PULLMAN, Wash. - For decades, wealthy nations have transported plastic trash, and the environmental problems that go with it, to poorer countries, but researchers have found a potential bright side to this seemingly unequal trade: plastic waste may provide an economic boon for the lower-income countries. In a study published in the Journal of World Systems Research, Yikang Bai of Washington State University and Jennifer Givens of Utah State University analyzed 11 years of data on the global plastics trade against economic measures for 85 countries. They found that the import of plastic waste was associated with growth in gross domestic product per capita in the lower-income countries. "Our study offers a nuanced understanding of the global trade in plastic waste," said Bai, ...

DALLAS, May 27, 2021 -- Adults who have obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) were more than three times as likely to have an ischemic stroke later in life compared to adults who do not have OCD, according to new research published today in Stroke, a journal of the American Stroke Association, a division of the American Heart Association. "The results of our study should encourage people with OCD to maintain a healthy lifestyle, such as quitting or not smoking, getting regular physical activity and managing a healthy weight to avoid stroke-related risk factors," said study senior author Ya-Mei Bai, M.D., Ph.D., a professor in the department of psychiatry at Taipei Veterans General Hospital ...

Researchers have mapped in fine detail the genetic changes malaria parasites go through as they prepare to infect people. The atlas maps the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum in unprecedented cellular detail as it develops inside a mosquito and prepares to infect humans through a bite. This detailed investigation could lead to new ways to block key stages in the parasite's development and prevent transmission through future drugs or vaccines. Mosquitoes are increasingly resistant to pesticides, and the parasite that causes malaria is also becoming increasingly ...

A cutting-edge digital tool that will make it cheaper, safer and faster for pharmaceutical companies to predict protein stability - a vital step in the development of new medicines - is being rolled out by scientists from the UK's University of Bath through their spin-out company, BLOC Labs. The tool, launched this week, will help researchers identify the most promising protein molecules for drug development. It has the potential to play an important role in the creation of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs). The market for these therapeutic antibodies is worth over £70 bn. Monoclonal antibodies are a type of protein derived from natural antibodies and then refined and mass produced in the lab. They are steadily transforming the way we treat and prevent diseases, from ...

Nearly three years after the Trump administration's "Zero Tolerance" policy went into effect, more than 445 children remain separated from their families, largely due to insufficient identifying paperwork and U.S. immigration officials' failures to plan, track and reunite separated families. In a Policy Forum, Elizabeth Barnert and colleagues - an interdisciplinary group of physicians, scientists and human rights advocates - argue that a well-defined, replicable, scalable, and sustainable framework to collect and manage sensitive DNA data is urgently needed in order to play a part in helping reunite separated migrant families safely and ethically. ...

Research across a wide range of languages shows that children's home literacy environment can often predict their language and literacy skills. However few studies, especially for English speaking children, examine how children's development affects what parents do and not just how parents affect their children's development. A new longitudinal study examined such bidirectional relationships between home literacy environment and children's progress in learning to read between grades 1 and 3. Results show that parents adjust their reading activities with their children over time, taking into account the level of difficulty the children are having in learning to ...

Research shows that poor sleep health may disproportionately affect children of color from families of low socioeconomic status and place them at risk for behavior problems and lower academic performance. However, few sleep studies utilize standard measures of both classroom behavior and academic achievement. A new longitudinal study examined the relation between sleep, classroom behavior, and academic achievement scores among primarily Black children growing up in historically disinvested neighborhoods. Disinvested refers to neighborhoods in which public and private funding, city services, or other necessary resources have been denied or withheld, and which are often segregated ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- A pilot project using an online survey to gather data on COVID-19 symptoms received more than 87,000 responses from around the world, providing important insight into the spread of disease. Project leaders from Regenstrief Institute, Indiana University and Microsoft believe these questionnaires could be a valuable tool for population health. The 7-question survey was launched in multiple languages during April 2020, as lockdowns were implemented to slow the spread of COVID-19. A link to the survey was placed in banner ads in Microsoft News articles. Respondents ...

If a ban were introduced on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars, and they were replaced by electric cars, the result would be a great reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. That is the finding of new research from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, looking at emissions from the entire life cycle - from manufacture of electric cars and batteries, to electricity used for operation. However, the total effect of a phasing out of fossil-fuelled cars will not be felt until the middle of the century - and how the batteries are manufactured will affect ...

Urgent investment in new tools is needed to address major global losses of wheat crops which cost £22 billion per year. Leading scientific experts are calling for governments around the world to come together and fund a new international research platform, to reduce the impact of major wheat pathogens and improve global food security. The John Innes Centre is calling for an internationally coordinated approach to deliver a new 'R-Gene Atlas', which would help identify new genetic solutions conferring disease resistance for crops, which could be bred into commercial wheat varieties. Globally, we lose one fifth of the projected wheat yield annually to pests and pathogens totaling losses of 209 million tonnes, worth £22 billion ($31 billion). The climate emergency has the ...

Each city has its own unique microbiome, a "fingerprint" of viruses and bacteria that uniquely identify it, according to a new study from an international consortium of researchers that included a team from the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM). The international project, which sequenced and analyzed samples collected from public transit systems and hospitals in 60 cities around the world, was published today in the journal Cell. The research is considered to be the largest-ever global metagenomic study of urban microbiomes, spanning both the air and the surfaces of multiple cities. It features a comprehensive ...

New research has discovered that monkeys will use the "accent" of another species when they enter its territory to help them better understand one another and potentially avoid conflict. Published in the journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, the study is the first to show asymmetric call convergence in primates, meaning that one species chooses to adopt another species' call patterns to communicate. The study, co-authored by Dr Jacob Dunn of Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), investigated the behaviour of 15 groups of pied tamarins (Saguinus bicolor) and red-handed tamarins (Saguinus midas) in the Brazilian Amazon. Pied tamarins are critically endangered and have one of the smallest ...

For the first time, a prospective, international study has shown that chest pain caused by problems with the very small vessels supplying blood to the heart is an important health problem that increases the risk of heart attacks, stroke and death due to cardiovascular reasons. The study, which is published today (Thursday) in the European Heart Journal [1], recruited 686 patients from 14 institutions in seven countries on four continents [2] between July 2015 and December 2018 to investigate microvascular angina (MVA). Until now, MVA was widely thought to be a benign disease that mainly occurs in women. However, the ...

Half a billion tonnes of carbon emissions could be cut from Earth's atmosphere by improved management of peatlands, according to research partly undertaken at the University of Leicester. A team of scientists, led by the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH), estimated the potential reduction of around 500 million tonnes in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by restoring all global agricultural peatlands. Peatlands - a type of wetland, where dead vegetation is stopped from fully breaking down - cover just 3% of the global land surface, but store around 650 billion tonnes of ...

Highlights Among patients receiving dialysis in the Southeastern United States, those at for-profit dialysis facilities were less likely to be referred for kidney transplantation than those at non-profit facilities. Rates of starting medical evaluations soon after referral and placing patients on a waitlist after evaluations were similar between the groups. Washington, DC (May 26, 2021) -- New research indicates that patients with kidney failure who receive care at for-profit dialysis facilities are less likely to be referred for kidney transplants that those receiving care at non-profit ...

Scientists at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC) have identified the first blood biomarker for myocarditis, a cardiac disease that is often misdiagnosed as myocardial infarction. Nevertheless, the diagnosis of myocarditis continues to be challenging in clinical practice. The study, led by Dr. Pilar Martín and published today in The New England Journal of Medicine, has detected the presence of the human homolog of micro RNA miR-721 in the blood of myocarditis patients. CNIC General Director Dr. Valentín Fuster emphasizes that these results of paramount importance because they establish the first validated blood marker with high sensitivity and specifity (>90%) for myocarditis. This will allow ...

Continuous skin-to-skin contact starting immediately after delivery even before the baby has been stabilised can reduce mortality by 25 per cent in infants with a very low birth weight. This according to a study in low- and middle-income countries coordinated by the WHO on the initiative of researchers at Karolinska Institutet published in The New England Journal of Medicine. Continuous skin-to-skin contact between infant and mother, or "Kangaroo Mother Care" (KMC), is one of the most effective ways to prevent infant mortality globally. The current recommendation from the World Health Organization (WHO) is that skin-to-skin contact should commence ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - Soil carbon storage, carbon capture and storage, biochar - mention these terms to most people, and a blank stare might be the response. But frame these climate change mitigation strategies as being clean and green approaches to reversing the dangerous warming of our planet, and people might be more inclined to at least listen - and even to back these efforts. A cross-disciplinary collaboration led by Jonathon Schuldt, associate professor of communication at Cornell University, found that a majority of the U.S. public is supportive of soil carbon storage as a climate change mitigation strategy, particularly when that and similar approaches are seen as "natural" strategies. "To me, that psychology part - that's really interesting," Schuldt ...

With brilliant colors and picturesque shapes, many crystals are wonders of nature. Some crystals are also wonders of science, with transformative applications in electronics and optics. Understanding how best to grow such crystals is key to further advances. Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, along with three universities, have revealed new insights into the mechanism behind how gallium nitride crystals grow at the atomic scale. Gallium nitride crystals are already in wide use in light-emitting diodes, better known as LEDs. They might also be applied to form transistors for high-power switching electronics to make electric grids more energy efficient and smarter. The use of such "smart grids," which ...

The opioid epidemic is taking a deadly toll on people in disproportionate clusters from Cape Cod to San Diego, according to a new study by the University of Cincinnati. Fatal opiate overdoses are most prevalent among six states: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, West Virginia, Indiana and Tennessee. But researchers identified 25 hot spots of fatal opioid overdoses nationwide using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study demonstrates how both widespread and localized the problem of substance use disorders can be, UC assistant professor and co-author Diego Cuadros ...

What is happening deep beneath the surface of ice planets? Is there liquid water, and if so, how does it interact with the planetary rocky "seafloor"? New experiments show that on water-ice planets between the size of our Earth and up to six times this size, water selectively leaches magnesium from typical rock minerals. The conditions with pressures of hundred thousand atmospheres and temperatures above one thousand degrees Celsius were recreated in a lab and mimicked planets similar, but smaller than Neptune and Uranus. The mechanisms of water-rock interaction at the Earth's surface are well known, and the picture of ...

Modern-day agriculture faces two major dilemmas: how to produce enough food to feed the growing human population and how to minimize environmental damage associated with intensive agriculture. Keeping more nitrogen in soil as ammonium may be one key way to address both challenges, according to a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Today's use of nitrogen fertilizers contributes heavily to greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, and water pollution, but they are also essential for growing crops. Reducing this pollution is critical, but nitrogen use is likely to grow with increased food production. At ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- One of the most important and widespread reef-building corals, known as cauliflower coral, exhibits strong partnerships with certain species of symbiotic algae, and these relationships have persisted through periods of intense climate fluctuations over the last 1.5 million years, according to a new study led by researchers at Penn State. The findings suggest that these corals and their symbiotic algae may have the capacity to adjust to modern-day increases in ocean warming, at least over the coming decades. Cauliflower corals -- which are in the genus Pocillopora -- are branching corals that provide critical habitat for one-quarter of the world's fish and many kinds of invertebrates, such as lobsters, sea urchins and giant clams. ...

To help patients manage their mental wellness between appointments, researchers at Texas A&M University have developed a smart device-based electronic platform that can continuously monitor the state of hyperarousal, one of the signs of psychiatric distress. They said this advanced technology could read facial cues, analyze voice patterns and integrate readings from built-in vital signs sensors on smartwatches to determine if a patient is under stress. Furthermore, the researchers noted that the technology could provide feedback and alert care teams if there is an abrupt deterioration in the patient's mental health. "Mental health can change very rapidly, and a lot of these changes remain hidden from providers or counselors," said Dr. Farzan Sasangohar, assistant ...

Like a good story, feeding has a beginning, a middle and an end. It begins with appetite prompting the search for food, continues with eating the food and it ends when satiation hits and the consumption of food is stopped. At Baylor College of Medicine, Dr. Qi Wu, Dr. Yong Han and their colleagues have uncovered new aspects of the last part of this story that relate to the little-known neural circuits and neurotransmitters involved in ending food consumption. The team discovered a novel circuit that connects a unique subset of dopamine-producing neurons with downstream neurons in the hindbrain (lower brainstem) ...