Viral respiratory diseases are easily transmissible and can spread rapidly across the globe, causing significant damage. The ongoing covid-19 pandemic is a testament to this. In the past too, other viruses have caused massive respiratory disease outbreaks: for example, a subtype of the influenza virus, the type A H1N1 virus, was responsible for the Spanish flu and the Swine flu outbreaks. Thus, to prevent such health crises in the future, timely and accurate diagnosis of these viruses is crucial. This is exactly what researchers from Korea have attempted to work toward, in their brand-new study. Read on to understand how! For several decades now, polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based assays have been the gold standard for detecting influenza viruses. And while these ...

An international study coordinated by the Research Group for Urban Nature and Biosystems Engineering (NATURIB) from the University of Seville's School of Agricultural Engineering emphasises that having plants at home had a positive influence on the psychological well-being of the dwelling's inhabitants during COVID-19 lockdown. Researchers from the Hellenic Mediterranean University (Greece), the Federal Rural University of Pernambuco (Brazil) and the University of Genoa (Italy) participated in the study along with representatives from the University ...

Did you know that fleas, ants, and click beetles are capable of blazingly fast accelerations, with some up to 10^6 meters per square-second? Their quick movements make fast animals like the cheetah look like slowpokes. A new study by a team that included Jake Socha, professor in biomedical engineering and mechanics in Virginia Tech's College of Engineering, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences shows that a snap-through unbending movement of the body is the main reason for the clicking beetle's fast acceleration. Most animals use muscle to move. For example, when we want to bend our elbow, our biceps ...

Countries where massive natural hazard events occur frequently are not more likely than others to make changes to reduce risks from future disasters. This is shown in an interdisciplinary Uppsala University study now published in Nature Communications. Natural hazard events, such as storms, floods, and wildfires, entail huge and growing costs all over the world, but they can also be occasions for countries to implement risk-reducing changes. There is no research consensus on whether natural hazard events lead to policy modifications or, instead, contribute to stability and preservation of existing solutions. Knowledge in this area to date has been ...

JUPITER, FL - In a landmark neurobiology study, scientists from Scripps Research have discovered a memory gating system that employs the neurotransmitter dopamine to direct transient forgetting, a temporary lapse of memory which spontaneously returns. The study adds a new pin to scientists' evolving map of how learning, memory and active forgetting work, says Scripps Research Neuroscience Professor Ron Davis, PhD. "This is the first time a mechanism has been discovered for transient memory lapse," Davis says. "There's every reason to believe, because of conservation ...

An extra 290,000 pounds a year for lighting and cleaning because smog darkens and pollutes everything: with this cost estimate for the industrial city of Manchester, the English economist Arthur Cecil Pigou once founded the theory of environmental taxation. In the classic "The Economics of Welfare", the first edition of which was published as early as 1920, he proved that by allowing such "externalities" to flow into product prices, the state can maximise welfare. In 2020, exactly 100 years later, the political implementation of Pigou's insight has gained strength, important objections are being invalidated, and carbon pricing appears more efficient than regulations and bans according to a ...

Scientists from the CNRS, CNES, IRD, Sorbonne Université, l'Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier and their Australian colleagues*, with the support of the IPEV, have provided a comprehensive analysis on the evolution of Southern Ocean temperatures over the last 25 years. The research team has concluded that the slight cooling observed at the surface hides a rapid and marked warming of the waters, to a depth of up to 800 metres. The study points to major changes around the polar ice cap where temperatures are increasing by 0.04°C per decade, which could have serious consequences for Antarctic ice. Warm water is also rising rapidly to the surface, at a rate of 39 metres per decade, i.e. between three and ten ...

Citrus greening disease, also known as Huanglongbing (HLB), is devastating to the citrus industry, causing unprecedented amounts of damage worldwide. There is no known cure. Since the disease's introduction to the United States in the early 2000s, research efforts have increased exponentially. However, there is still a lack of information about the molecular mechanism behind the disease. "Getting into the molecular details behind what contributes to citrus greening symptom development and disease progression is key to finding sustainable solutions to combat the pathogen," explained plant pathologist Wenbo Ma. "We bring the community one step closer to understanding these mechanisms ...

Understanding the genetic and environmental factors that enable some feral honey bee colonies to tolerate pathogens and survive the winter in the absence of beekeeping management may help lead to breeding stocks that would enhance survival of managed colonies, according to a study led by researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences. Feralization occurs when previously domesticated organisms escape to the wild and establish populations in the absence of human influence, explained lead researcher Chauncy Hinshaw, doctoral candidate in plant pathology and environmental microbiology. "In the case of honey bees, colonies that escape domestication and establish in the wild provide an opportunity to study how environmental and genetic factors ...

Muscle structure and body size predict the athletic performance of Olympic athletes, such as sprinters. The same, it appears, is true of wild seabirds that can commute hundreds of kilometres a day to find food, according to a recent paper by scientists from McGill and Colgate universities published in the Journal of Experimental Biology. The researchers studied a colony of small gulls, known as black-legged kittiwakes, that breed and nest in an abandoned radar tower on Middleton Island, Alaska. They attached GPS-accelerometers--Fitbit for birds -- ...

Warming ocean waters could reduce the ability of fish, especially large ones, to extract the oxygen they need from their environment. Animals require oxygen to generate energy for movement, growth and reproduction. In a recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, an international team of researchers from McGill, Montana and Radboud universities describe their newly developed model to determine how water temperature, oxygen availability, body size and activity affect metabolic demand for oxygen in fish. The model is based on physicochemical principles that look at oxygen consumption and diffusion at the gill surface in relation to water temperature and body size. Predictions were compared against actual measurements from over 200 fish species where oxygen ...

A McGill-led research team has identified a new species of praying mantis thanks to imprints of its fossilized wings. It lived in Labrador, in the Canadian Subarctic around 100 million years ago, during the time of the dinosaurs, in the Late Cretaceous period. The researchers believe that the fossils of the new genus and species, Labradormantis guilbaulti, helps to establish evolutionary relationships between previously known species and advances the scientific understanding of the evolution of the most 'primitive' modern praying mantises. The unusual find, described in a recently published study in Systematic ...

A recent McGill study published in Environmental Science and Technology finds that annual methane emissions from abandoned oil and gas (AOG) wells in Canada and the US have been greatly underestimated - by as much as 150% in Canada, and by 20% in the US. Indeed, the research suggests that methane gas emissions from AOG wells are currently the 10th and 11th largest sources of anthropogenic methane emission in the US and Canada, respectively. Since methane gas is a more important contributor to global warming than carbon dioxide, especially over the short term, the researchers believe that it is essential to gain a clearer understanding of methane ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - Jan. 20, 2021 - Breast cancer is the second most common cancer among women in the United States, and cigarette smoking is associated with a higher incidence of breast cancer spread, or metastasis, lowering the survival rate by 33% at diagnosis. While cigarette smoking's link to cancer is well-known, the role of nicotine, a non-carcinogenic chemical found in tobacco, in breast-to-lung metastasis is an area where more research is needed. Now, scientists at Wake Forest School of Medicine have found that nicotine promotes the spread of breast cancer cells into the lungs. The study ...

No evidence so far indicates that food or drinks can transmit the virus that causes COVID-19, but new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests that people with problems in the upper gastrointestinal (GI) tract may be vulnerable to infection after swallowing the virus. Studying tissue from patients with a common disorder called Barrett's esophagus, the researchers found that although cells in a healthy esophagus cannot bind to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, esophageal cells from patients with Barrett's have receptors for the virus, and those cells can bind to and become infected by the virus that causes COVID-19. The study is published online Jan. 20 in the journal Gastroenterology. "There ...

20 January 2021/Kiel. Numerous natural products are awaiting discovery in all kinds of natural habitats. Especially microorganisms such as bacteria or fungi are able to produce diverse natural products with high biomedical application potential in particular as antibiotics and anticancer agents. This includes the so-called red yeast of the species Rhodotorula mucilaginosa, isolated from a deep-sea sediment sample from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and analyzed for its genome and chemical constituents by researchers from GEOMAR Centre for Marine Biotechnology (GEOMAR-Biotech) ...

In a paper published in NANO, researchers from Hubei, China discuss the top-down and bottom-up strategies for the synthesis of Graphene quantum dots (GQDs). The respective advantages and disadvantages of these methods are summarized. With regard to some important or novel ones, the mechanisms are proposed for reference. In addition, the application of GQDs in biosensors is highlighted in detail. At present, various top-down methods, such as oxidative cutting, hydrothermal or solvothermal reactions, electrochemical oxidation, ultrasonic-assisted or microwave-assisted process, chemical vapor deposition (CVD) have been reported to produce GQDs. Meanwhile, the bottom-up methods have been ...

Changes in climate that occur over short periods of time influence biodiversity. For a realistic assessment of these effects, it is necessary to also consider previous temperature trends going far back into Earth's history. Researchers from the University of Bayreuth and the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg show this in a paper for Nature Ecology and Evolution. According to the paper, future climate-related species extinction could be less severe than predictions based only on the current trend of global warming. However, the researchers do not give the all-clear. At present, the effects of climate change are being exacerbated ...

In nature, many things have evolved that differ in size, color and, above all, in shape. While the color or size of an object can be easily described, the description of a shape is more complicated. In a study now published in Nature Communications, Jacqueline Nowak of the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology and her colleagues have outlined a new and improved way to describe shapes based on a network representation that can also be used to reassemble and compare shapes. Jacqueline Nowak designed a novel approach that relies on a network-based shape representation, named visibility graph, along with a tool for analyzing shapes, ...

The study explains the benefits of both the wing shape and the flexibility of their wings. The Lund researchers studied the wingbeats of freely flying butterflies during take-off in a wind tunnel. During the upward stroke, the wings cup, creating an air-filled pocket between them. When the wings then collide, the air is forced out, resulting in a backward jet that propels the butterflies forward. The downward wingbeat has another function: the butterflies stay in the air and do not fall to the ground. The wings colliding was described by researchers almost 50 years ago, but it is only in this study that the theory has been tested on real butterflies in free ...

Three-dimensional (3D) direct laser writing (DLW) based on two-photon polymerisation (TPP) is an advanced technology for fabricating precise 3D hydrogel micro- and nanostructures for applications in biomedical engineering. Particularly, the use of visible lasers for the 3D DLW of hydrogels is advantageous because it enables high fabrication resolution and promotes wound healing. Polyethylene glycol diacrylate (PEGda) has been widely used in TPP fabrication owing to its high biocompatibility. However, the high laser power required in the 3D DLW of PEGda microstructures using a visible laser in a high-water-content environment limits its applications to only those below the biological laser power safety level. In a new paper ...

Rather like David versus Goliath, it appears that Saturn's tilt may in fact be caused by its moons. This is the conclusion of recent work carried out by scientists from the CNRS, Sorbonne University and the University of Pisa, which shows that the current tilt of Saturn's rotation axis is caused by the migration of its satellites, and especially by that of its largest moon, Titan. Recent observations have shown that Titan and the other moons are gradually moving away from Saturn much faster than astronomers had previously estimated. By incorporating this increased migration rate into their calculations, the researchers concluded that ...

To process information in our brains, nerve cells produce brief electrical impulses, called action potentials, triggered from one highly specialized region. Research from the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, together with researchers from Heidelberg University and the University of Göttingen in Germany, now show that the electrical trigger sites surprisingly change with experience; they are either becoming smaller with increasing number of experiences and, vice versa, they grow larger when less input arrives in the brain. The results were published in Nature Communications. Exploring the environment Rodents learn about their environment by moving their highly sensitive whiskers, with which they touch ...

Researchers from the Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University unraveled the function of flint tools known as 'chopping tools', found at the prehistoric site of Revadim, east of Ashdod. Applying advanced research methods, they examined use-wear traces on 53 chopping tools, as well as organic residues found on some of the tools. They also made and used replicas of the tools, with methods of experimental archaeology. The researchers concluded that tools of this type, found at numerous sites in Africa, Europe and Asia, were used by prehistoric humans at Revadim to neatly break open bones of medium-size animals such as fallow deer, gazelles and ...

UV-radiation can affect hormone levels of postmenopausal women negatively and this may contribute to several health issues. The concentration of oestrogens in the blood affects a woman's health in many ways. For example, oestrogens contribute to a strong bone structure and help wounds heal more quickly: "When a woman reaches menopause, we see the levels of oestrogens decline and an increase of other hormones, called gonadotropins", says Kai Triebner at the University of Bergen. For several years, he has studied the hormonal balance of women in relation to menopause: What effects changing hormone levels ...