A research team co-led by City University of Hong Kong (CityU) and The University of Hong Kong (HKU) has recently made a significant advancement in spinal cord injury treatment by using genetically modified human neural stem cells (hNSCs). They found that specifically modulating a gene expression to a certain level in hNSCs can effectively promote the reconstruction of damaged neural circuits and restore locomotor functions, offering great potential for new therapeutic opportunities for patients with spinal cord injury. Traumatic spinal cord injury ...

Commercially available mass spectrometers can reliably detect the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. In the journal "Clinical proteomics" researchers from the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) present a new method which employs equipment that is already being used in hospitals and laboratories to detect bacterial and fungal infections. It takes just two hours from swab to result. According to the team, the approach can also be easily adapted to detect other pathogens and could thus help in future ...

A ban on using apps to collect data in order to personalize advertising would significantly reduce the spectrum of available apps and the number of updates, according to a study by the Technical University of Munich (TUM) based on the ban concerning Android apps for children. The findings can assist companies in defining their business models and policymakers when regulating targeted advertising. Most smartphone apps are free. The providers finance them with advertising, often with what is referred to as targeted advertising: The apps evaluate data such as usage behavior and the user's location and even photos and messages ...

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 16, 2023 — Can you recognize someone you haven’t seen in years, but forget what you had for breakfast yesterday? Our brains constantly rearrange their circuitry to remember familiar faces or learn new skills, but the molecular basis of this process isn’t well understood. Today, scientists report that sulfate groups on complex sugar molecules called glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) affect “plasticity” in the brains of mice. Determining how GAGs function could help us understand ...

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 16, 2023 — Indoor air pollution may have met its match. Today, scientists will report that they have designed catalyst-coated lampshades that transform indoor air pollutants into harmless compounds. The lampshades work with halogen and incandescent light bulbs, and the team is extending the technology so it will also be compatible with LEDs. The researchers will present their results at the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS Fall 2023 is a hybrid meeting being held virtually and in-person ...

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 16, 2023 — A few years ago, amid lockdown boredom, it seemed like everyone was perfecting their sourdoughs. A simple, fermented mixture of flour and water, the bread is powered by microbes that provide its one-of-a-kind tangy flavor. For over a hundred years, sourdough bread has been synonymous with San Francisco, where today, scientists will report that they’ve identified and quantified 21 key chemical compounds that make this bread taste and smell so unique. They’ve also compared the levels of the compounds in different breads. The researchers will present their results at the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society ...

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 16, 2023 — Pouring flecks of rust into water usually makes it dirtier. But researchers have developed special iron oxide nanoparticles they call “smart rust” that actually makes it cleaner. Smart rust can attract many substances, including oil, nano- and microplastics, as well as the herbicide glyphosate, depending on the particles’ coating. And because the nanoparticles are magnetic, they can easily be removed from water with a magnet along with the pollutants. Now, the team is reporting that they’ve ...

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 16, 2023 — With Labor Day approaching, many people are preparing to go tubing and swimming at local streams and rivers. These delightful summertime activities seem innocuous, but do they have an impact on these waterways? Today, scientists report preliminary results from the first holistic study of this question, which shows that recreation can alter the chemical and microbial fingerprint of streams, but the environmental and health ramifications are not yet known. The researchers will present their results at the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS Fall 2023 is a hybrid meeting ...

Research Highlights: Experiencing pain – even pain not associated with heart disease – a year after having a heart attack is common, and people who had moderate or extreme pain were more likely to die within the next 8 years compared to adults who did not have any post-heart attack pain. When recommending treatment and making prognoses for people who have had a heart attack, health care professionals should consider if the patients are experiencing moderate or extreme pain. Embargoed until 4 a.m. CT/5 a.m. ET Wednesday, Aug. 16, 2023 DALLAS, ...

Social determinants of health —the social conditions in which people grow up, live and work— can influence the risk of contracting AIDS and the mortality associated with the disease. This is the main conclusion of a new study carried out by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by the "la Caixa" Foundation, and published in The Lancet Regional Health. The research team evaluated a cohort of 28.3 million people, representative of the low-income Brazilian population, based on data collected between 2007 and 2015. This is the largest evaluation of social determinants of health ...

Birds likely hold smart insights about coexisting in popular habitats– especially as climate change looms. But tapping into that knowledge has a big hurdle: knowing where and how numerous birds live successfully in vast environments. In today’s biological research journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, scientists at Michigan State University (MSU) peeled back layer upon layer of big data to tease out real-life answers that until now have been explored mostly in small-scale experiments. Sam Ayebare, a PhD candidate from Uganda, has led the work that is the first steps to understanding how so many birds can coexist in the vast Albertine ...

Six policies aimed boosting residential housing construction in New York City could spark the production of roughly 300,000 additional new housing units over a decade, according to a new RAND Corporation report.   The additional housing units would represent more than a 160% increase over recent annual housing production levels in the city, according to the report.   Researchers say the surge in housing supply likely would lead to increased affordability through greater competition among landlords for tenants in the short term and an increase in naturally occurring ...

In the issue, ten historians and literary scholars present evidence that casts serious doubts about who actually authored the monumental works credited to William Shakespeare. Suggesting that the name is actually a pseudonym for someone else, this position has been endorsed by numerous artists and scholars over the decades ranging from Walt Whitman and Mark Twain to Sigmund Freud, Tyrone Guthrie (founder of Canada’s Stratford Shakespeare Festival) and Mark Rylance founding Artistic Director of the reconstructed Globe Theatre in London. Tradition credits a businessman from an essentially ...

Strong parent-school relationships are central to a child’s learning, development, and wellbeing, yet when it comes to children with autism (ASD), it seems positive relationships are few and far between say UniSA researchers. In Australia, an estimated 200,000 people are autistic, with autism the largest primary disability group served by the NDIS. Globally, about one in 100 children are autistic. Lead researcher, UniSA’s Dr Kobie Boshoff, says support is urgently needed in schools to support the learning needs of children with ...

Today’s weather satellites provide scientists with a unique opportunity to evaluate the abilities of various reanalysis datasets to depict multilayer tropospheric water vapor. So a research team undertook a study to assess multilayer water vapor depiction in six representative reanalysis datasets against the measurements from the Advanced Himawari Imager over East Asia. Because water vapor is important in the formation of clouds and precipitation, it is vital for scientists to better understand water vapor and the biases among various datasets. Their work is published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Science on July 29, 2023. Scientists produce reanalysis datasets when ...

Since the scientists at Bell Labs invented the world’s first transistor in December 1947, a revolution in microelectronics technology has profoundly affected lifestyles worldwide. As electronics get smaller and smaller, it is a challenge to find an easy, fast, and low-cost way to fabricate micro-nano components. Traditional direct writing fabrication methods such as mechanical scribing, focused ion beam etching, electron beam lithography, multiphoton polymerization, and thermal scanning probe etching are inefficient. Although methods such as nanoimprinting, photolithography, plasma etching, and ...

A prevailing narrative about immigration is that migrants displace U.S.-born residents in the workforce, but new research from University of California, Davis, economists shows that’s not the case. The study, published in the Journal of Population Economics, details how the COVID-19 pandemic led to a decrease in immigration to the U.S. and how jobs often filled by migrants were not filled by U.S.-born residents.     “We found that this drop in immigrants corresponded also to a drop in employment in some specific types of occupations, including accommodation ...

When will the protruding rear camera on smartphones become obsolete? The implementation of a metasurface, which completely disregards the properties of light, promises to reduce the thickness of a camera lens to 1/10,000 of a conventional lens. However, despite this advancement, challenges still persist due to high production costs and intricate processes. Nonetheless, a recent study unveiled a “mold” that dissolves in water, enhancing the efficiency of the fabrication process. A collaborative team led by Professor Junsuk Rho from the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Department ...

Recreational drug use may be a factor in a significant proportion of admissions to cardiac intensive care, with various substances detected in 1 in 10 such patients, suggest the findings of a multicentre French study published online in the journal Heart.  Drug use was also associated with significantly poorer outcomes, with users nearly 9 times as likely to die or require emergency intervention as other heart patients while in hospital, and 12 times as likely to do so if they used more than one drug.  Recreational drug use is a known risk factor for cardiovascular incidents, such as a heart attack or abnormal heart rhythm (atrial fibrillation), ...

Young vapers are at risk of bronchitic symptoms and shortness of breath, even if they, or others around them, smoke cigarettes or cannabis, suggests research published online in the journal Thorax. The findings prompt the US researchers to call for the respiratory effects of vaping products to be included in regulatory oversight. Latest US estimates indicate that 14% of high school students vaped in 2022. And it’s known that e-cigarette aerosol contains substances that harm the lungs. Several published studies have reported respiratory symptoms among teen and young adult vapers. But most of these have focused exclusively on e-cigarette ...

Good cardiorespiratory fitness when young is associated with up to a 40% lower risk of developing 9 specific cancers later on—at least in men—suggests a large long term study published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. These include cancers of the head and neck, food pipe (oesophagus), stomach, pancreas, liver, bowel, kidney, and lung. Cardiorespiratory fitness refers to a person’s ability to do aerobic exercise, such as running, cycling, and swimming for sustained periods, or even to climb stairs. It's known ...

A team of researchers have found a shared penchant for sewing reflective shell beds onto clothing and other items across three Indonesian islands that dates back to at least 12,000 years ago.  The team, led by the Australian National University’s Professor Sue O’Connor with Griffith University’s Associate Professor Michelle Langley, used advanced microscopic analysis to investigate Nautilus shell beads from Makpan Cave on the Indonesian island of Alor, and that the trends in style were shared with at least two other islands.   Striking similarities between the beads of Alor, Timor, and Kisar indicate that there ...

Bats gather to feast as nocturnal insects fly through mountain passes in the Pyrenees each autumn, new research shows. University of Exeter scientists identified seven bat species and 66 insect species (90% of which were moths) in the Pass of Bujaruelo, near Spain’s border with France. The study shows that migrating insects are a vital food source for both migrating bats and those that live in the mountains. It also provides the first ever evidence of migratory bats feeding on migratory insects while both are migrating. “Mountain passes are hotspots for a wide variety of insect species that fly south in the autumn,” said Dr Will ...

The Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) has named its prize winners for 2023. AAS awarded the 2023 Alexander Prize to Amy Simon, Senior Scientist for Planetary Atmospheres Research in the Solar System Exploration Division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.     Simon won the award for a mid-career scientist who has made and continues to make outstanding contributions that have significantly advanced our knowledge of planetary systems, ...

The Moral Difference between Faces and FaceTime Kyle E. Karches Although telemedicine can be useful in certain situations, physicians should not consider it an adequate substitute for the office visit, writes Karches, an associate professor of health care ethics and internal medicine at St. Louis University. While seeing the potential for telemedicine to improve care for certain patients, he is concerned about what may be lost if telemedicine comes to replace many in-person visits. Telemedicine rules out an embodied encounter between physician and patient, in which the sense of touch has special ...