A new avenue for fighting drug-resistant bacteria

If you didn't have a brain, could you still figure out where you were and navigate your surroundings? Thanks to new research on slime molds, the answer may be "yes." Scientists from the Wyss Institute at Harvard University and the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University have discovered that a brainless slime mold called Physarum polycephalum uses its body to sense mechanical cues in its surrounding environment, and performs computations similar to what we call "thinking" to decide in which direction to grow based on that information. Unlike previous studies with Physarum, these results were obtained without giving ...

DALLAS, July 15, 2021 -- Statement Highlights: The new scientific statement, "Primary Care of Adult Patients After Stroke," acknowledges the importance of primary care in the system of care for patients with stroke, summarizing the available literature and providing a roadmap for holistic, goal-directed and patient-centered care. The statement is published today in Stroke, a journal of the American Stroke Association, a division of the American Heart Association. Primary care professionals provide essential comprehensive and consistent care to patients ...

"The solar energy-to-electricity conversion of perovskite solar cells is unbelievably high, around 25%, which is now approaching the performance of the best silicon solar cells," says Professor László Forró at EPFL's School of Basic Sciences. "But their central element is lead, which is a poison; if the solar panel fails, it can wash out into the soil, get into the food chain, and cause serious diseases." The problem is that in most of the halide perovskites lead can dissolve in water. This water solubility and solubility in other solvents is actually a great advantage, as it makes building perovskite solar panels simpler and inexpensive - another perk along with their ...

Patients who experience long COVID have reported more than 200 symptoms across 10 organ systems*, in the largest international study of 'long-haulers' to date, led by UCL scientists together with a patient-led research collaborative. For the study, published in the Lancet's EClinicalMedicine, patient researchers who connected through the Body Politic online COVID-19 support group created a web-based survey designed to characterise the symptom profile and time course in patients with confirmed or suspected long COVID, along with the impact on daily life, work, and return to health. With responses from 3,762 ...

BOSTON - Resistance to antibiotics is common and often deadly among children with pneumonia in Bangladesh, according to a new study coauthored by researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) with colleagues at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (abbreviated as icddr,b). This study, which appears in the journal Open Forum Infectious Diseases, offers an early warning that a pandemic of potentially deadly antibiotic resistance is under way and could spread around the globe. The study was led by Mohammod Jobayer Chisti, MD, PhD, a senior scientist in icddr,b's Nutrition ...

Teens' ability to empathize -- to understand others' perspectives and emotions, and to care for their wellbeing -- is an important contributor to their relationships, including with friends. Prior research shows that teens who have more secure family relationships report higher levels of empathy for others. But little research examines whether teens with more secure family relationships actually show greater empathy when observed in real-life interactions with peers, or whether their empathic capacities show different patterns of growth over time. A new study tested whether ...

According to the World Health Organization, over 340 million children and adolescents (aged 5 to 10 years old) were classified as overweight or obese in 2016, a statistic that has risen from 14% since 1975. Childhood obesity is associated with a wide range of severe health complications and an increased risk of premature onset of illnesses, including diabetes and heart disease. Without intervention, children and young adolescents classified as obese are likely to remain so throughout adolescence and adulthood. A new study conducted in the United Arab Emirates investigates whether asking early adolescents to evaluate the food choices of peers triggers deliberative thinking that improves their own food selection, even when the peers' ...

NEW YORK, NY (July 15, 2021)--Heart problems in children hospitalized with multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C)--an inflammatory condition triggered by COVID--were mostly gone within a few months, a new study by researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and NewYork-Presbyterian has found. The study published in Pediatrics about 45 MIS-C patients is the first in North America to report on longitudinal cardiac and immunologic outcomes in children hospitalized with MIS-C. "We've learned that COVID causes a spectrum of illness in children. Some are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic and a small number of kids who develop MIS-C become critically ill, requiring ...

Equatorial Asia, which includes Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, and surrounding areas, experienced devastating biomass burning in 2015 due to the severe drought condition induced by the extreme El Niño and a positive anomaly of the Indian Ocean dipole. This biomass burning emitted a significant amount of carbon, mainly in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2), into the atmosphere. Equatorial Asia has very few ground-based stations that observe CO2 and other related atmospheric constitutents. Meanwhile, a few satellites could observe atmospheric CO2; however, their observations were less available ...

When a CEO steps down or is dismissed, the attention of the board is on how to choose the right executive to succeed that CEO. However, Bocconi University professor Dovev Lavie claims that managing the process of introducing the new CEO and choking the negative sentiment that can arise among stakeholders in a moment of uncertainty could be a more critical task, especially when the new CEO comes from outside the firm. The effect of such a negative sentiment, which is a form of psychological bias, on a firm's performance is stronger than the implications of the new CEO's previous experience ...