Computational tools are indispensable in almost all scientific disciplines. Especially in cases where large amounts of research data are generated and need to be quickly processed, reliable, carefully developed software is crucial for analyzing and correctly interpreting such data. Nevertheless, scientific software can have quality quality deficiencies. To evaluate software quality in an automated way, computer scientists at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS) have designed the SoftWipe tool. "Adherence to coding standards is rarely considered in scientific software, although it can even lead to incorrect scientific results," says ...

BOSTON - Physical activity that conforms to medical and health association guidelines is associated with a lower risk of atrial fibrillation (Afib) and stroke, according to a study by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), who analyzed nearly 100,000 individuals equipped with wrist-worn accelerometers to measure their movement. The researchers' findings suggest that data from wearables, including a new generation of devices with sensors that allow for Afib detection, could provide an opportunity for the public health community to promote moderate physical activity as an effective way to improve health outcomes. The study ...

Digital medicine is opening up entirely new possibilities. For example, it can detect tumors at an early stage. But the effectiveness of new AI algorithms depends on the quantity and quality of the data used to train them. To maximize the data pool, it is customary to share patient data between clinics by sending copies of databases to the clinics where the algorithm is being trained. For data protection purposes, the material usually undergoes anonymization and pseudonymization processes - a procedure that has also come in for criticism. "These processes have often proven inadequate in terms of protecting patients' health data," says Daniel Rueckert, ...

From shamans and mystics to cult leaders and divine kings, why have people throughout history accorded high status to people believed to have supernatural powers? According to a study led by researchers from the University of Oxford, this tendency to attribute social dominance to such individuals is rooted in early development. As part of the study, 48 infants aged 12 to 16 months watched a series of animated videos in which two characters competed for a reward. In each scenario, one character displayed physically counterintuitive methods of making ...

In a new publication from Opto-Electronic Advances; DOI https://doi.org/10.29026/oea.2021.200077, Researchers led by Professor Jeongyong Kim at the Department of Energy Science, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Republic of Korea review light-emitting MXene quantum dots. MXenes have found wide-ranging applications in energy storage devices, sensors, catalysis, etc. owing to their high electronic conductivity and wide range of optical absorption. However, the absence of semiconducting MXenes has limited their applications related to light emission. Extensively reviewing current relevant research, the authors summarise recent advances in MXene quantum dot (MQD) research on the synthesis, optical properties and applications of MQDs as light emitting quantum materials. Research ...

Graphene is an ultrathin material characterized by its ultrasmall bending modulus, superflimsiness. Now the researchers at the Nanoscience Center of the University of Jyväskylä have demonstrated how an experimental technique called optical forging can make graphene ultrastiff, increase its stiffness by several orders of magnitude. The research was published in npj 2D Materials and Applications in May 2021. Graphene is an atomically thin carbon material loaded with excellent properties, such as large charge carrier mobility, superb thermal conductivity, and high ...

When it comes to distinguishing a healthy cell from an infected one that needs to be destroyed, the immune system's killer T cells sometimes make mistakes. This discovery, described today in eLife, upends a long-held belief among scientists that T cells were nearly perfect at discriminating friend from foe. The results may point to new ways to treat autoimmune diseases that cause the immune system to attack the body, or lead to improvements in cutting-edge cancer treatments. It is widely believed that T cells can discriminate perfectly between infected cells and healthy ones based on how tightly they are able to bind to molecules called antigens ...

About 14 billion years ago, our universe changed from being a lot hotter and denser to expanding radically - a process that scientists have named 'The Big Bang'. And even though we know that this fast expansion created particles, atoms, stars, galaxies and life as we know it today, the details of how it all happened are still unknown. Now a new study performed by researchers from University of Copenhagen reveals insights on how it all began. "We have studied a substance called Quark-Gluon Plasma that was the only matter, which existed during the first microsecond ...

A rare mutation that causes Parkinson's disease-like symptoms interrupts the flow of dopamine in the brain, suggests a study in fruit flies published today in eLife. The findings provide more detailed insights about why young children with this mutation develop these symptoms. This new information, as well as previous evidence that therapies helping to improve dopamine balance in the brain can alleviate some symptoms in the flies, suggests that this could be a beneficial new treatment strategy. Parkinson's disease causes progressive degeneration of the brain that leads to impaired movement and coordination. Current treatments focus on replacing or increasing the levels of dopamine to help reduce movement-related symptoms. But these drugs can have side ...

Graphene nanoribbons (GNRs), narrow strips of single-layer graphene, have interesting physical, electrical, thermal, and optical properties because of the interplay between their crystal and electronic structures. These novel characteristics have pushed them to the forefront in the search for ways to advance next-generation nanotechnologies. While bottom-up fabrication techniques now allow the synthesis of a broad range of graphene nanoribbons that feature well-defined edge geometries, widths, and heteroatom incorporations, the question of whether or not structural disorder is present in these atomically precise GNRs, and to what extent, is still subject to debate. The answer to this ...

In the latest National Autism Indicators Report, researchers from Drexel University’s A.J. Drexel Autism Institute examined surveys of family members of autistic adults who use Developmental Disability services, and found needs for additional supports like respite care and assistance to plan for crisis and emergencies, especially among families whose adult lived with them. Data from the surveys showed over one quarter of families with autistic adults who use Developmental Disability services and live with family do not have enough services or supports for themselves, according to the report. And over half of these families ...

Staying up all night, working nonstop, eating on the run and skipping meals are often telltale signs of starting a new business. But research shows this constant hustle - which is often glorified as the key to success - can have a negative impact not only on an entrepreneur's health and well-being but also his or her business. New research led by UCF assistant professor of management Jeff Gish suggests that engaging in recovery may help entrepreneurs reduce the negative impact of stress. "Entrepreneurs who work really hard and grind on their business and who most ...

Cells sense and respond to the mechanical properties of the cellular microenvironment in the body. Changes in these properties, which occur in a number of human pathologies, including cancer, can elicit abnormal responses from cells. How the cells adapt to such changes in the mechanical microenvironment is not well understood. A team of researchers at Texas A&M University are working to understand cellular mechanosensing -- the ability to sense and respond to the mechanical properties of the microenvironment -- in a unique way. Dr. Tanmay Lele, Unocal Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering and the Department of Translational Medical Sciences, partnered with Dr. Charles Baer, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Florida. ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. - To improve the development of new saliva-based diagnostic tests and personalized medicine, the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) has supported the development of the Human Salivary Proteome Wiki, the first public platform that catalogs and curates data on each of the thousands of proteins within our saliva. Detailed in an article published on Tuesday, May 25 in the Journal of Dental Research, the wiki provides researchers and clinicians with rich, unbiased evidence from multiple independent studies to help explore the dynamic and complex nature of saliva, as well as analytical tools to search for data by tissue type, disease and more. "This ...

New effective compounds, which can be endogenous donors of a signaling molecule - hydrogen sulfide in the body, were synthesized by SUSU scientists. Due to this property, the obtained compounds are potential drugs with a cancer-preventing effect. The research work was published in the Russian Chemical Bulletin (Q3). Organosulfur compounds with anticancer, antibacterial, and antirheumatic properties have been studied for some years by scientists from South Ural State University and N.D. Zelinsky Institute of Organic Chemistry, Russian Academy of Sciences. In the latest study, they attempted to search for new derivatives of 1,2-dithiol-3-thiones - compounds with various ...

Scientists from the UK's University of Bath explore racemases - an important type of enzyme that is linked to certain cancers and other life-threatening diseases while also being critical to cell function - in a paper published in the prestigious journal Chemical Society Reviews. The scientists also propose new strategies for finding drugs that neutralise these enzymes. Many racemases and epimerases perform vital roles in human and animal cells, and in disease-causing organisms. They facilitate proper nerve function, the degradation of toxic substances, the formation of bacterial cell walls and the conversion of certain drugs into their active ...

Alzheimer's disease is the main cause of dementia and current therapeutic strategies cannot prevent, slow down or cure the pathology. The disease is characterized by memory loss, caused by the degeneration and death of neuronal cells in several regions of the brain, including the hippocampus, which is where memories are initially formed. Researchers from the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience (NIN) have identified a small molecule that can be used to rejuvenate the brain and counteract the memory loss. New cells in old brains The presence of adult-born cells in the hippocampus ...

A research group from Osaka University led by Professor Hisashi Arase and consisting of researchers from the Research Institute for Microbial Diseases, the Institute for Protein Research, the Immunology Frontier Research Center, the Center for Infectious Diseases, and the Graduate School of Medicine has discovered for the first time that both neutralizing antibodies that protect against infection as well as infection-enhancing antibodies that increase infectivity are produced after infection with SARS-CoV-2 by analyzing antibodies derived from COVID-19 patients. Antibodies against the receptor binding site (RBD) of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein play an important function as ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- A new map of dark matter in the local universe reveals several previously undiscovered filamentary structures connecting galaxies. The map, developed using machine learning by an international team including a Penn State astrophysicist, could enable studies about the nature of dark matter as well as about the history and future of our local universe. Dark matter is an elusive substance that makes up 80% of the universe. It also provides the skeleton for what cosmologists call the cosmic web, the large-scale structure of the universe ...

WASHINGTON (May 25, 2021)--A new report summarizes the findings from a national survey of frontline health care workers during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, finding that many reported unsafe working conditions and retaliation for voicing their concerns to employers. The survey, launched in May 2020 by staff and student researchers at the George Washington University, provides a snapshot of the experiences of frontline health care workers providing care for millions of Americans during the pandemic. "This survey gives a voice to US health care workers who have been on the frontlines ...

Photos and Map The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM, was a short interval of highly elevated global temperatures 56 million years ago that is frequently described as the best ancient analog for present-day climate warming. Fish are among the organisms thought to be most sensitive to warming climates, and tropical sea-surface temperatures during the PETM likely approached temperatures that are lethal to some modern marine fish species, according to some estimates. But newly discovered fish fossils from an eastern Egyptian desert site show that marine fishes thrived in at least ...

A study by Monash University and Alfred Health found a 70 per cent reduction in one type of human papillomavirus (HPV) in gay and bisexual men after the implementation of the school-based HPV vaccination program. The HYPER2 study, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, and led by Associate Professor Eric Chow, found there was a significant reduction in all four vaccine-preventable genotypes in gay/bisexual men aged 16-20 years following the introduction of the vaccine for boys in 2013. Australia is one of the first and few countries that have both boys and girls vaccination programs for ...

It is said that 10 to 15% of the world's agricultural production loss is caused by diseases, which is equivalent of the food for about 500 million people. And since 70-80% of this plant disease is caused by filamentous fungi, protecting crops from filamentous fungi is an important issue in effectively feeding the world population. In order for pathogenic fungi to infect plants, they must break through the epidermal cells of the plant and invade the interior. In other words, plant epidermal cells act as the first barrier to stop the attack of pathogenic fungi in the environment. So what kind of defense functions do ...

In the last year, one thing has become clear: we cannot live life without risk. In fact, every part of our daily routines became subject to analysis: How risky is the action and is its value worth the potential cost? Risk analysis, though seemingly more ever-present in our thoughts today, has always been a part of how we operate and how the systems around us work. As new pressures, such as climate change, deepen, the accuracy and reliability of risk analysis models regarding issues as basic as the cleanliness of our drinking water have become more important than ever. USC ...

A study published today in Scientific Reports suggests that new health challenges may be emerging as a result of conservationists' success in pulling mountain gorillas back from the brink of extinction. The study, the first species-wide survey of parasite infections across the entire range of the mountain gorilla, was conducted by an international science team led by the Institute of Vertebrate Biology, Czech Academy of Sciences; University of Veterinary Sciences Brno, Czech Republic; Gorilla Doctors; and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. The work was conducted in collaboration with the protected area authorities of Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (the Rwanda Development Board, the Uganda Wildlife Authority and l'Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature, respectively). All ...