The photovoltaic effect of ferroelectric crystals can be increased by a factor of 1,000 if three different materials are arranged periodically in a lattice. This has been revealed in a study by researchers at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU). They achieved this by creating crystalline layers of barium titanate, strontium titanate and calcium titanate which they alternately placed on top of one another. Their findings, which could significantly increase the efficiency of solar cells, were published in the journal Science Advances. electric crystals do not require a so-called pn junction to create the photovoltaic effect, in other words, no positively and negatively doped layers. This makes it much easier to produce ...

A study led by D. Ross Camidge, MD, PhD, director of thoracic oncology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and CU Cancer Center member, has helped to define MET amplification as a rare but potentially actionable driver for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Camidge says many of the major developments in the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer have come from defining molecularly specific subsets of the disease for which researchers have been able to develop targeted treatments. Until now, all of these subsets have been based on either genetic mutations or gene rearrangements ...

As multicellular life relies on cell-cell interactions, it is not surprising that this is not always peaceful: cells with higher fitness eliminate cells with lower fitness through cell competition. Cell competition has emerged as a quality control mechanism and occurs when cells differ, genetically or otherwise, from each other. In mammals, the process of cell competition has been observed e.g., in cancer, during organ homeostasis, and during development as a process to select the fittest cells in the embryo and the adult. However, the features that distinguish "winner" from "loser" cells and whether there are key determinants for cell competition in various biological ...

PULLMAN, Wash. - When it comes to craft beer, the flavor doesn't have to be all in the hops. As a panel of amateur beer tasters at Washington State University recently demonstrated, malted barley, the number one ingredient in beer besides water, can have a range of desirable flavors too. Researchers recruited a panel of about 100 craft beer drinkers to taste some so-called SMaSH beers--those brewed with a single barley malt and single hop. All the beers contained the same hop variety, called Tahoma, but each had a malt from a different barley genotype, or genetic makeup. Trained tasters can distinguish these easily, but even the untrained ...

An international group of researchers representing thousands of coral scientists across the globe is calling for new commitments and actions by the world's policymakers to protect and restore coral reefs. In a paper presented July 20 at the International Coral Reef Symposium, the scientists said that the coming decade will likely offer the last chance for policymakers at all levels to prevent coral reefs "from heading towards world-wide collapse." The paper, developed by the International Coral Reef Society, pushes for three strategies to save the reefs: addressing climate change, improving local conditions and actively restoring coral. ...

The female tsetse fly, which gives birth to adult-sized live young, produce weaker offspring as they get older, and when they feed on poor quality blood. The study, carried out by researchers at the Universities of Bristol, Oxford and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, was designed to measure how tsetse offspring health is influenced by their mothers' age, and how factors such as the mother's nutrition and mating experience might come into play. In many animals, females show signs of reproductive ageing - where offspring health declines with maternal age - but there is huge variation within species in how rapidly this ageing occurs. Scientists found that female tsetse that experience ...

For more than 20 years, Makoto Miyata from Osaka City University has been studying the gliding motility of the parasitic bacterium Mycoplasma mobile (M. mobile). It is a mechanism consisting of an external "grabbing" structure and internal "motor" - the motor having yet to be clarified on a molecular level. In collaboration with Osaka University and Kanazawa University, his research team used electron microscopy and high-speed atomic force microscopy (high-speed AFM) to reveal that the bacteria's molecular motor consists of two ATP synthase-like complexes, suggesting an unexpected evolution of the protein. Their findings were published in mBio. Based on genetic information, researchers have suggested that the ...

Imagine you're a CEO who wants to promote an innovative new product -- a time management app or a fitness program. Should you send the product to Kim Kardashian in the hope that she'll love it and spread the word to her legions of Instagram followers? The answer would be 'yes' if successfully transmitting new ideas or behavior patterns was as simple as showing them to as many people as possible. However, a forthcoming study in the journal Nature Communications finds that as prominent and revered as social influencers seem to be, in fact, they are unlikely to change a person's behavior by example -- and might actually be detrimental to the cause. Why? "When social influencers present ideas that are ...

A new scoping review found that those with chronic health concerns, such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and autoimmune conditions, are not only at a higher risk of severe COVID-19 infection, they are also more likely to experience anxiety, depression or substance use during the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of the review was to address knowledge gaps related to the prevention and management of mental health responses among those with chronic conditions. The findings, recently published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, were based on a comprehensive review of 67 Chinese and English-language studies. "Levels ...

A recent study in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems shows that the fruits of a type of tomato plant send electrical signals to the rest of the plant when they are infested by caterpillars. Plants have a multitude of chemical and hormonal signaling pathways, which are generally transmitted through the sap (the nutrient-rich water that moves through the plant). In the case of fruits, nutrients flow exclusively to the fruit and there has been little research into whether there is any communication in the opposite direction--i.e. from fruit to plant. "We usually forget that a plant's fruits are living and semiautonomous parts of their mother-plants, far ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - As children made fewer visits to health facilities and engaged in social distancing and other COVID-19 mitigation measures, a smaller number of them also received prescription drugs, a new study suggests. Overall, medications prescribed for children dropped by more than a quarter during the first eight months of the pandemic compared to the previous year, with the steepest declines in infection-related medicines like antibiotics and cough-and-cold drugs. Antibiotic dispensing to children and teens plunged by nearly 56 % ...

An internal transporter that enables us to use the copper we consume in foods like shellfish and nuts to enable a host of vital body functions also has the essential role of protecting the receptor that enables us to grow new blood vessels when ours become diseased, Medical College of Georgia scientists report. The findings published in the journal END ...

The development of an ultrathin magnet that operates at room temperature could lead to new applications in computing and electronics - such as high-density, compact spintronic memory devices - and new tools for the study of quantum physics. The ultrathin magnet, which was recently reported in the journal Nature Communications , could make big advances in next-gen memories, computing, spintronics, and quantum physics. It was discovered by scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley. "We're ...

Black holes with masses equivalent to millions of suns do put a brake on the birth of new stars, say astronomers. Using machine learning and three state of the art simulations to back up results from a large sky survey, the researchers resolve a 20-year long debate on the formation of stars. Joanna Piotrowska, a PhD student at the University of Cambridge, will present the new work today (Tuesday 20 July) at the virtual National Astronomy Meeting (NAM 2021). Star formation in galaxies has long been a focal point of astronomy research. Decades of successful observations ...

The case of a patient who experienced two facial palsies - one after the first and another after the second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine - strongly suggests that Bell's palsy (facial nerve palsy of unknown cause) is linked to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, doctors write in the journal BMJ Case Reports. They describe the first case to be reported in the medical literature of two separate unilateral facial nerve palsies, where muscles on one side of the face become weak or paralysed, occurring shortly after each dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. "The ...

Although lockdowns are undoubtedly associated with health harms, their impact on health is unlikely to be worse than the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic itself, concludes a review published in the online journal BMJ Global Health. During the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an ongoing debate around whether the benefits of government "lockdowns"- either stay-at-home orders or interventions restricting movement - in reducing infections are outweighed by the negative impacts on the economy, social structure, education, and mental and physical health. In a nutshell, whether "the cure is worse than the disease." In this narrative review, an international team of doctors examine the ...

One in eight children have mental disorders that cause symptoms and impairment and therefore require treatment, but even in high-income countries most of these children will not gain access to services to treat them, reports a study published in the journal Evidence-Based Mental Health. Mental disorders that start in childhood and adolescence can significantly interfere with wellbeing and development. Despite the social and economic implications of not addressing these disorders, including long-term healthcare costs, justice system costs and the loss of human potential, mental health service provision for children continues to lag behind provision of services for physical ...

Below please find summaries of new articles that will be published in the next issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The summaries are not intended to substitute for the full articles as a source of information. This information is under strict embargo and by taking it into possession, media representatives are committing to the terms of the embargo not only on their own behalf, but also on behalf of the organization they represent. 1. Rapid screening, face masks may prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission at indoor mass-gathering events Abstract: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M21-2278 URL goes live when the embargo lifts An observational study in Barcelona, Spain found that implementation of same-day rapid screening, use of face masks, and improved ventilation was ...

Although people in early 2020 hoarded toilet paper, washed their hands incessantly, and wouldn't leave home, 11 months later the public pushed the envelope on COVID-19 safety precautions and ignored warnings as time went on, a new University of California, Davis, study suggests. Researchers in the Department of Communication examined people's reactions and expressions of anxiety about news articles on Twitter. Additionally, they investigated reactions to fear-inducing health news over time, despite the steadily rising COVID-19 death toll, said Hannah Stevens, a doctoral student in communication and lead author of the paper. The paper, "Desensitization to Fear-Inducting COVID-19 Health News on Twitter: Observational Study," ...

Two common practices in the U.S. restaurant industry -- service with a smile and tipping -- contribute to a culture of sexual harassment, according to new research from the University of Notre Dame. "A perfect storm: Customer sexual harassment as a joint function of financial dependence and emotional labor" was recently published in the Journal of Applied Psychology from Timothy Kundro, assistant professor of management and organization at Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business. In the study, co-authored by Alicia Grandey and Vanessa Burke from Penn State University and Gordon Sayre from Emlyon Business School in France, more than 66 percent of restaurant employees reported facing some form of sexual harassment in the past six months. Previous ...

By uprooting carbon trapped in soil, wild pigs are releasing around 4.9 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide annually across the globe, the equivalent of 1.1 million cars. An international team led by researchers from The University of Queensland and The University of Canterbury have used predictive population models, coupled with advanced mapping techniques to pinpoint the climate damage wild pigs are causing across five continents. UQ's Dr Christopher O'Bryan said the globe's ever-expanding population of feral pigs could be a significant threat to the climate. "Wild pigs are just like tractors ploughing through fields, turning over soil to find food," Dr O'Bryan said. "When soils are ...

Research conducted at the Sharon Eccles Steele Center for Translational Medicine (SCTM) at the University of Utah's John A. Moran Eye Center explains why people carrying a block of genetic variants strongly associated with the development of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) may develop the disease and identifies a potential therapeutic pathway for slowing or even reversing disease progression. AMD is a major cause of irreversible blindness worldwide and the leading cause of blindness for Americans aged 55 and over. Following more than 15 years of research that has employed an extensive repository of donated human ocular ...

A new approach to analyse satellite measurements of Earth's cloud cover reveals that clouds are very likely to enhance global heating. The research, by scientists at Imperial College London and the University of East Anglia, is the strongest evidence yet that clouds will amplify global heating over the long term, further exacerbating climate change. The results, published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also suggest that at double atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations above pre-industrial levels, the climate is unlikely to warm below 2°C, and is more likely on average to warm more than 3°C. Pre-industrial CO2 levels were around 280 ppm (parts per million), ...

Throughout history, people of different cultures and stages of evolution have found ways to adapt, with varying success, to the gradual warming of the environment they live in. But can the past inform the future, now that climate change is happening faster than ever before? Yes, say an international team of anthropologists, geographers and earth scientists in Canada, the U.S. and France led by Université de Montréal anthropologist Ariane Burke. In a paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Professor Burke and her colleagues ...

A major drought and forest fires in the Amazon rainforest killed billions of trees and plants and turned one of the world's largest carbon sinks into one of its biggest polluters. Triggered by the 2015-16 El Niño, extreme drought and associated mega-wildfires caused the death of around 2.5 billion trees and plants and emitted 495 million tonnes of CO2 from an area that makes up just 1.2 per cent of the entire Brazilian Amazon rainforest, and 1 per cent of the whole biome. The stark findings, discovered by an international team of scientists working for more than eight years on a long-term study in the Amazon before, during and after the El Niño, have significant implications for global efforts to control the atmospheric ...