Three bacterial strains discovered on space station may help grow plants on Mars

ITHACA, N.Y. - Women veterinarians make less than their male counterparts, new research from Cornell University's College of Veterinary Medicine has found ¬- with an annual difference of around $100,000 among the top quarter of earners. The disparity predominantly affects recent graduates and the top half of earners, according to the research, the first overarching study of the wage gap in the veterinary industry. "Veterinarians can take many paths in their careers, all of which affect earning potential," said the paper's senior author, Dr. Clinton Neill, assistant professor in the Department of Population Medicine and Diagnostic Sciences. "Similar to what's been found in the human medicine world, we found the wage gap was more prominent ...

Do children learning French as a second language see benefits from reading bilingual French-English children's books? A study recently published in the journal Language and Literacy found that bilingual books, which are not often used in French immersion classrooms, are seen by students as an effective tool for second language learning. To find out more on this topic, we spoke with the co-author of the paper, Joël Thibeault, Assistant Professor of French education at uOttawa's Faculty of Education. What is the topic of your research? "My research focuses on the educational value of bilingual children's books in the teaching of French as a second language. To highlight this value, I zeroed in on elementary students in French immersion ...

Drugs can only work if they stick to their target proteins in the body. Assessing that stickiness is a key hurdle in the drug discovery and screening process. New research combining chemistry and machine learning could lower that hurdle. The new technique, dubbed DeepBAR, quickly calculates the binding affinities between drug candidates and their targets. The approach yields precise calculations in a fraction of the time compared to previous state-of-the-art methods. The researchers say DeepBAR could one day quicken the pace of drug discovery and protein engineering. "Our method is orders of magnitude faster than before, meaning we can have drug discovery that is both efficient and reliable," ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - If you count yourself among those who lose themselves in the lives of fictional characters, scientists now have a better idea of how that happens. Researchers found that the more immersed people tend to get into "becoming" a fictional character, the more they use the same part of the brain to think about the character as they do to think about themselves. "When they think about a favorite fictional character, it appears similar in one part of the brain as when they are thinking about themselves," said Timothy Broom, lead author of the study and doctoral student in psychology at The Ohio State University. The study was published ...

Statewide stay-at-home orders put in place as Tennessee fought to control the spread of coronavirus last March were associated with a 14% lower rate of preterm birth, according to a research letter published today in JAMA Pediatrics. Preterm infants have higher morbidity and mortality risks than babies born at term. Senior author Stephen Patrick, MD, director of the Vanderbilt Center for Child Health Policy and a neonatologist at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt and his colleagues had observed in March that there appeared to be fewer infants than usual in the NICU at ...

A home-based parenting programme to prevent childhood behaviour problems, which very unusually focuses on children when they are still toddlers and, in some cases, just 12 months old, has proven highly successful during its first public health trial. The six-session programme involves providing carefully-prepared feedback to parents about how they can build on positive moments when playing and engaging with their child using video clips of everyday interactions, which are filmed by a health professional while visiting their home. It was trialled with 300 families of children who had shown early signs of behaviour problems. Half of the families received the programme alongside routine ...

What The Study Did: Researchers analyzed neurologic manifestations, biological and electroencephalography (EEG, which records the brain's electrical activity) findings plus brain MRI images in a study of 78 adult patients with COVID-19 in France. Authors: Virginie Lambrecq, M.D., Ph.D., of the Sorbonne Université in Paris, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.1489) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest ...

What The Study Did: This population-based study of all nursing home residents in Ontario, Canada, found increased prescribing of psychotropic drugs at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic that persisted through September 2020. Although absolute increases in prescribing were small, they were disproportionate to expected secular prescribing trends from April 2018 to February 2020, and they were distinct from observed prescribing changes for other drugs during the pandemic. Authors: Nathan M. Stall, M.D., of Sinai Health and the University Health Network in Toronto, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study:  Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2021.0224) Editor's ...

What The Study Did: Researchers used Tennessee birth records from 2015 to 2020 to examine the odds of preterm birth in the state during the 2020 COVID-19 stay-at-home order compared with the same periods in 2015 to 2019. Authors: Elizabeth M. Harvey, Ph.D., M.P.H., of the Tennessee Department of Health in Nashville, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2020.6512) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions ...

What The Study Did: Researchers examined the screening mammography recommendations regarding starting age and interval for nearly 500 breast cancer centers in the United States. Authors: Jennifer L. Marti, M.D., of Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2021.0157) Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support. INFORMATION: Media advisory: The full study and editorial are linked to this news release. Embed this link to provide your readers free access ...