CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Attempts at restricting people's mobility to control the spread of COVID-19 may be effective only for a short period, researchers said. A new study examines people's mobility for seven months during the pandemic in the United States using publicly available, anonymized mobile phone data. Reported in the Journal of Transport Geography, the study alerts authorities to the need for more manageable travel restrictions and policies that reduce COVID-19 exposure risk to essential workers - who, because they are required to be physically present at their workplaces, remained highly mobile during the pandemic. The longitudinal study is one of the first to compare mobility data using a broad ...

Being unable to walk quickly can be frustrating and problematic, but it is a common issue, especially as people age. Noting the pervasiveness of slower-than-desired walking, engineers at Stanford University have tested how well a prototype exoskeleton system they have developed - which attaches around the shin and into a running shoe - increased the self-selected walking speed of people in an experimental setting. The exoskeleton is externally powered by motors and controlled by an algorithm. When the researchers optimized it for speed, participants walked, on average, 42 percent faster than when they were wearing normal shoes and no exoskeleton. The results of this study were ...

Young scientists of Tomsk Polytechnic University as a part of the team of Arctic researchers have studied pore waters in three areas of methane release on the surface. They first managed to define in details the composition of pore waters in the cold methane seeps of the Eastern Arctic seas. The research findings are published in the Water academic journal. The research was based on the samples obtained during the Arctic expedition aboard the research vessel "Akademik Mstislav Keldysh" in 2019. The scientists and students from 12 scientific institutions, including Tomsk Polytechnic University, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, the Research Center of Biotechnology ...

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) largely remedies Superfund sites containing asbestos by capping them with soil to lock the buried toxin in place. But new research suggests that this may actually increase the likelihood of human exposure to the cancer-causing mineral. "People have this idea that asbestos is all covered up and taken care of," said Jane Willenbring, who is an associate professor of geological sciences at Stanford University's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (Stanford Earth). "But this is still a lingering legacy pollutant ...

Sugar is not just something we eat. On the contrary. Sugar is one of the most naturally occurring molecules, and all cells in the body are covered by a thick layer of sugar that protects the cells from bacteria and virus attacks. In fact, close to 80 per cent of all viruses and bacteria bind to the sugars on the outside of our cells. Sugar is such an important element that scientists refer to it as the third building block of life - after DNA and protein. And last autumn, a group of researchers found that the spike protein in corona virus needs a particular sugar to bind to our cells efficiently. Now the same group of researchers have completed a new study that further digs into the cell receptors to which sugars and thus bacteria and virus ...

Researchers at Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) in a pioneering study identify clinical, genetic and histopathological characteristics that may help confirm the diagnosis when nephronophthisis occurs in adults Tokyo, Japan - Nephronophthisis (NPH) is a kidney disease affecting mainly children. Now, for the first time, researchers at Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) have studied a number of adults with NPH and highlighted clinical, genetic and pathological characteristics that could help in confirming this challenging diagnosis. NPH is inherited in an autosomal recessive pattern and, though rare, is the commonest genetic cause of kidney failure in children. The ...

It is 2,250 kilometers long, but only 355 kilometers wide at its widest point - on a world map, the Red Sea hardly resembles an ocean. But this is deceptive. A new, albeit still narrow, ocean basin is actually forming between Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Exactly how young it is and whether it can really be compared with other young oceans in Earth's history has been a matter of dispute in the geosciences for decades. The problem is that the newly formed oceanic crust along the narrow, north-south aligned rift is widely buried under a thick blanket of salt and sediments. This complicates direct investigations. In the international journal Nature Communications, scientists from GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, ...

Tsukuba, Japan - Blood vessels can be injured by the build-up of atherosclerosis and long-standing hypertension, among other conditions. As a consequence, blood vessels may undergo a process called remodeling, whereby their walls thicken and cause blockages (known as occlusion). In a new study, researchers from the University of Tsukuba discovered how cells marked by platelet-derived growth factor receptor alpha (PDGFRa+) residing predominantly in the most outer layer of blood vessels contribute to their remodeling. Blood vessels comprise three layers, each of which fulfills a unique role ...

Single-molecule fluorescence detection (SMFD) is able to probe, one molecule at a time, dynamical processes that are crucial for understanding functional mechanisms in biosystems. Fluorescence in the Near-infrared (NIR) offers improved Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) by reducing the scattering, absorption and autofluorescence from biological cellular or tissue samples, therefore, provides high imaging resolution with increased tissue penetration depth that are important for biomedical applications. However, most NIR-emitters suffer from low quantum yield, the weak NIR fluorescence signal makes the detection extremely difficult. Plasmonic nanostructures are capable of converting localized electromagnetic energy into free radiation ...

Strawberry geranium (Saxifraga stolonifera) has been used in Japan as a herbal medicine to treat wounds and swelling, and continues to be an ingredient in food and cosmetics. Pharmacological studies have shown that extracts of strawberry geranium have antioxidant and antitumor activities. However, the anti-inflammatory effect of strawberry geranium on the skin had not been well characterized. This study, first-authored by associate professor Takeshi Kawahara of the Institute of Agriculture, Shinshu University for a joint research project with Maruzen Pharmaceutical Co., ...

Dr. Sabrina Coninx from Ruhr-Universität Bochum and Dr. Peter Stilwell from McGill University, Canada, have investigated how philosophical approaches can be used to think in new ways about pain and its management. The researchers advocate not merely reducing chronic pain management to searching and treating underlying physical changes but instead adopting an approach that focuses on the person as a whole. Their work was published online in the journal "Synthese" on 15 April 2021. It is not currently possible to treat chronic pain effectively in many cases. This has encouraged researchers from various disciplines to consider new approaches ...

A team led by Prof. GUO Guangcan and Prof. ZOU Changling from the University of Science and Technology of China of the Chinese Academy of Sciences realized efficient frequency conversion in microresonators via a degenerate sum-frequency process, and achieved cross-band frequency conversion and amplification of converted signal through observing the cascaded nonlinear optical effects inside the microresonator. The study was published in Physics Review Letters. Coherent frequency conversion process has wide application in classical and quantum information fields such as communication, detection, ...

A new study conducted jointly by the University of Liege (Belgium) and the Ecole normale superieure - PSL (France) shows that heart brain interactions, measured using electroencephalography (EEG), provide a novel diagnostic avenue for patients with disorders of consciousness. This study is published in the Journal of Neuroscience. Catherine Tallon-Baudry (ENS, CNRS) introduces : "The scientific community already knew that in healthy participants, the brain's response to heartbeats is related to perceptual, bodily and self-consciousness. We now show that we can obtain clinically meaningful information if we probe this interaction in ...

Networks offer a powerful way to visualize and analyze complex systems. However, depending on the size and complexity of the network, many visualizations are limited. Protein interactions in the human body constitute such a complex system that can hardly be visualized. Jörg Menche, Adjunct Principal Investigator at the CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Professor at the University of Vienna and research group leader at Max Perutz Labs (Uni Wien/MedUni), and his team developed an immersive virtual reality (VR) platform that solves ...

Software using artificial intelligence, AI, is revolutionizing how microscopy images are analysed. For instance, AI can be used to detect features in images (i.e., tumours in biopsy samples) or improve the quality of images by removing unwanted noise. However, non-experts continue to find AI technologies difficult to use. In the article "Democratising deep learning for microscopy with ZeroCostDL4Mic", published in Nature Communications on 15 April 2021, researchers describe a platform called ZeroCostDL4Mic, which makes these AI technologies accessible to everyone. "The key novelty is that ZeroCostDL4Mic runs in the cloud for free and does not ...

In the brain, more than a hundred molecular substances act as transmitters that control communication pathways between nerve cells via thousands of different receptor types. In a review article, an international research team discusses how the activation of certain nerve cell receptors affects neuronal networks in the brain. The authors from Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB), Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona and Oxford University present concepts to quantify receptor-specific modulations of brain states. They have also developed a computer model that can predict the impact of individual receptor types on brain activity. In addition, the researchers show how the predictions obtained in the computer can be verified and refined by experimental methods. They hope this will lead to new ...

A group of University of Wyoming professors and students has identified an unusual belt of igneous rocks that stretches for over 2,000 miles from British Columbia, Canada, to Sonora, Mexico. The rock belt runs through Idaho, Montana, Nevada, southeast California and Arizona. "Geoscientists usually associate long belts of igneous rocks with chains of volcanoes at subduction zones, like Mount Shasta, Mount Hood, Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainer," says Jay Chapman, an assistant professor in UW's Department of Geology and Geophysics. "What makes this finding so interesting and mysterious is that this belt ...

NEW YORK, NY--A new imaging technique developed by scientists at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital captures movies of receptors on the surface of living cells in unprecedented detail and could pave the way to a trove of new drugs.  The researchers used the technique to zoom in on individual receptor proteins on the surface of living cells to determine if the receptors work solo or come together to work as pairs. This work appeared in the April issue of Nature Methods. "If two different receptors come together to form a dimer with distinctive function and pharmacology, this might allow for a new generation of drugs with greater specificity and reduced side effects," says Jonathan ...

Sophia Antipolis - 23 April 2021: A study of 2.4 million hospitalised cannabis users has found that those with an arrhythmia were 4.5 times more likely to die while in hospital than those without. The research is presented at EHRA 2021, an online scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).1 "People should be aware of this devastating outcome and be careful when using cannabis if they have a concomitant heart problem," said study author Dr. Sittinun Thangjui of Bassett Healthcare Network, Cooperstown, US. Marijuana or cannabis is the most commonly used psychoactive substance worldwide.2 However, there is limited knowledge about safety of the drug in people with cardiac arrhythmias. This study examined the burden ...

Osaka, Japan - Scientists at Osaka University, in cooperation with JOANNEUM RESEARCH (Weiz, Austria), introduced wireless health monitoring patches that use embedded piezoelectric nanogenerators to power themselves with harvested biomechanical energy. This work may lead to new autonomous health sensors as well as battery-less wearable electronic devices. As wearable technology and smart sensors become increasingly popular, the problem of providing power to all of these devices become more relevant. While the energy requirements of each component may be modest, the need for wires or even batteries become burdensome and inconvenient. That is why new energy harvesting methods are needed. Also, the ability ...

Among the first lessons any grade school science student learns is that white light is not white at all, but rather a composite of many photons, those little droplets of energy that make up light, from every color of the rainbow - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Now, researchers at Stanford University have developed an optical device that allows engineers to change and fine-tune the frequencies of each individual photon in a stream of light to virtually any mixture of colors they want. The result, published April 23 in Nature Communication, is a new photonic architecture that could transform fields ranging from digital communications and artificial intelligence to cutting-edge quantum computing. "This powerful new tool puts a degree of control in the engineer's ...

Quantum systems consisting of several particles can be used to measure magnetic or electric fields more precisely. A young physicist at the University of Basel has now proposed a new scheme for such measurements that uses a particular kind of correlation between quantum particles. In quantum information, the fictitious agents Alice and Bob are often used to illustrate complex communication tasks. In one such process, Alice can use entangled quantum particles such as photons to transmit or "teleport" a quantum state - unknown even to herself - to Bob, something that is not feasible using traditional communications. However, it has been unclear whether the team Alice-Bob can use similar quantum states for other things besides communication. A young physicist at the University ...

Images A new real-time, 3D motion tracking system developed at the University of Michigan combines transparent light detectors with advanced neural network methods to create a system that could one day replace LiDAR and cameras in autonomous technologies. While the technology is still in its infancy, future applications include automated manufacturing, biomedical imaging and autonomous driving. A paper on the system is published in Nature Communications. 50928751578_a3702cc26c_q.jpgThe imaging system exploits the advantages of transparent, nanoscale, highly sensitive graphene photodetectors developed by Zhaohui Zhong, U-M associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, and his group. They're believed to be the first of their kind. "The ...

The tree of life just got a little bigger: A team of scientists from the U.S. and China has identified an entirely new group of microbes quietly living in hot springs, geothermal systems and hydrothermal sediments around the world. The microbes appear to be playing an important role in the global carbon cycle by helping break down decaying plants without producing the greenhouse gas methane. "Climate scientists should take these new microbes into account in their models to more accurately understand how they will impact climate change," said END ...

A patient arrives at hospital with chest pain. Doctors suspect heart attack and rapid diagnosis is important, but the tests to confirm it can be invasive and it could easily be something else. Could a simple blood test help to non-invasively rule heart attack in or out? A new study in open access journal Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine certainly suggests so. The study identified telltale markers in the blood of heart attack patients that distinguished them from patients suffering chest pain with other causes. The researchers hope that the results will lead to new diagnostic tests for heart attacks. If you have ever suffered chest pain, the possibility of a heart attack may have popped into your head. While chest pain is ...