King Richard III's involvement in one of the most notorious and emotive mysteries in English history may be a step closer to being confirmed following a new study by Professor Tim Thornton of the University of Huddersfield. Richard has long been held responsible of the murder of his nephews King Edward V and his brother, Richard, duke of York - dubbed 'the Princes in the Tower' - in a dispute about succession to the throne. The pair were held in the Tower of London, but disappeared from public view in 1483 with Richard taking the blame following his death two years later. It has become of the most enduring unsolved mysteries of all, stoked by references in Shakespeare's play about the ...

Skoltech researchers helped their colleagues from Japan, Germany, the United States, and China study the crystal structure and optical properties of a new class of two-dimensional compounds, which can be used as effective visible-light-responsive photocatalysts for energy and chemical conversion. They used the Advanced Imaging Core Facility equipment for imaging and structural analysis. The paper was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. One potential use of photocatalysts, so-called water splitting can help substitute climate-warming fossil fuels with more environmentally friendly hydrogen. For this process to work on ...

It has sometimes been suggested that humans use a tiny fraction of their brains. But, is this statement true? The authors of a study published on 20 January in the journal Nature Communications answer this question using neural records of mice subjected to visual stimuli. This paper demonstrates, in the visual system of mice, the presence of a type of coordination of neural activity called differential correlations. A study by Rubén Moreno-Bote, a researcher at the Center for Brain and Cognition (CBC) and Serra Hunter research professor with the UPF Department of Information and Communication Technologies ...

Scientists have revealed new insights into the behaviour of black holes with research that demonstrates how a phenomenon called backreaction can be simulated. The team from the University of Nottingham have used their simulation of a black hole, involving a specially designed water tank, for this latest research published in Physical Review Letters. This study is the first to demonstrate that the evolution of black holes resulting from the fields surrounding them can be simulated in a laboratory experiment. The researchers used a water tank simulator consisting of a draining vortex, like the one that forms when you pull the plug in the bath. This mimics a black hole since a wave which comes too ...

Protein alteration in the family of lamins causes several diseases, known as laminopathies, such as progeria or precocious ageing. A study in which UB researchers have taken part states that alterations in the levels of one of these proteins, lamin B1, contribute to the degeneration of different brain neuronal populations in Huntington's disease. Caused by a mutation in the huntingtin gen, this pathology features involuntary movements, cognitive deficit and psychiatric disorders, and has no cure yet. According to the study, published in the journal EMBO Molecular Medicine, these results open new therapeutic pathways for the treatment of this disease, since research shows pharmacological normalization of levels of lamin ...

As COVID-19 spread across the world, so did conspiracy theories and false information about the virus. This proliferation of misinformation--labeled an "infodemic" by the World Health Organization (WHO)--makes it difficult to identify trustworthy sources and can threaten public health by undermining confidence in science, governments, and public health recommendations. The consequences of misinformation can be tragic: hundreds died and thousands were poisoned in Iran after consuming toxic methanol alcohol, falsely believing it could cure COVID-19. In a new article in the Journal of Public ...

The COVID-19 pandemic is straining health systems across the country, especially intensive care units. New research from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University School of Medicine shows that people treated in the ICU for COVID-19 are twice as likely to die when the ICU capacity is strained by the number of COVID-19 patients. "These results demonstrate that patients with COVID-19 are more likely to die if they are admitted to an ICU during times with peak COVID-19 caseload," said Dawn Bravata, M.D., first author of the study. "We know that strain on hospital ...

Amsterdam, December 29, 2020 - This new pioneering study by Prof. Ricardo Maccioni and coworkers of the International Center for Biomedicine, "New Frontiers in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer´s disease" was published in the special issue of Latin American investigators of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease(JAD). This supports a growing body of research on the Alzheimer's prevention value of an integrated approach using daily exercise, nutraceuticals, oriental practices such as QiGong along with meditation, and social life. These elements of a healthy style of life are supplemented with the use of reliable biomarkers for early detection of this disease that allows the detection of Alzheimer up to 20 years before ...

Chronic stress could be the prevailing condition of our time. In the short term, our jaws or stomachs may clench; in the long term, stress can lead to metabolic disease and speed up diseases of aging, as well as leading to more serious psychological disorders. The physical manifestations of stress originate in the brain, and they move along a so-called "stress axis" that ends in the adrenal glands. These glands then produce the hormone cortisol. When the stress axis is continually activated, changes occur in the cells and organs along the way, and the continual production of cortisol then substantially contribute the symptoms of chronic stress. The stress response axis starts with the hypothalamus in the brain, ...

Scientists say stable seafood consumption amongst the world's poorer coastal communities is linked to how local habitat characteristics influence fishing at different times of the year. In the coastal communities of low-income countries, the seafood people catch themselves is often a main food source. In a new study, scientists focused on an often-overlooked type of fishing called gleaning: collecting molluscs, crabs, octopus and reef fish by hand close to shore. "We surveyed 131 households in eight coastal communities on a small island off Timor-Leste," said study lead author Ruby Grantham from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. Grantham said even though gleaning is important for food security ...

(Boston)--There have been great advances in treating melanoma over the past five years, however, even with these treatments many patients quickly develop drug resistance and die from their disease. A new study from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) has discovered that a drug (YK-4-279) that was previously created to target one specific type of protein has much broader use against a family of proteins that act to promote melanoma. "We find that this drug inhibited melanoma from becoming more aggressive in human cells and in experimental models. We also found a specific pathway that this drug acts through to be anti-cancer: inhibiting proteins that drive genes that promote cancer cell growth and metastasis," ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Antarctic ice is melting, contributing massive amounts of water to the world's seas and causing them to rise - but that melt is not as linear and consistent as scientists previously thought, a new analysis of 20 years' worth of satellite data indicates. The analysis, built on gravitational field data from a NASA satellite system, shows that Antarctica's ice melts at different rates each year, meaning the models scientists use to predict coming sea level rise might also need adjusting. "The ice sheet is not changing with a constant rate - it's more complicated than a linear change," said Lei Wang, assistant professor ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of Texas have developed and demonstrated a new approach for designing photonic devices. The advance allows them to control the direction and polarization of light from thin-film LEDs, paving the way for a new generation of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies. "This is a fundamentally new device architecture for photonic devices," says Franky So, corresponding author of a paper describing the work. "And we've demonstrated that, using our approach, directional and polarized emissions from an organic LED or a perovskite LED without external optical elements can be realized." So is the ...

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health and their collaborators found that inhaling unfragmented hyaluronan improves lung function in patients suffering from severe exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Hyaluronan, a sugar secreted by living tissue that acts as a scaffold for cells, is also used in cosmetics as a skin moisturizer and as a nasal spray to moisturize lung airways. Utilized as a treatment, hyaluronan shortened the amount of time COPD patients in intensive care needed breathing support, decreased their number of days in the hospital, and saved money by reducing their hospital stay. The study, published online in Respiratory Research, is a good example of how examining the impacts of environmental pollution on the lungs can ...

Self-control significantly affects well-being and objective success in life. Although many agree that a high degree of self-control is beneficial, helping people develop more self-control is a tricky challenge. Self-control training, like training in any domain, is affected by the basic question of whether a person is motivated to improve self-control. Recent work has found that people differ as to how strongly they desire better self-control, and reveals some of the factors affecting this desire. Desire for self-control (DSC) reflects a wish to have an improved self-control ability. This desire is influenced by societal or cultural ...

HOUSTON - (Feb. 1, 2021) - When aboveground storage tanks fail during a storm and their toxic contents spread, the threat to human health can and probably will flow downwind of the immediate area. Rice University engineers have developed a model to quantify what could happen when a hurricane or other natural disaster causes such damage based on data gathered from the Houston Ship Channel, the largest petrochemical complex in the United States, during and after two hurricanes, Ike in 2008 and Harvey in 2017. Pollutants like toxic organic chemicals evaporate ...

There is a considerable gap in our current understanding of gift-giving because much of what has been studied has focused on gift-giving as an affair between just two consumers--a single giver and a recipient. Little is known about the impact other gifts have on the recipient of the gifts, even though some of the most common occasions for giving a gift, such as birthdays, the winter holidays, Mothers' and Fathers' Day, graduations, bridal showers, baby showers, bachelor and bachelorette parties, going away parties, and retirement parties, all typically involve a recipient receiving gifts from several different givers. Researchers from ...

(DENVER--February 1, 2021, 10:00 a.m. EST) The first comprehensive, prospective study of smoking habits in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who were enrolled in a phase III early-stage trial revealed that there was a high rate of smoking reduction and cessation following study entry, according to research published today in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology. The JTO is the official journal of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer. Continued smoking after a lung cancer diagnosis is associated with an approximate ...

Good news: The bacteria living on your toothbrush reflect your mouth - not your toilet. After studying microbial communities living on bristles from used toothbrushes, Northwestern University researchers found those communities matched microbes commonly found inside the mouth and on skin. This was true no matter where the toothbrushes had been stored, including shielded behind a closed medicine cabinet door or out in the open on the edge of a sink. The study's senior author, Erica Hartmann, was inspired to conduct the research after hearing concerns that flushing a toilet might generate a cloud of aerosol particles. She ...

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture, forestry and other land uses (AFOLU sector) cover the 24% of global emissions, representing the second hot spot in the contribution to climate change after the energy sector. The main drivers are CO2 emissions from deforestation, methane (CH4) emissions produced by ruminant livestock and by anaerobic fermentation of organic matter, mainly from rice crops, and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from fertilizer use. Thus, the land sector plays a crucial role in the contribution to climate change. A new study lead by the CMCC Foundation explores to which extent sustainable land management options applied at small-scale rural landscape level can be a valuable solution for increasing the mitigation potential of the land sector. ...

That is the question that Prof. Alan Deidun, resident academic within the Department of Geosciences of the Faculty of Science, along with a cohort of high-profile co-authors, posed within a study recently published in the Microplastics and Nanoplastics journal. Specifically, the study overviews a plethora of marine litter monitoring survey data available for different regions of the world ocean, as well as modelling data, in order to answer this compelling question. The study, whose lead author is renowned litter researcher Dr Francois Galgani from IFREMER, concludes that, despite the well-known increase in the volume of plastics making their way ...

The impact of ozone on soybean production can be predicted more accurately thanks to improvements to a computer modelling system. Surface ozone is a pollutant that affects plant growth by entering leaves and reducing the rate of photosynthesis, and rising ozone levels could severely limit production of crops including soy. Being able to estimate this damage on soybean production using a "climate-vegetation model" is vital for predicting global and regional soy yields in the future. This study uses results from a field experiment in the USA, which found that a normal ozone level of 10ppm/h (AOT40) could reduce soybean yield by 10%. At extreme ozone levels - comparable to those observed on very polluted days in some parts of the world - soybean production fell to less than ...

Increases in life expectancy in the UK and elsewhere had slowed even before 2016 - and COVID-19 is expected to further eliminate any gains, Newcastle University studies show. After 2011, over the post-financial crisis period the authors find that the UK performed poorly, in almost all measures, compared to the 28 countries of the European Union (EU28). Life expectancy at birth, and age 65, in the UK were increasing rapidly in 2008 but slowed around 2011 and Germany, Portugal and France showed evidence of a similar slowing. Furthermore, years of good health, called Healthy Life Years, at birth in the UK decreased, whereas it increased in most EU28 countries. The UK experienced a period ...

Using salt as a key ingredient, Chinese and British researchers have designed a new type of rechargeable battery that could accelerate the shift to greener, electric transport on our roads. Many electric vehicles (EV) are powered by rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, but they can lose energy and power over time. Under certain conditions, such batteries can also overheat while working or charging, which can also degrade battery life and reduce miles per charge. To solve these issues, the University of Nottingham is collaborating with six scientific ...

The year 2020 played host to an uncharacteristically large number of natural disasters. The year began with large wildfires in the Amazon rainforest and Australia. A series of wildfires broke out in the American states of California during summer and Oregon in September 2020. In particular, the Oregon wildfire intensified to an uncontrollable extent and was spread over a wide area by strong gusts of wind that carried it forward. These unseasonably strong winds may have been stoked by an unexpected source: typhoons on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. In late August and early September, three storms--Bavi, Mayask, and Haishen--occurred just two weeks apart in the Korean peninsula, causing floods, mudslides, and several casualties. In a recently ...