COLUMBIA, Mo. - When Ram Raghavan heard from a former colleague at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that a 7-year-old girl had died from Rocky Mountain spotted fever as the result of a tick bite, he thought of his own daughter, also 7 years old at the time, and the potentially fatal danger posed to vulnerable populations by tick-borne diseases. Now a professor at the University of Missouri College of Veterinary Medicine and School of Health Professions, Raghavan is an epidemiologist studying how ticks, mosquitos and other arthropods spread disease that impact people, pets and livestock over time in various geographical regions. In a recent study, the most comprehensive of its kind in the Midwest region of the United States, Raghavan and former graduate ...

Anti-NMDA receptor (NMDAR) encephalitis was first reported to develop in female young adults with ovarian teratoma. However, another study with a larger cohort reported that more than one-third of all patients with anti-NMDAR encephalitis were aged under 18 years, suggesting that this encephalitis might be more common in children than originally expected. A clinical diagnostic approach to autoimmune encephalitis was proposed in 2016, and included diagnostic criteria for probable and definite anti-NMDAR encephalitis. For a diagnosis of probable anti-NMDAR encephalitis, the criteria require rapid onset ( END ...

Tokyo, Japan - Materials in a glassy state are everywhere in our lives and have contributed to humanity for many years. Today, they play a critical role in various technologies, including optical fibers. Although we believe that glass is highly stable, it sometimes crystallizes, resulting in loss of transparency and isotropy, essential characteristics of glass, which has been a significant problem in industrial applications. The reason why crystallization occurs in a solid-state with almost no molecular movement has been a great mystery. Its understanding may help to prevent or optimize crystal growth at deep supercooling. In a study recently published in Nature Materials, researchers ...

A dengue virus vaccine candidate has passed an important milestone, with promising results in animal model testing providing hope to the 390 million people infected every year. The University of Queensland-developed vaccine candidate, applied to the skin via the high-density microarray patch (HD-MAP), has produced a protective immune response in dengue-infected mice. UQ PhD candidate Jovin Choo said the result could lead to a readily administered vaccine that could help halt the devastation of dengue fever globally. "Dengue is the most significant mosquito-borne viral disease in the world's ...

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., May 12, 2021--A new theorem from the field of quantum machine learning has poked a major hole in the accepted understanding about information scrambling. "Our theorem implies that we are not going to be able to use quantum machine learning to learn typical random or chaotic processes, such as black holes. In this sense, it places a fundamental limit on the learnability of unknown processes," said Zoe Holmes, a post-doc at Los Alamos National Laboratory and coauthor of the paper describing the work published today in Physical Review Letters. "Thankfully, because most physically interesting processes are sufficiently simple or structured so that they do not resemble ...

A new study, by researchers from Simon Fraser University and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, reveals the trade-offs of fish biodiversity--its costs and benefits to mixed-stock fisheries--and points to a potential way to harness the benefits while avoiding costs to fishery performance. Many Pacific salmon fisheries catch fish that come from multiple stocks (management units), often representing locally-adapted populations, in so-called mixed-stock fisheries. Fish are intercepted in the ocean as they migrate along the coast, returning to different rivers to spawn. The study used computer models of hypothetical fisheries and case studies of three actual sockeye salmon fisheries, including BC's Fraser River fishery, to explore how fish biodiversity within mixed-stock ...

PASADENA, Calif. -- Among cancer patients with health coverage in Southern California, those who were diagnosed and treated at Kaiser Permanente, an integrated health care organization, had better survival rates, especially Black and Latino patients, according to Kaiser Permanente research published in The American Journal of Managed Care. "Kaiser Permanente is committed to finding and addressing health care inequities," said the study's senior author, Reina Haque, PhD, a cancer epidemiologist in the Kaiser Permanente Southern California Department of Research & Evaluation. "We investigated survival among insured patients with cancer ...

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--May 12, 2021--Following the minuscule movements of every cell in a petri dish would be a painstaking task for any human. But teach a set of computer programs to do the job, and they can complete it quickly and even observe things that the human eye would miss. Scientists at Gladstone Institutes have developed such an approach, which uses "neural nets"--artificial intelligence programs that can detect patterns--to analyze the locations of hundreds of cells growing together in a colony. When they applied the technique to a group of stem cells, the program revealed that a small number of cells act as "leaders," able to direct the movements of their neighbors. "This technique gives us a much more comprehensive view of how cells behave, how they work cooperatively, and how ...

White evangelicals are best persuaded to mask up through messages that stress the Christian doctrine of "love thy neighbor," according to a UCR-authored study published Tuesday. The study yielded a second effective way to persuade white evangelicals - but only if they are Republican. That is, messaging from former President Donald Trump that aligns mask-wearing with patriotism. The lessons learned from the study can be borrowed for pro-vaccine messaging, said study author Jennifer Merolla, a UCR professor of political science. About 45% of white evangelicals do not plan on getting vaccinated against COVID-19, according to a Pew Research Center poll. Health officials have said persuading the 41 million white evangelical ...

A person's stance on abortion is linked to their, often inaccurate, belief about when a fetus can feel pain, a University of Otago study has found. Lead author Emma Harcourt, PhD candidate in Otago's Centre for Science Communication, says misinformation about abortion and pregnancy is common and potentially harmful. "The current medical consensus is that it is unlikely that fetal pain perception is possible before the 29th or 30th weeks of pregnancy. However, we found that most people believe that the capacity to feel pain develops much earlier and that this was particularly evident in participants with anti-abortion views," she says. The study, published in The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, recruited 374 ...

Numerous compelling evidences from astroparticle physics and cosmology indicate that the major matter component in the Universe is dark matter, accounting for about 85% with the remaining 15% is the ordinary matter. Nevertheless, people still know little about the dark matter, including its mass and other properties. Many models predict dark matter particles could couple to ordinary particle at weak interaction level, so it is possible to capture the signal of dark matter particle in the direct detection experiment. The scientific goals of the China ...

The evolution of ankle and foot bones into different shapes and sizes helped mammals adapt and thrive after the extinction of the dinosaurs, a study suggests. A surge of evolution following the mass extinction 66 million years ago enabled mammals to diversify and prosper during a period of major global change, researchers say. Analysis of bones that form part of the ankle and the heel of the foot reveal that mammals during this time - the Paleocene Period - were less primitive than previously thought. Palaeontologists from the University of Edinburgh made the discovery by comparing the anatomy of Paleocene mammals with species from the earlier Cretaceous ...

As we move through the world, what we see is seamlessly integrated with our memory of the broader spatial environment. How does the brain accomplish this feat? A new study from Dartmouth College reveals that three regions of the brain in the posterior cerebral cortex, which the researchers call "place-memory areas," form a link between the brain's perceptual and memory systems. The findings are published in Nature Communications. "As we navigate our surroundings, information enters the visual cortex and somehow ends up as knowledge of where we are - the question is where this transformation into spatial ...

A research group has developed an ion-selective smart porous membrane that can respond to outer stimuli, potentially paving the way for new applications in molecular separation and sensing applications. Porous thin films have attracted the attention of scientists because of their potential use in sensors, energy harvesting, and ion/molecular separation. Nanostructure properties, such as pore size, thickness, and film density, affect molecular selectivity and molecular permeability. Surface properties also have a significant impact on molecular selectivity. Thus it is important to be able to control both the 3D nanostructures and surface properties of ultrathin porous films. Previous research shed light on smart porous membranes, which are covered with molecules that can respond ...

Eating a diet rich in fruit and vegetables is associated with less stress, according to new research from Edith Cowan University (ECU). The study examined the link between fruit and vegetable intake and stress levels of more than 8,600 Australians aged between 25 and 91 participating in the Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle (AusDiab) Study from Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute. The findings revealed people who ate at least 470 grams of fruit and vegetables daily had 10 per cent lower stress levels than those who consumed less than 230 grams. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends ...

Arizona! The sunsets. The saguaros. The snakes. All of them are part of life in the sunny Southwest, but keeping cool when the latter is holed up in a golf bag, air compressor or swimming pool pump house is a big ask for a lot of people. Not as big as you'd think, however. The first study to analyze snake removals in a social-ecological context was recently published by an Arizona State University conservation biologist working with a local rattlesnake removal company. "I think one of the surprises was that people don't hate snakes," said researcher Heather Bateman of the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts. "A lot of them responded that the snakes are important to the desert ecosystem and the snake belongs ...

Optical imaging systems have been playing an essential role in scientific discovery and societal progress for several centuries. For more than 150 years scientists and engineers have used aberration theory to describe and quantify the deviation of light rays from ideal focusing in an imaging system. Until recently most of these imaging systems included spherical and aspherical refractive lenses or reflective mirrors or a combination of both. With the introduction of new ultra-precision manufacturing methods, it has become possible to fabricate lenses and mirrors that lack the common translational or ...

The relevance for radiology applications is probably the most known advantage of X-ray beams (keV energies) with respect to visible radiation (eV energies) and can be traced back to their superior penetration depth. On a more fundamental ground, however, the relevance of this photon energy range relies on the capability of probing inner shell electrons (as they have comparable binding energies) and mapping molecular structures on the atomic-scale (as typical interatomic spacings are comparable to X-ray wavelengths). Building on such capabilities, large efforts have been devoted by the scientific community to develop X-ray sub-picosecond sources able to access matter properties with a time resolution sufficient to access elemental molecular motions. Free electron lasers (FEL), nowadays available ...

UNSW medical researchers have found a way to starve pancreatic cancer cells and 'disable' the cells that block treatment from working effectively. Their findings in mice and human lab models - which have been 10 years in the making and are about to be put to the test in a human clinical trial - are published today in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. "Pancreatic cancer has seen minimal improvement in survival for the last four decades - and without immediate action, it is predicted to be the world's second biggest ...

The Indian public blamed foreigners, minority groups and doctors for the rapid spread of COVID-19 across the country during the first wave, due to misinformation, rumour and long-held discriminatory beliefs, according to an international study led by Monash University. This resulted in people refusing to get tested for fear of humiliation or public reprisals, which included attacks on Muslims and health care workers. However, when presented with accurate and reliable information about the virus spread, the Indian public back-pedalled on those negative sentiments and were more likely to get tested and seek medical help, highlighting the importance of health advice from credible sources. A ...

World-first nanotechnology developed by the University of South Australia could change the lives of thousands of people living with cystic fibrosis (CF) as groundbreaking research shows it can improve the effectiveness of the CF antibiotic Tobramycin, increasing its efficacy by up to 100,000-fold. The new technology uses a biomimetic nanostructured material to augment Tobramycin - the antibiotic prescribed to treat chronic Pseudomonas aeruginosa lung infections in severe cases of CF - eradicating the infection in as little as two doses. In Australia, cystic fibrosis (CF) affects one in 2500 babies - or one baby born every four days - causing severe impairments to a person's ...

Cancer death rates have fallen dramatically in the United States, but factor in obesity, as researchers did at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health, and the picture changes. In a study published May 10 in JAMA Network Open, researchers showed that obesity-related cancer deaths are improving, but at a slowing pace. Based on mortality data for 50 million people, deaths from cancers not associated with obesity -- that's lung cancer and skin cancer, among others - are declining at a rate almost three times faster than cancers linked to obesity, such as stomach, colorectal, uterine, thyroid and postmenopausal breast cancer. "These are cancers where we could see even larger mortality improvements with creative and practical tools to combat ...

Compared with the superresolution microscopy that bases on squeezing the point spread function in the spatial domain, the superresolution microscopy that broadens the detection range in the spatial frequency domain through the spatial-frequency-shift (SFS) effect shows intriguing advantages including large field of view, high speed, and good modularity, owing to its wide-field picture acquisition process and universal implementation without using special fluorophores labeling. To enable spatial-frequency-shift microscopy with a superresolution at the subwavelength scale, it is essential to use the near-field evanescent wave with a larger wave vector than the far-field propagation wave for illumination, which can be built on the integrated photonics, paving the way for compact ...

Researchers from Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU), collaborating with scientists from the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) and RIKEN, develop a novel technique for live-cell fluorescent imaging which leads them to discover a new actin structure in starfish early embryos. Tokyo, Japan - Monitoring alignments of the building blocks of cells is important to understand how the cells are built. By collaborating with imaging scientists at the MBL, researchers from Japan have developed a new probe which they call POLArIS, allowing real-time imaging of molecular orientations in live cells. A fluorophore emits polarized light as it glows. The orientation of polarized fluorescence ...

It is difficult for us to succeed in whatever we set out to do if we lack motivation. We usually need it as a driving force to achieve both short- and long-term goals, from household chores to getting a degree. However, because of the ongoing pandemic, our lifestyles have been subjected to drastic and dynamic changes, and many work- and study-related activities are now carried out online exclusively. This, among other complex factors, have made it difficult for some people to stay focused and motivated, and psychology researchers are trying to find effective and widely applicable solutions to address such problems. In a END ...