WASHINGTON, February 9, 2021 -- School closures, the loss of public spaces, and having to work remotely due to the coronavirus pandemic have caused major disruptions in people's social lives all over the world. Researchers from City University of Hong Kong, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute suggest a reduction in fatal coronavirus cases can be achieved without the need for so much social disruption. They discuss the impacts of the closures of various types of facilities in the journal Chaos, from AIP Publishing. After running thousands of simulations of the pandemic response in New York City with variations in social distancing behavior at home, in schools, at public facilities, and in the workplace ...

What The Study Did: To mitigate subsequent waves of COVID-19, allocating testing resources to locations of greatest need is important. Researchers in this study examined the alignment of testing to epidemic intensity in Massachusetts. Authors: Scott Dryden-Peterson, M.D., M.Sc., of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, 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.2020.37067) 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, ...

WASHINGTON, February 9, 2021 -- Advances in the fields of biomaterials and nanotechnology could lead to big breakthroughs in the fight against dangerous viruses like the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. In APL Bioengineering, by AIP Publishing, researchers from the Indian Institute of Science describe two possibilities being explored by scientists in the field to make vaccines more effective and build surfaces that could fight and kill viruses on their own. "It is important not just in terms of COVID," said author Kaushik Chatterjee. "We've seen SARS, ...

FOLSOM, Calif., February 9, 2021 - A new animal study, published in the Journal of Clinical Biochemistry and Nutrition, suggests regular walnut consumption may be a promising intervention for reducing negative outcomes associated with Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection, a widespread bacterial infection that affects more than half of the world's population. Using mice models, researchers from the CHA Cancer Prevention Research Center in Korea found preliminary evidence that eating a diet rich in walnuts may help protect against negative outcomes associated with H. pylori infection. Specifically, the research found that walnut extracts, formed from ...

Within the constellation Cygnus, an elderly star and its massive companion are having one last hurrah, flinging off mass at an incredible rate before they explode as supernovae and collapse into a black hole. Now, researchers including recent Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University graduate Laura M. Lee have mapped the elderly star's orbit around its oversized and equally ancient partner. In a scientific first, they have also determined the dynamical mass of both stars that make up a binary system called Wolf-Rayet 133. The team's findings, published Feb. 9, 2021 by Astrophysical Journal ...

While the World Health Organization (WHO) continues its mission to Wuhan investigating the origin and early transmission of SARS-CoV-2, a new study led by scientists from Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore, and Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, shows that SARS-CoV-2-related coronaviruses (SC2r-CoVs) are circulating in animals as far away as Thailand. The study, published in Nature Communications today, reported that high levels of neutralising antibodies against the virus were present in both bats and pangolins found in the Southeast Asian country. The study further indicates that more SC2r-CoVs are likely to be discovered ...

Amsterdam, NL, February 9, 2021 - Globally, nearly 300,000 babies are born with neural tube defects including spina bifida (SB) each year. This openly available special issue of the Journal of Pediatric Rehabilitation Medicine (JPRM) provides 20 important evidence- and consensus-based updates to key sections of the 2018 "Guidelines for the Care of People with Spina Bifida" issued by the Spina Bifida Association (SBA). These reflect current recommendations for the care of patients with SB across the entire lifespan, from prenatal counseling to adult care. As a result of research advancements and improved team-based patient care, approximately 80%-90% of children with SB now live to adulthood in the United ...

A study of women who were new mothers in the late 1970s found that those who were given longer, paid maternity leave lived healthier lives as they entered middle age. While universal paid maternity leave is now available in many Western European nations, this has not always been the case. A new study by University of Georgia economist Meghan Skira looked at the health of Norwegian mothers before and after paid maternity leave became law in 1977. She found that the health benefits of leave continued for years after their children were born. Skira, an associate professor in the Terry College of Business, worked with economist Aline Bütikofer of the Norwegian School of Economics and Julie Riise of the University of Bergen on the study. Their paper, "The Impact of Paid ...

A study led by researchers at the University of Minnesota Medical School found a way to detect the presence of ovarian cancer in patients using Pap test samples, normally used to detect cervical cancer. Currently, no early warning system exists for ovarian cancer, which in 2021, is estimated to kill more than 13,700 women, according to the American Cancer Society. "It is known as a 'silent killer' since women with early stages of ovarian cancer have symptoms that can often be confused with other ailments. Women are typically diagnosed when the cancer has progressed so far that other organs are involved, requiring major surgery and chemotherapy," ...

Russian researchers from HSE University have studied a hypothesis regarding the capability of the visual system to automatically categorize objects (i.e., without requiring attention span). The results of a simple and beautiful experiment confirmed this assumption. The paper was published in the journal Scientific Reports. The study was supported by a Russian Science Foundation grant. Humans receive a lot of information from the environment through their vision. Every day, we face a flow of varied visual stimuli. At the same time, information processing requires cognitive resources. Like a computer processor, the human brain has limited capacity in terms of the data it is able to process and save ...

Anaphylaxis is a systemic allergic reaction that can affect the skin, the gastrointestinal tract, the respiratory system and the cardiovascular system. The most severe form of anaphylaxis is anaphylactic shock, which features hypotension and can cause death. This reaction can have several causes, such as allergic reactions to food, medicines or insect venom. The molecular mechanisms that cause the severity of these kinds of reactions is still unknown. In a study led by researchers of the University of Barcelona and IDIBAPS, researchers analyzed the mutation of a gen detected in a patient who suffered from recurrent anaphylactic shocks caused ...

Growing the right crop in the right place within an impaired watershed can achieve significant water quality improvements, according to Penn State researchers, who conducted a novel study in the drainage of a Susquehanna River tributary in an agricultural area in southeastern Pennsylvania. The research may reveal a potential path for restoring the troubled Chesapeake Bay, said Patrick Drohan, associate professor of pedology in the College of Agricultural Sciences and one of the study's authors. The bay -- which long has been impaired in large part by nutrients and sediment washing off crop fields and getting into surface waters that feed it -- needs bold solutions, such as changing cropping systems, he suggested. "Other than when wastewater treatment plants came into compliance ...

BROOKLYN, New York, Monday, February 8, 2021 -- A holy grail for orthopedic research is a method for not only creating artificial bone tissue that precisely matches the real thing, but does so in such microscopic detail that it includes tiny structures potentially important for stem cell differentiation, which is key to bone regeneration. Researchers at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering and New York Stem Cell Foundation Research Institute (NYSF) have taken a major step by creating the exact replica of a bone using a system that pairs biothermal imaging with a heated "nano-chisel." In a study, "Cost and Time Effective Lithography of Reusable Millimeter Size Bone Tissue Replicas with Sub-15 nm Feature Size on a Biocompatible ...

A team of researchers from the Laboratory of Biophysics at NUST MISIS, Lomonosov Moscow State University and D. Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia has summarized metal-containing diagnostic agents for positron emission tomography (PET), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) imaging of Alzheimer's disease (AD). According to the researchers, metal-containing radiopharmaceuticals are not only highly effective for detecting early markers of Alzheimer's disease, but also synchrotron-independent and ...

Bats are the only mammals that can actively fly. Some species travel over one hundred kilometres on their nocturnal excursions in search of food. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Radolfzell have now discovered that European free-tailed bats use uplifting winds for their ascents - a behaviour that was previously known only from birds. To do this, they tracked the bats using mini GPS loggers and then linked the flight data to weather data. The animals can thus gain altitude of well over 1,000 metres without expending much energy. The results ...

DNA sequences that can fold into shapes other than the classic double helix tend to have higher mutation rates than other regions in the human genome. New research shows that the elevated mutation rate in these sequences plays a major role in determining regional variation in mutation rates across the genome. Deciphering the patterns and causes of regional variation in mutation rates is important both for understanding evolution and for predicting sites of new mutations that could lead to disease. A paper describing the research by a team of Penn State scientists is available online in the journal Nucleic Acids Research. "Most of the time we think about DNA as the classic ...

A 'biological age' score predicts that being male, overweight, a smoker and having depression all contribute to biological aging, a study published today in eLife reports. Aging can be measured in different ways. While chronological age is measured by date of birth, scientists have developed a range of measurements to determine our biological age. These include measuring the length of telomeres (little caps on the end of our chromosomes that shorten as we grow older), chemical changes to our DNA (epigenetics), and changes to the proteins and metabolites in our bodies ...

According to the Education Act, schools in the ethnically divided Bosnia and Herzegovina must teach students "democratic ideals in a multicultural society." But according to new research from the University of Copenhagen, the opposite happens: Segregated schools perpetuate ethnic divisions between Croats, Serbs and Bosniaks, making reconciliation after the 1992-1995 wars extremely difficult. 25 years ago, the warring factions in the war in former Yugoslavia signed a peace agreement. Bosnia and Herzegovina, where 100,000 people lost their lives during the war, is now an independent state comprising the Bosnian-Croatian Federation and the Republika Srpska. It is a division that ...

Social conflicts, from policy debates to family disagreements, can easily devolve into angry words and personal attacks. Such heated confrontations, however, seldom resolve disagreements and can entrench opposing views. A better approach to resolving interpersonal disagreements is to embrace characteristics that psychological scientists associate with wisdom, like intellectual humility, diverse viewpoints, and open-mindedness. But applying these elements of wisdom can be difficult, especially during confrontations. The trick, according to new research published ...

The global problem of unowned domestic cats, driven by the cats' phenomenal reproductive success, carries significant economic, animal welfare and biodiversity costs. Big-data research led by an expert on veterinary medicine and infectious diseases at City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has found that although more than 80% of cats in Australia were desexed, only a fraction have had surgery before reaching puberty, thus creating a "pregnancy gap". To close this gap and prevent unwanted litters, it is recommended that the age of desexing is before four months. The research was led by Professor ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. - Breast cancer death rates have stopped declining for women in the U.S. younger than age 40, ending a trend that existed from 1987 to 2010, according to a new study in Radiology. Researchers expressed hope that the findings would raise awareness of breast cancer in younger women and spur research into the causes behind the change. Breast cancer is the most common non-skin cancer and the second most common cause of cancer deaths in women in the U.S., accounting for 30% of all cancers in women. Although most invasive breast cancers occur in women age 40 years and older, ...

Scientific and public health experts have been raising the alarm for decades, imploring public officials to prepare for the inevitability of a viral pandemic. Infectious epidemics seemingly as benign as "the flu" and as deadly as the Ebola virus provided ample warning, yet government officials seemed caught off guard and ill prepared for dealing with COVID-19. Three future-oriented researchers and policy experts map out an "Epidemiological Blueprint for Understanding the Dynamics of a Pandemic." COVID Detectives Researchers around the world have become forensic, Sherlock Holmes-like "consulting detectives" for government officials and public health organizations. Handling tens of thousands ...

In the span of only 15 years, a small academic elite has increased its share of academic citations significantly. In the year 2000, 14 per cent of all citations went to the top one percent of the most cited researchers. New research shows that this figure had risen to 21 per cent in 2015. The people behind these remarkable findings are senior researcher Jens Peter Andersen, Danish Centre for Studies in Research and Research Policy (CFA) at Aarhus BSS, Aarhus University, and associate professor Mathias Wullum Nielsen (former CFA, now University of Copenhagen). Their examination of almost 26 million scientific papers and four million authors has just been published in the well-established interdisciplinary journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ...

Animal owners frequently report concerns and worries relating to caring for their animal during the pandemic, new research suggests. The study, by the University of York, also revealed owners had increased their appreciation of their animals during the first lockdown phase. The notion that people "could not live without" their animals and that they were a "godsend" or a "lifeline" in the pandemic was frequently expressed. The study has been investigating the role of animals as sources of emotional and physical support during the pandemic. More than 40 per cent of UK households are estimated to own at least one animal. There was consensus among participants that companion animals constituted a reliable source of support, providing unconditional love, ...

When human cells have to adapt due to a wide variety of external influences, the BAF complex plays a central role because it controls the accessibility of the DNA and thus the information stored in it. In every fifth human cancer, a mutation is found in one of the BAF complex genes. Scientists from the research group of Principal Investigator Stefan Kubicek at the CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences have investigated this complex in more detail using novel techniques and were able to show how quickly changes in the BAF complex genes influence the accessibility of DNA. The study has now been published in Nature Genetics. Chromatin is a central component of the cell nucleus and refers to the material that ...