Self-compassion can lessen feelings of work-from-home loneliness, finds study

Researchers who simulated early stages of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in Wuhan, China, conclude that the virus was likely circulating earlier than has been described, possibly even in mid-October 2019. The findings do not reveal whether the virus that first emerged was less "fit" than the virus that spread throughout China, say the authors, but the estimates do further distance the first ("index") case from the outbreak at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which has received much attention. A concerted effort has been made to determine when the SARS-CoV-2 virus ...

Have you forgotten where you laid your keys? Ever wondered where you had parked your car? Or having trouble remembering the name of the new neighbor? Unfortunately, these things seem to get worse as one gets older. A big question for researchers is where does benign forgetfulness end and true disease begin? One of the keys to having a healthy brain at any age is having a healthy blood-brain barrier, a complex interface of blood vessels that run through the brain. Researchers reviewed more than 150 articles to look at what happens to the blood-brain barrier as we age. Their findings were published March 15 in Nature ...

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., March 18, 2021--A new, simpler solution process for fabricating stable perovskite solar cells overcomes the key bottleneck to large-scale production and commercialization of this promising renewable-energy technology, which has remained tantalizingly out of reach for more than a decade. "Our work paves the way for low-cost, high-throughput commercial-scale production of large-scale solar modules in the near future," said Wanyi Nie, a research scientist fellow in the Center of Integrated Nanotechnologies at Los Alamos National Laboratory and corresponding ...

During a pandemic like COVID-19, vulnerable countries are traditionally the focus of global attention and concern. However, new research suggests that we need to rebuild our understanding. A study published in KeAi's Global Health Journal, examined the relationship between state vulnerabilities (measured using the Fragile States Index (FSI) from Fund for Peace) and COVID-19 incidence and death rates in 146 countries. The FSI consists of 12 specific indicators covering cohesion, economy, politics and society. "When using the total FSI score for statistical analysis, we were surprised to find that, overall, the more fragile countries had lower cumulative incidence and fatality rates for COVID-19," explains one of the study's authors, Yangmu ...

In new findings published online March 18, 2021 in the journal Cancer Cell, an international team of researchers, led by scientists at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Moores Cancer Center, describe how pancreatic cancer cells use an alternative method to find necessary nutrients, defying current therapies, to help them grow and spread. Pancreatic cancer accounts for roughly 3 percent of all cancers in the United States, but it is among the most aggressive and deadly, resulting in 7 percent of all cancer deaths annually. Pancreatic cancer is especially deadly once it metastasizes, with the number of people who are alive five years later declining from 37 percent to just 3 percent. All cancer cells require a constant supply of nutrients. Some types ...

Smart glass can change its color quickly through electricity. A new material developed by chemists of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich has now set a speed record for such a change. On the highway at night. It rains, the bright headlights of the car behind you are blinding. How convenient to have an automatically dimming rearview mirror in such a case. Technically, this helpful extra is based on electrochromic materials. When a voltage is applied, their light absorption and color change. Controlled by a light sensor, the rearview mirror can thus filter out strongly dazzling light. Recently, experts discovered that, in addition to established inorganic electrochromic materials, a new generation of highly ordered lattice structures can also be equipped ...

KINSHASA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO (March 18, 2021) - A new study in the journal Conservation Science and Practice finds that restaurants in urban areas in Central Africa play a key role in whether protected wildlife winds up on the menu. The study, by a team of scientists from Michigan State University, Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), and University of Maryland, used a crime science "hot product" approach, which looks at frequently stolen items coveted by thieves. The approach offered new insights into wildlife targeted by the urban wild meat trade and can inform urban wildlife policies. The study engaged lower, middle, and upper-level tiered restaurants to understand which species were traded. ...

Detailed, new analysis published this week in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) Open highlights significant concerns about a growing issue of sex selective abortion of girls in Nepal. Drawing on census data from 2011 and follow-on survey data from 2016, the social scientists estimate that roughly one in 50 girl births were 'missing' from records (i.e. had been aborted) between 2006-11 (22,540 girl births in total). In the year before the census (June 2010 - June 2011) this had risen to one in 38. For certain areas of the country, the practice was more widespread. In Arghakhanchi, the most affected district, one in every six girl births were 'missing' in census data. In the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal's main urban centre, around 115 boys are born for ...

Anyone who has watched an infant's eyes follow a dangling trinket dancing in front of them knows that babies are capable of paying attention with laser focus. But with large areas of their young brains still underdeveloped, how do they manage to do so? Using an approach pioneered at Yale that uses fMRI (or functional magnetic resonance imaging) to scan the brains of awake babies, a team of university psychologists show that when focusing their attention infants under a year of age recruit areas of their frontal cortex, a section of the brain involved in more advanced functions that was previously thought to be immature in babies. The findings were ...

At the heart of clouds are ice crystals. And at the heart of ice crystals, often, are aerosol particles - dust in the atmosphere onto which ice can form more easily than in the open air. It's a bit mysterious how this happens, though, because ice crystals are orderly structures of molecules, while aerosols are often disorganized chunks. New research by Valeria Molinero, distinguished professor of chemistry, and Atanu K. Metya, now at the Indian Institute of Technology Patna, shows how crystals of organic molecules, a common component of aerosols, can get the ...