CAMBRIDGE, MA -- In the era of social distancing, using robots for some health care interactions is a promising way to reduce in-person contact between health care workers and sick patients. However, a key question that needs to be answered is how patients will react to a robot entering the exam room. Researchers from MIT and Brigham and Women's Hospital recently set out to answer that question. In a study performed in the emergency department at Brigham and Women's, the team found that a large majority of patients reported that interacting with a health care provider via a video screen mounted on a robot was similar to an in-person interaction with a health care worker. "We're ...

How governments and companies should listen to the people on climate change People are more engaged in reducing carbon emissions than previously thought - and governments, scientists and companies should listen to them - according to new research from the University of East Anglia and the UK Energy Research Centre. A new study published today in Nature Energyy investigates how invested people are in making the changes needed to reduce carbon emissions and stop climate change. The study shows that people, their views and actions should be included more when it comes to how we transform the way we use energy, to keep global average temperatures well below 2°C as set out in the Paris COP21 climate agreement. Lead ...

HOUSTON -- Contrary to long-held beliefs, Type I collagen produced by cancer-associated fibroblasts may not promote cancer development but instead plays a protective role in controlling pancreatic cancer progression, reports a new study from researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. This new understanding supports novel therapeutic approaches that bolster collagen rather than suppress it. The study finds that collagen works in the tumor microenvironment to stop the production of immune signals, called chemokines, that lead to suppression of the anti-tumor immune response. When collagen is lost, chemokine levels increase, and the cancer is allowed ...

Digital solutions including remote monitoring can help chronic pain sufferers manage their pain and reduce the probability of misuse of prescription opioids. For chronic pain sufferers an app may be just the tool they need to manage their pain. In a UHN-led study that used the app "Manage My Pain" enrolled patients saw clinically significant reductions in key areas that drive increased medical needs, potential abuse of prescription opioids and of course, pain. Toronto (March 4, 2021) - For the first time, an app has been shown to reduce key symptoms of chronic pain. A UHN-led study evaluated the impact of Manage My Pain (MMP), a digital health solution developed ...

The body's immune response plays a crucial role in the course of a SARS-CoV-2 infection. In addition to antibodies, the so-called T-killer cells, are also responsible for detecting viruses in the body and eliminating them. Scientists from the CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Medical University of Vienna have now shown that SARS-CoV-2 can make itself unrecognizable to the immune response by T-killer cells through mutations. The findings of the research groups of Andreas Bergthaler, Judith Aberle and Johannes Huppa provide important clues for the further development of vaccines and were published in the journal Science ...

A recent study outlines a range of privacy concerns related to the programs that users interact with when using Amazon's voice-activated assistant, Alexa. Issues range from misleading privacy policies to the ability of third-parties to change the code of their programs after receiving Amazon approval. "When people use Alexa to play games or seek information, they often think they're interacting only with Amazon," says Anupam Das, co-author of the paper and an assistant professor of computer science at North Carolina State University. "But a lot of the applications they are interacting with were created by third parties, and we've identified several flaws in the current vetting process that could allow those third parties to gain access to users' personal or private ...

Cervical cancer is a serious global health threat which kills more than 300,000 women every year. It's a disease that disproportionately affects women in low- and middle-income countries in equatorial Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia, yet it is a preventable disease and decades of research have produced the tools needed to eliminate it. Recognizing this urgent public health issue, the editorial team of Preventive Medicine, led by Editor-in-Chief Dr. Eduardo Franco, Director, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Chair, Gerald Bronfman Department ...

Researchers in Japan have developed the first wearable devices to precisely monitor jaundice, a yellowing of the skin caused by elevated bilirubin levels in the blood that can cause severe medical conditions in newborns. Jaundice can be treated easily by irradiating the infant with blue light that breaks bilirubin down to be excreted through urine. The treatment itself, however, can disrupt bonding time, cause dehydration and increase the risks of allergic diseases. Neonatal jaundice is one of the leading causes of death and brain damage in infants in low- and middle-income countries. To address the tricky balance ...

On Earth, plate tectonics is not only responsible for the rise of mountains and earthquakes. It is also an essential part of the cycle that brings material from the planet's interior to the surface and the atmosphere, and then transports it back beneath the Earth's crust. Tectonics thus has a vital influence on the conditions that ultimately make Earth habitable. Until now, researchers have found no evidence of global tectonic activity on planets outside our solar system. A team of researchers led by Tobias Meier from the Center for Space and Habitability (CSH) at the University of Bern and with the participation of ETH Zurich, the University of Oxford and the National Center of Competence in Research NCCR PlanetS has now found evidence of the flow patterns inside ...

Female gannets travel further than male gannets to find fish for their chicks in some years but not others, new research shows. Scientists tracked breeding gannets from Grassholm Island in Wales over 11 years with tiny GPS devices and by measuring isotopic signatures in their blood. Male gannets flew an average of 220km to forage for their chicks, while females averaged 260km. Some birds travelled 1,000km on a single trip. The scientists also found that the two sexes selected different habitats and foraged at different times of day, but some years ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Putting a price on producing carbon is the cheapest, most efficient policy change legislators can make to reduce emissions that cause climate change, new research suggests. The case study, published recently in the journal Current Sustainable/Renewable Energy Reports, analyzed the costs and effects that a variety of policy changes would have on reducing carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation in Texas and found that adding a price, based on the cost of climate change, to carbon was the most effective. "If the goal is reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, what we found is that putting a price on carbon and then letting suppliers and consumers make their ...

In order to show the clinical relevance of a difference between two treatment alternatives, in recent years, the manufacturer dossiers submitted in early benefit assessments of new drugs have increasingly contained responder analyses for patient-relevant outcomes. In such analyses, it is investigated whether the proportion of patients experiencing a noticeable change in the respective outcome differs between the two treatment groups in a study. This involves information on health-related quality of life or on individual symptoms such as pain or itching, which patients recorded with the help of scales in questionnaires. But what difference makes a change relevant for the individual? That is, at what threshold can a response to an intervention be derived for ...

A deep sequencing study of 747 SARS-CoV-2 virus isolates has revealed mutant peptides derived from the virus that cannot effectively bind to critical proteins on the surface of infected cells and, in turn, hamper activation of CD8+ killer T cells that recognize and destroy these infected cells. These peptides, the authors say, represent one way the coronavirus subverts killer T cell responses and stymies immunity in the host. Their results may be of particular importance for SARS-CoV-2 subunit vaccines, such as the RNA vaccines currently in use, which induce responses against a limited number of viral ...

There are no therapeutics available that have been developed for COVID-19 treatment. Repurposing of already available medication for COVID-19 therapy is an attractive option to shorten the road to treatment development. The drug Camostat could be suitable. Camostat exerts antiviral activity by blocking the protease TMPRSS2, which is used by SARS-CoV-2 for entry into cells. However, it was previously unknown whether SARS-CoV-2 can use TMPRSS2-related proteases for cell entry and whether these proteases can be blocked by Camostat. Moreover, it was unclear whether metabolization of Camostat interferes with antiviral activity. An international team of researchers around Markus Hoffmann and Stefan Pöhlmann ...

Solving a Genetic Mystery at the Heart of the COVID-19 Pandemic As the COVID-19 pandemic enters its second year, scientists are still working to understand how the new strain of coronavirus evolved, and how it became so much more dangerous than other coronaviruses, which humans have been living alongside for millennia. Virologists and epidemiologists worldwide have speculated for months that a protein called ORF8 likely holds the answer, and a recent study by Berkeley Lab scientists has helped confirm this hypothesis. In a paper published in mBio, lead author Russell Neches and his colleagues ...

By embedding a silver catalyst inside a porous crystal, KAUST researchers have improved a chemical reaction that converts carbon dioxide (CO2) into carbon monoxide (CO), which is a useful feedstock for the chemical industry. Carbon monoxide is a building block for producing hydrocarbon fuels, and many researchers are searching for ways to produce it from CO2, a greenhouse gas emitted by burning fossil fuels. One strategy involves using electricity and a catalyst to drive a so-called CO2 reduction reaction. But this reaction typically produces a variety of other products, including methane, methanol and ethylene. Separating these products significantly raises the cost of the process, ...

A study on big droughts in the Greater Mekong region revealed findings that can help reduce the carbon footprint of power systems while providing insights into better designed and more sustainable power plants. The study, titled 'The Greater Mekong's climate-water-energy nexus: how ENSO-triggered regional droughts affect power supply and CO2 emissions', was published by researchers from the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) and the University of California, Santa Barbara, in the journal Earth's Future. Known as an important means to support economic growth in Southeast Asia, the hydropower resources of the Mekong River Basin have been largely exploited by the riparian countries. The researchers ...

The current commercial production of methanol through the hydrogenation of the green-house gas CO2 relies on a catalyst consisting of copper, zinc oxide and aluminum oxide. Even though this catalyst has been used for many decades in the chemical industry, unknowns still remain. A team of researchers from the Interface Science Department of the Fritz-Haber-Institute of the Max Planck Society, the Ruhr-University Bochum, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), FZ Juelich and Brookhaven National Laboratory have now elucidated the origin of intriguing catalytic activity and selectivity trends of complex nanocatalysts ...

In 2015, hackers infiltrated the corporate network of Ukraine's power grid and injected malicious software, which caused a massive power outage. Such cyberattacks, along with the dangers to society that they represent, could become more common as the number of cyber-physical systems (CPS) increases. A CPS is any system controlled by a network involving physical elements that tangibly interact with the material world. CPSs are incredibly common in industries, especially those integrating robotics or similar automated machinery to the production line. However, as CPSs make their way into societal infrastructures such as public transport and energy management, it becomes even more important to ...

A research review led by Oxford Brookes University has found a large proportion of COVID-19 survivors will be affected by neuropsychiatric and cognitive complications. Psychologists at Oxford Brookes University and a psychiatrist from Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, evaluated published research papers in order to understand more about the possible effects of the SARS-COV-2 infection on the brain, and the extent people can expect to experience short and long-term mental health issues. Patients experienced a range of psychiatric problems The study found that in the short term, a wide range of neuropsychiatric problems were reported. In one examined study, 95% of clinically ...

As millions of Fantasy Premier League players mull over a decision whether to start Bruno Fernandes or Mohamed Salah in their teams this weekend, new research by the University of Limerick in Ireland has unlocked the secrets of the popular online game. A new study by a team of researchers at UL has identified the underlying tactics used by the top-ranked competitors among the seven million players of Fantasy Premier League (FPL), the official - and world's largest - fantasy football game of the English Premier League. Joseph O'Brien, Professor James Gleeson, and Dr David O'Sullivan, based within the ...

With three out of four newly emerging infectious human diseases originating in animals*, there is an urgent need to monitor the legal trade in wildlife, according to new research by Vincent Nijman, Professor in Anthropology at Oxford Brookes University. Professor Nijman, who has been involved in monitoring and regulating the legal wildlife trade for over two decades, said: "Covid-19 more than anything else has put a spotlight on emerging infectious diseases and how this is linked to the trade in wild animals. Few people are aware of its scale. With literally hundreds of millions ...

New research reveals an essential step in scientists' quest to create targeted, more eco-friendly fungicides that protect food crops. Scientists have known for decades that biological cells manufacture tiny, round structures called extracellular vesicles. However, their pivotal roles in communication between invading microorganisms and their hosts were recognized only recently. UC Riverside geneticist Hailing Jin and her team found plants use these vesicles to launch RNA molecules at fungal invaders, suppressing the genes that make the fungi dangerous. "These vesicles shuttle small RNAs between cells, like tiny Trojan horses with weapons hidden inside," said Jin, a professor of genetics and the Cy Mouradick Chair in the Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology. ...

In a close collaboration between experimental and theoretical physicists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), the research groups of Professor Mathias Kläui and Dr. Peter Virnau investigated the behavior of magnetic whirls within nanoscale geometric structures. In their work published in Advanced Functional Materials, the researchers confined small magnetic whirls, so-called skyrmions, in geometric structures. Skyrmions can be created in thin metal films and have particle-like properties: They exhibit high stability and are repelled from each other and from specially prepared walls. Experiments and accompanying computer simulations showed that the mobility of skyrmions within these geometric structures depends massively on their arrangement. In triangles, ...

Oxidative dispersion has been widely used in the regeneration of sintered metal catalysts as well as the fabrication of single-atom catalysts. The consensus on the oxidative dispersion process includes the formation of mobile metal oxide species from large metal particles and the capture of these species on a support surface. Nevertheless, the mechanism of oxidation-induced dispersion has yet to be confirmed via in situ electron microscopic and/or spectroscopic characterizations. Recently, a research team led by Prof. FU Qiang and Prof. BAO Xinhe from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), in collaboration with Prof. YANG Bing from DICP and Prof. GAO Yi ...