A team of scientists have measured the relative importance of the different obstacles that carbon dioxide (CO2) encounters in its voyage from the atmosphere to the interior of plant cells, where it is converted into sugars. This research leading method provides much needed information that will help to increase the yield of important food crops such as cowpea, soybean and cassava. "Our data highlights promising targets to improve the diffusion of CO2 through the leaf with the aim of boosting crop productivity," says lead author Dr Tory Clarke, who works at The Australian National University (ANU), as part of the Realizing Increased Photosynthetic ...

Psychologists at the University of Bath, Cardiff, and London have developed the first ever 'mind-reading questionnaire' to assess how well people understand what others are really thinking. A new approach to 'mind-reading' has been developed by researchers at the University of Bath, Cardiff, and London to improve how well we understand what others are thinking. And it transpires that women are much better than men at putting themselves in someone else's shoes. Mind-reading, sometimes referred to in psychology as 'mentalising', is an important ability enabling us to pick-up on subtle behavioural cues that might indicate that someone we are speaking to is thinking ...

A new modelling study published in Anaesthesia (a journal of the Association of Anaesthetists) shows that the UK's coronavirus vaccination program is already reducing daily deaths. However, reductions of hospital and intensive care (ICU) admissions will likely take several weeks longer, with large reductions seen by the end of March and continuing into April. The study is by Professor Tim Cook (Consultant in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine, Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust, Bath, UK, and Honorary Professor, School of Medicine, University of Bristol, UK) and Mr ...

Anti-retroviral drugs are a vital tool in the prevention and treatment of HIV. A new study of pregnant women in Tanzania shows that life-long antiviral treatment also seems to prevent viral transmission from mother to baby. The results of the study, which was conducted in part by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and published in Lancet HIV, make a promising contribution to the WHO's work with HIV prevention in low and middle-income countries. Just over eight years ago, the World Health Organisation (WHO) issued recommendations known as Option B+ for a simpler and more effective prevention and treatment for HIV during and beyond pregnancy in low and middle-income countries. One arm of the Option B+ programme involved ensuring that pregnant women with HIV ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University used a three-model approach to trace the between-farm spread of porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV), as well as to analyze the efficacy of different control strategies in these scenarios. The approach may enable farmers to be more proactive in preventing the spread of PEDV and to optimize their efforts to control the disease. PEDV is a virus that causes high mortality rates in preweaned piglets. The virus emerged in the U.S. in 2013 and by 2014 had infected approximately 50 percent of breeding herds. PEDV is transmitted by contact with contaminated fecal matter. "We wanted to compare three different models by using actual outbreak data in order to test their efficacy," says Gustavo Machado, assistant professor of population ...

To build a universal quantum computer from fragile quantum components, effective implementation of quantum error correction (QEC) is an essential requirement and a central challenge. QEC is used in quantum computing, which has the potential to solve scientific problems beyond the scope of supercomputers, to protect quantum information from errors due to various noise. Published by the journal Nature, research co-authored by University of Massachusetts Amherst physicist Chen Wang, graduate students Jeffrey Gertler and Shruti Shirol, and postdoctoral researcher Juliang Li takes a step toward building a fault-tolerant ...

New research from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business shows first evidence that watching and learning from others can help reduce bias and improve decision-making. The research, published END ...

MUSC Hollings Cancer Center researcher Yongxia Wu, Ph.D., identified a new target molecule in the fight against graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). Bone marrow transplant, a treatment for certain blood cancers, is accompanied by potentially life-threatening GVHD in nearly 50% of patients. A January 2021 paper published in Cellular and Molecular Immunology revealed that activating a molecule called STING may be a new approach to reduce GVHD. Xue-Zhong Yu, M.D., professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, focuses on understanding the intricate immune mechanisms that regulate GVHD development and anti-tumor activity. Recently, STING (stimulator of interferon genes) has been highly studied in the context of cancer. Data from other groups has shown that STING activation ...

Irvine, CA - February 11, 2021 - Subconsciously, our bodies keep time for us through an ancient means - the circadian clock. A new University of California, Irvine-led article reviews how the clock controls various aspects of homeostasis, and how organs coordinate their function over the course of a day. "What is fascinating is that nearly every cell that makes up our organs has its own clock, and thus timing is a crucial aspect of biology," said Kevin B. Koronowski, PhD, lead author and a postdoctoral fellow in Biological Chemistry at the UCI School of Medicine. "Understanding how daily timing is integrated with function ...

A Russian physicist and his international colleagues studied a quantum point contact (QCP) between two conductors with external oscillating fields applied to the contact. They found that, for some types of contacts, an increase in the oscillation frequency above a critical value reduced the current to zero - a promising mechanism that can help create nanoelectronics components. This research supported by the Russian Science Foundation (RSF) was published in the Physical Review B journal. A persistent trend in the modern electronics, miniaturization has spurred demand for new nano-sized devices that boast advanced performance and leverage quantum effects with electrons ...

Getting around without the need to concentrate on every step is something most of us can take for granted because our inner ears drive reflexes that make maintaining balance automatic. However, for about 1.8 million adults worldwide with bilateral vestibular hypofunction (BVH) -- loss of the inner ears' sense of balance -- walking requires constant attention to avoid a fall. Now, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers have shown that they can facilitate walking, relieve dizziness and improve quality of life in patients with BVH by surgically implanting a stimulator that electrically ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. - The songs of fin whales can be used for seismic imaging of the oceanic crust, providing scientists a novel alternative to conventional surveying, a new study published this week in Science shows. Fin whale songs contain signals that are reflected and refracted within the crust, including the sediment and the solid rock layers beneath. These signals, recorded on seismometers on the ocean bottom, can be used to determine the thickness of the layers as well as other information relevant to seismic research, said John Nabelek, a professor in Oregon State University's College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences and a co-author of the paper. "People in the past have used whale calls to track whales and study whale behavior. ...

For some 15,000 years, dogs have been our hunting partners, workmates, helpers and companions. Could they also be our next allies in the fight against COVID-19? According to UC Santa Barbara professor emeritus Tommy Dickey(link is external) and his collaborator, BioScent researcher Heather Junqueira, they can. And with a review paper(link is external) published in the Journal of Osteopathic Medicine they have added to a small but growing consensus that trained medical scent dogs can effectively be used for screening individuals who may be infected with the COVID-19 virus. This follows a comprehensive survey of research ...

DURHAM, N.C. - People who have a gene variant associated with an increased risk of developing Alzheimer's disease also tend to have changes in the fluid around their brain and spinal cord that are detectable years before symptoms arise, according to new research from Duke Health. The work found that in people who carry the APOE4 gene variant, which is found in roughly 25 percent of the population, the cerebrospinal fluid contains lower levels of certain inflammatory molecules. This raises the possibility that these inflammatory molecules may be collecting in the brain where they may be damaging synapses, rather than floating freely in the cerebrospinal fluid. The findings, which were published online last month in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, provide a potential ...

A team of researchers from Russia and Israel applied a new algorithm to classify the severity of autistic personality traits by studying subjects' brain activity. The article 'Brief Report: Classification of Autistic Traits According to Brain Activity Recoded by fNIRS Using ε-Complexity Coefficients' is published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. When diagnosing autism and other mental disorders, physicians increasingly use neuroimaging methods in addition to traditional testing and observation. Such diagnostic methods are not only ...

Using a dataset on daily patrols and enforcement activities of officers in the Chicago Police Department (CPD) - an agency that has undergone substantial diversification in recent decades - researchers report Black officers used force less often than white officers during the three-year period studied, and women used force less often than men. These and other findings provide insight into impacts of diversification in policing, a widely proposed policing reform. "The magnitude of the differences [here] provides strong evidence that--at least in some cities--the number of officers who identify with vulnerable groups can matter quite a bit in predicting police behavior," writes Philip Goff in a related Perspective. Racial disparities in police-civilian interactions ...

Fin whale song - one of the strongest animal calls in the ocean - can be used as a seismic source for probing the structure of Earth's crust at the seafloor, researchers report. While the novel method produces lower-resolution results compared to the high-energy air-gun signals commonly used in seismic ocean surveys, the abundant and globally available fin whale calls could complement and enhance seismic studies where conventional techniques cannot be used. Surveying the structure of the ocean crust often requires powerful seismic waves. This is most commonly done using ship-based ...

During the Proterozoic, Earth grew no taller - the tectonic processes that form mountains stalled, leaving continents devoid of high mountains for nearly 1 billion years, according to a new study. Because mountain formation is crucial to nutrient cycling, the prolonged shift in crustal activity may have resulted in the "boring billion," an eon in which the evolution of Earth's life stalled. Over geologic timescales, even mountains are ephemeral. The massive tectonic forces that drive vast swaths of the planet skywards are countered by the interminable processes of erosion. Because the thickness of Earth's crust is in constant flux, tracking mountain formation over deep time is challenging, yet crucial to understanding the evolution of the planet's surface and the life that lives upon it. ...

Building modern human brain organoids with the Neanderthal variant of a gene has provided a glimpse into the way substitutions in this gene impacted our species' evolution. The ability to grow brain organoids with specific archaic genes provides a way to identify and evaluate the functional differences between the closely related genomes of hominin lineages and explore the evolutionary changes that underly the unique traits that set us as modern humans apart from our extinct relatives. While the genomes of modern humans and their archaic Neanderthal and Denisovan relatives are, in many respects, similar, the genetic differences between ...

Previous studies have shown people can identify the gender and race of a speaker based on the words chosen, but could a person identify something like political membership? A team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found people are more successful at identifying language associated with Republican speech than Democratic speech patterns. The results are available in the February issue of the journal PLOS. "While other studies have shown that people can detect social categories like the race and gender of a speaker based word choice, ...

A nationwide analysis of data from the first 6 months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Argentina has identified factors associated with increased risk of death or admission to an intensive care unit (ICU) due to the disease, including older age, male sex, coma, seizures, and underlying comorbidities. Daniel Schoenfeld of Centro Diagnostico San Jorge in Puerto Madryn, Argentina, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on February 11. Argentina reported its first case of COVID-19 on March 3, 2020, and a national lockdown ...

Delirium, a form of acute brain dysfunction, is widespread in critically ill patients in lower resourced hospitals, and the duration of delirium predicted both mortality and disability at six months after discharge, according to a study published in PLOS ONE. Working with partners in Zambia, Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers evaluated 711 hospitalized critically ill patients; delirium occurred in 48.5%. The findings shed light on the impact of delirium on a patient's recovery -- and even whether a patient is likely to live or die. There have been limited data on the prevalence and outcomes of delirium ...

Women today represent two-thirds of all Canadian doctorates in archaeology, but only one-third of Canadian tenure-stream faculty. While men with Canadian PhDs have done well in securing tenure-track jobs in Canada over the past 15 years, women have not, according to a new study from McGill University. The current COVID-19 pandemic is likely to exacerbate these existing inequalities. Published in American Antiquity, the study is the first to follow archaeologists from graduate school to faculty positions to determine when women are exiting the academic track. It's also the first to explore grant applications and the success rates of women in Canadian archaeology. "A 'chilly climate' exists for women in academia. ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- One thing that decades of social science research has made abundantly clear? Americans in urban areas live in neighborhoods deeply segregated by race -- and they always have. Less clear, however, is whether city-dwellers stay segregated when they leave home and go about their daily routines. That's a question to which Jennifer Candipan, an assistant professor of sociology at Brown University, was determined to find an answer. By analyzing geotagged locations for more than 133 million tweets by 375,000 Twitter users in the 50 largest U.S. cities, Candipan and a team of researchers found that in most urban areas, people of different races don't just live in different neighborhoods -- they also eat, drink, shop, socialize and travel ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - As more male-dominated industries look for ways to hire women, new Cornell University research offers employers a simple solution - make your initial job candidate short list longer. Many professional advancement opportunities - jobs, promotions, trainings and mentorships - are filled through informal recruitment practices. But these practices pose an unintended barrier to gender diversity in male-dominant workplaces because when hiring managers consult their "mental Rolodex," they are more likely to associate certain jobs with specific genders. "Our research investigates informal short lists," said Brian Lucas, assistant ...