An extensive review of cephalopod fauna from the Northwest African Atlantic coast was performed by researchers from the University of Vigo (Spain) and the Spanish Institute of Oceanography ( END ...

A team led by plant biologists at the Universities of Freiburg and Göttingen in Germany has shown for the first time that mosses have a mechanism to protect them against cold that was previously known only in flowering plants. Professor Ralf Reski at the Cluster of Excellence Centre for Integrative Biological Signalling Studies (CIBSS) at the University of Freiburg and Professor Ivo Feussner at the Center for Molecular Biosciences (GZMB) at the University of Göttingen have also demonstrated that this mechanism has an evolutionarily independent origin - mosses and flowering ...

Every living organism has DNA, and every living organism engages in DNA replication, the process by which DNA makes an exact copy of itself during cell division. While it's a tried-and-true process, problems can arise. Break-induced replication (BIR) is a way to solve those problems. In humans, it is employed chiefly to repair breaks in DNA that cannot be fixed otherwise. Yet BIR itself, through its repairs to DNA and how it conducts those repairs, can introduce or cause genomic rearrangements and mutations contributing to cancer development. "It's kind of a double-edged sword," says Anna Malkova, professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Iowa, who has studied ...

Quantum physics allows to make statements about the behaviour of a wide variety of many-particle systems at the atomic level, from salt crystals to neutron stars. In quantum systems, many parameters do not have concrete values, but are distributed over various values with certain probabilities. Often this distribution takes the form of a simple Gaussian bell curve that is encountered also in classical systems for example the distribution of balls in the Galton box experiment. However, not all quantum systems follow this simple behavior and some might deviate from the Gaussian distribution due to interactions. Prof. Dr. Jens Eisert, who heads a joint research group on theoretical physics at the Freie Universität Berlin and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, argues that once interactions ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Employees feel significantly less job distress if they work at companies that are open and transparent about the firm's finances, including budgets and profits, a new study found. Researchers examining data from the U.K. found that at companies with more financial transparency, workers felt more secure in their jobs, more committed to their employers and - most significantly - said they had better relationships with their managers. The link between greater transparency and lower job distress was strong and stood up even after accounting ...

January 25, 2021 - What care do veterans need when recovering after suicide attempts? The answer may be different for women compared to men veterans, reports a qualitative study in Medical Care, part of a special issue devoted to new research on suicide risk and prevention in women. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer. "The paths to recovery after a suicide attempt may vary by gender, especially among veterans," according to the new research by Lauren M. Denneson, PhD, of the HSR&D Center to Improve Veteran Involvement in Care (CIVIC) at VA Portland (Ore.) Health Care System. "Our data suggest that women emphasize relatedness whereas men emphasize competence." ...

Our bodies send out hosts of signals - chemicals, electrical pulses, mechanical shifts - that can provide a wealth of information about our health. But electronic sensors that can detect these signals are often made of brittle, inorganic material that prevents them from stretching and bending on our skin or within our bodies. Recent technological advances have made stretchable sensors possible, but their changes in shape can affect the data produced, and many sensors cannot collect and process the body's faintest signals. A new sensor design from the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) at the University of Chicago helps solve that problem. By incorporating a patterned material that optimizes strain distribution among transistors, researchers have created stretchable ...

In the course of deciding whether to keep reading this article, you may change your mind several times. While your final choice will be obvious to an observer - you'll continue to scroll and read, or you'll click on another article - any internal deliberations you had along the way will most likely be inscrutable to anyone but you. That clandestine hesitation is the focus of research, published Jan. 20 in Nature, by Stanford University researchers who study how cognitive deliberations are reflected in neural activity. These scientists and engineers developed a system that read and decoded the ...

URBANA, Ill. - Dairy producers know early nutrition for young calves has far-reaching impacts, both for the long-term health and productivity of the animals and for farm profitability. With the goal of increasing not just body weight but also lean tissue gain, a new University of Illinois study finds enhanced milk replacer with high crude-protein dry starter feed is the winning combination. "Calves fed more protein with the starter had less fat in their body weight gain, and more protein was devoted to the development of the gastrointestinal system, compared with the lower ...

X-rays are usually difficult to direct and guide. X-ray physicists at the University of Göttingen have developed a new method with which the X-rays can be emitted more precisely in one direction. To do this, the scientists use a structure of thin layers of materials with different densities of electrons to simultaneously deflect and focus the generated beams. The results of the study were published in the journal Science Advances. To generate X-rays in ordinary X-ray tubes, electrons that have been accelerated by a high voltage, collide with a metal anode. ...

Nature is full of colour. For flowers, displaying colour is primarily a means to attract pollinators. Insects use their colour vision not only to locate the right flowers to feed on but also to find mates. The evolutionary interaction between insects and plants has created complex dependencies that can have surprising outcomes. Casper van der Kooi, a biologist at the University of Groningen, uses an interdisciplinary approach to analyse the interaction between pollinators and flowers. In January, he was the first author of two review articles on this topic. Bees and other insects visit flowers to feed on nectar and pollen. In exchange for ...

Linguists from RUDN University found out how Russian speakers differentiate between similar consonants of the Greek language and associate them with Russian sounds. The results of the study were published in the Speech Communication journal. Efficient learning of a foreign language depends on a student's mother tongue and similarities between the sounds of the two languages. If they have a lot of similar sounds, foreign speech is perceived better, and if a student's mother tongue has no or few sounds similar to those of a foreign language, the progress will be slower. For example, it could be quite difficult for a Russian speaker to learn Greek, as some Greek consonants don't have Russian analogs. Linguists from RUDN University were the first to conduct a comprehensive ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- U.S. counties with higher income inequality faced higher rates of COVID-19 infections and deaths in the first 200 days of the pandemic, according to a new study. Counties with higher proportions of Black or Hispanic residents also had higher rates, the study found, reinforcing earlier research showing the disparate effects of the virus on those communities. The findings, published last week by JAMA Network Open, were based on county-level data for all 50 states and Washington, D.C. Data sources included the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USAFacts and the U.S. Census Bureau. The lead author of the study, Tim Liao, head of the sociology department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, initiated the study last summer after noticing that ...

When it launches in the mid-2020s, NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will explore an expansive range of infrared astrophysics topics. One eagerly anticipated survey will use a gravitational effect called microlensing to reveal thousands of worlds that are similar to the planets in our solar system. Now, a new study shows that the same survey will also unveil more extreme planets and planet-like bodies in the heart of the Milky Way galaxy, thanks to their gravitational tug on the stars they orbit. "We were thrilled to discover that Roman will be able to offer even more information about the planets throughout our galaxy than originally planned," said Shota ...

Hitting a pothole on the road in just the wrong way might create a bulge on the tire, a weakened spot that will almost certainly lead to an eventual flat tire. But what if that tire could immediately begin reknitting its rubber, reinforcing the bulge and preventing it from bursting? That's exactly what blood vessels can do after an aneurysm forms, according to new research led by the University of Pittsburgh's Swanson School of Engineering and in partnership with the Mayo Clinic. Aneurysms are abnormal bulges in artery walls that can form in brain arteries. Ruptured brain aneurysms are fatal in almost 50% of cases. The research, recently published in Experimental Mechanics, is the first to show that there are two phases of wall restructuring after an aneurysm forms, the first ...

PHILADELPHIA (January 25, 2021) - While eating less and moving more are the basics of weight control and obesity treatment, finding ways to help people adhere to a weight-loss regimen is more complicated. Understanding what features make a diet easier or more challenging to follow can help optimize and tailor dietary approaches for obesity treatment. A new paper from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing (Penn Nursing) analyzed different dietary approaches and clinical trials to better understand how to optimize adherence and subsequent weight reduction. The findings have been published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. "There is not convincing evidence that one diet is universally easier to adhere to than another for extended periods, a feature necessary for long-term ...

Research by an international team of medical experts has found cancer patients could be up to four times more likely to die following cancer surgery in low to lower-middle income countries than in high-income countries. It also revealed lower-income countries are less likely to have post-operative care infrastructure and oncology services. The global observational study, published in The Lancet, explored global variation in post-operative complications and deaths following surgery for three common cancers. It was conducted by researchers from the GlobalSurg Collaborative and NIHR Global Health Unit on Global Surgery - led by the University of Edinburgh, with analysis and support from the University of Southampton. Between April 2018 and January 2019, researchers enrolled 15,958 ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Older minority cancer patients with poor social determinants of health are significantly more likely to experience negative surgical outcomes compared to white patients with similar risk factors, according to a new study published by researchers at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC - James). A new retrospective analysis of more than 200,000 patients conducted by researchers with the OSUCCC - James suggests that minority patients living in high socially vulnerable neighborhoods had a 40% increased risk of a complication ...

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 ...