From the biggest bridges to the smallest medical implants, sensors are everywhere, and for good reason: The ability to sense and monitor changes before they become problems can be both cost-saving and life-saving. To better address these potential threats, the Intelligent Structural Monitoring and Response Testing (iSMaRT) Lab at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering has designed a new class of materials that are both sensing mediums and nanogenerators, and are poised to revolutionize the multifunctional material technology big and small. The research, recently published in Nano Energy, describes a new metamaterial system that ...

Philadelphia, June 1, 2021--Researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have developed a proof-of-concept treatment for blood disorders like sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia that could raise hemoglobin levels by activating production of both fetal and adult hemoglobin. Using a viral vector engineered to reactivate fetal hemoglobin production, suppress mutant hemoglobin, and supply functional adult hemoglobin, the researchers developed an approach that could produce more hemoglobin through a single vector. The results were published in Haematologica. "Until now, researchers have been exploring one of two approaches to treating blood disorders ...

The discovery of graphene, a 2D layered form of carbon, once caused a paradigm shift in science and technology like no other. As this wonder material drew attention from material scientists around the world, it spurred research on other materials that were structurally similar, such as "van der Waals materials", which comprise strongly-bonded 2D atomic layers that are held together by weak interlayer interactions called "van der Waals forces". These materials quickly caught on because they were highly conducive to structural modifications, such as stacking, twisting, and insertion of foreign molecules between layers, which gave them interesting physical properties ...

Getting enough sleep can be a real challenge for shift workers affecting their overall health. But what role does being an early bird or night owl play in getting good rest? Researchers from McGill University find a link between chronotype and amount of sleep shift workers can get with their irregular schedules. "Some people seem to be hardwired to sleep early, while others tend to sleep late. This preference, called chronotype, is modulated by our circadian system - each person's unique internal timekeeper," says lead author Diane B. Boivin, a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University. Their study published in Sleep is the first to examine the relationship between ...

Algorism plays a significant role in predicting future states of a system. Particularly, non-Markov chain algorithm has been widely applied in epidemic spreading processes, social and man-made memory networks, the environment-related quantum entangled states, and artificial algorisms such as face pose tracking. Traditionally, a large number of memories and computing cells are integrated to achieve these goals by software algorisms, showing high complexity. In the paper published in Science Bulletin, a group led by Bilu Liu and Hui-Ming Cheng from Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute (TBSI) of Tsinghua University has realized a non-Markov chain algorithm in a single resistive random access memory (RRAM) based on 2D mineral material ...

Swedish researchers from institutions including Uppsala University have spent four years gathering data from the areas affected by the major forest fire of 2014. In their study of how the ecosystem as a whole has been altered, they could see that water quality in watercourses quickly returned to normal, while forested areas continued to lose carbon for many years after the fire. The consequences of major forest fires remain poorly studied in Northern Europe. To improve this situation, researchers from Uppsala University, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) and the Swedish Meteorological ...

Siberian jays are group living birds within the corvid family that employ a wide repertoire of calls to warn each other of predators. Sporadically, however, birds use one of these calls to trick their neighbouring conspecifics and gain access to their food. Researchers from the universities of Konstanz (Germany), Wageningen (Netherlands), and Zurich (Switzerland) have now examined how Siberian jays avoid being deceived by their neighbours. The study, published in the journal Science Advances, shows that these birds have great trust in the warning calls from members of their own group, but mainly ignore such ...

News media reports about scientific failures that do not recognize the self-correcting nature of science can damage public perceptions of trust and confidence in scientific work, according to findings by researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania and the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York. News stories about science follow several specific narratives, the researchers write in a new study in the journal Public Understanding of Science. One is that science is "in crisis" or "broken," a narrative driven in recent years by reports of unsuccessful efforts to replicate findings in ...

A new miniature 3D model of human bone marrow has been described today in the open-access eLife journal. The model may help clinicians predict which patients will benefit from a new therapy for blood platelet disorders, such as Inherited Thrombocytopenias - a group of familial disorders that inhibit the production of platelets. It could also enable further study of these disorders and give scientists a new tool to test experimental treatments. Platelets are cells that are necessary for the blood to clot and stop bleeding. Having too few platelets can lead to internal or serious bleeding after surgery or injuries, which is usually treated with therapies that cause clotting. Recent studies have shown that a drug called Eltrombopag increases ...

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 ...