Scientists from the Department of Physiology of the University of Granada (UGR) have shown that caffeine (about 3 mg/kg, the equivalent of a strong coffee) ingested half an hour before aerobic exercise significantly increases the rate of fat-burning. They also found that if the exercise is performed in the afternoon, the effects of the caffeine are more marked than in the morning. In their study, published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, the researchers aimed to determine whether caffeine--one of the most commonly-consumed ergogenic substances in ...

LAWRENCE -- When a franchise buys a superstar like Tom Brady or LeBron James, the team tends to win more games. But do the fans follow? How much team loyalty is purchased along with an expensive star? Maybe not as much as some owners might hope -- in the NBA Finals between the Miami Heat and San Antonio Spurs, many fans expressed their dislike of the "bought" Miami team. In a new paper published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Applied Social Psychology, researchers at the University of Kansas asked over 1,500 Americans how much they liked teams that purchased excellence and compared that with liking teams that built excellence from the ground up. "People reliably ...

An international team of scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore), Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) platform that could one day be used in a system to assess vascular diseases, which are characterised by the abnormal condition of blood vessels. The AI-powered platform combines machine learning and a specially-designed microfluidic chip with analysis of 2D video images of blood flow and the application of physical laws, to infer how blood flows in 3D. In tests, it accurately predicted blood flow characteristics such as speed, pressure, and shear stress, ...

The world needs more electricity. As populations grow, standards of living increase and more people gain access to modern conveniences, countries will need to expand their energy generation capacity. India, with its rapidly developing economy and a population of more than 1.3 billion, epitomizes this trend. The country finds itself at a crossroads regarding its energy future: Small decisions today will resound in the coming years. In their latest report, the Indian government set a target of 450 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2030. For comparison, the country's total energy generation capacity today is about 380 gigawatts, out of which 90 gigawatts are of renewable energy, not including large hydropower stations. How this plan shapes up will dictate how ...

(BOSTON) -- A team of nanobiotechnologists at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) led by Wyss Founding Core Faculty member William Shih, Ph.D., has devised a programmable DNA self-assembly strategy that solves the key challenge of robust nucleation control and paves the way for applications such as ultrasensitive diagnostic biomarker detection and scalable fabrication of micrometer-sized structures with nanometer-sized features. Using the method, called "crisscross polymerization", the researchers can initiate weaving ...

One of the surest signs of spring is the vibrantly lime-green tinge trees develop as their buds open and tiny new leaves unfurl. Bud-break is the scientific name for this process -- a straightforward term for the grand genetic mechanism that allows trees to leaf out and do their summer work of photosynthesis to store up energy for the coming winter. Bud-break is precluded by bud-set, which occurs in the autumn. After trees have dropped their leaves and as the days shorten and grow colder, new buds grow on branches. Like many wildflowers, trees require a period of dormancy at colder temperatures -- a process fine-tuned by evolution ...

DURHAM, N.C. -An unfortunate biological "feed-forward" loop drives cartilage cells in an arthritic joint to actually contribute to progression of the disease, say researchers at Duke University and Washington University in Saint Louis. Pain researcher and mechanobiologist Wolfgang Liedtke, a professor of neurology at Duke, partnered with former Duke colleague and cartilage expert Farshid Guilak, now at the Washington University School of Medicine, to examine the activity of pressure-sensitive ion channels in cartilage. Their study appears the week of March 22 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Cartilage is the highly lubricated, low-friction, elastic tissue that lines ...

There are 12 essential attributes that explain why commercial carbon capture and sequestration projects succeed or fail in the U.S., University of California San Diego researchers say in a recent study published in Environmental Research Letters. Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) has become increasingly important in addressing climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies greatly on the technology to reach zero carbon at low cost. Additionally, it is among the few low-carbon technologies in President Joseph R. Biden's proposed $400 billion clean energy plan that earns bipartisan support. In the last two decades, private industry and government have ...

Amsterdam, NL, March 22, 2021 - The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on our world, with disequilibrium, uncertainty, and human suffering making it difficult to envision a human, societal and individual future. Milan Zeleny, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Management Systems, Fordham University, New York, NY, USA, and world-recognized authority on decision making, productivity, knowledge management, and more recently the corporation as a living organism, says that "COVID-19 is rapidly changing from a cause to one of the symptoms of an increasingly unhinged world." Writing in the journal Human Systems Management, published ...

A University of New Mexico research team conducted a data analysis that has found that as a larger portion of the population gets vaccinated against COVID-19, it becomes economically advantageous to start relaxing social distancing measures and open businesses. Francesco Sorrentino, associate professor of mechanical engineering, is lead author of "Data-driven Optimized Control of the COVID-19 Epidemics," published March 22 in Scientific Reports. Co-authors of the study are Afroza Shirin of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Yen Ting Lin, a staff scientist of the Information Science Group in the Computer, Computational ...

Despite the fact that viruses are among the simplest biological entities--consisting only of DNA or RNA encapsulated in a protein shell--they can have devastating consequences, with viruses such as influenza, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and Ebola having dramatically affected the course of human history. Because they generally lack the cellular machinery necessary to reproduce, they propagate by hijacking host cells, often to the host's detriment. While their status as a "living" organism may be in question, there is no doubt that viruses are shaped by evolutionary forces that influence their genomes, as well as their replication, host range, virulence, and other features. With the emergence of ...

The same process that drains the battery of your cell phone even when it's turned off is even more of a problem for lithium-metal batteries, which are being developed for the next generation of smaller, lighter electronic devices, far-ranging electric vehicles and other uses. Now scientists at Stanford University and the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have taken the first atomic-scale look at how this process, called "calendar aging," attacks lithium-metal anodes, or negative electrodes. They discovered that the nature of the battery electrolyte, which carries charge between the electrodes, has a big impact on aging - a factor that needs to be taken into account ...

The first documented record of salt as an ancient Maya commodity at a marketplace is depicted in a mural painted more than 2,500 years ago at Calakmul, a UNESCO World Heritage site in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. In the mural that portrays daily life, a salt vendor shows what appears to be a salt cake wrapped in leaves to another person, who holds a large spoon over a basket, presumably of loose, granular salt. This is the earliest known record of salt being sold at a marketplace in the Maya region. Salt is a basic biological necessity and is also useful for preserving food. Salt also was valued ...

Two new environmental policy briefings, aimed at decision makers working on rapidly expanding urban areas in southern Africa, emphasise that local community voices must be included in the early planning stages to minimise ecological impacts. Urban populations across the African continent and in particular the surrounding areas of urban sprawl, are forecasted to triple by 2050, resulting in higher rates of land conversion that have implications for managing significant environmental changes that lie ahead. This expansion is happening faster than infrastructure changes can keep-pace, meaning that residents do not have access to important services to reduce the impact of climate-related events such as flooding, droughts, and heat-stress. A new policy briefing, led by ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- A University of California, Riverside, study analyzing fourth-generation electronic cigarette, or EC, pod atomizer design features has found the pod atomizers are similar to those of previous generations and contain elements that may adversely affect health and accumulate in the environment. EC atomizers are chambers that hold nicotine-containing fluid and upon heating generate an aerosol. The pod-style e-cigarettes have become very popular, especially with young people. The elements/metals in atomizers are important because chronic exposure could adversely affect human health. Further, EC pod products, which eventually enter the environment, could ...

Suppose you drop your morning coffee and it splatters everywhere. Later a colleague drops by to say hello. Do you grumble a testy acknowledgment, or cheerfully greet her? In a new study on brain activity led by University of Miami psychologists, researchers found that how a person's brain evaluates fleeting negative stimuli--such as that dropped cup--may influence their long-term psychological well-being. "One way to think about it is the longer your brain holds on to a negative event, or stimuli, the unhappier you report being," said Nikki Puccetti, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Psychology ...

East Hanover, NJ. March 22, 2021. Kessler Foundation researchers demonstrated that spinal cord transcutaneous stimulation (scTS) combined with hand training improves upper extremity and hand function in individuals with motor and sensory compete spinal cord injury (SCI). The study results showed immediate and long-lasting gains in strength, sensibility, and voluntary motor function. The article, "Cervical Spinal Cord Transcutaneous Stimulation Improves Upper Extremity and Hand Function in People with Complete Tetraplegia: A Case Study" (doi: 10.1109/TNSRE.2020.3048592), was published January 28, 2021, in IEEE Transactions On Neural Systems And Rehabilitation Engineering. It is available open access at https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9311628. The authors are Fan Zhang, ...

What is happening in your brain as you are scrolling through this page? In other words, which areas of your brain are active, which neurons are talking to which others, and what signals are they sending to your muscles? Mapping neural activity to corresponding behaviors is a major goal for neuroscientists developing brain-machine interfaces (BMIs): devices that read and interpret brain activity and transmit instructions to a computer or machine. Though this may seem like science fiction, existing BMIs can, for example, connect a paralyzed person with a robotic ...

The pandemic has exposed weaknesses in nursing homes, causing many families to rethink whether to keep an aging parent at home instead. Now a new study by UC San Francisco has found that many elderly Americans lack the basic self-care equipment that could enable them to live at home longer, postponing the need to move into residential care facilities. In the study, researchers focused on three inexpensive, low-tech assistive devices: grab bars around the toilet and in the shower or tub area; a shower or tub seat; and a raised toilet or toilet seat. They identified approximately 2,600 seniors who were representative of Medicare recipients nationwide and were drawn from the National Health and Aging ...

Social deficits attract so much attention in the study of autism spectrum disorder, it's easy to forget there are motor learning deficits during early childhood as well. For autistic kids hoping to throw a ball around the schoolyard and connect with classmates, these physical skill differences can isolate a child further. In a new study published in Nature Neuroscience, researchers from the University of Ottawa's Faculty of Medicine have closed in on the neurological underpinnings of the motor learning delay. Dr. Simon Chen's lab in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine of the Faculty of Medicine used a mouse model of autism to demonstrate a shortage ...

Though 40 million concussions are recorded annually, no effective treatment exists for them or for many other brain-related illnesses. In collaboration with Dragan Maric of the National Institutes of Health, Badri Roysam, Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen University Professor and Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and his team are working to speed up drug development to treat brain diseases and injuries like concussion by developing new tools. "We are interested in mapping and profiling unhealthy and drug-treated brain tissue in unprecedented detail to reveal multiple biological processes at once - in context," said Roysam about his latest paper published ...

NEW YORK, NY (March 22, 2021)--The first year of the COVID-19 pandemic has taken the lives of millions of people around the world but has also left hundreds with lingering symptoms or completely new symptoms weeks after recovery. Much is unknown about what causes these symptoms and how long they last. But with nearly 740,000 cases of COVID reported in New York City since last March--and 28 million in the United States--physicians are increasingly seeing these "long-haulers" in their practices. "Over the course of the summer, we started getting a sense of what issues these people were having," ...

Organoids are tiny three-dimensional cellular assemblies that are grown in a laboratory from tissue-specific cells. They are particularly interesting to biologists because of their ability to mimic the characteristics of the original tissues. If scientists extract cells from a tumor, then they can grow cancer organoids that mimic the characteristics of the source tumor. This possibility for individual-level studies of tumor properties makes cancer organoids an exciting tool from the perspective of an emerging field called precision cancer medicine. Daniel Gil of the University of Wisconsin ...

CLEVELAND--A new technique for sampling and testing cells from Barrett's esophagus (BE) patients could result in earlier and easier identification of patients whose disease has progressed toward cancer or whose disease is at high risk of progressing toward cancer, according to a collaborative study by investigators at Case Western Reserve University and Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center (JHKCC). Published in the journal Gastroenterology, the findings show the combination of esophageal "brushing" with a massively parallel sequencing method can provide an accurate assessment of the ...

For something we spend one-third of our lives doing, we still understand remarkably little about how sleep works -- for example, why can some people sleep deeply through any disturbance, while others regularly toss and turn for hours each night? And why do we all seem to need a different amount of sleep to feel rested? For decades, scientists have looked to the behavior of the brain's neurons to understand the nature of slumber. Now, though, researchers at UC San Francisco have confirmed that a different type of brain cell that has received far less study -- astrocytes, named for their star-like shape -- can influence how long and how deeply animals sleep. The findings could open new avenues for exploring sleep disorder therapies and help scientists better understand brain diseases linked ...