An international research collaboration, involving scientists from the UK, US and Spain, has shed new light on the usefulness of digital contact tracing (DCT) to control the spread of Covid-19. The study, published today in Nature Communications, assessed the effectiveness of the Spanish DCT app, Radar COVID, following a 4-week experiment conducted in the Canary Islands, Spain between June-July 2020. For the experiment, funded by the Secretary of State of Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence (SEDIA), the researchers simulated a series of Covid infections in the capital of La Gomera, San Sebastián de la Gomera, to understand whether the Radar COVID app technology could ...

Individual variations in how the immune system responds to SARS-CoV-2 appear to impact the severity of disease. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have now been able to show that patients with severe COVID-19 have significantly elevated levels of a certain type of immune cells in their blood, called myeloid-derived suppressor cells. The study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation may bring an increased understanding of how early immune responses impact disease severity. Most individuals with COVID-19 develop mild to moderate symptoms and recover without needing hospital treatment. In severe cases, however, COVID-19 can lead to respiratory failure or even death. It is not yet known ...

Materials scientists of Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU), in collaboration with an international research team, have advanced the design of composite ceramic materials (Ce3+:YAG-Al2O3), i.e. solid-state light converters (phosphors) that can be applied in-ground and aerospace technologies. The LED systems based on the developed materials to save 20-30 percent more energy compared to commercial analogues. A related article was published in Materials Characterization. Over 15% of the total global electricity production or about $ 450 billion annually spent on lighting. According to the photonics development roadmap run in Russia, the development of LED technology with an efficiency of more than 150 ...

Canada could be sitting on a significant untapped resource, as the number of PhD holders in this country rises, but persistent barriers make it hard for them to put their skills to work. According to a new expert panel report from the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA), PhD graduates play a critical role in the Canadian economy, but many are missing out on important opportunities to contribute their expertise and bolster growth and innovation. "The growing number of PhD graduates in Canada could represent a significant opportunity to drive innovation and increase our competitiveness in a global economy," said M. Elizabeth Cannon, O.C., PhD, FRSC, FCAE, Chair of the Expert Panel. "The difficulties graduates face raise important questions about the nature of PhD ...

"74 percent of the respondents consider the national vaccination strategy to be appropriate," says BfR-President Professor Dr. Dr. Andreas Hensel. "This indicates that the strategy is accepted." While some regulations, such as the cancellation of events or the quarantine measures, have always been met with approval in recent months, other measures are now less accepted. Whereas shortly before Christmas, 84 percent of the respondents considered the contact restrictions to be appropriate, 74 percent say so in the current survey. Over the same period, approval of the closure of shops fell by ten percentage points to 56 percent. In the previous ...

BROOKLYN, New York, Monday, January 26, 2021 - Atomically thin, 2D hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) is a promising material whose protean ability to undergo phase transformations to strong, super lightweight, chemically stable, oxidation-resistant films makes them ideal for protective coatings, nanotechnology thermal applications, deep-UV light emitters, and much more. The possibilities embodied in different polytypes of h-BN include the ultra-hard diamond phase, a cubic structure (c-BN) with strength and hardness second only to actual carbon diamonds. Key to fabricating such materials is the ability to induce and control the transformation between their various crystalline phases, in a way that is efficient and cost effective enough to allow for economies of scale. While ...

An international group of scientists is predicting markedly different outcomes for different species of coral reef fishes under climate change - and have made substantial progress on picking the 'winners and losers'. Associate Professor Jodie Rummer from James Cook University's ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies co-authored a study that exposed two species of coral reef fishes to elevated temperatures and measured their responses over time. "We collected five-lined cardinalfish and redbelly yellowtail fusilier from the Great Barrier Reef, and under controlled conditions in the laboratory at JCU, slowly raised the temperature ...

The scientific process is an iterative and collaborative journey. Research is published, others can weigh in on results, and hypotheses can be corroborated, refuted, or further refined and tested. Though it may seem like second guessing or perhaps become contentious in some cases, this often overlooked aspect of the scientific method makes science better by continuing to challenge scientific assertions, thereby expanding and deepening our understanding. An example of this process has been published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in a collaboration between researchers from Louisiana State University, the University of Puerto Rico, and UConn. This new paper is a follow-up to an earlier response published in the same journal in 2018 that told of a collapsing ...

Hydrogen is an important factor in a sustainable energy system. The gas stores energy in chemical form and can be used in many ways: as a fuel, a feedstock for other fuels and chemicals or even to generate electricity in fuel cells. One solution to produce hydrogen in a climate-neutral way is the electrochemical splitting of water with the help of sunlight. This requires photoelectrodes that provide a photovoltage and photocurrent when exposed to light and at the same time do not corrode in water. Metal oxide compounds have promising prerequisites for this. For example, solar water splitting devices using bismuth ...

In a study of 500 sourdough starters spanning four continents, scientists have garnered new insights into the environmental factors that contribute to each sourdough starter's microbial ecosystem, and how different types of microbes influence both a sourdough's aroma and how quickly the sourdough rises. The results may surprise sourdough enthusiasts. "We didn't just look at which microbes were growing in each starter," says Erin McKenney, co-author of the paper and an assistant professor of applied ecology at North Carolina State University. "We looked at what those microbes are doing, and how those microbes coexist with each other." "There have been quite a few small studies on microbial ecosystems in sourdough," says Benjamin Wolfe, co-author of the study and ...

In the next years, increasing use of electronic devices in consumables and new technologies for the internet of things will increase the amount of electronic scrap. To save resources and minimize waste volumes, an eco-friendlier production and more sustainable lifecycle will be needed. Scientists of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have now been the first to produce displays, whose biodegradability has been checked and certified by an independent office. The results are reported in the Journal of Materials Chemistry. (DOI: 10.1039/d0tc04627b) "For the first time, we have demonstrated that it is possible to produce sustainable displays that are largely based on natural ...

DALLAS (SMU) - A new study suggests children on the autism spectrum may be more likely to misinterpret healthy arguments between their parents as being negative, compared to children who aren't on the autism spectrum. That means they may be missing out on an opportunity to learn from their parents how to handle conflict constructively, researchers Naomi Ekas and Chrystyna Kouros said. "Children can learn how to best handle conflict from watching their parents," said Kouros, associate professor of psychology at SMU (Southern Methodist University). "Seeing parents ...

Manipulating individual electrons with the goal of employing quantum effects offers new possibilities and greater precision in electronics. However, these single-electron circuits are governed by the laws of quantum mechanics, meaning that deviations from error-free operation still occur - albeit (in the best possible scenario) only very rarely. Thus, insights into both the physical origin the and metrological aspects of this fundamental uncertainty are crucial for the further development of quantum circuitry. To this end, scientists from PTB and the University of Latvia have collaborated to develop a statistical testing methodology. Their results have been published in the journal Nature Communications. Single-electron circuits are already used as electric-current quantum standards and ...

A study performed by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) provided eight recommendations for improving the online technology to help with the treatment and diagnosis of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). The analysis, presented in a recent open-access publication, was performed by UOC researchers Carme Carrion and Marta Aymerich from the eHealth Lab and Noemí Robles from the eHealth Center, together with José Antonio Ruiz Postigo from the World Health Organization and Oriol Solà de Morales from the Health Innovation Technology Transfer Foundation. In the study, the authors looked at the context of the existing ...

For mice, the earliest social memories can form at three days old and last into adulthood, scientists report on January 26 in the journal Cell Reports. They show that mouse pups prefer their mothers to unfamiliar mouse mothers as newborns and remember them after up to 100 days apart--although they prefer unfamiliar mouse mothers as adults. "I'm really interested in studying the development of social memory," says first author Blake J. Laham of Princeton University, "which is the memory we have for other individuals including certain facts and features about them." These early ...

Representatives from a network of women deans, chairs and distinguished faculty in biomedical engineering are calling upon the National Institutes of Health and other funding agencies to address disparities in allocating support to Black researchers. The group made the call to action in the Jan. 26, 2021, issue of the journal Cell. In examining the racial inequities and injustices that prevent Black faculty from equitably contributing to science and achieving their full potential, insufficient federal funding for research by Black scientists rose to the top as a key issue. According to studies of National Institutes ...

WASHINGTON, January 26, 2021 -- As the pandemic has continued to spread globally, studies indicate the COVID-19 virus may be contained in aerosols that can be generated and spread through breathing, coughing, sneezing, or talking by infected individuals. Researchers are increasingly focused on developing tools and methods to assist in decontaminating surfaces and spaces. While scientists have previously explored the use of electromagnetic energy to deactivate flu virus in bulk fluids, less work has been done to understand the role of nonionizing radiation, ...

What The Study Did: Survey data from school-age children and adolescents in Guangdong province, China, were used to assess self-reported psychological distress associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Authors: Chichen Zhang, M.D., and Ruibin Zhang, Ph.D., of Southern Medical University in Guangzhou, and Xuefeng Yi, M.D., of the Health Publicity and Education Center of Guangdong Province, all in China, are the corresponding authors. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.35487) Editor's Note: The article includes funding/support disclosures. ...

Exposure to antibiotics in the first days of life is thought to affect various physiological aspects of neonatal development. A new study, led by Bar-Ilan University's Azrieli Faculty of Medicine, reveals that antibiotic treatment within 14 days of birth is associated with reduced weight and height in boys - but not girls -- up to the age of six. By contrast, the study showed significantly higher body mass index (BMI) in both boys and girls following antibiotic use after the neonatal period, and within the first six years of life. The findings, published in the journal Nature Communications ...

WASHINGTON, January 26, 2021 -- The positions of air inlets and outlets in confined spaces, such as elevators, greatly affect airborne virus transmission. In Physics of Fluids, by AIP Publishing, researchers from University of Nicosia in Cyprus show while air purifiers would be expected to help, they may actually increase the spread. Air quality in small spaces can quickly degrade without ventilation. However, adding ventilation will increase the rate at which air, possibly laden with viruses, can circulate in the small space. Elevator manufacturers have added air purifiers to take care of ...

An innovative approach to treating bone tumors - starving cancer cells of the energy they need to grow - could one day provide an alternative to a commonly used chemotherapy drug without the risk of severe side effects, suggests a new study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Studying human cancer cells and mice, the researchers said that a two-drug combination targeting a tumor's energy sources could be as effective and less toxic than methotrexate, a long-used chemotherapy drug often given in high doses to treat osteosarcoma, a bone cancer. The study appears Jan. 26 in the journal Cell Reports. Osteosarcoma is ...

PITTSBURGH, Jan. 26, 2021 - The mechanism by which acute viral respiratory infections promote secondary bacterial growth and infection in the airways depends on iron-carrying extracellular sacs secreted by the cells lining the host's airways, report researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in a paper published today in Cell Reports. The sacs, or "vesicles," which carry iron bound to a protein called transferrin, associate with bacterial cells and supply them with essential nutrients, promoting the growth of expansive bacterial communities. The finding gives us a glimpse into how bacteria ...

Although the protein ITIH4 is found in large amounts in the blood, its function has so far been unknown. By combining many different techniques, researchers from Aarhus University have discovered that ITIH4 inhibits proteases in the innate immune system via an unknown mechanism. The research results have just been published in the prestigious scientific journal Science Advances. Proteases are enzymes that cleave other proteins. Most often, proteases occur in cascade networks, where a particular event triggers a chain reaction in which several proteases cleave and thereby activate each other. Most well known is probably the coagulation cascade, which causes clotting of our blood when a vessel is punctured. But a similar network of proteases called the complement ...

There are an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 species of micro-organism per gram of soil. Addition of certain microbes can tailor soil characteristics: removing contaminants, improving fertility and even making barren land available for farming. The Microbiology Society's report calls for increased access to research into soil health, promoting outreach activities in agricultural colleges and schools and showcasing work in non-academic outlets. This, say microbiologists, is the best way to collaborate with farmers to improve soil health and agricultural productivity. Tilling and excessive use of fertilisers have major effects on soil health. Microbiology can be used to help understand the impact of intensive farming and design feasible mitigation practices. The report ...

Authors from the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD) presented data showing that the longevity gene mammalian Indy (mINDY) is involved in blood pressure regulation in the Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI) insight. Reduced expression of mINDY, which is known to extend life span in lower organisms and to prevent from diet induced obesity, fatty liver and insulin resistance in mice, has now been shown to lower blood pressure and heart rate in rodents. The authors provided mechanistic insights for the underlying physiological mechanism based on in vivo data in a genetic knock out model as well as microarray and in vitro studies. Furthermore, ...