A non-contact laser imaging system could help doctors diagnose and treat eye diseases that cause blindness much earlier than is now possible. The new technology, developed by engineering researchers at the University of Waterloo, is designed to detect telltale signs of major blinding diseases in retinal blood and tissue that typically go unseen until it is too late. With current testing methods, diseases such as age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma--which have no symptoms in their early stages--are usually diagnosed only after vision is irreversibly affected. "We're optimistic that our technology, by providing functional details of the eye such as oxygen saturation and oxygen metabolism, may be able to play a critical role in early ...

PULLMAN, Wash. - Most consumers care about the technology and the ingredients used to make their microwavable dinners and other shelf ready meals, according to a new study led by Washington State University researchers. The study found that many consumers are willing to pay a premium for ready-to-eat meals with a 'clean label' showing few ingredients. They are also more willing to fork out their hard-earned cash when they know their processed foods are made with a new technology that helps limit the number of additives and preservatives commonly found in most ...

Advancements in wearable technology are reshaping the way we live, work and play, and also how healthcare is delivered and received. Wearables that have weaved their way into everyday life include smart watches and wireless earphones, while in the healthcare setting, common devices include wearable injectors, electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring patches, listening aids, and more. A major pain point facing the use of these wearables is the issue of keeping these devices properly and conveniently powered. As the number of wearables one uses increases, the need to charge multiple ...

Neurons, nerve cells in the brain, are central players in brain function. However, a key role for glia, long considered support cells, is emerging. A research group at the University of Basel has now discovered two new types of glial cells in the brain, by unleashing adult stem cells from their quiescent state. These new types of glia may play an important role in brain plasticity and repair. The brain is malleable well into adulthood. Brain plasticity is not only due to the formation of new nerve connections. Stem cells present in the adult brain also ...

Moreover, they identified a correlation between the progression of the disease and certain corpuscles in the cell nuclei. They published their report in the journal Acta Neuropathological Communications on 13 April 2021. Aggregates seem to have a function Affecting over 50 million people, Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia and primarily occurs in people over the age of 65. The pathology of the disease in the brain is mainly characterised by two factors: beta-amyloid plaques outside the nerve cells and tau proteins. The tau protein stabilises tube-like structures (microtubules) inside cells, which are relevant ...

With Oskar Aszmann and his team at the Department of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery, MedUni Vienna has long been regarded as a world leader in bionic limb reconstruction. It was only last year that the world's first fully integrated bionic arm prosthesis was developed at MedUni Vienna. This is ready-to-use and is described as "Plug and Play". Although all bionic aids have so far been used in humans, the technique known as osseointegration (direct skeletal attachment) has now been used for the very first time in a bearded vulture - the creature was given a new foot. A paper on this ground-breaking procedure has been published today (Friday) in the prestigious Journal Scientific Reports. In large birds such as vultures, the loss of limbs results in the ...

Researchers at Tohoku University have demonstrated the designability of novel magnets with magic mirror-like characteristics in organic-inorganic hybrid perovskite (OIHP)-type compounds. OIHP-type compounds, a type of material used to construct solar cells, possess exceptional optical properties and have recently attracted worldwide interest. Researchers are keen to harness their structural diversity. Although the superior optical properties of OIHPs have been mainly studied for their photoelectric characteristics, several OIHP-type compounds are known to function as magnets that transmit light. Combining the excellent optical ...

Not only the very concise 11-year cycle, but also all other periodic solar activity fluctuations can be clocked by planetary attractive forces. This is the conclusion drawn by Dr. Frank Stefani and his colleagues from the Institute of Fluid Dynamics at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and from the Institute of Continuous Media Mechanics in Perm, Russia. With new model calculations, they are proposing a comprehensive explanation of all important known sun cycles for the first time. They also reveal the longest fluctuations in activity over thousands of years as a chaotic process. ...

On average the earliest memories that people can recall point back to when they were just two-and-a-half years old, a new study suggests. The findings, published in peer-reviewed journal Memory, pushes back the previous conclusions of the average age of earliest memories by a whole year. They are presented in a new 21-year study, which followed on from a review of already-existing data. "When one's earliest memory occurs, it is a moving target rather than being a single static memory," explains childhood amnesia expert and lead author Dr Carole Peterson, from Memorial University of Newfoundland. "Thus, what many people provide when asked for their earliest memory is not a boundary or watershed beginning, before which there are no memories. Rather, ...

Shifts in weather patterns induced by climate change will increase extreme heat and reduce rainfall across major crop growing regions, with impacts on agricultural production. Will this trigger a decline in the supply of calories needed to sustain the world's growing population? According to a study published in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, global calorie supplies are subject to continuing or even increasing vulnerability to climate change. Climate change could reduce global crop yields by 10% by mid-century and 25% by century's end, under a vigorous warming scenario, if farmers cannot adapt better than they did historically. ...

Every day, around 15 000 children under the age of five die from causes that could have been prevented. But the children of highly educated parents survive more often than others. This statistic applies worldwide, according to a newly published sweeping systematic review in The Lancet. The mother's level of education is particularly important for her children's survival. "One year of extra education for the mother is associated with an approximately three per cent reduction in mortality on average," says Professor Terje Andreas Eikemo at the Norwegian University of Science ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- By adding behavioral components to an infectious disease model, Brown University researchers have developed a new modeling approach that captures the peaks and valleys in new COVID-19 cases seen over the past 16 months. The approach, published in the journal Scientific Reports, could be useful in forecasting the future trends in the current pandemic, as well as in predicting the course of future ones. "We know that people's behavior matters in terms of how an infection is spread," said Vikas Srivastava, an assistant professor of ...

Tsukuba, Japan - To study the immune system in human health and disease, scientists commonly use the genetic manipulation of mouse hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) as a powerful model system. These studies have been extremely valuable in the fight against a number of human diseases. However, the current procedures are complex, time-consuming, and expensive. In a new study published in NATURE COMMUNICATIONS, researchers at the University of Tsukuba have developed a novel technique that has the potential to overcome the limitations associated with these models, which are known as bone marrow (BM) chimeric mice. This system allows scientists to observe and investigate how ...

SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks involving care homes with fully vaccinated residents have been reported across Germany. In order to gain a better understanding of this phenomenon, a team of researchers from Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin used an outbreak at a Berlin-based facility to analyze virus-related data and study the immune responses of elderly residents following vaccination. The researchers' data, which have been published in Emerging Infectious Diseases*, confirm vaccine effectiveness in the elderly. However, they also indicate a delayed and slightly reduced immune response. In light of their findings, the researchers emphasize the need to vaccinate both caregivers and close contacts in order to better protect this high-risk group. The BioNTech/Pfizer ...

Research combining systematic observations with cosmological simulations has found that, surprisingly, black holes can help certain galaxies form new stars. On scales of galaxies, the role of supermassive black holes for star formation had previously been seen as destructive - active black holes can strip galaxies of the gas that galaxies need to form new stars. The new results, published in the journal Nature, showcase situations where active black holes can, instead, "clear the way" for galaxies that orbit inside galaxy groups or clusters, keeping those galaxies from having their star formation disrupted as they fly through the surrounding intergalactic gas. Active black holes are primarily thought to have a destructive influence on their surroundings. As they blast ...

At a classical second-order phase transition, condensed matter systems acquire long-range order upon cooling below the transition temperature, and the properties near the transition are driven by thermal fluctuations. These behaviors have been long explained by the Landau theory of phase transitions, which leads to the notion of universality, whereby systems with very different microscopic constituents exhibit certain universal macroscopic behaviors close to a phase transition. Some condensed matter systems however can be tuned so that the phase transition is suppressed to zero temperature at a quantum critical point (QCP), where the behaviors are no longer driven by thermal fluctuations, but by quantum fluctuations arising as a consequence of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Heavy ...

North Carolina State University researchers continue to track the evolution of different strains of the plant pathogen that caused the Irish potato famine in the 1840s, which set down roots in the United States before attacking Europe. NC State plant pathologists studied the genomes of about 140 pathogen samples - historic and modern - from 37 countries on six continents to track the evolution of differing strains of Phytophthora infestans, a major cause of late-blight disease on potato and tomato plants. The study, published in Scientific Reports, shows that the historic lineage called FAM-1 was found in ...

Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines applied in national vaccination programs protect against most cancers associated with oncogenic, high-risk (hr) HPV types. Two recent studies demonstrate the impact of gender-neutral HPV vaccination in the overall protection against hrHPV infections already with low vaccination coverage. More than 30 000 12-15-year-old Finnish girls and boys participated in a community-randomized trial that evaluated the impact of gender-neutral vs. girls-only HPV16/18 vaccination in the two school years of 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 in 33 communities. To evaluate the occurrence of HPV infections, pre- and post-vaccination serum samples collected in the same communities were used to measure the antibodies against ...

A new high-performance plastic foam developed from whey proteins can withstand extreme heat better than many common thermoplastics made from petroleum. A research team in Sweden reports that the material, which may be used for example in catalysts for cars, fuel filters or packaging foam, actually improves its mechanical performance after days of exposure to high temperatures. Reporting in Advanced Sustainable Systems, researchers from KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm say the research opens the door to using protein-based foam materials in potentially tough environments, such as filtration, ...

WESTMINSTER, Colorado - June 06, 2021 - Many invasive plants are expanding their growing range in response to climate change, making early detection and rapid response more critical than ever. Limited resources, though, can make it impossible to track and manage every range-shifting species. To help invasive species managers bring focus their efforts, a team from the University of Massachusetts suggests prioritizing potential invaders based on the threat they represent. In a research project featured in the journal Invasive Plant Science and Management, the team explored data on 87 plant species that are projected ...

A plant-based diet appears to afford significant protection to rats bred to become hypertensive on a high-salt diet, scientists report. When the rats become pregnant, the whole grain diet also protects the mothers and their offspring from deadly preeclampsia. Although we have all heard to avoid the salt shaker, an estimated 30-50% of us have a significant increase in blood pressure in response to high-salt intake, percentages that are even higher and more impactful in Blacks. The two new studies provide more evidence that the gut microbiota, which contains trillions of microorganisms that help us digest food and plays a key role ...

In cultures that place a high value on conventional gender norms, particularly those that prize men as the breadwinners in a family, their unemployment plays an outsized role in whether a romantic relationship ultimately succeeds or fails. That's according to new research from sociologists Pilar Gonalons-Pons of the University of Pennsylvania and Markus Gangl of Goethe University Frankfurt. They published their findings in the journal END ...

Haifa, Israel June 11, 2021 - Using an ultrafast transmission electron microscope, researchers from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology have, for the first time, recorded the propagation of combined sound and light waves in atomically thin materials. The experiments were performed in the Robert and Ruth Magid Electron Beam Quantum Dynamics Laboratory headed by Professor Ido Kaminer, of the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical & Computer Engineering and the Solid State Institute. Single-layer materials, alternatively known as 2D materials, are in themselves novel materials, solids consisting of a single layer of atoms. Graphene, the first 2D material discovered, was isolated for the first time in 2004, an achievement ...

Researchers at the Keck School of Medicine (KSOM) of USC are among the contributors to a large-scale ethnically diverse genetic study that has expanded what we know about potential causes of type 2 diabetes. The research, published in Nature Genetics, was conducted by the international MAGIC collaboration, made up of 400 global academics and led by researchers at the University of Exeter. The study, a genome-wide meta-analysis, has identified more regions of the genome that are linked to blood glucose and insulin levels, features that contribute to the ...

The build-up of calcium in a major blood vessel is linked with a 39 per cent higher risk of serious falls in older women, new Edith Cowan University (ECU) research has found. This calcium build-up, known as abdominal aortic calcification (AAC), is a hardening of the abdomen's largest artery, which can be identified early on a commonly used bone density machine scan. The study's findings could help health professionals to identify people at risk of serious falls early to prevent future falls and their potentially life changing consequences. Foiling future falls Falls are a growing public health concern, causing the deaths of an estimated 680,000 people globally each year. They are also one of ...