CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Absent a widely available vaccine, mitigation measures such as stay-at-home mandates, lockdowns or shelter-in-place orders have been the major public health policies deployed by state governments to curb the spread of COVID-19. But given the uncertain duration of such policies, questions have been raised about the potential negative mental health consequences of extended lockdowns with indefinite end dates. But according to new research co-written by a team of University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign experts who study the intersection of health care and public policy, the negative mental health effects of ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - Researchers from Cornell University and the National Park Service have pinpointed and confirmed the location of the remnants of a wooden fort in Alaska - the Tlingit people's last physical bulwark against Russian colonization forces in 1804 - by using geophysical imaging techniques and ground-penetrating radar. The fort was the last physical barrier to fall before Russia's six-decade occupation of Alaska, which ended when the United States purchased Alaska in 1867 for $7 million. The Tlingit built what they called Shiskinoow - the "sapling fort" - on a peninsula in modern-day Sitka, Alaska, ...

During epileptic seizures, a large number of nerve cells in the brain fire excessively and in synchrony. This hyperactivity may lead to uncontrolled shaking of the body and involve periods of loss of consciousness. While about two thirds of patients respond to anti-epileptic medication, the remainder is refractory to medical treatment and shows drug-resistance. These patients are in urgent need for new therapeutic strategies. Together with colleagues in Japan, Prof. Dr. Christine Rose and her doctoral student Jan Meyer from the Institute of Neurobiology at HHU have performed a study to address the cellular mechanisms that promote the development of epilepsy. While up to now, most studies and anti-epileptic drugs targeted nerve cells (neurons), ...

Findings of a new study published by researchers from Trinity College Dublin and St James's Hospital outline the health impacts faced by older people while cocooning during the Covid-19 pandemic. The findings are published in the Quarterly Journal of Medicine here: https://bit.ly/3qGKJoI. Cocooning involves staying at home and reducing face-to-face interaction with other people and is an important part of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, with an overall aim to prevent transmission to vulnerable older people. However, concerns exist regarding the long-term adverse effects ...

A new study from Indiana University researchers finds that most high-school age youth are willing to wear masks to help prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus, but that more education is needed on how to wear masks properly and on the importance of consistent commitment to public health guidelines. The study, published today in the Journal of Adolescent Health looked at 1,152 youth's mask wearing and social distancing behaviors during five, in-person live-streamed high school graduations from one U.S. public school district in early July 2020. These broadcasts allowed the researchers to systematically document social-distancing behaviors throughout the ceremonies and mask-wearing as students crossed the graduation stage ...

Coconut oil has increasingly found its way into German kitchens in recent years, although its alleged health benefits are controversial. Scientists at the University of Bonn have now been able to show how it is metabolized in the liver. Their findings could also have implications for the treatment of certain diarrheal diseases. The results are published in the journal Molecular Metabolism. Coconut oil differs from rapeseed or olive oil in the fatty acids it contains. Fatty acids consist of carbon atoms bonded together, usually 18 in number. In coconut oil, however, most of these chains are much shorter and contain only ...

Research from North Carolina State University shows that extreme weather events, such as hurricanes and increased precipitation, affect both the amount and the composition of picophytoplankton in the Neuse River Estuary. The work is a first step in determining how a wetter climate may affect the estuarine ecosystem. Picophytoplankton are defined as any phytoplankton measuring less than three micrometers in size. Although well studied as part of the oceanic ecosystem and food web, picophytoplankton are understudied in estuarine systems, even though they occur in significant numbers within these environments. "Picophytoplankton are important primary producers in aquatic ecosystems," says Ryan Paerl, assistant professor of ...

DALLAS - Jan. 25, 2021 - Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) cells are missing a surface protein that triggers an immune response, allowing them to hide from one of the body's key cancer defenses, a new study led by UT Southwestern researchers suggests. The findings, reported online today in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, could lead to new treatments for SCLC, which has no effective therapies. Despite decades of study, SCLC - a subset of lung cancer that makes up about 13 percent of lung cancer diagnoses - has a very poor prognosis, with only about 6 percent of patients surviving five years after ...

Massive earthquakes are, fortunately, rare events. But that scarcity of information blinds us in some ways to their risks, especially when it comes to determining the risk for a specific location or structure. "We haven't observed most of the possible events that could cause large damage," explained Kevin Milner, a computer scientist and seismology researcher at the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) at the University of Southern California. "Using Southern California as an example, we haven't had a truly big earthquake since 1857 -- that was the last time the southern San Andreas broke into a massive magnitude ...

Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech), Imperial and High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) Institute of Materials Structure Science, discover new Ba7Nb4MoO20-based materials with high oxygen-ion (oxide-ion O2-) conductivities--"the hexagonal perovskite-related oxides"--and shed light on the underlying mechanisms responsible for their conductivity. Their findings lead the way to uncovering other similar materials, furthering research on developing low-cost and scalable renewable energy technologies. Over the past few years, fuel cells have become a focal point of research in eco-friendly technology because of their ...

Researchers from the Max Born Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short Pulse Spectroscopy (MBI) have developed a new method to modify the spectral width of extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) light. By employing a novel phase-matching scheme in four-wave mixing, they could compress the spectral width of the initial broadband light by more than hundred times. The detailed experimental and theoretical results have been published in Nature Photonics. Light, as emitted by the sun, consists of many different colors and typically appears as white. Sometimes, however, only certain colors reach our eyes, leading to stunning phenomena like an afterglow. For technical or scientific applications that require a specific color, gratings and prisms can be used to extract this color ...

What The Study Did: The results of this study suggest that cumulative exposure to cigarette smoke is an independent risk factor for hospital admission and death from COVID-19. Authors: Katherine E. Lowe, M.Sc., of the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2020.8360) Editor's Note: The article includes conflicts of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for ...

What The Study Did: The association of a shelter-in-place order with lower rates of seasonal respiratory viral activity was examined in this study. Authors: Elizabeth Partridge, M.D., of the University of California at Davis School of Medicine in Sacramento, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study:  Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.35281) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support. INFORMATION: Media ...

A study designed to study how the immune system impacts gut bacteria - has led to the extraordinary discovery of two molecules that can not only provide profound protection in experimental models of asthma but can also substantially reduce the severity of an attack. Neither of these molecules, one of which is already commercially available as a dietary supplement, were previously known to have an effect on asthma - and they also appear, from animal studies, to have a role in treating the respiratory illness that is prevalent, and often fatal, in people with serious COVID-19. The researchers aim to test one of the molecules in a clinical trial in 2021 in asthmatics. As further evidence that these two molecules ...

As the planet's burden of rubber and plastic trash rises unabated, scientists increasingly look to the promise of closed-loop recycling to reduce waste. A team of researchers at Princeton's Department of Chemistry announces the discovery of a new polybutadiene molecule - from a material known for over a century and used to make common products like tires and shoes - that could one day advance this goal through depolymerization. The Chirik lab reports in Nature Chemistry that during polymerization the molecule, named (1,n'-divinyl)oligocyclobutane, enchains in a repeating sequence of squares, a previously ...

Human females rely on aids like charting, test strips or wearable tech to identify periods of fertility. Some animals, like baboons, undergo obvious physical changes during ovulation. How did fertility become so hard to detect in humans? For nearly half a century, the evolution of concealed ovulation in human females has been explained as useful for securing male partners to help raise and support children. A END ...

It was previously thought that collisions between galaxies would necessarily add to the activity of the massive black holes at their centers. However, researchers have performed the most accurate simulations of a range of collision scenarios and have found that some collisions can reduce the activity of their central black holes. The reason is that certain head-on collisions may in fact clear the galactic nuclei of the matter which would otherwise fuel the black holes contained within. When you think about gargantuan phenomena such as the collision of galaxies, it might be tempting to imagine it as some sort of cosmic cataclysm, with stars crashing and exploding, and destruction on an epic scale. ...

New genetic faults discovered in people with a heart condition that is sometimes inherited in families could transform the diagnosis and treatment of the hidden disease, according to research funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) and published in Nature Genetics. Researchers have found a new type of genetic change in the DNA of people with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) - a silent killer amongst families that can cause sudden death in young people due to the thickening of the heart muscle. This ground-breaking discovery, which may be the biggest advance in our knowledge of the genetic basis of the ...

1. Key points of the work - An emerging semiconductor for future power devices, beta-gallium oxide (β-Ga2O3), was investigated using a technique called transmission terahertz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) for the first time - The findings on the fundamental properties of β-Ga2O3 at THz frequencies are significant to the development of this semiconductor's power electronic applications - THz-TDS can be used as a noninvasive tool for the evaluation of electrical properties instead of conventional electrical measurements that degrade the semiconductor quality 2. Overview of the work The β-Ga2O3 ultra-wide bandgap (UWBG) ...

Cisplatin has been used to treat cancer since the 1970s. Since then, many other platinum-containing cytostatic drugs have been developed, such as triplatinNC, a highly charged complex that contains three ligand-bridged platinum atoms. Unlike cisplatin, this drug also directly inhibits metastasis. The reason for this seems to be modulation of the geometry of a sugar component of heparan sulfate, an important component of the extracellular matrix, reports a research team in the journal Angewandte Chemie. Heparan sulfate, a glycosaminoglycan, is a chain of ring-shaped sugar molecules. It is involved in many regulatory processes, as well as in the growth and metastasis of tumors. In order for ...

The absence of monsoon rains at the source of the Nile was the cause of migrations and the demise of entire settlements in the late Roman province of Egypt. This demographic development has been compared with environmental data for the first time by professor of ancient history, Sabine Huebner of the University of Basel - leading to a discovery of climate change and its consequences. The oasis-like Faiyum region, roughly 130 km south-west of Cairo, was the breadbasket of the Roman Empire. Yet at the end of the third century CE, numerous formerly thriving settlements there declined and were ultimately abandoned by their inhabitants. Previous excavations and contemporary papyri have shown that problems with field irrigation were the cause. Attempts by ...

Researchers perform experiments that can add or subtract a single quantum of sound--with surprising results when applied to noisy sound fields. Quantum mechanics tells us that physical objects can have both wave and particle properties. For instance, a single particle--or quantum--of light is known as a photon, and, in a similar fashion, a single quantum of sound is known as a phonon, which can be thought of as the smallest unit of sound energy. A team of researchers spanning Imperial College London, University of Oxford, the Niels Bohr Institute, University ...

G3BP proteins inhibit the metabolic driver MTOR - a signaling protein that plays a central role in tumor diseases and developmental disorders of the brain. This is reported in this week´s issue of the renowned journal Cell. The study was led by scientists from the University of Innsbruck and the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in collaboration with the Medical University of Innsbruck and a Europe-wide research network. The signaling protein MTOR (Mechanistic Target of Rapamycin) is a sensor for nutrients such as amino acids and sugars. When sufficient nutrients are available, MTOR boosts metabolism and ensures that sufficient energy and building blocks are available for the growth ...

It is clear that COVID-19 has drastically changed our world, but how can we use the lessons learnt to build a more resilient and sustainable future? The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and the International Science Council (ISC) have drawn on the combined strengths and expertise of the two organizations to help find a way forward. The COVID-19 pandemic, which has impacted almost every aspect of our lives over the past year, is a warning: We need to step back from business-as-usual onto new transformative pathways to reach the Sustainable Development Goals and the commitments of the Paris Agreement. Systems science is ideally positioned to address global impacts ...

For those who are diagnosed and have begun treatment for HIV, it is standard practice to regularly monitor viral load in the blood to assess response to treatment. A study of people living with HIV in Ethiopia shows that poverty and labour mobility are linked to high viral load despite treatment, indicating treatment failure. The researchers behind the study recommend that socioeconomic conditions should be taken into account to a greater extent in low-income countries to ensure that HIV treatment can achieve the best possible results. Treatment using antiretroviral therapy (ART) is the same across the globe. For people living with HIV in low-income countries, however, ...