Although robotic devices are used in everything from assembly lines to medicine, engineers have a hard time accounting for the friction that occurs when those robots grip objects - particularly in wet environments. Researchers have now discovered a new law of physics that accounts for this type of friction, which should advance a wide range of robotic technologies. "Our work here opens the door to creating more reliable and functional haptic and robotic devices in applications such as telesurgery and manufacturing," says Lilian Hsiao, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at North Carolina State University and corresponding author of a paper on the work. At ...

The best path across the desert is rarely the straightest. For the first human inhabitants of Sahul -- the super-continent that underlies modern Australia and New Guinea -- camping at the next spring, stream, or rock shelter allowed them to thrive for hundreds of generations. Those who successfully traversed the landmarks made their way across the continent, spreading from their landfall in the Northwest across the continent, making their way to all corners of Australia and New Guinea. By simulating the physiology and decisions of early way-finders, an international team* of archaeologists, geographers, ecologists, and computer scientists has mapped the probable "superhighways" that led ...

BOSTON - Concerns about fertility often influence how young women with breast cancer approach treatment decisions and are a reason for forgoing or delaying hormone-blocking therapy, a new study by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute investigators shows. The findings, published online today by the journal Cancer, reinforce the need for physicians to talk with patients about their fertility-related priorities and address them in treatment plans, the study authors write. Such conversations are important not only at the start of treatment but during its entire course, as patients' goals ...

Scientists from the University of Bristol's Quantum Engineering Technology Labs (QETLabs) have developed an algorithm that provides valuable insights into the physics underlying quantum systems - paving the way for significant advances in quantum computation and sensing, and potentially turning a new page in scientific investigation. In physics, systems of particles and their evolution are described by mathematical models, requiring the successful interplay of theoretical arguments and experimental verification. Even more complex is the description of systems of particles interacting with each other at the quantum mechanical level, which is often done using a Hamiltonian model. The process of formulating Hamiltonian models from observations is made even harder by the nature ...

'Superhighways' used by a population of up to 6.5 million Indigenous Australians to navigate the continent tens of thousands of years ago have been revealed by new research using sophisticated modelling of past people and landscapes. The new insights into how people not only survived, but thrived, in harsh environments provide further evidence of the capacity and resilience of the ancestors of Indigenous people, and help paint a picture of large, well-organised groups navigating tough terrain. The 'peopling' of Sahul -- the combined mega continent that joined Australia with New Guinea when ...

There was a hope that as more plants start to grow in Arctic and boreal latitudes as our warming climate makes those regions more hospitable for plants, those photosynthesizing plants would work to help sequester the atmospheric carbon dioxide that helped them flourish in the first place. But new research led by scientists at UC Irvine and Boston University, out in Nature Climate Change, suggests that all the new green biomass is not as large a carbon sink as scientists had hoped. "What does greening really mean? Can we really trust it to save us from climate change?" said Jon Wang, an Earth system scientist at UCI who the led the work alongside BU Earth & Environment professor Mark Friedl. "A big question is: What'll happen to the carbon that's currently ...

What The Study Did: This survey study examines the associations of school closure and exposure to COVID-19-related stressors with caregivers' perceptions of their children's mental well-being. Authors: Tali Raviv, Ph.D., of the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, 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.2021.11103) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest disclosures. Please see the article ...

What The Study Did: Using insurance claims data, the change in screening rates for breast, colorectal and prostate cancers during the COVID-19 pandemic were estimated as well as the overall decline in cancer screening last year among the U.S. population. Authors: Ronald Chen, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of Kansas in Kansas City, 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/jamaoncol.2021.0884) Editor's Note: The article includes conflicts of interest disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support. INFORMATION: Media ...

What The Study Did: This case series investigates the frequency and type of SARS-CoV-2 nasopharyngeal test complications in Helsinki, Finland. Authors: Anni Koskinen, M.D., Ph.D., of the Helsinki University Hospital in Finland, 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/jamaoto.2021.0715) Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support. INFORMATION: Media advisory: The full article is linked to this news release. Embed this link to provide your readers free access to the full-text article This ...

What The Study Did: Researchers investigated whether spending  a year aboard the International Space Station was associated with worsening of spaceflight-associated structural changes to the eye. Authors: Brandon R. Macias, Ph.D., of the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, 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/jamaophthalmol.2021.0931) Editor's Note: The article includes conflicts of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author ...

What The Study Did: The association between exposure to antibiotics before birth and during the first year of life and the development of eczema during childhood was evaluated among children in Sweden. Authors: Mwenya Mubanga, M.D., Ph.D., of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, 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.2021.5245) Editor's Note: The article includes conflicts of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, ...

An experimental treatment produced improvements in cognitive function and language in patients with fragile X syndrome, according to study results published on April 29 in Nature Medicine. Fragile X syndrome (known as FXS for short) is the most common known genetic cause of autism and the most common cause of inherited intellectual disability. "These results offer hope for patients with fragile X syndrome and their families," said Elizabeth Berry-Kravis, MD, PhD, a pediatric neurologist at Rush University Medical Center and principal investigator of the study. "The majority of clinical outcome measures were in favor of the drug. These measures included performance-based ...

Researchers in Japan have compiled a first-of-its-kind genetic database for autoimmune and autoinflammatory diseases. This resource will allow experts to more deeply understand how immune disorders develop and plan future drug discovery projects. Scientists also hope this atlas of immune-related genome data may eventually be applied to investigations of infectious diseases like COVID-19. "To understand diseases, a deep comprehension of the function of genetic variants is essential. With this data set, we can connect the data about changes to DNA sequence associated with a disease to genes and cell types that are important for disease pathogenesis," said University of Tokyo Project Research Associate Mineto Ota, M.D., Ph.D., a clinical rheumatologist and ...

Particularly sensitive to chemical modifications, messenger RNAs (mRNAs) are molecules responsible for transmitting the information encoded in our genome, allowing for the synthesis of proteins, which are necessary for the functioning of our cells. Two teams from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, in collaboration with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), have focused on a specific type of chemical modification - called methylation - of mRNA molecules in the small worm Caenorhabditis elegans. They found that methylation on a particular sequence of an mRNA leads to its degradation ...

A survey of over 32,000 caregivers of youth in Chicago Public Schools found that around a quarter of children and adolescents were described as stressed, anxious, angry or agitated after pandemic-related school closures and the switch to remote learning. Around a third of youth were described by caregivers as lonely and only one-third were described as having positive social and peer relationships. Across the board, caregivers reported significantly worse psychological well-being after school closures as compared to before. Findings were published in the journal JAMA Network Open. "Caregivers are reporting that the pandemic and school closures have taken a substantial emotional toll on their children and adolescents," ...

URBANA, Ill. - With threats of water scarcity complicating the need to feed a growing global population, it is more important than ever to get crop irrigation right. Overwatering can deplete local water supplies and lead to polluted runoff, while underwatering can lead to sub-optimal crop performance. Yet few farmers use science-based tools to help them decide when and how much to water their crops. A new University of Illinois led study identifies obstacles and solutions to improve performance and adoption of irrigation decision support tools at the field scale. "We wanted to offer our perspective on how to achieve field-scale precision irrigation with the most recent and advanced technologies on data collection, plant water stress, modeling, ...

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and the Public Health Agency of Sweden have studied newborn babies whose mothers tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 during pregnancy or childbirth. The results show that although babies born of test-positive mothers are more likely to be born early, extremely few were infected with COVID-19. The study, which is published in the esteemed journal JAMA, supports the Swedish recommendation not to separate mother and baby after delivery. The population-based study comprised 92 per cent of all neonates - almost 90,000 births - in Sweden during the first year of the pandemic (11 March 2020 to 31 January 2021), making it one of the largest datasets in the field to date. The results show a slightly higher level of morbidity ...

During the first wave of the corona pandemic, 36 per cent fewer men were diagnosed with prostate cancer in Sweden than in previous years. On the other hand, the number of patients receiving curative treatment for prostate cancer was unaffected. This is shown by a new register study led by Uppsala University researchers, whose results are published in the Scandinavian Journal of Urology. "We think the number of cases diagnosed fell because, early on, the Public Health Agency of Sweden urged older people to minimise their social contacts and, by the same token, refrain from non-urgent ...

Microalgae of the dinoflagellate group are known for their ability to survive in other animal cells. These tiny single-cell organisms have engaged in mutually beneficial relationships with corals since primeval times. By passing on critical nutrients to their hosts, dinoflagellates allow corals to thrive even in barren areas. A research team from the Centre for Organismal Studies (COS) of Heidelberg University recently discovered that such symbioses within the cell essentially depend on the ability of the algae to suppress the immune system of their host cell and thereby avoid being "spit ...

Nearly half of adults in the United States have hypertension, a condition that raises the risk for heart disease and stroke, which are leading causes of death in the U. S. At Baylor College of Medicine, Dr. David J. Durgan and his colleagues are dedicated to better understand hypertension, in particular the emerging evidence suggesting that disruption of the gut microbiota, known as gut dysbiosis, can have adverse effects on blood pressure. "Previous studies from our lab have shown that the composition of the gut microbiota in animal models of hypertension, such as the SHRSP (spontaneously hypertensive stroke-prone ...

The outbreak of COVID-19 has revealed the widespread effects a pandemic can have on all spheres of life from health, to social life, to the economy. The main thrust of efforts to control the spread has been to decrease the reproduction rate to flatten the curve of the total number of infected individuals per day in order to reduce overload on the health system. The most widely implemented response to the exponential growth of the infection has been widespread quarantine and lockdown. While isolation is an effective tool to decelerate the spread, repeatedly imposing complete ...

Small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) face many obstacles and difficulties (economic, technical, cultural, etc.) when it comes to implementing Industry 4.0. "These are transition processes that are economically costly, and in which SMEs often come up against technical and cultural problems, as they are not cognizant of how to make this transition, or of the benefits their companies stand to gain by implementing Industry 4.0," explained the UPV/EHU pre-doctoral researcher Víctor Ramírez-Durán. While several pieces of work address the incorporating ...

NEW YORK, NY (April 29, 2021) - In a new resource for the scientific community, published today in Nature Biotechnology, researchers in the lab of Neville Sanjana, PhD, at the New York Genome Center (NYGC) and New York University (NYU) developed CRISPR-sciATAC, a novel integrative genetic screening platform that jointly captures CRISPR gene perturbations and single-cell chromatin accessibility genome-wide. With this technology, they profile changes in genome organization and create a large-scale atlas of how loss of individual chromatin-altering enzymes impacts the human genome. The new method harnesses the programmability of the gene editing system CRISPR to knock-out ...

Exploring extreme environments can put significant operational challenges on the engineering systems we depend upon to safely explore and at times operate within. Within high-value and safety-critical applications, such as space exploration or sub-surface drilling, the extreme and at times dynamic operating conditions within the environment, can make it challenging to understand the life expectancy of critical components and sub-systems. Hence, it's a highly complex and at times impossible situation to accurate understand therefore predict. To have safe, resilient and economically viable operations within these challenge environments, it is vital ...

Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have discovered one way in which SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, hijacks human cell machinery to blunt the immune response, allowing it to establish infection, replicate and cause disease. In short, the virus' genome gets tagged with a special marker by a human enzyme that tells the immune system to stand down, while at the same time ramping up production of the surface proteins that SARS-CoV-2 uses as a "doorknob" to enter cells. The study, published April ...