Our world needs reliable telecommunications more than ever before. However, classic devices have limitations in terms of size and cost and, especially, power consumption - which is directly related to greenhouse emissions. Graphene could change this and transform the future of broadband. Now, Graphene Flagship researchers have devised a wafer-scale fabrication technology that, thanks to predetermined graphene single-crystal templates, allows for integration into silicon wafers, enabling automation and paving the way to large scale production. This work, published in the prestigious journal ACS Nano, is a great example of a collaboration fostered by the ...

During the first confinement (18 March to 10 May 2020), people who reported worse sleep quality during a night also reported an increase in negative mood, psychotic-type like experiences and somatic complaints on the next day. Furthermore, daily reports of deaths caused by Covid-19 predicted psychological symptoms on the same day and sleep quality the following night. This is the result of research carried out in three countries (Belgium, Hungary, Spain) under direction of Peter Simor with researchers at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Rebeca Sifuentes-Ortega, Ariadna Albajara Saenz, Oumaïma Benkirane, Anke Van Roy and Philippe Peigneux from the CRCN (Center for Research in Cognition and Neurosciences) and the UNI (ULB Neurosciences Institute) ...

Personality traits such as conscientiousness or sociability are patterns of experience and behavior that can change throughout our lives. Individual changes usually take place slowly as people gradually adapt to the demands of society and their environment. However, it is unclear whether certain personality traits can also be psychologically influenced in a short-term and targeted manner. Researchers from the universities of Zurich, St. Gallen, Brandeis, Illinois, and ETH Zurich have now investigated this question using a digital intervention. In their study, around 1,500 participants were provided with a specially developed smartphone app for three months and the researchers then assessed whether and ...

A mathematician from RUDN University suggested a stable difference scheme for solving inverse problems for elliptic-telegraph and differential equations that are used to describe biological, physical, and sociological processes. The results of the study were published in the Numerical Methods for Partial Differential Equations journal. Elliptic equations are a class of differential equations in partial derivatives that are used, among other things, to model time-independent processes. Telegraph equations are presented in a nonstationary form. They were initially obtained for a telegraph communication line, but today they are also used to model the movement of insects, the flow of blood ...

PHOENIX -- A Mayo Clinic team, led by Rahmi Oklu, M.D., Ph.D., a vascular and interventional radiologist at Mayo Clinic, in collaboration with Samir Mitragotri, Ph.D., of Harvard University, report the development of a new ionic liquid formulation that killed cancer cells and allowed uniform distribution of a chemotherapy drug into liver tumors and other solid tumors in the lab. This discovery could solve a problem that has long plagued drug delivery to tumors and provide new hope to patients with liver cancer awaiting a liver transplant. The preclinical study results are published in Science Translational Medicine. Dr. Oklu, study author and director of Mayo Clinic's ...

Two international studies of a consortium including more than a dozen institutions the world over, including Empa, published today in the journal Nature show levels of CFC-11 emissions, one of many chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) chemicals once widely used in refrigerators and insulating foams, are back on the decline - less than two years after their shock resurgence in the wake of suspected rogue production in eastern China was widely publicized. "The findings are very welcome news and hopefully mark an end to a disturbing period of apparent regulatory breaches", says Luke Western from the University of Bristol, a ...

Cerebral small vessel disease (SVD) is characterized by damage to the blood vessels and parenchyma in the brain. It presents as a multitude of symptoms, which makes the diagnosis difficult. Matters are complicated further when SVD sets in along with other comorbidities with similar symptoms. Therefore, accurate diagnosis at an early stage of disease progression helps in defining better prognosis and management strategies for patients with cerebral SVD. A team of researchers from the United Kingdom set out to review more than 10,000 studies on clinical diagnosis, risk factors, progression, and intervention ...

Experts have spent decades warning us about the rising rates of childhood obesity, which has become an epidemic among recent generations in many places around the world, including Spain. The transition from the traditional Mediterranean diet to the consumption of processed foods with low nutritional value is a key contributor, with child-targeted advertising also partly to blame. According to the Breakfast Food Advertisements in Mediterranean Countries: Products' Sugar Content in Adverts from 2015 to 2019 report produced by UOC Faculty of Information and Communication Sciences professor and researcher, Mireia Montaña, the majority of breakfast products ...

In recent years, active, self-propelled particles have received growing interest amongst the scientific community. Examples of active particles and their systems are numerous and very diverse, ranging from bacterium films to flocks of birds or human crowds. These systems can demonstrate unusual behavior, which is challenging to understand or model. To this end, large-scale models of active particles were being scrutinised by experts at Leicester, in order to understand basic principles underlying active particle dynamics and apply them in a scenario of an evacuation strategy for customers in crowded place. Unexpectedly, the 'super-particles' milling in a circular motion were stumbled upon ...

There's a reason that ideas--even erroneous ones--catch fire on social media or in popular culture: groupthink. New research co-authored by Berkeley Haas Asst. Prof. Douglas Guilbeault shows that large groups of people all tend to think alike, and also illustrates how easily people's opinions can be swayed by social media--even by artificial users known as bots. In a series of experiments, published in the journal Nature Communications, Guilbeault and co-authors Damon Centola of the University of Pennsylvania and Andrea Baronchelli of City University London created an online game that asked numerous people to identify ...

Just as beneficial microbes in the human gut can be affected by antibiotics, diet interventions and other disturbances, the microbiomes of other animals can also be upset. In a rare study published this week, Andrea Jani, a researcher with the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), determined the skin microbiome of an endangered frog was altered when the frogs were infected by a specific fungus, and it didn't recover to its initial state even when the frog was cured of the infection. All animals host symbiotic microbes--many ...

WASHINGTON--Chinese people are more likely to face high blood pressure and other health risks as a result of higher body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference than people from other racial and ethnic groups, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society's END ...

SINGAPORE, 10 February 2021 - Researchers studying an enzyme in fruit fly larvae have found that it plays an important role in waking up brain stem cells from their dormant 'quiescent' state, enabling them to proliferate and generate new neurons. Published in the journal EMBO Reports, the study by Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore, could help clarify how some neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and microcephaly occur. Quiescent neural stem cells in the fruit fly larval brainPr-set7 is an enzyme involved in maintaining genome stability, DNA repair and cell cycle regulation, as well as ...

Modern telecommunication systems rely on satellites to relay signals across the globe quickly and reliably, enabling users to send messages across the world in an instant, watch live television, or - more recently - hold conference calls with global partners right from the kitchen table! Communications satellites use high-frequency radio waves to transmit data, with antennas acting as a two-way interface, converting electric current provided by the transmitter into radio waves, and vice versa when paired with a receiver. Antennas are therefore vital pieces of equipment, without which satellites and ground receivers would be practically useless. However, despite advances in modern satellite design and performance, antenna technology remains a limiting factor for ...

With the advent of 5G communication technology and its integration with AI, we are looking at the dawn of a new era in which people, machines, objects, and devices are connected like never before. This smart era will be characterized by smart facilities and services such as self-driving cars, smart UAVs, and intelligent healthcare. This will be the aftermath of a technological revolution. But the flip side of such technological revolution is that AI itself can be used to attack or threaten the security of 5G-enabled systems which, in turn, can greatly compromise their reliability. It is, therefore, imperative to investigate such potential security threats and explore countermeasures before a smart world is realized. In a recent study published ...

Researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine have shed light on what causes herpes simplex virus to flare up, explaining how stress, illness and even sunburn can trigger unwanted outbreaks. The discovery could lead to new ways to prevent cold sores and herpes-related eye disease from reoccurring, the researchers report. "Herpes simplex recurrence has long been associated with stress, fever and sunburn," said researcher Anna R. Cliffe, PhD, of UVA's Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Cancer Biology. "This study sheds light on how all these triggers can lead to herpes simplex-associated disease." About Herpes Simplex ...

Joe Biden is the new president of the United States, although half of the country's Republicans believe he stole the election. A lot of people believe conspiracy theories on the other side of the Atlantic. But they aren't only found there. Conspiracy theories are not exclusive to people who storm the U.S. Capitol. "Everyone believes at least one conspiracy theory," says Asbjørn Dyrendal, a professor in NTNU's Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies who specializes in conspiracy theories. The more conspiracy theories you bring up, the more people answer yes to one of them. That fact leads ...

Loading a cancer immunotherapy drug onto a metal organic framework improves both its delivery and its sustained release for treating leukemia. Furthermore, coating the drug-loaded framework with a cancer cell membrane improves targeted delivery to solid tumors. These findings could lead to safer and more reliable cancer immunotherapies. "We believe our findings are quite significant because they show that the undesirable side effects of immunotherapy can be modulated by choosing the right delivery vehicle," says KAUST chemist Niveen Khashab. "They also show that targeted delivery can be realistically established through proper surface functionalization." ...

The energy of the future lies in the area of the controlled thermonuclear fusion. The scientific group from Peter the Great St.Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU), headed by Professor Vladimir Rozhansky, is directly involved in the establishment of the world's largest experimental thermonuclear reactor ITER. Researchers discovered new effects, which affect the energy flow in the reactor. The theoretical predictions were confirmed by the experiments on two tokamaks. The research results were published in the scientific journal "Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion". The scientific group of Polytechnic University is engaged in modeling of the edge plasma. The researchers aim to identify how and ...

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was established that SARS-CoV-2 infects cells by binding to the human protein ACE2, which plays a role in regulating blood pressure. But ACE2 is almost absent in human lung cells, so how can the lungs be one of the most affected organs in COVID-19? This gave researchers a hint that ACE2 might be more than just a blood pressure regulator, and might not be the only player in the SARS-CoV-2 infection mechanism. EMBL's Gibson team, in collaboration with Lucía Chemes at Universidad Nacional de San Martín in Buenos Aires and ...

Research from the Business School (formerly Cass) suggests that observing others' decision-making can teach people to make better decisions themselves. The research, co-authored by Professor Irene Scopelliti, Professor of Marketing and Behavioural Science, tested the effectiveness of a new debiasing training strategy and reports first evidence that watching others make decisions can improve our own decision making. The authors carried out three experiments, which involved participants making a set of judgements before and after a training intervention designed to improve their decision-making. Experiment ...

A study led by researchers at Lund University in Sweden showed a connection between lifestyle intervention in pregnant women with obesity and epigenetic alterations in the baby. The study is published in the journal Diabetes. An international collaboration between researchers in Sweden, Denmark and Spain investigated whether children's genes were programmed differently if a pregnant woman with a BMI over 30 underwent lifestyle interventions. The study involved 425 pregnant women, all of whom have a BMI over 30, which is defined as obesity. They were divided at random into three different groups: Group 1 had a lifestyle intervention that included both physical activity (they were urged to walk 11 000 steps per day and use a step counter) and a ...

Those with asthma are experiencing less asthma control related to an increase in using household disinfectants -- known asthma triggers -- because of COVID-19, according to a survey co-conducted by University of Illinois Chicago researchers. "We became concerned with increased cleaning and disinfecting related to the COVID-19 pandemic, combined with people spending more time indoors may expose people with asthma to more environmental triggers for asthma symptoms," Eldeirawi said. "This prompted our interest in studying the impact of disinfectants and asthma control among those living with asthma." Cleaning products are considered respiratory irritants that cause inflammation and bronchial hyperresponsiveness, Eldeirawi explained. ...

American athlete Tom Brady has done the seemingly impossible, winning his seventh Super Bowl at the age of 43 in spectacular fashion. He's joined by stellar company: At 39, Serena Williams has won 23 grand slams, one of them while pregnant. The reasons for age-defying athletic performances are dependent on numerous factors, including diet, but a new study by Iranian and University of South Australia researchers shows that when it comes to track and field events, the age when athletes peak often depends on the sport. Discus and javelin throwers as well as marathon runners and race walkers are likely to achieve their best performances at a later age than sprinters, hurdlers and ...

Australian researchers have come up with two key recommendations from studies of the annual influenza season - one highlighting the benefits of antivirals in reducing repeat hospitalisation, and the other to watch for underlying cardiovascular disease. While the world focuses on the rising COVID-19 death toll, seasonal influenza continues to cause significant mortality and poses a significant economic burden every year. The South Australian study, conducted at two major metropolitan training hospitals between January 2016 and March 2020, collected data from 1,828 adult patients (average age around 66) who were hospitalised with influenza A and B. Researchers compared outcomes for patients who did and did not take the antiviral ...