Robots that could take on basic healthcare tasks to support the work of doctors and nurses may be the way of the future. Who knows, maybe a medical robot can prescribe your medicine someday? That's the idea behind 3D structural-sensing robots being developed and tested at Simon Fraser University by Woo Soo Kim, associate professor in the School of Mechatronic Systems Engineering. "The recent pandemic demonstrates the need to minimize human-to-human interaction between healthcare workers and patients," says Kim, who authored two recent papers on the subject - a perspective on the technology and a demonstration of a robots' usefulness in healthcare. "There's an opportunity for sensing robots to measure ...

Parasitic flatworms known as agents of food-borne zoonoses were confirmed to use several species of thiarid snails, commonly found in freshwater and brackish environments in southeast Asia, as their first intermediate host. These parasites can cause severe ocular infections in humans who consume raw or improperly cooked fish that have fed on infected snails. The study, conducted in South Thailand by Thai and German researchers and led by Kitja Apiraksena, Silpakorn University, is published in the peer-reviewed open-access journal Zoosystematics and Evolution. "Trematode infections are major public health problems affecting humans in southeast Asia," explain the scientists. "Trematode infections depend not only on the habit of people, but also on the presence of first ...

BOSTON - Two novel calculators for predicting which patients admitted to the hospital with COVID-19 are at greatest risk of requiring mechanical ventilation or of in-hospital death have been developed and validated by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). In a study published in The Lancet's EClinicalMedicine, researchers describe how these models could enable clinicians to better stratify risk in COVID-infected patients to optimize care and resource utilization in hospitals faced with ICU capacity constraints. "Information that can accurately predict severity of the clinical course at the time of hospital admission has been limited," says senior author Rajeev Malhotra, MD, a cardiologist at MGH and investigator in the MGH Cardiovascular Research Center. ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- When Patrick Rottinghaus began college, he had no idea what he wanted to do with his career. He started out as an "Open" major while he explored possibilities. Today, Rottinghaus, an associate professor in the University of Missouri College of Education, is helping young people eager to find their place in the world by identifying their strengths and connecting them with careers that match their skillset, interests and personality. As the father of three children, including a daughter soon to enter high school, he wants to ensure they are equipped ...

In recent years, engineers have found ways to modify the properties of some "two- dimensional" materials, which are just one or a few atoms thick, by stacking two layers together and rotating one slightly in relation to the other. This creates what are known as moiré patterns, where tiny shifts in the alignment of atoms between the two sheets create larger-scale patterns. It also changes the way electrons move through the material, in potentially useful ways. But for practical applications, such two-dimensional materials must at some point connect with the ordinary world of 3D materials. An international team led by MIT researchers has now come up with a way of imaging what goes on at these ...

Both Democrats and Republicans overwhelmingly favor politicians who support generous COVID-19 relief spending, yet remain deeply polarized over the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election results and former President Donald Trump's second impeachment. Meanwhile, political experts find that the former president's actions and those taken by congressional supporters in the aftermath of the election represent serious departures from American democratic norms. Those are among the most recent findings of Bright Line Watch, the political science research project cofounded by Gretchen Helmke, a professor of political science at the ...

A Swansea University scientist's research into the geometrical characteristics of a physical theories is highlighted in a new paper. Physicist Dr Farid Shahandeh said: "Imagine a physical theory whose explanation for the trajectory of an apple falling from a tree differs for Gala and Pink Lady. We know that the apple's variety has nothing to do with how it falls. A theory like this is overcomplicated. "Any seemingly unnecessary and nonsensical parameter like this adds context to a theory's description of a physical phenomenon. "Luckily, classical theories are not contextuality. But, we know that if we try to interpret quantum mechanics in classical terms, it becomes contextual, and consequently ...

HOUSTON - (Feb. 26, 2021) - In a twist befitting the strange nature of quantum mechanics, physicists have discovered the Hall effect -- a characteristic change in the way electricity is conducted in the presence of a magnetic field -- in a nonmagnetic quantum material to which no magnetic field was applied. The discovery by researchers from Rice University, Austria's Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien), Switzerland's Paul Scherrer Institute and Canada's McMaster University is detailed in a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Of interest are both the origins of the effect, which is typically associated with magnetism, and its gigantic magnitude -- more than 1,000 times larger than one might observe in simple ...

Whilst a great deal of research has studied the rates of photons escaping from cold atomic gases, these studies have used a scalar description of light leaving some of its properties untested. In a new paper published in EPJ B Louis Bellando, a post-doctoral researcher at LOMA, University of Bordeaux, France, and his coauthors--Aharon Gero and Eric Akkermans, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Israel, and Robin Kaiser, Université Côte d'Azur, France--aim to numerically investigative the roles of cooperative effects and disorder in photon escape rates from a cold atomic gas to construct a model that considers the vectorial ...

When patients with COVID-19 arrive in emergency rooms, there are relatively few ways for doctors to predict which ones are more likely to become critically ill and require intensive care and which ones are more likely to enjoy a quick recovery. New Yale research could help them identify important early clues. In a recent study, researchers report that a series of biomarkers, or biological signals, associated with white blood cell activation and obesity can predict severe outcomes in COVID-19 patients. The findings appear in the Feb. 26 edition of Blood Advances. "Patients with high levels of these markers were much more like to require care in the intensive care unit, require ventilation, or die due to their COVID-19," said Dr. Hyung Chun, ...

PHOENIX, Arizona, February 26, 2021- Promising new research shows aerobic exercise may help slow memory loss for older adults living with Alzheimer's dementia. ASU Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation Professor Fang Yu led a pilot randomized control trial that included 96 older adults living with mild to moderate Alzheimer's dementia. Participants were randomized to either a cycling (stationary bike) or stretching intervention for six months. Using the Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale-Cognition (ADAS-Cog) to assess cognition, the results of the trial were substantial. The six-month change in ADAS-Cog was 1.0±4.6 (cycling) and 0.1±4.1 (stretching), which were both significantly ...

Neutron scattering is a technique commonly used in physics and biology to understand the composition of complex multicomponent mixtures and is increasingly being used to study applied materials such as food. A new paper published in EPJ E by Gregory N Smith, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, shows an example of neutron scattering in the area of food science. Smith uses neutron scattering to better investigate casein micelles in milk, with the aim of developing an approach for future research. Smith, also a researcher at the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source in ...

The past century or so has seen unprecedented technological, scientific, and sociological evolution worldwide. These have accompanied global shifts in people's lifestyles and rapid changes in the environment, both natural and man-made. An unfavorable consequence of these alterations has been the increasing burden of cancer on human society. As the country with the largest population, China has borne this burden heavily. Despite the massive progress China has made in healthcare since the 1950s, cancer has become the leading killer in the country. ...

Transfer RNAs (tRNAs) deliver specific amino acids to ribosomes during translation of messenger RNA into proteins. The abundance of tRNAs can therefore have a profound impact on cell physiology, but measuring the amount of each tRNA in cells has been limited by technical challenges. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry have now overcome these limitations with mim-tRNAseq, a method that can be used to quantify tRNAs in any organism and will help improve our understanding of tRNA regulation in health and disease. A cell contains several hundred thousand tRNA molecules, each of which consists of only 70 to 90 nucleotides folded into a cloverleaf-like pattern. At one end, tRNAs carry one of the twenty amino acids that serve as protein building blocks, while the ...

What The Study Did: Researchers investigated whether home addresses recorded in the electronic medical record could be used to accurately estimate transmission risk of SARS-CoV-2 and identify risk factors for transmission. Authors: Joshua P. Metlay, M.D., Ph.D., of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/  (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.0304) Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial ...

What The Study Did: Researchers in this observational study assess at what age young people ages 12 to 17 start using cigarettes. Authors: Adriana Pérez, Ph.D., of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston in Austin, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.0218) Editor's Note: The article includes conflicts of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support. INFORMATION: Media advisory: The full study is linked to ...

PHILADELPHIA-- Even though the use of rhythm control strategies for treating Paroxysmal Atrial Fibrillation (AF), a common abnormal heart rhythm, have increased overall in the United States, patients from racial and ethnic minority groups and those with lower income were less likely to receive rhythm control treatment - often the preferred treatment - according to new research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The study is published in the JAMA Network Open. "Research has demonstrated the pervasive impact of structural racism on health outcomes among minoritized patients. We know, for instance, that there is less use of novel cardiovascular therapies among Black, Latinx, and patients of lower socioeconomic ...

A Mason Engineering researcher has discovered that artificial microswimmers accumulate where their speed is minimized, an idea that could have implications for improving the efficacy of targeted cancer therapy. Jeff Moran, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering in the Volgenau School of Engineering, and colleagues from the University of Washington in Seattle studied self-propelled half-platinum/half-gold rods that "swim" in water using hydrogen peroxide as a fuel. The more peroxide there is, the faster the swimming; without peroxide in pure water, the rods don't swim. In this work, they set out to understand ...

People living with obesity tend to have unhealthy glucose and lipid levels in their blood, as well as high blood pressure. As a result, they are more at risk of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. But scientists have observed that up to 45% of people living with obesity have healthy blood pressure and glucose and lipid levels, and therefore may not be at high risk of disease. The reason why this group of people with obesity remain healthy, has been poorly understood. But now a team of researchers - led by scientists at the University of Copenhagen and Icahn School of Medicine ...

Biologists from RUDN University confirmed that a well-known spasmolytic drug called hymecromone can suppress the inflammatory response in astrocytes, important glial cells of the central nervous system. Potentially, it could be used to develop medications against Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative conditions. The results of the study were published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences. All pathological processes in the nervous system, such as neurodegenerative diseases, injuries, or intoxications, are associated with inflammations. ...

An insecticide used to control pest infestations on squash and pumpkins significantly hinders the reproduction of ground-nesting bees -- valuable pollinators for many food crops, a new University of Guelph study has revealed. This first-ever study of pesticide impacts on a ground-nesting bee in a real-world context found female hoary squash bees exposed to imidacloprid dug 85 per cent fewer nests, collected less pollen from crop flowers and produced 89 per cent fewer offspring than unexposed bees. "Because they're not making nests and not collecting pollen, they cannot raise offspring," said Dr. Susan Willis Chan, a post-doc in the School of ...

Heart problems cause disturbed gene activity in the brain's memory center, from which cognitive deficits arise. Researchers at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), the University Medical Center Göttingen (UMG) and the German Center for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK) come to this conclusion based on laboratory studies. They consider that they have found a possible cause for the increased risk of dementia in people with heart problems. In mice, a specific drug which is known to affect gene activity alleviated the mental deficits. The involved experts see these results as potential approaches for therapies. ...

HOUSTON - (Feb. 26, 2021) - Tracking the origin of synthetic genetic code has never been simple, but it can be done through bioinformatic or, increasingly, deep learning computational approaches. Though the latter gets the lion's share of attention, new research by computer scientist Todd Treangen of Rice University's Brown School of Engineering is focused on whether sequence alignment and pan-genome-based methods can outperform recent deep learning approaches in this area. "This is, in a sense, against the grain given that deep learning approaches have recently outperformed traditional approaches, such as BLAST," he said. "My goal with this study is to start a conversation about how to combine the expertise of both domains to achieve further improvements for this important computational ...

TORONTO, Feb. 26, 2021 - The maternal care of offspring is one of the behavioural drivers that has led some bee species to have an ever-expanding social life over the history of evolution, new research out of York University has found. By virtue of being in a social group, the genome itself may respond by selecting more social rather than non-social genes. The behaviour and social environment come first, setting the stage for future molecular evolution. In addition, the researchers have found that a similar genetic evolution happened independently in different species at different times, suggesting there is a unifying principle leading to the same social trait. "There seems to be something about sociality specifically that is driving the genome to evolve in this way. It's a very ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Marilyn Rantz still remembers the day she got the call that her mother, whose health had been declining, had fallen and fractured her shoulder. After rushing to the hospital, her mother told her she didn't understand how she ended up on a helicopter pad after the traumatic incident. A nearby nurse told Rantz the noise from the MRI scanning tube had caused her frightened mother to mistakenly believe she had been airlifted to the hospital on a helicopter. Determined to prevent avoidable hospitalizations, as well as the stress and panic that often comes along with the ambulance ride, Rantz, ...