Twenty scientists from 14 countries warn of a hidden "pandemic within the pandemic" in two current publications. On the one hand, physical activity levels have gone down significantly, on the other hand, psychological well-being has suffered. "Governments and those responsible for health systems should take our findings seriously," emphasizes the author team, headed by Dr Jan Wilke from the Institute for Sport Sciences at Goethe University Frankfurt. About 15,000 people in participating countries answered standardised questionaires as part of an international survey. In April/May 2020, they reported physical activity levels (13,500 participants) as well as their mental and physical well-being (15,000 participants) ...

With global warming decreasing the size of New Zealand's alpine zone, a University of Otago study found out what this means for our altitude-loving kea. The study, published in Molecular Ecology, analysed whole genome DNA data of the kea and, for the first time, its forest-adapted sister species, the kākā, to identify genomic differences which cause their habitat specialisations. The researchers found the kea is not an alpine specialist, but rather one that adapted to using such an open habitat because it was least disturbed by human activity. Co-author Associate Professor Michael Knapp, of the Department of Anatomy, says that is not likely to surprise people ...

Different from small molecules, polymer will fold into lamellar crystals during crystallization and further assemble into lamellar stacks. Synchrotron Small-Angle X-Ray Scattering (SAXS) is an important tool to characterize such nanoscale structure and understand polymer crystallization. However, its scattering mechanism in semi-crystalline polymers is not completely elucidated yet. Recently, a research group led by Prof. TIAN Xingyou from Institute of Solid State Physics, Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS), proposed a complete set of new methods to characterize polymer lamellar crystals ...

Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is the most common lethal gynaecological cancer. Ovarian cancer is usually treated with platinum-based chemotherapy; however, a significant number of patients are resistant to such treatments and relapse soon afterwards. To improve their survival, there is a need to first identify which patients may be platinum-resistant, so that newer treatments may be administered early. Now, researchers from the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore (CSI Singapore) at the National University of Singapore (NUS), have discovered a way to predict which patients are resistant to platinum chemotherapy. The study, co-led by CSI Singapore Principal ...

Current best practices for encouraging more female students to pursue degrees in economics may actually have the opposite effect and worsen gender disparities in the field, a recent study from Oregon State University found. The study examined whether mass emails telling introductory economic students about promising career and earning opportunities helped increase female participation in higher-level economics courses. But instead, these emails appealed more to male students, increasing male enrollment and widening the existing gender gap. There was no change in the probability of female students majoring in economics. Researchers say this demonstrates a need for more personalized, deliberate interventions. "There ...

Using renewable energy to replace fossil energy is now considered the best solution for greenhouse gas emission and air pollution problems. As a result, the demand for new and better energy storage technology is strong. As part of the effort to improve this technology, a group led by Prof. ZHANG Suojiang from the Institute of Process Engineering (IPE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) recently found that ionophobic electrodes can boost energy storage performance. Their study was published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A on May 8. Electric Double-Layer Capacitors (EDLCs) with ionic liquids (ILs)--as a new type of energy storage device--can fill the gap between the power density of batteries and the ...

Human-driven global change is challenging the scientific community to understand how marine species might adapt to predicted environmental conditions in the near-future (e.g. hypoxia, ocean warming, and ocean acidification). The effects of the uptake of anthropogenic atmospheric CO2 by oceans affects (i.e. ocean acidification) propagate across the biological hierarchy, from changes in the building blocks of life at nano-scales to organism, physiology and behaviour through ecosystem processes and their properties. To survive in a reduced pH environment, marine organisms have to adjust their physiology which, at the molecular level, is achieved by modifying the expression ...

The great application prospect in biology, medicine, optogenetics, photovoltaics and sustainability has enabled lanthanide ions-doped upconversion nanoparticles to attract widespread attention which derives mainly from their superior anti-Stokes spectroscopic property. However, the relatively low upconversion efficiency remains a major bottleneck on their way of actual applications. Internal OH- impurity is known as one of the main detrimental factors affecting the upconversion efficiency of nanomaterials. Different from surface/ligand related emission quenching which can be effectively diminished by, e.g., core/shell structure, internal OH- is easy to be introduced during synthesis but difficult to be quantified and controlled. In a new paper published in Light Science ...

PHILADELPHIA--Antibodies aren't the only immune cells needed to fight off COVID-19 -- T cells are equally important and can step up to do the job when antibodies are depleted, suggests a new Penn Medicine study of blood cancer patients with COVID-19 published in Nature Medicine. The researchers found that blood cancer patients with COVID-19 who had higher CD8 T cells, many of whom had depleted antibodies from cancer treatments, were more than three times likelier to survive than patients with lower levels of CD8 T cells. "It's clear T cells are critical in terms of the early infection and to help control the virus, but we also showed that they can compensate for B cell and antibody responses, which blood cancer patients are likely missing because of the drugs," said co-senior author Alexander ...

PULLMAN, Wash. -- A new fungus strain could provide a chemical-free method for eradicating mites that kill honey bees, according to a study published this month in Scientific Reports. A team led by Washington State University entomologists bred a strain of Metarhizium, a common fungus found in soils around the world, to work as a control agent against varroa mites. Unlike other strains of Metarhizium, the one created by the WSU research team can survive in the warm environments common in honey bee hives, which typically have a temperature of around 35 Celsius (or 95 F). "We've known that metarhizium could kill mites, but it was expensive and didn't last long because the fungi died in the hive heat," said Steve Sheppard, professor in WSU's Department of Entomology and corresponding ...

A research group at the University of Córdoba evaluated the commercial mixture formulated in a laboratory and the tank-based mixture of two herbicides to determine which method is more effective in terms of weed control and environmental impact. In 2017 the company Nufarm Europe proposed to the Higher Technical School of Agricultural and Forestry Engineering (ETSIAM) at the UCO a study of the results of two products having a significant agronomic impact: the herbicides glyphosate and 2,4-D (synthetic auxin). After three years of research, they concluded that the commercial mix produced in the company's laboratories is more effective than manual mixes produced in tanks. To do this, they used in vivo techniques (tests with greenhouse ...

MAY 26, 2021 -- Researchers from UTSA, the University of Central Florida (UCF), the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and SRI International have developed a new method that improves how artificial intelligence learns to see. Led by Sumit Jha, professor in the Department of Computer Science at UTSA, the team has changed the conventional approach employed in explaining machine learning decisions that relies on a single injection of noise into the input layer of a neural network. The team shows that adding noise--also known as pixilation--along multiple layers of a network provides a more robust representation of an image that's recognized by the AI ...

The Menetries' tiger moth (Arctia menetriesii) is one of the rarest and most poorly studied Palaearctic moth species. Even though its adult individuals are large and brightly coloured, they are difficult to spot, because they aren't attracted to light, they're not active at night, and they fly reluctantly. Currently, the species only inhabits two countries - Finland and the Russian Federation, and is included in the Red Lists of both, as Data Deficient in the former and Vulnerable in the latter. For 13 years, researcher Evgeny Koshkin of the Institute of Water and Ecology Problems of the Far ...

Men aged 65 and over should monitor their sleep patterns and seek medical advice after a warning from Flinders University experts that disrupted slumber can be linked to cognitive dysfunction. In a new article published in the Journal of Sleep Research, the Adelaide Institute for Sleep Health research group studied a group of 477 middle-aged and older men's attention and processing speed in relation to their sleep. The participants from the Florey Adelaide Male Ageing Study undertook cognitive testing and a successful sleep study. "Less deep sleep and more light sleep is related to slower responses on cognitive function tests," says lead author Jesse Parker. ...

To really appreciate what a team of researchers led by Maksym Kovalenko and Maryna Bodnarchuk has achieved, it is best to start with something mundane: Crystals of table salt (also known as rock salt) are familiar to anyone who has ever had to spice up an overtly bland lunch. Sodium chloride - NaCl in chemical terms - is the name of the helpful chemical; it consists of positively charged sodium ions (Na+) and negatively charged chloride ions (Cl-). You can imagine the ions as beads that strongly attract each other forming densely packed and rigid crystals like the ...

Scientists at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have developed a new biomaterial made entirely from discarded bullfrog skin and fish scales that could help in bone repair. The porous biomaterial, which contains the same compounds that are predominant in bones, acts as a scaffold for bone-forming cells to adhere to and multiply, leading to the formation of new bone. Through laboratory experiments, the NTU Singapore team found that human bone-forming cells seeded onto the biomaterial scaffold successfully attached themselves and started multiplying - a sign of growth. They also found that the risk of the biomaterial triggering an inflammatory response is low. Such a scaffold could be used to help with the regeneration of ...

The parents of children with rare diseases face exceptional circumstances which influence their role as parents. Sometimes, the role of caregivers is added to that of parents. On other occasions, especially with the most serious cases, the former becomes more prominent than the latter. There are also cases in which both roles coexist separately, allowing them to be parents and caregivers in equal measure. However, whichever group they belong to, they need trust and to overcome fear in order to live their experience without overwhelming anxiety. This is one of the findings of an open-access study published in the International Journal of Environmental ...

NUI Galway study confirms that the Noble False Widow spider does have public health implications Research team have established a DNA database to allow clinicians dealing with cases to confirm the species identity using genetic analysis Epidemiology of bites reveals that almost all bites occurred in and around the home, and 88% of bites occurred when the victim was either asleep in bed or when the spider was trapped in clothing In parts of Ireland and Britain, the False Widow spider has become one of the most common species of spiders found in and around urban habitats A team of scientists from NUI Galway have published a new study showing that Noble False Widow spiders ...

Eating habits amongst the young changed during the lockdown imposed due to COVID-19 and worsened in the case of those belonging to socioeconomically disadvantaged groups. These are the chief findings of an open access study published in specialist journal Nutrients, headed by researchers Alícia Aguilar Martínez, of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, and Marina Bosque Prous, of the UOC and UManresa, as part of the DESKcohort project of the interuniversity Epidemiology and Public Health research group GRESP. The study, of 303 Catalan young people aged between 12 and 18, sought to establish how this age group's diet had changed from March to May 2020, in terms of both eating behaviours and the products consumed. The goal was to collect data to ascertain ...

For years, food producers who make lightly preserved, ready-to-eat food have had to follow a set of guidelines to stop growth of Clostridium botulinum bacteria and production of a strong neurotoxin. The toxin can cause a serious illness called botulism. For refrigerated products, the guidelines for controlling Clostridium botulinum indicate that the water contained in the products should have a salt content of at least 3.5%. Unfortunately, this hampers efforts to develop salt-reduced products, even though such products would benefit public health, as most consumers eat more salt than recommended. If food producers want to launch products that contain e.g. less salt, they have had to conduct laboratory experiments to document ...

Current neural network algorithms produce impressive results that help solve an incredible number of problems. However, the electronic devices used to run these algorithms still require too much processing power. These artificial intelligence (AI) systems simply cannot compete with an actual brain when it comes to processing sensory information or interactions with the environment in real time. Neuromorphic chip detects high-frequency oscillations Neuromorphic engineering is a promising new approach that bridges the gap between artificial and natural intelligence. An interdisciplinary research team at the University of Zurich, the ETH Zurich, and the ...

What keeps consumers hooked on high sugar soft drink? Advertising, of course. But why are some consumers more adept at ignoring these cues than others? A new study from Flinders University, published in Appetite, found participants with an automatic bias towards soft drinks - or difficulty resisting sweet drinks compared to non-sweetened control beverages (e.g., water) - were more responsive to the ads than those without these tendencies. The Australian study compared the ability of 127 university-age students (18-25 year olds) to withstand or succumb to the urge to reach for a soft drink when viewing television advertisements. "Perhaps, then, we can start targeting people who show these ...

Analysis using a national medical database revealed that the cumulative incidence of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in children born in 2009-2014 was 2.75% by the age of five. A research group led by Associate Professor Daimei Sasayama and Professor Hideo Honda of the Department of Child and Adolescent Development Psychiatry, Shinshu University School of Medicine, used a national medical database to analyze autism spectrum disorders in Japan. It was reported that the cumulative incidence showed an increasing trend for each year of birth, and that there were regional differences. This cumulative incidence of ASD is the highest in the world based on medical diagnosis, suggesting high diagnostic ...

Poor sleep impacts the risk of long-term cognitive decline in Hispanic/Latino middle aged and older adults differently than it does in non-Hispanic adults, according to research led by University of Miami Miller School of Medicine neurology faculty and the largest long-term study of U.S. Hispanic/Latinos to date. During seven years of follow-up, Hispanics/Latinos were more likely to develop cognitive declines in processing speed, mental flexibility, and verbal memory, if they had sleep disordered breathing, such as obstructive sleep apnea, and long sleep duration of nine or more hours. The risk was especially high in middle-aged adults without metabolic syndrome and women without obesity or metabolic syndrome ...

Oysters' exposure to plastics is concerning, particularly because these materials can accumulate and release metals which are then absorbed by the molluscs. According to a recent study published in the journal Chemosphere, the combined presence of nanoplastics and arsenic affects the biological functions of oysters. This study was conducted by the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) in Québec City and the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) at the University of Bordeaux in France. The international research team chose to study arsenic, since it is one of the most common metals absorbed ...