When the analysis of digital data reaches its limits, methods that focus on observations made by individuals can be useful. In contexts such as the coronavirus pandemic, a method called human social sensing can elicit information that is difficult to obtain from digital trace data. Prof. Frauke Kreuter at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich is now using this method with the global "Covid Trends & Impact Survey" to predict the course of the pandemic. Despite today's researchers in the social sciences having access to historically unparalleled amounts of data, many aspects of contemporary social developments have proven difficult to predict. National elections and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic are highly visible examples ...

The seasonal flu kills up to 600 000 people a year worldwide and has a century-long history of pandemics. Examples include the Spanish flu in the late 1910's or the H1N1 in 2009, which together claimed more than 50 million lives. "The way the stage is set tells us that it is not a matter of if but rather of when there will be a next pandemic. And preparing ourselves for that demands intensive fundamental research and constant accumulation of knowledge about these viruses and the diseases they cause", says Maria João Amorim, IGC principal investigator and leader of the team that conducted the study. When a virus like influenza enters our lungs, it is quickly faced with cocktails of ...

An international study has elucidated the structure of a protein that is required for the assembly and stability of photosynthetic membranes. Plants, algae and cyanobacteria convert carbon dioxide and water into biomass and oxygen with the aid of photosynthesis. This process forms the basis of most forms of life on Earth. Global warming is exposing photosynthetic organisms to increasing levels of stress. This reduces growth rates, and in the longer term presents a threat to food supplies for human populations. An international project, in which Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet ...

Researchers based in Munich and Tuebingen have developed an open-source camera system that images natural habitats as they appear to rodents. During the course of evolution, animals have adapted to the particular demands of their local environments in ways that increased their chances of survival and reproduction. This is also true of diverse aspects of the sensory systems that enable species to perceive their surroundings. In the case of the visual system, these adaptations have shaped features such as the positioning of the eyes and the relative acuity of different regions of the retina. However, our knowledge of the functional evolution of visual systems in mammals has remained relatively sparse. "In the past 10 or 15 years, the mouse has become the favored model ...

Elisa Cordero, a doctor at the Virgen del Rocío University Hospital, researcher at the Institute of Biomedicine of Seville (IBiS) and professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Seville, led a study involving researchers from 12 Spanish hospitals to study the clinical characteristics and facilitate the prognosis of solid organ transplant recipients with COVID-19. The study provides a more precise description of the complications caused by Covid-19 in organ transplant recipients and has provided useful clinical indicators to identify the disease early. This makes it possible to determine therapeutic and care measures ...

There are plenty of negatives associated with smart technology -- tech neck, texting and driving, blue light rays -- but there is also a positive: the digital age is not making us stupid, says University of Cincinnati social/behavioral expert Anthony Chemero. "Despite the headlines, there is no scientific evidence that shows that smartphones and digital technology harm our biological cognitive abilities," says the UC professor of philosophy and psychology who recently co-authored a paper stating such in Nature Human Behaviour. In the paper, Chemero and colleagues at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of ...

A new study disputes the prevailing hypothesis on why Mercury has a big core relative to its mantle (the layer between a planet's core and crust). For decades, scientists argued that hit-and-run collisions with other bodies during the formation of our solar system blew away much of Mercury's rocky mantle and left the big, dense, metal core inside. But new research reveals that collisions are not to blame--the sun's magnetism is. William McDonough, a professor of geology at the University of Maryland, and Takashi Yoshizaki from Tohoku University developed a model showing ...

Ibaraki, Japan - The flavor of a tomato is an interaction between its taste and aroma. Now, researchers from Japan and the United States have revealed that the pigments that determine the colors of tomatoes also affect their flavor. In a study published this month, researchers from University of Tsukuba developed a new method to rapidly measure the pigment profiles of tomatoes and used the technique to explore how pigments affect the taste and aroma of different tomato varieties. The color of tomatoes is produced by combinations of different types of pigments, including carotenoids and chlorophylls. These pigments can also affect the accumulation of flavor-related compounds such as sugars, which affect the taste of tomatoes, and volatile ...

A surprising study by UNSW on the behaviour of unrelated lizards in very different parts of the world has demonstrated how evolution can lead to different species learning the same skills. The study in Ecology Letters documents how the Anolis lizard species in the Caribbean, and the Draco lizard species in Southeast Asia, have solved the challenge of communicating with one another to defend territories and attract mates. It found males from both species perform elaborate head bob and push up displays, and rapidly extend and retract their often large and conspicuously coloured dewlap, or ...

The muskrat, a stocky brown rodent the size of a Chihuahua - with a tail like a mouse, teeth like a beaver and an exceptional ability to bounce back from rapid die-offs - has lived for thousands of years in one of Earth's largest freshwater deltas, in northeastern Alberta, Canada. Today, this delta lies within one of the largest swaths of protected land in North America: a national park five times the size of Yellowstone that's home to the planet's biggest herd of free-roaming bison and the last natural nesting ground for the endangered whooping crane. It's also central to the culture ...

Guadalupe fur seals (Arctocephalus townsendi) have established a large resting colony in the Gulf of California--bringing the total number of sites where this endangered species now occurs to just four. This new haul-out was discovered on El Farallón de San Ignacio Island, along the mainland coast of Mexico, according to researchers from Mexico and the University of British Columbia. Guadalupe fur seals were hunted for their furs and declared extinct in the late 1800's. However, 14 individuals were discovered on Guadalupe Island in 1950--and the population has grown since then. While still designated as vulnerable to extinction, according to IUCN, the population is believed to total 41,000 individuals and is growing ...

In an Australian world-first, researchers have successfully repurposed two existing medications to reduce the severity of sleep apnoea in people by at least 30 per cent. Affecting millions around the world, sleep apnoea is a condition where the upper airway from the back of the nose to the throat closes repetitively during sleep, restricting oxygen intake and causing people to wake as often as 100 times or more per hour. Those with untreated sleep apnoea are more likely to develop cardiovascular disease, dementia and depression, and are two to four times more likely to crash a car than the general population. Despite almost thirty years of research, there are no approved drug therapies to treat the condition. Professor Danny Eckert, Principal ...

Fukuoka, Japan--Medical researchers led by Kyushu University have revealed a possible underlying genetic pathway behind the neurological dysfunction of Rett syndrome. The team found that deficiencies in key genes involved in the pathology triggers neural stem cells to generate less neurons by producing more astrocytes--the brain's maintenance cells. The researchers hope that the molecular pathology they identified, as reported in the journal Cell Reports, can lead to potential therapeutic targets for Rett syndrome in the future. Rett syndrome is a progressive neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impairments in cognition and coordination--with varying severity--and occurs in roughly one in every 10,000 to 15,000 female births. However, it ...

Japanese astronomers have developed a new artificial intelligence (AI) technique to remove noise in astronomical data due to random variations in galaxy shapes. After extensive training and testing on large mock data created by supercomputer simulations, they then applied this new tool to actual data from Japan's Subaru Telescope and found that the mass distribution derived from using this method is consistent with the currently accepted models of the Universe. This is a powerful new tool for analyzing big data from current and planned astronomy surveys. Wide area survey data can be used to study the large-scale structure of the Universe through measurements of gravitational lensing patterns. In gravitational lensing, the ...

Microorganisms produce natural products, for example, as disease-causing virulence factors or as defense substances against predators and competitors. A team led by Dr. Robin Teufel and first author Ying Duan from the Institute of Biology II at the Faculty of Biology of the University of Freiburg, together with researchers from the University of Bonn, have now discovered a novel enzyme that is crucial for the production of so-called bacterial tropone natural products. The researchers presented their results in the current issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Previously unknown enzyme type Bacteria found in terrestrial and marine environments produce tropone natural products, among other things, when they interact symbiotically with plants, algae or lower animals, for ...

Methylglyoxal (MG) is a highly reactive α-ketoaldehyde formed endogenously as a byproduct of the glycolytic pathway. MG accumulates under conditions of hyperglycemia, impaired glucose metabolism, or oxidative stress. An excess of MG formation causes mitochondrial impairment and reactive oxygen species (ROS) production that further increases oxidative stress. It also leads to the formation of advanced glycation end products (AGEs) due to MG reacting with proteins, DNA, and other biomolecules, which can induce aberrant inflammation via binding to receptors for AGEs (RAGE). To remove the toxic MG, ...

This insight is the result of the close collaboration of several research groups at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology. A team around Cedric Hahn and Gunter Wegener recently discovered ethane-degrading microbes at hydrothermal vents of the Guaymas Basin at a water depth of 2,000 meters in the Gulf of California. They named it Ethanoperedens thermophilum, which means "heat-loving ethane-eater". Cedric Hahn a PhD student from the research group Molecular Ecology cultured the ethane-degrading microbes in the laboratory. Hahn, Wegener and colleagues of the research group Microbial Metabolism, Tristan Wagner and Olivier Lemaire took a closer look at these microorganisms. This collaborative work unraveled the secrets behind ...

"We have studied which temperatures are preferable and which are harmful in humans, cattle, pigs, poultry, and agricultural crops and found that they are surprisingly similar," says Senthold Asseng, Professor of Digital Agriculture at TUM. According to the study, preferable temperatures range from 17 to 24 degrees Celsius. When does it become too hot for humans? At high humidity, mild heat strain for humans begins at about 23 degrees Celsius and at low humidity at 27 degrees Celsius. "If people are exposed to temperatures above 32 degrees Celsius at extremely high humidity or above 45 degrees Celsius at extremely low humidity for a lengthy period of time, it can be fatal," says Prof. Asseng. "During extreme heat events with temperatures far above 40 degrees Celsius, such as those ...

Plastics are a growing problem for natural ecosystems around the globe, and in particular for our marine and freshwater environments. Rivers are the leading source of plastic pollution, as it has been estimated that they deliver several million metric tons of plastic annually to our oceans from poor land-based waste management. The problem is that the estimates made for plastics flowing from the rivers are tens to hundreds of times higher than the quantity of plastics floating on the ocean's surface. So where is all of this river-derived plastic actually going - is there a missing plastic 'sink' somewhere in the ocean? Are the estimates correct? In a paper published ...

Originally discovered as a bacterial mode of defense against invading viruses, the remarkable ability of CRISPR-Cas9 to modify specific locations of DNA has made it a researcher favorite among gene editing tools. The ongoing effort to explore further possibilities of the CRISPR-Cas9 system is ushering in newer developments to this tool. In one of the latest refinements of the technique, as illustrated in a study published in BioDesign Research, scientists from Stanford University, USA have developed a CRISPR-Cas9 system that induces highly effective silencing of target genes. The versatility of CRISPR-Cas9 based gene editing is largely ...

New research published in The Journal of Physiology shows that researchers have successfully repurposed two existing medications to reduce the severity of sleep apnoea in people by at least 30 per cent. Affecting around 1.5 million adults in the UK, sleep apnoea is a condition where the upper airway from the back of the nose to the throat closes repetitively during sleep, restricting oxygen intake and causing people to wake as often as 100 times or more per hour (1). Those with untreated sleep apnoea are more likely to develop cardiovascular disease, dementia and depression, ...

NDIANAPOLIS--Indiana University School of Medicine researchers are developing a new, noninvasive brain stimulation technique to treat neurological disorders, including pain, traumatic brain injury (TBI), epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and more. "Given the increasing use of brain stimulation in human brain study and treatment of neurological diseases, this research can make a big impact on physicians and their patients," said Xiaoming Jin, PhD, associate professor of anatomy, cell biology and physiology. When someone experiences a brain injury, nerve injury, or neurodegeneration, such as in epilepsy and TBI, there is damage to the brain which can lead to loss ...

Small children learn language at a pace far faster than teenagers or adults. One explanation for this learning advantage comes not from differences between children and adults, but from the differences in the way that people talk to children and adults. For the first time, a team of researchers developed a method to experimentally evaluate how parents use what they know about their children's language when they talk to them. They found that parents have extremely precise models of their children's language knowledge, and use these models to tune the language they use when speaking to them. The results are available in an advance online publication ...

Lugano, Switzerland, 2 July 2021 - Obese patients with colorectal cancer receive lower cumulative doses of adjuvant chemotherapy, relative to their body surface area (BSA), than non-obese patients, show results from a large meta-analysis reported at the ESMO World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancer 2021 (1). Further findings showed that cumulative relative chemotherapy dose was associated with survival so may explain the poorer survival that has been seen in obese patients receiving adjuvant chemotherapy for colorectal cancer. (2) "Adjuvant chemotherapy ...

Lugano, Switzerland, 2 July 2021 - Doctors and patients are being advised to reduce unnecessary antibiotic use following new data suggesting that these medicines may increase the risk of cancer of the large intestine (colon), especially in people under 50 years. (1) The results, presented at the ESMO World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancer (30 June-3 July) raise fresh concerns about the impact of the estimated 65% increase in global antibiotic consumption reported between 2000 and 2015, despite not showing a direct cause and effect. (2) "To our knowledge, ...