A college education is estimated to add $1 million to a person's lifetime earning potential, but for some students the path to earning one is riddled with obstacles. That journey is even more difficult for students who have been in the foster care system or experienced homelessness, according to a new study from the University of Georgia. But the more college administrators and faculty know about these students' problems, the more they can do to ease the burden. Getting into universities in the first place can frequently be a challenge for students who've had unstable home lives, said David Meyers, co-author of the study. "Research tells us that every time a student moves from one foster care placement to another, they lose six months of educational ...

In recent months, more than three hundred cases of salmonellosis have occurred in various European countries and Canada, which are linked to each other. In the UK the cases could be partly traced back to frozen breaded poultry meat. The cause was contamination with the bacterium Salmonella Enteritidis, which causes gastrointestinal inflammation. Salmonella is not killed by deep freezing and can remain infectious at temperatures below zero degrees Celsius. The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) and the BfR are monitoring the situation together with the Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL). In Germany, the number of reported cases has currently ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- Scientists have long known that frogs are oddballs when it comes to teeth. Some have tiny teeth on their upper jaws and the roof of their mouths while others sport fanglike structures. Some species are completely toothless. And only one frog, out of the more-than 7,000 species, has true teeth on both upper and lower jaws. Now, the first comprehensive study of tooth evolution in frogs is bringing the group's dental history into focus. Florida Museum of Natural History researchers analyzed CT scans of nearly every living amphibian genus to reveal that frogs have lost teeth over 20 times during their evolution, more than any ...

DANVILLE, Pa. - Among people who have strokes and COVID-19, there is a higher incidence of severe stroke as well as stroke in younger people, according to new data from a multinational study group on COVID-19 and stroke, led by a team of Geisinger researchers. The COVID-19 Stroke Study Group's latest report, published in the journal END ...

LAWRENCE -- In the early days of COVID-19 vaccine development, a new social media platform provided a place for like-minded people to discuss vaccines, share misinformation and speculate about the motivations for its development. A new study from the University of Kansas shows people flocked to Parler to discuss the vaccines in an echo chamber-type environment, and those conversations can shed light about how to communicate about vaccine efficacy during health crises. COVID-19 vaccine vial and syringe photo from the U.S. Census Bureau.In the runup to the 2020 election, then-president Donald Trump claimed a COVID-19 vaccine could be ready before ...

Mass of human chromosomes measured for the first time The mass of human chromosomes, which contain the instructions for life in nearly every cell of our bodies, has been measured with X-rays for the first time in a new study led by UCL researchers. For the study, published in Chromosome Research, researchers used a powerful X-ray beam at the UK's national synchrotron facility, Diamond Light Source, to determine the number of electrons in a spread of 46 chromosomes which they used to calculate mass. They found that the chromosomes were about 20 times ...

Scientists have revealed a potential mechanism for how traumatic brain injury leads to neurodegenerative diseases, according to a study in fruit flies, and rat and human brain tissue, published today in eLife. The results could aid the development of treatments that halt the progression of cell damage after brain injury, which can otherwise lead to neurological diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. Repeated head trauma is linked to a progressive neurodegenerative syndrome called chronic ...

Since the introduction on the market in 1995 of Doxil, pegylated liposomal doxorubicin, liposomes have become one of the most clinically established drug delivery systems in nanomedicine. Among different liposomal formulations, cationic liposomes have attracted great attention because of their capacity to bind negatively charged nucleic acids to perform as non-viral gene delivery tools, and due to their potentials to fuse with cell membranes leading to a direct release of cargoes from liposomes into the cytoplasm and high drug delivery efficiency. However, in most cases, the drug/gene delivery and therapeutic efficacy by cationic liposomes are evaluated ...

A new study led by Kent Business School, University of Kent, finds that whilst the mumpreneur identity may enable women to participate in the business world and be recognised as 'proper' entrepreneurs, this success is dependent on alignment with the conventional masculine norms of entrepreneurship. These conventional masculine behaviours include working long hours and an ongoing dedicated commitment to the success of a business. Published in the International Small Business Journal and based on an interview study of women business owners, the study highlights the interviewees' belief that entrepreneurship and motherhood ...

Firefighting is a race against time. Exactly how much time? For firefighters, that part is often unclear. Building fires can turn from bad to deadly in an instant, and the warning signs are frequently difficult to discern amid the mayhem of an inferno. Seeking to remove this major blind spot, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed P-Flash, or the Prediction Model for Flashover. The artificial-intelligence-powered tool was designed to predict and warn of a deadly phenomenon in burning buildings known as flashover, when flammable materials in a room ignite almost simultaneously, producing a blaze only limited in size by available oxygen. The tool's predictions are ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- June 1, 2021 -- Businesses typically rely on banks and financial markets for financing, but credit provided by suppliers also can play an important role, especially in manufacturing. Yet why firms lend and borrow extensively from each other is still an open question. In a paper online ahead of print in the Journal of Financial Economics, "Trade Credit and Profitability in Production Networks," Youchang Wu, an associate professor at the University of Oregon, and coauthor Michael Gofman, an assistant professor at the University of Rochester, examined trade credit from a new angle. They noted that for an average nonfinancial firm in North America, the outstanding amount of trade credit it receives from suppliers is about 21 percent of annual production costs. Moreover, ...

In ride-sharing, trips of two or more customers with similar origins and destinations are combined into a single cab ride. The concept can make a significant contribution to sustainable urban mobility. However, its acceptance depends on human needs and behavior. For example, while shared rides typically offer a financial advantage, passengers might suffer drawbacks in terms of comfort and trip duration. These factors give rise to different adoption behaviors that explain usage patterns observed in 360 million real-world ride requests from New York City and Chicago in 2019. The study has ...

Besides common symptoms such as fever, cough and respiratory distress, some children have an atypical form of COVID-19 known as multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), characterized by persistent fever and inflammation of several organs, such as the heart and intestines, as well as the lungs to a lesser extent. Reports of MIS-C have been increasingly associated with severe cases and deaths in several countries including Brazil since the onset of the pandemic. Researchers affiliated with the University of São Paulo's Medical School (FM-USP) and Adolfo Lutz Institute in Brazil performed the largest ...

In a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a research team of the Institute of Complex Systems of the University of Barcelona (UBICS) analysed the time evolution of real complex networks and developed a model in which the emergence of new nodes can be related to pre-existing nodes, similarly to the evolution of species in biology. This new study analyses the time evolution of the citation network in scientific journals and the international trade network over a 100-year period. According to M. Ángeles Serrano, ICREA researcher at UBICS, "what we observe in these real networks is that both grow in a self-similar way, that is, their connectivity properties ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- For many people, the need to go grocery shopping is met with a sigh, or an "ugh." It's generally not considered to be an enjoyable experience. For moms who shop using WIC benefits, it can be a downright awful experience, one that's often made worse by difficulty finding eligible products and dealing with a lengthy checkout process. Add kids in tow and it's enough for many moms to forego re-enrolling in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, commonly known as WIC. But researchers at the University at Buffalo are working on ways to improve ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - Fibroid symptoms, such as heavy menstrual bleeding and abdominal pain, are increasingly driving women to the emergency room. In fact, tens of thousands of women were seen annually in the emergency department for the condition, which involves benign growths in the uterus, over a 12-year period. But only 1 in 10 of these visits led to a hospital admission, suggesting that many cases may have been managed in an alternative, non-urgent health setting, according to recent Michigan Medicine research. "Fibroids are often a chronic disease, so we have opportunities to treat this through established care with a trusted health provider. Yet, we've seen a big increase in women using the emergency room ...

While the term "supergene" may bring to mind the genetic hocus-pocus of Peter Parker's transformation into Spiderman, supergenes are actually fairly common phenomena in the realm of biology. A supergene refers to a genomic region containing multiple genes or genetic elements that are tightly linked, allowing genetic variants across the region to be co-inherited. Supergenes may arise when there is a clear benefit to inheriting specific combinations of biological traits together. Perhaps the most well-known examples of supergenes are sex chromosomes, which allow traits that are beneficial to the reproductive success of one sex to be co-inherited. In humans, this ...

(Boston)--Only a small subset of people who get a lung infection go on to become very sick yet who will become severely ill or why is unclear. This is now widely recognized in the context of COVID-19, where most people have mild or no illness while others with the same infection become extremely sick or even die. Researchers now have discovered that after recovering from a respiratory infection, new cells get deposited in lung tissue, persist there and then become antibody secreting cells very quickly if the lungs later get re-infected by something similar. "It is increasingly clear that our lungs contain their own specialized immune system, different from the immune system throughout the rest of the body," explained corresponding ...

In some environments there is no way for a seed to know for sure when the best time to germinate is. In spring, cues like light, temperature and water may suggest to seeds that conditions are optimal for germination, but a week later an unpredictable drought or frost could kill the emerging seedlings. So how does a plant make sure that all of its offspring are not killed at once by an ill-timed environmental stress following germination? There is evidence that some plant species produce seeds that germinate at different times to hedge their bets against this risk. Many species produce seeds that can enter a dormant state and exist in the soil for several years and some also produce seeds that germinate at different ...

Research by scientists from University of Southampton (UK) and the Central University of Jharkhand (India) and has shown the first COVID-19 lockdown in India led to an improvement in air quality and a reduction in land surface temperature in major urban areas across the country. The study found that travel and work restrictions imposed early in the pandemic resulted in a significant environmental improvement, due to an abrupt reduction in industrial activities and a major decrease in the use of land and air transport. The international team used data from a range of Earth Observation sensors, including those from the European Space Agency's Sentinel-5p and NASA's MODIS sensors, to measure changes in surface temperature and atmospheric ...

Efforts to contain the novel coronavirus have caused lockdowns and school closures around the world. These efforts and policies have unfortunately cut off many children from valuable resources such as the opportunity for exercise, access to clean water and food, learning, and socialization. Therefore, the effects on mental health and behavior may be found not just in adults but children. However, studies published thus far have been limited to elucidating the mood of middle school and high school students and the conditions for which mood problems occur ...

Drinking straws are single use plastic products which will be subjected to a Europe-wide sales ban from 2021 onwards. This is stated in EU Directive 2019/904 from 5 June 2019. Consequently, alternative materials have to be established for the production of drinking straws as well as other frequently used products which predominantly were made of plastic so far. As set out in the EU Framework Regulation for food contact material (Regulation (EC) No. 1935/2004), objects that come into direct contact with food must be safe. The German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) has appraised straw, silicone, metal, paper and paper-board, durum wheat, and glass for their suitability to replace plastic ...

Using a brain-training app helps people eat less junk food and lose weight, new research suggests. The Food Trainer (FoodT app) trains people to tap on images of healthy foods - but to stop when they see unhealthy snacks, creating an association between these foods and stopping. The new study, by the universities of Exeter and Helsinki, found that playing the game about once a day for a month led to an average one-point reduction of junk food consumption on an eight-point scale (the scale ranges from four or more items per day, to one or zero items per month). Overall, people who used the app more also ...

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a common neurodegenerative disorder caused by the death of dopaminergic neurons in a part of the brain (known as substantia nigra pars compacta), which leads to a deficit of dopamine (DA), one of the main neurotransmitters active in the central nervous system. Symptomatic treatment focuses on increasing the concentration of dopamine into the brain. However, dopamine is not directly administered, because it is unable to cross the so called blood-brain barrier, which prevents some of the substances circulating in the blood to penetrate into the nervous system. Thus, DA precursor levodopa (L-DOPA) -an amino-acid which participates ...

Announcing a new article publication for BIO Integration journal. In this article the authors Craig S. Carlson and Michiel Postema, from University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa and Tampere University, Tampere, Finland discuss deep impact of superficial skin inking: acoustic analysis of underlying tissue. Skin tattoos are a common decoration, but profound scientific study on whether a skin tattoo alters the acoustic response from superficial tissues, and therefore from underlying tissue, was previously lacking; thus, any quantitative effects were unknown. This study is the first to investigate the nature of artifacts in ultrasound images, which have been observed to originate from tattooed skin. The work was conducted theoretically and experimentally using ...