People who have contact with other social groups are more likely to be committed to social justice. However, an international study led by the University of Zurich has shown that for this to be the case, power relations and discrimination must be actively addressed and group-specific needs must be met. It is important that disadvantaged group members, such as racial minorities and LGBTIQ+ individuals, are given a voice, and that those who belong to advantaged groups do not feel labeled as biased. People who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against because they belong to a particular group often join forces with other disadvantaged people to fight together for better rights. Prominent examples of such political engagement are the women's rights movement, Black Lives ...

Rather than levelling inequality, as the Great Depression did, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated inequalities around the world allowing some wealthy investors to benefit from the crisis and make a fortune on the misfortune of others. During March to December last year, U.S. billionaires increased their wealth by over one-third, to one trillion dollars, while millions of Americans faced deep financial hardship. New research from Copenhagen Business School has examined how American "shadow banks"- which are less regulated and include private credit intermediaries such as private equity, venture capital, and hedge fund firms - have invested in ways that extract profit from the misfortunes of frontline workers, struggling companies, ...

People who have experienced childhood trauma get a more pleasurable "high" from morphine, new research suggests. University of Exeter scientists compared the effects of morphine on 52 healthy people - 27 with a history of childhood abuse and neglect, and 25 who reported no such experiences in childhood. Those with childhood trauma liked morphine (an opioid drug) more, felt more euphoric and had a stronger desire for another dose. Those with no childhood trauma were more likely to dislike the effects and feel dizzy or nauseous. "There are high rates of childhood trauma in people with addictions. Our findings ...

Warm mix asphalt (WMA) is gaining attention in the asphalt industry as an eco-friendly and sustainable technology. WMA reduces energy consumption while simultaneously minimizing vapors and greenhouse gas emissions during the production of asphalt mixtures in comparison to conventional asphalt. However, high moisture susceptibility and ageing of asphalt make WMA less durable on the roads. To address both issues in WMA technology, a team from the Energy Safety Research Institute (ESRI) at Swansea University and Braunschweig Pavement Engineering Centre (ISBS) at the Technical University of Braunschweig have discovered ...

Listening to music while running might be the key to improving people's performance when they feel mentally fatigued a study suggests. The performance of runners who listened to a self-selected playlist after completing a demanding thinking task was at the same level as when they were not mentally fatigued, the research found. The study is the first to investigate the effect of listening to music playlists on endurance running capacity and performance when mentally fatigued. Researchers at the University of Edinburgh used two tests to study how listening to music affected the running performance of ...

Skoltech researchers and their colleagues from Russia and Serbia have reviewed almost a thousand patents held by some two hundred organizations involved in the New Space economy. The analysis helped draw a comprehensive picture of technology trends in the field. The paper was published in the journal Progress in Aerospace Sciences. "New Space" is a loosely defined term that encompasses the recent flurry of space-related activities coming from smaller actors rather than a handful of space-faring nations. Put somewhat simply, while the Apollo missions were more traditional, SpaceX, Rocket Lab (launching small satellites from New Zealand) or LeoLabs (a space junk tracking company) are undeniably parts of a new and different ...

In 2020, as many states of emergency were declared around the world during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic as there were in the entire previous decade. The influence of neighbouring countries on each other, weak democracies and poor pandemic preparedness are some of the explanations, according to research from the University of Gothenburg and Stockholm University. A state of emergency is a situation in which a country's ordinary laws and rights are suspended and authorities are given increased powers. A state of emergency is declared by the government of a country, often as a result of war, civil unrest or natural disasters. The introduction of a curfew is ...

Protected Satellite Communications (SatComs) exhibit specific characteristics such as security, intelligence, anti-jamming, and nuclear disaster survivability. They constitute one of the key research topics in modern communications. Currently, the United States is using the latest Advanced Extremely High-Frequency (AEHF) system to provide protected communications. Other countries are also employing their own protected SatCom systems to meet future operational requirements. Furthermore, in the modern intelligent age, many intelligent-related technologies are introduced into the protected SatCom ...

New York, NY (June 22, 2021) - A new class of drugs that inhibits a "master switch" involved in the vast majority of cases of mantle cell lymphoma (MCL), a fatal subtype of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, has been discovered by researchers at Mount Sinai. In a study in Clinical Cancer Research published in June, the team reported that the drugs, known as small-molecule inhibitors of the SOX 11 oncogene, are toxic to MCL tumor development in human cells studied outside the body. If the effect is replicated in living patients, the discovery could lead to new therapies for a disease that is highly resistant to existing treatments. "The SOX 11 protein, which is expressed in up to 90 percent of mantle cell lymphoma patients, is an attractive target for therapy," said senior author Samir Parekh, MD, ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - Scientists at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health have developed a universal vaccine that protected mice not just against COVID-19 but also other coronaviruses and triggered the immune system to fight off a dangerous variant. While no one knows which virus may cause the next outbreak, coronaviruses remain a threat after causing the SARS outbreak in 2003 and the global COVID-19 pandemic. To prevent a future coronavirus pandemic, UNC-Chapel Hill researchers designed the vaccine to provide protection from the current SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and a group of coronaviruses known to make the jump from animals to humans. The findings were published ...

As many as 16.8 million Americans had undiagnosed SARS-CoV-2 infections - 5 times the rate of diagnosed infections - by the end of July of 2020, according to an analysis of antibodies from more than 8,000 previously undiagnosed adults collected during the pandemic's first wave. The authors calculated that almost 5% of the undiagnosed U.S. population harbored SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, with the highest positivity rates among African Americans, those under the age of 45, urban dwellers, and women. The results suggest a larger spread of COVID-19 in the U.S. than originally suspected in previous reports. SARS-CoV-2 can stealthily cause asymptomatic ...

The rapid development of safe and efficacious vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 has offered hope that the global COVID-19 pandemic may soon be under control. However, vaccinations remain incomplete in many developed nations, and lag further still in the developing world. In a new Focus, Jonathan Sprent and Cecile King posit that vaccine hesitancy, motivated in part by fear of side effects documented in scientific journals and the popular media, could hold back the global population from reaching herd immunity. Seeking to reassure those with reservations, Sprent and King suggest that "it is highly likely ...

Osaka, Japan - As far back as 1959, brewers at Guinness developed a system that fundamentally altered the texture of their draught beer. Now, researchers from Japan have solved the physics of Guinness' cascading flow, which will have widespread applications to technology in life and environmental sciences. In a study recently published in Physical Review E, researchers from Osaka University have revealed why the nitrogen bubbles of Guinness draught beer flow similarly to a fluid. The bubbles of many just-opened carbonated beverages simply move upwards, following Archimedes' principle. Much of the appeal of the draught from Guinness beer is that the bubbles sink and flow collectively, known as "bubble cascade." ...

In Finland, every fifth mother was diagnosed with gestational diabetes in 2019. The condition increases the mother's risk of developing type 2 diabetes in the future. However, the most significant consequence of gestational diabetes is fetal macrosomia, or excessive growth of the fetus. Macrosomia increases birth injuries for both the child and the mother, causes fetal hypoxia, that is, a lack of oxygen in the fetus, and increases labour-related complications for the newborn. A research group active at the University of Helsinki and Helsinki University Hospital demonstrated that the mother's gestational diabetes ...

In a world-first, a Kobe University research group led by Associate Professor FUKAYAMA Hiroshi of the Graduate School of Agricultural Science has used rice to successfully illuminate the mechanism by which plants regulate the amount of starch produced via photosynthesis. This knowledge could contribute towards improving the quality and yield of agricultural crops. These research results were published in the international scientific journal Plant, Cell & Environment on May 14, 2021. Main Points Plants convert carbon dioxide (CO2) into organic substances ...

Without an audience, men run slower and women faster: The lack of spectators during the coronavirus pandemic appears to have had a noticeable effect on the performance of athletes at the 2020 Biathlon World Cup, a new study by Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) in Psychology of Sport and Exercise shows. According to the new analysis, women also performed better in complex tasks, such as shooting, when an audience was present while men did not. Social facilitation theory states that a person's performance is impacted if other people watch them. The mere presence of an audience improves the performance of simple tasks, especially those that require stamina. "The studies have been relatively clear so far, but the results are more heterogeneous when it comes to more complex ...

Increased risk of cancer due to a genetic predisposition in first- and second-degree relatives is long-established but has previously only been studied in white or European populations. Now, a new study published in eLife is the first to demonstrate that the inherited risk of early-onset cancer is significantly higher among Latino and African American families for solid tumors, and Asian/Pacific Islander families for blood-based cancers, compared to non-Latino white families in California. "Cancer clustering within families, meaning the devastating diagnosis of more than one early-onset cancer within the same family, usually points ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Oregon State University research has identified the oldest known specimen of a fungus parasitizing an ant, and the fossil also represents a new fungal genus and species. "It's a mushroom growing out of a carpenter ant," said OSU's George Poinar Jr., an international expert in using plant and animal life forms preserved in amber to learn about the biology and ecology of the distant past. A mushroom is the reproductive structure of many fungi, including the ones you find growing in your yard, and Poinar and a collaborator in France named their discovery Allocordyceps baltica. They found the ...

A recent study revealed that as a city becomes more economically developed, its citizens' happiness becomes more directly related to the area of urban green space. A joint research project by Professor Meeyoung Cha of the School of Computing and her collaborators studied the relationship between green space and citizen happiness by analyzing big data from satellite images of 60 different countries. Urban green space, including parks, gardens, and riversides not only provides aesthetic pleasure, but also positively affects our health by promoting ...

Urban green spaces, such as parks, backyards, riverbanks, and urban farmlands, are thought to contribute to citizen happiness by promoting physical and mental health. While a number of previous studies have reported the mental bene?ts of green space, most had been conducted in the affluent parts of the world like the United States and Europe, and only a few involved a multi-country setting. Lack of data had been the main limitation in carrying out these studies because there is no global medical dataset that can provide reliable and standardized mental health surveys from different countries. Another challenge involves a systematic method to measure the amount of green space across countries. Various methods of measuring ...

Solar cells, which convert sunlight to electricity, have long been part of the global vision for renewable energy. Although individual cells are very small, when upscaled to modules, they can be used to charge batteries and power lights. If laid side-by-side, they could, one day, be the primary energy source for buildings. But the solar cells currently on the market utilize silicon, which makes them expensive to fabricate when compared to more traditional power sources. That's where another, relatively new-to-science, material comes in - metal halide perovskite. When nestled at the center of a solar cell, this crystalline structure also ...

A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the University of the Ryukyus has recently identified and described a bizarre new genus and species of xanthid crab found in Okinawa Island, Ryukyu Islands, Japan. Named Mabui calculus, it is unique among the 7,800 species of known crabs in having strongly asymmetrical male and female reproductive structures! "Male crabs have a pair of reproductive parts called gonopods while females have a pair of vulvae. All crabs mate in the 'missionary position', so the gonopods pump sperm into females for internal fertilisation of the eggs. This was the accepted orthodoxy until our discovery - a small Japanese crab has evolved to do this very differently!" explained Professor Peter Ng, a world-leading expert in ...

Recent studies show that, in the future, the mercury concentration of fish in Finnish Lapland can shift closer to the level found in lakes located below the Arctic Circle. According to researchers, mercury content should be increasingly carefully investigated and monitored in fish and food webs, as the climate and land use change. Mercury is a heavy metal found in nature. Methylmercury, a particularly toxic form of the metal, accumulates in fish and is biomagnified in food webs. Humans are exposed to methylmercury especially through fish-based diets. Researchers investigated the joint effects of the climate and land ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Scientists are pursuing a new strategy in the protracted fight against the SARS-CoV-2 virus by engineering nanobodies that can neutralize virus variants in two different ways. In lab studies, researchers identified two groups of molecules that were effective against virus variants. Using different mechanisms, nanobodies in each group bypassed mutations and disabled the virus's ability to bind to the receptor that lets it enter host cells. Though vaccination is enabling the resumption of some pre-pandemic activities in parts of the world, ...

MISSOULA - The map of Montana Kayla Irish pulls up is peppered with red circles, each cluster providing details behind one of today's timely topics - childhood vaccination. The project, led by Dr. Sophia Newcomer in the University of Montana's Center for Population Health Research, is the first spatial scan analysis to identify hotspots of undervaccinated children across Montana and evaluate whether they are due to social or geographic barriers. CPHR is funded through the National Institutes of Health, and the analysis is part of a collaborative ...