Researchers have come up with a better way to test which fabrics work best for masks that are meant to slow the spread of COVID-19. By testing those fabrics under conditions that mimic the humidity of a person's breath, the researchers have obtained measurements that more accurately reflect how the fabrics perform when worn by a living, breathing person. The new measurements show that under humid conditions, the filtration efficiency -- a measure of how well a material captures particles -- increased by an average of 33% in cotton fabrics. Synthetic fabrics performed poorly relative to cotton, and their performance did not improve with humidity. The material from medical-procedure masks also did not improve with humidity, though it performed ...

Astronomers have discovered evidence for an extraordinarily long jet of particles coming from a supermassive black hole in the early universe, using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. If confirmed, it would be the most distant supermassive black hole with a jet detected in X-rays. Coming from a galaxy about 12.7 billion light-years from Earth, the jet may help explain how the biggest black holes formed at a very early time in the universe's history. The source of the jet is a quasar - a rapidly growing supermassive black hole - named PSO J352.4034-15.3373 (PJ352-15 for short), which sits ...

Most teenagers don't remember life before the internet. They have grown up in a connected world, and being online has become one of their main sources of learning, entertaining and socializing. As many previous studies have pointed out, and as many parents worry, this reality does not come risk-free. Whereas time on the internet can be informative, instructive and even pleasant, there is already significant literature on the potential harm caused by young children's problematic internet use (PIU). However, a new study led by END ...

"It was clear that the greater an individual's sensitivity to motion parallax cues, the more severe the motion sickness symptoms," says lead NYU Abu Dhabi researcher Fast facts: The visual system is often studied in relative isolation, but it has clear connections to other components of the nervous system. A notable example of this is motion sickness, which affects certain people much more severely than others. Motion sickness is typically associated with traveling in cars, boats, and airplanes, however discomfort or "cybersickness" also arises with technological use such as in virtual reality (VR). Abu Dhabi, UAE, March 9, 2021: A new study led by Head of the Rokers Vision Laboratory and NYUAD Associate Professor of Psychology Bas Rokers explored why ...

Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) is the most prevalent form of lung cancer, accounting for more than 80 percent of all lung cancer cases. Despite the aggressive nature of NSCLC, circulating tumor cells that lead to metastases often go undetected in the blood compared to breast, prostate, colorectal, and other cancers.  Now, scientists have developed a novel method to better detect the circulating tumor cells (CTCs) that are a telltale sign of metastases. The research was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).  ISB and a collaborative team of researchers looked at hexokinase-2, or HK2, a ...

A unique curved barrier has been designed by researchers at Imperial College London, who publish new findings in the peer-reviewed journal END ...

Researchers from the HealthPartners Institute and University of Minnesota in Minneapolis conducted an observational analysis of interviews and characteristics of primary care clinics, comparing the strategies, facilitators and barriers to high performance in treating patients with diabetes. The purpose of the study was to learn what strategies and factors seem most important to leaders of primary care clinics to ensure high performance. The percentage of Minnesota diabetes patients who achieved optimal diabetes care measures increased from 12 to 45 percent between 2004 and 2017, while national measures of diabetes care outcomes did not improve significantly around the same time ...

Smoke from local wildfires can affect the health of Colorado residents, in addition to smoke from fires in forests as far away as California and the Pacific Northwest. Researchers at Colorado State University, curious about the health effects from smoke from large wildfires across the Western United States, analyzed six years of hospitalization data and death records for the cities along the Front Range, which reaches deep into central Colorado from southern Wyoming. They found that wildfire smoke was associated with increased hospitalizations for asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and some cardiovascular health outcomes. They also discovered that wildfire smoke was associated with deaths from asthma and cardiovascular disease, but that ...

Researchers at Skoltech and their colleagues proposed a photonic device from two optical resonators with liquid crystals inside them to study optical properties of this system that can be useful for future generations of optoelectronic and spinoptronic devices. The paper was published in the journal Physical Review B. The simplest kind of optical resonator consists of two mirrors directly opposite each other, "squeezing" light between them. When you stand inside a mirror resonator, you see infinite copies of yourself in the mirrors; when a liquid crystal - the kind in your computer and smartphone screen - is placed into a much smaller and a bit more complex resonator, ...

Cancer patients often experience fragmented care, particularly as they undergo cancer treatments. Although family physicians seek to provide continuous and comprehensive care, they often lose touch with their cancer patients during the treatment phase. Researchers conducted a randomized intervention that aimed to improve continuity of care and interprofessional collaboration as perceived by lung cancer patients and their family physicians. The components of the intervention included the bidirectional exchange of patient information and care summaries between oncology teams and family physicians. Oncology ...

While many celebrate apple blossoms as classic signs of spring, they are also welcoming entry gates for pathogens. Full of nutrients to lure pollinators and promote pollen germination, flowers also attract bacteria like Erwinia amylavora, a pathogen that causes a damaging disease called fire blight. However, recent work by scientists at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station suggests that these flowery infection sites might also be perfect targets for applying microbial fire blight biocontrol measures. In a paper recently published in Phytobiomes Journal, researchers Zhouqi ...

LA JOLLA, CA--Translational research led by scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) has resulted in a promising combination therapeutic candidate for adults with recent-onset type 1 diabetes. The combination therapy was recently tested in a randomised, double-blind, placebo- controlled, phase 2 trial run and funded by pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk. The results, published recently in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, point to a potential way to treat the autoimmune disease without leaving the body vulnerable to infectious disease. The therapeutic candidate combines anti-IL-21 antibody with the diabetes drug liraglutide. This ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. - In the midst of a pandemic that has claimed more than 2 million lives worldwide and disrupted nearly every facet of society since it appeared more than a year ago, understanding the factors that create and facilitate disease outbreaks is more important than ever. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have determined that cognitive biases -- patterns of errors in thinking that affect judgments and behaviors, often unconsciously -- can help create and worsen foodborne disease outbreaks. "Unethical behavior isn't always intentional; conflicts of interest and other unconscious motivations can lead people to behave ...

WHAT: Approximately two years after establishing a human cerebral organoid system to study Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), National Institutes of Health researchers have further developed the model to screen drugs for potential CJD treatment. The scientists, from NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), describe their work in Scientific Reports. Human cerebral organoids are small balls of human brain cells ranging in size from a poppy seed to a pea; scientists use human skin cells to create them. CJD, a fatal neurodegenerative brain disease of humans caused by infectious prion proteins, affects about 1 in 1 million people each year. It can arise spontaneously, result from ...

Philadelphia, March 9, 2021 - Schizophrenia is a neurodevelopmental disorder that disrupts brain activity producing hallucinations, delusions, and other cognitive disturbances. Researchers have long searched for genetic influences in the disease, but genetic mutations have been identified in only a small fraction--fewer than a quarter--of sequenced patients. A new study now shows that "somatic" gene mutations in brain cells could account for some of the disease neuropathology. The study, led by senior author Jeong Ho Lee, MD, PhD, at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and the team of Stanley Medical Research Institute, appears in Biological ...

According to the current BfR-Corona-Monitor of the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), 43 percent of the respondents have already had themselves tested for the virus. The survey, which has been conducted regularly for almost a year now, documents how the population is dealing with the situation, what they are doing to protect themselves and how they are informing themselves about the current events. "For 50 weeks now, our survey has provided insights into the current situation and its development," says BfR-President Professor Dr. Dr. Andreas Hensel. "Over time, we see that the vast majority of the population is implementing the key protective measures." BfR-Corona-Monitor as to 2-3 March 2021: https://www.bfr.bund.de/cm/349/210302-bfr-corona-monitor-en.pdf Regarding ...

PLYMOUTH MEETING, PA [March 9, 2021] -- New research in the March 2021 issue of JNCCN--Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network from Mass General Hospital Cancer Center, Harvard Medical School, and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute finds muscle mass (quantity) correlated with survival, while muscle radiodensity (quality) was associated with symptom burden, healthcare use, and survival in patients with advanced cancer undergoing an unplanned hospitalization. The researchers also found nearly two-thirds of the patients in that population had significant muscle loss ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- New research from the University at Buffalo suggests that breast cancer patients who drink sugar-sweetened beverages regularly are at increased risk for death from any cause and breast cancer in particular. Compared to women who never or rarely drank non-diet soda, those who reported drinking non-diet soda five times or more per week had a 62% higher likelihood of dying from any causes, and were 85% more likely to die from breast cancer specifically. The findings were published online ahead of print March 2 in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. Research on soda and breast ...

Researchers at Uppsala University have developed a digital self-test that trains users to assess news items, images and videos presented on social media. The self-test has also been evaluated in a scientific study, which confirmed the researchers' hypothesis that the tool genuinely improved the students' ability to apply critical thinking to digital sources. The new tool and the scientific review of it are part of the News Evaluator project to investigate new methods of enhancing young people's capacity for critical awareness of digital sources, a key component of digital literacy. "As ...

Philadelphia, March 9, 2021--Combining computational mining of big data with experimental testing in the lab, researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have identified RNA editing events that influence gene expression and, in turn, the phenotypic manifestation of that expression. In analyzing so-called A-to-I RNA editing, in which the adenosine of an RNA molecule is chemically modified into an inosine, the researchers describe how a single nucleotide change by RNA editing can have large downstream effects. The findings were published today in Genome Biology. "Millions of A-to-I RNA editing sites have been identified across the human transcriptome, but the functions of most RNA editing ...

If travel to distant stars within an individual's lifetime is going to be possible, a means of faster-than-light propulsion will have to be found. To date, even recent research about superluminal (faster-than-light) transport based on Einstein's theory of general relativity would require vast amounts of hypothetical particles and states of matter that have "exotic" physical properties such as negative energy density. This type of matter either cannot currently be found or cannot be manufactured in viable quantities. In contrast, new research carried out at the University of Göttingen gets around this problem by constructing a new class of hyper-fast 'solitons' ...

Researchers have demonstrated that a slimy, yet tough, type of biofilm that certain bacteria make for protection and to help them move around can also be used to separate water and oil. The material may be useful for applications such as cleaning contaminated waters. In the journal Langmuir, North Carolina State University researchers reported the findings of an experiment in which they used a material produced by the bacteria Gluconacetobacter hansenii as a filter to separate water from an oil mixture. "It's really remarkable to think that these little bugs can make this stuff that is so perfect in many ways," said Lucian Lucia, the study's corresponding author and an associate professor of forest biomaterials and chemistry at NC State. The biofilm the bacteria make and ...

Flash sintering is a ceramic processing technique which uses electric current to intensively heat the ceramic sample internally rather than using only external furnace heating. The process can lower ceramic processing temperatures and durations significantly, enabling ceramics to be co-processed with metals or other materials, and reducing energy use. However, the process can result in low quality ceramics due to weaknesses caused by inhomogeneities in the microstructure. The origins of these inhomogeneities caused by thermal gradients in the material during flash sintering have been studied by researchers ...

Deforestation may cause an initial increase in malaria infections across Southeast Asia before leading to later decreases, a study published today in eLife suggests. The results may help malaria control programs in the region develop better strategies for eliminating malaria infections and educating residents on how to protect themselves from infection. Mosquitos spread the malaria parasite to humans causing infections that can be severe and sometimes deadly. In the area along the Mekong river in Southeast Asia, many residents hunt or harvest wood in the surrounding forests, which can increase their risk of infection. Yet recent outbreaks of malaria in the region have also been linked to deforestation. "As countries in the region focus their malaria control ...

As the fight against COVID-19 continues, scientists have turned to an unlikely source for a potentially effective treatment: tiny antibodies naturally generated by llamas. While the world has welcomed the news of multiple vaccines against COVID-19, the search for effective treatments for those who contract the virus is ongoing. Now scientists are looking to what might seem to be an unlikely source: the South American llama. Researchers are using the ultrabright X-rays of the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility at DOE's Argonne National Laboratory, to help turn naturally generated llama antibodies into potentially effective therapies against ...