At the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, a University of Illinois Chicago researcher conducted a survey asking respondents if they experienced health care delays because of the pandemic. In addition to learning about the types of delays, the study also presented a unique opportunity to capture a historic moment at the pandemic's beginning.  Elizabeth Papautsky, UIC assistant professor of biomedical and health information sciences, is first author on "Characterizing Healthcare Delays and Interruptions in the U.S. During the COVID-19 Pandemic Using Data from an Internet-Based Cross-Sectional ...

During the first phase of the COVID-19 epidemic, New York City experienced high prevalence compared to other U.S. cities, yet little is known about the circulation of SARS-CoV-2 within and among its boroughs. A study published in PLOS Pathogens by Simon Dellicour at Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, Ralf Duerr and Adriana Heguy at New York University, USA, and colleagues describe the dispersal dynamics of COVID-19 viral lineages at the state and city levels, illustrating the relatively important role of the borough of Queens as a SARS-CoV-2 transmission hub. To better understand how the virus dispersed throughout New York ...

Ancient pollen samples and a new statistical approach may shed light on the global rate of change of vegetation and eventually on how much climate change and humans have played a part in altering landscapes, according to an international team of researchers. "We know that climate and people interact with natural ecosystems and change them," said Sarah Ivory, assistant professor of geosciences and associate in the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, Penn State. "Typically, we go to some particular location and study this by teasing apart these influences. In particular, we know that the impact people have goes back much earlier than what is typically ...

A compound used widely in candles offers promise for a much more modern energy challenge--storing massive amounts of energy to be fed into the electric grid as the need arises. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have shown that low-cost organic compounds hold promise for storing grid energy. Common fluorenone, a bright yellow powder, was at first a reluctant participant, but with enough chemical persuasion has proven to be a potent partner for energy storage in flow battery systems, large systems that store energy for the grid. Development of such storage is critical. When the grid goes offline due to severe weather, for instance, the large batteries under ...

Wherever ecologists look, from tropical forests to tundra, ecosystems are being transformed by human land use and climate change. A hallmark of human impacts is that the rates of change in ecosystems are accelerating worldwide. Surprisingly, a new study, published today in Science, found that these rates of ecological change began to speed up many thousands of years ago. "What we see today is just the tip of the iceberg" noted co-lead author Ondrej Mottl from the University of Bergen (UiB). "The accelerations we see during the industrial revolution and modern periods have a deep-rooted history stretching back in time." Using a global network of over 1,000 fossil pollen records, the team found - and expected to find - a first peak ...

Carbon exists in various forms. In addition to diamond and graphite, there are recently discovered forms with astonishing properties. For example graphene, with a thickness of just one atomic layer, is the thinnest known material, and its unusual properties make it an extremely exciting candidate for applications like future electronics and high-tech engineering. In graphene, each carbon atom is linked to three neighbours, forming hexagons arranged in a honeycomb network. Theoretical studies have shown that carbon atoms can also arrange in other flat network patterns, while still binding to three neighbours, but none of these predicted networks had been realized until now. Researchers at the University of Marburg ...

Analyzing data obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), researchers found a galaxy with a spiral morphology by only 1.4 billion years after the Big Bang. This is the most ancient galaxy of its kind ever observed. The discovery of a galaxy with a spiral structure at such an early stage is an important clue to solving the classic questions of astronomy: "How and when did spiral galaxies form?" "I was excited because I had never seen such clear evidence of a rotating disk, spiral structure, and centralized mass structure in a distant galaxy in any previous ...

A new study published in the journal Science, highlights the opportunity to complement current climate mitigation scenarios with scenarios that capture the interdependence among investors' perception of future climate risk, the credibility of climate policies, and the allocation of investments across low- and high-carbon assets in the economy. Climate mitigation scenarios are key to understanding the transition to a low-carbon economy and inform climate policies. These scenarios are also important for financial investors to assess the risk of missing out on the transition or making the transition happen too late and in a disorderly fashion. In this respect, the scenarios developed by the platform of financial authorities ...

Deaths caused by indirect effects of the pandemic emphasize the need for policy changes that address widening health and racial inequities. More than 15 months into the pandemic, the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 is nearing 600,000. But COVID-19 deaths may be underestimated by 20%, according to a new, first-of-its-kind study from Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH), the University of Pennsylvania, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Published in the journal PLOS Medicine, the study uses data from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - Cornell University engineers and plant scientists have teamed up to develop a low-cost system that allows grape growers to predict their yields much earlier in the season and more accurately than costly traditional methods. The new method allows a grower to use a smartphone to record video of grape vines while driving a tractor or walking through the vineyard at night. Growers may then upload their video to a server to process the data. The system relies on computer-vision to improve the reliability of yield estimates. Traditional methods for estimating grape ...

INFORMS Journal Information Systems Research Study Key Takeaways: In real-time feedback the relationship source (peer, subordinate or supervisor) plays a role: the feedback tends to be more critical when it is from supervisors. Favoritism and retribution are impacted in real-time feedback: Supervisors adopt tit-for-tat strategies, but peers do not. Men rate women higher than men, and women rate men and women similar to how men rate men. Positive real-time feedback has a stronger effect on future ratings than negative feedback. CATONSVILLE, MD, May 20, 2021 - To deliver real-time feedback to support employee development and rapid innovation, many companies are replacing formal, review-based performance management with systems that enable frequent and continuous employee evaluation. ...

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have traced the locations of five brief, powerful radio blasts to the spiral arms of five distant galaxies. Called fast radio bursts (FRBs), these extraordinary events generate as much energy in a thousandth of a second as the Sun does in a year. Because these transient radio pulses disappear in much less than the blink of an eye, researchers have had a hard time tracking down where they come from, much less determining what kind of object or objects is causing them. Therefore, most of the time, astronomers don't know exactly where to look. Locating where these blasts ...

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 22 percent of older adults in the United States suffer from a functional impairment, defined as difficulties performing daily activities, such as bathing or getting dressed, or problems with concentration or decision-making affected by physical, mental or emotional conditions. In a new study published in the May 20, 2021 online edition of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine found that functional impairments among adults aged 50 and older are associated with a higher risk of medical cannabis use; and prescription opioid and tranquilizer/sedative use and misuse. "Our ...

A team of Spanish researchers have developed, at the laboratory level, a prototype of a new biosensor to help detect breast cancer in its earliest stages. One of the team coordinators has been Ramón Martínez Máñez, a professor at the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) and the scientific director of the Networking Biomedical Research Centre in Bioengineering, Biomaterials and Nanomedicine (CIBER BBN). The other one has been Ana Lluch, a Valencian oncologist, co-coordinator of the Breast Cancer Biology Research Group ...

Leave voters in Cornwall wanted to exit the EU to "take back control" and express concern about immigration - even though most said the movement of people across the continent had not caused issues for them, a new survey suggests. A total of 56.5 per cent of people in Cornwall voted to Leave the EU in 2016, yet the area has received some of the highest levels of EU structural funding in England. There have long been campaigns for Cornwall to have more political autonomy, but hardly anyone who took part in the research said they voted to Leave said they do so to get more power for politicians in the county. The most frequent reason given, found in 79 responses to the survey, was the UK had lost control to ...

Untreated hepatitis C can lead to serious and life-threatening health problems like cirrhosis and liver cancer. Direct-acting antiviral therapies introduced in recent years are highly effective, with cure rates above 95%. But most Medicaid beneficiaries with hepatitis C don't get these drugs, which cost $20,000-$30,000, due to state budget constraints. Now, a new USC study finds that a Medicaid-Medicare partnership could cover the lifesaving medications -- and still save $1 to $1.1 billion over 25 years. Medicaid is a joint federal and state program that provides health coverage for low-income families and others. Medicare is the federal health insurance program for people 65 and older. The study was published today in the American Journal of Managed Care. Researchers ...

For coffee drinkers, a common scenario might involve drinking an extra cup only to end up with a racing heart and a subtle reminder to themselves to cut down the caffeine. But for those who have a different thinking pattern, one that includes heart-focused anxiety, the racing heart might conclude with the fear of a heart attack and a trip to the emergency room. It turns out young Latinx adults who experience heart-focused anxiety could be at greater risk for mental health disorders. "We have empirical evidence that individual differences in heart-focused anxiety are related to more severe co-occurring anxiety and depressive symptomatology among a ...

MSU researcher is studying, raising awareness about the role of sex in the efficacy of vaccines that make use of nanomedicine. If there's one take-home message for the general public about the coronavirus vaccines approved in the U.S., it's that they are remarkably effective. But Michigan State University's Morteza Mahmoudi is raising awareness about an important subtlety: The vaccines developed by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech appear to work slightly better for men than for women. Both vaccines use tiny orbs, or nanoparticles, to deliver their active ingredients to cells in our immune systems. For years, Mahmoudi has been studying how and why nanomedicines -- therapies that use nanoparticles -- can affect patients differently based on their sex and ...

A team of researchers at the University of Ottawa has found a way to use visible light to transform carbon dioxide gas, or CO2, into solid carbon forms that emit light. This development creates a new, low-energy CO2 reduction pathway to solid carbon that will have implications across many fields. We talked to lead author Dr. Jaspreet Walia, Post-Doctoral Fellow in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Ottawa, and research lead Dr. Pierre Berini, uOttawa Distinguished Professor and University Research Chair in Surface Plasmon Photonics, to learn more. Please tell us about your team's discovery. Pierre ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Passports are a tangible way of showing where one has traveled, as the stamps provide a chronological order that traces an individual's journey across international borders. When an object's origins are not readily apparent, a variety of sources can be relied upon to learn more, which might include labels, sales receipts, foreign translations, oral histories, GPS coordinates and itemized personal possessions. That documentation is an example of provenance, or the origins of an object and where it has traveled throughout history. Sarah Buchanan, an assistant professor in the University of Missouri's College of Education, is an archivist, a professional who assesses, collects and preserves various artifacts and archives them ...

Our reliance on fossil fuels as a primary energy source has pushed air pollution to an all-time high, resulting in several environmental and health concerns. Among the major pollutants, nitrogen oxide (NOx) accumulation can cause severe respiratory diseases and imbalance in the Earth's nitrogen cycle. Reducing NOx accumulation is, therefore, an issue of utmost importance. Recently, the conversion of NOx into harmless or even useful nitrogen products has emerged as a promising strategy. Particularly appealing to scientists is the reduction of NOx to hydroxylamine (NH2OH), which can be utilized ...

A large-scale research project at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute has revealed insight into the relationship between surface debris on glaciers and the rate at which they melt. The work is the first global assessment of Earth's 92,033 debris-covered glaciers and shows that debris, taken as a whole, substantially reduces glacier mass loss. The results will affect sea level rise calculations and allow for improved assessment of hazards faced by nearby communities. "This is the first step to enable us to start projecting how these debris-covered glaciers are going to evolve in the future and how they're going to affect glacial runoff and sea level rise," said glaciologist ...

May 20, 2021 - Comets that circle the Sun in very elongated orbits spread their debris so thin along their orbit or eject it out of the solar system altogether that their meteor showers are hard to detect. From a new meteor shower survey published in the journal Icarus, researchers now report that they can detect showers from the debris in the path of comets that pass close to Earth orbit and are known to return as infrequent as once every 4,000 years. "This creates a situational awareness for potentially hazardous comets that were last near-Earth orbit as far back as 2,000 BC," said meteor astronomer and lead author Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute. Jenniskens is the ...

Building more homes and buildings with wood has been on the radar for years as a way to offset carbon emissions, though construction companies have been hesitant to take the material in broader use. A study at Aalto University in Finland is now the first to show that building with wood can be a sound investment. The team analysed statistical data from real estate sales in the Finnish capital of Helsinki and two suburbs, from 1999 to 2018. Of these, timber-built homes made up 2.23% of cases. The findings show that multi-storied buildings made out of wood sold for an average of 8.85% more than those made from other materials. Previous research has pointed to perceptions of higher costs in wood construction, ...

Biologist Sasha Mendjan at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna and his team have used human pluripotent stem cells to grow sesame-seed-sized heart models, called cardioids, that spontaneously self-organize to develop a hollow chamber without the need of experimental scaffolds. This advance, which allows for the creation of some of the most realistic heart organoids to date, appears on May 20th in the journal Cell. Previously, scientists have built 3D cardiac organoids via tissue engineering, an approach that generally involves assembling cells and scaffolds like building a house out of brick and mortar. But these engineered organoids do not have the same physiological responses to damages as human ...