Scientists have designed a single-dose universal vaccine that could protect against the many forms of leptospirosis bacteria, according to a study published today in eLife. An effective vaccine would help prevent the life-threatening conditions caused by leptospirosis, such as Weil's disease and lung haemorrhage, which are fatal in 10% and 50% of cases, respectively. Leptospirosis is caused by a diverse group of spirochetes called leptospires. A broad range of mammals, including rats, harbour the bacteria in their kidneys and release them into the environment through their urine. Humans and animals can then get infected after coming into contact with contaminated water or soil. In addition to having a major impact on the health of vulnerable human populations, ...

Syracuse, N.Y. - As President Joe Biden seeks to raise the federal minimum wage, a new study published recently by researchers from Syracuse University shows that a higher minimum wage will reduce infant deaths. In the study, "Effects of US state preemption laws on infant mortality," Syracuse University professors found that each additional dollar of minimum wage reduces infant deaths by up to 1.8 percent annually in large U.S. cities. The study was published recently by Preventive Medicine. The federal minimum wage has not been increased since 2009, and Biden's $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan to aid those hit hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic calls for Congress to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 ...

CAMBRIDGE, MD (January 26, 2021)--The Chesapeake Bay has a long history of nutrient pollution resulting in degraded water quality. However, scientists from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science are reporting some improvements in the Choptank River on Maryland's Eastern Shore. The Choptank is a tributary of Chesapeake Bay, and its watershed lies primarily in the state of Maryland, with a portion in Delaware. There are strong similarities between the Choptank basin and the Chesapeake as a whole, which enables the Choptank to be used as a model for progress in the Bay. The Chesapeake Bay is an estuary which has undergone considerable ...

Researchers from McGill University have discovered, for the first time, one of the possible mechanisms that contributes to the ability of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) to increase social interaction. The findings, which could help unlock potential therapeutic applications in treating certain psychiatric diseases, including anxiety and alcohol use disorders, are published in the journal PNAS. Psychedelic drugs, including LSD, were popular in the 1970s and have been gaining popularity over the past decade, with reports of young professionals claiming to regularly take small non-hallucinogenic micro-doses of ...

Black holes are considered amongst the most mysterious objects in the universe. Part of their intrigue arises from the fact that they are actually amongst the simplest solutions to Einstein's field equations of general relativity. In fact, black holes can be fully characterized by only three physical quantities: their mass, spin and charge. Since they have no additional "hairy" attributes to distinguish them, black holes are said to have "no hair": Black holes of the same mass, spin, and charge are exactly identical to each other. Dr. Lior Burko of Theiss Research in collaboration with Professor Gaurav Khanna of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and the University ...

Landslides caused by the collapse of unstable volcanoes are one of the major dangers of volcanic eruptions. A method to detect long-term movements of these mountains using satellite images could help identify previously overlooked instability at some volcanoes, according to Penn State scientists. "Whenever there is a large volcanic eruption, there is a chance that if a flank of the volcano is unstable there could be a collapse," said Judit Gonzalez-Santana, a doctoral student in the Department of Geosciences. "To better explore this hazard, we applied an increasingly popular and more sensitive time-series method to look at these movements, or surface ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- The Medicaid expansion facilitated by the Affordable Care Act led to increases in the identification of undiagnosed HIV infections and in the use of HIV prevention services such as preexposure prophylaxis drugs, says new research co-written by a team of University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign experts who study the intersection of health care and public policy. The research by Dolores Albarracín, a professor of psychology and of business administration at Illinois, and Bita Fayaz Farkhad, an economist and a postdoctoral researcher in psychology at Illinois, ...

Corn hasn't always been the sweet, juicy delight that we know today. And, without adapting to a rapidly changing climate, it is at risk of losing its place as a food staple. Putting together a plant is a genetic puzzle, with hundreds of genes working together as it grows. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Professor David Jackson worked with Associate Professor Jesse Gillis to study genes involved in corn development. Their teams analyzed thousands of individual cells that make up the developing corn ear. They created the first anatomical map that shows where and when important ...

Pneumonia and the flu kill tens of thousands of Americans each year, racking up billions of dollars in medical costs and even more in lost productivity. But new research from the University of Georgia shows that state laws promoting flu vaccinations for hospital workers can substantially reduce the number of influenza-related deaths. Spanning 23 years, the study looked at the mortality rate from influenza and pneumonia during peak flu season (from December through March of each year), comparing changes in mortality over time in the 13 states and Washington, D.C., that adopted laws to the changes in mortality in states without laws. ...

The health of aquatic ecosystems depends on the supply of key nutrients, especially phosphorus. Too much phosphorus results in unwanted eutrophication, and much effort is spent on preventing phosphorus pollution of water bodies. In the World's largest freshwater ecosystem, the North American Great Lakes, this control may have recently been lost to an invasive species. According to a new study, quagga mussels, which have spread across four of the five Great Lakes, have accumulated large amounts of phosphorus in their biomass, to the degree that their activities now regulate the supply of phosphorus ...

Their field may not be top of mind among those that contribute to the greater good, yet new research from the University of Notre Dame shows marketers can help entrepreneurs in emerging markets grow their businesses, which in turn helps them to improve lives, sustain livelihoods, enhance overall living standards and strengthen societies. "Do Marketers Matter for Entrepreneurs? Evidence from a Field Experiment in Uganda" is forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing from Frank Germann, an associate professor of marketing at Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business who teaches ...

Cell phone data that is routinely collected by telecommunications providers can reveal changes of behavior in people who are diagnosed with a flu-like illness, while also protecting their anonymity, a new study finds. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published the research, led by computer scientists at Emory University and based on data drawn from a 2009 outbreak of H1N1 flu in Iceland. "To our knowledge, our project is the first major, rigorous study to individually link passively-collected cell phone metadata with actual public health data," says Ymir Vigfusson, assistant professor in Emory University's Department of Computer Science and a first author of the study. "We've shown ...

WASHINGTON -- A multi-institutional group of researchers has developed new metamaterial tiles that will help improve the sensitivity of telescopes being built at the preeminent Simons Observatory in Chile. The tiles have been incorporated into receivers that will be deployed at the observatory by 2022. The Simons Observatory is the center of an ambitious effort to measure the cosmic microwave background -- electromagnetic radiation left over from an early stage of the universe -- using some of the world's largest and most sophisticated ground-based telescopes. ...

Providing economic relief to struggling families can lead to another positive effect -- fewer cases of child neglect, according to new research by the University of Washington. A 10% increase in a common benefit for low- to moderate-income working families, the Earned Income Tax Credit, led to a 9% decrease in the annual number of reports of child neglect made to child welfare agencies over a 14-year study period. That's a significant impact, researchers say, and can inform future social policies. The study is relevant to current policy actions, as President Joe Biden has recently proposed an expansion ...

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. -- Kombucha tea, a trendy fermented beverage, inspired researchers to develop a new way to generate tough, functional materials using a mixture of bacteria and yeast similar to the kombucha mother used to ferment tea. With Army funding, using this mixture, also called a SCOBY, or symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast, engineers at MIT and Imperial College London produced cellulose embedded with enzymes that can perform a variety of functions, such as sensing environmental pollutants and self-healing materials. The team also showed that they could incorporate yeast directly into the cellulose, creating living materials that could be used to purify water for Soldiers in the field or make smart packaging materials that can detect damage. "This ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. - In 2016, the World Health Organization called the Zika virus epidemic a "public health emergency of international concern" due to the virus causing birth defects for pregnant women in addition to neurological problems. Since then, researchers have wrestled with different strategies for controlling the spread of Zika virus, which gets transmitted to humans from female mosquito bites. One approach, which was approved by the Environmental Protection Agency in May, will release more than 750 million genetically modified mosquitos into the Florida Keys in 2021 and 2022. These "suicide mosquitos" are genetically-altered to produce offspring that die before emerging into adults and therefore cannot ...

An international research collaboration, involving scientists from the UK, US and Spain, has shed new light on the usefulness of digital contact tracing (DCT) to control the spread of Covid-19. The study, published today in Nature Communications, assessed the effectiveness of the Spanish DCT app, Radar COVID, following a 4-week experiment conducted in the Canary Islands, Spain between June-July 2020. For the experiment, funded by the Secretary of State of Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence (SEDIA), the researchers simulated a series of Covid infections in the capital of La Gomera, San Sebastián de la Gomera, to understand whether the Radar COVID app technology could ...

Individual variations in how the immune system responds to SARS-CoV-2 appear to impact the severity of disease. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have now been able to show that patients with severe COVID-19 have significantly elevated levels of a certain type of immune cells in their blood, called myeloid-derived suppressor cells. The study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation may bring an increased understanding of how early immune responses impact disease severity. Most individuals with COVID-19 develop mild to moderate symptoms and recover without needing hospital treatment. In severe cases, however, COVID-19 can lead to respiratory failure or even death. It is not yet known ...

Materials scientists of Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU), in collaboration with an international research team, have advanced the design of composite ceramic materials (Ce3+:YAG-Al2O3), i.e. solid-state light converters (phosphors) that can be applied in-ground and aerospace technologies. The LED systems based on the developed materials to save 20-30 percent more energy compared to commercial analogues. A related article was published in Materials Characterization. Over 15% of the total global electricity production or about $ 450 billion annually spent on lighting. According to the photonics development roadmap run in Russia, the development of LED technology with an efficiency of more than 150 ...

Canada could be sitting on a significant untapped resource, as the number of PhD holders in this country rises, but persistent barriers make it hard for them to put their skills to work. According to a new expert panel report from the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA), PhD graduates play a critical role in the Canadian economy, but many are missing out on important opportunities to contribute their expertise and bolster growth and innovation. "The growing number of PhD graduates in Canada could represent a significant opportunity to drive innovation and increase our competitiveness in a global economy," said M. Elizabeth Cannon, O.C., PhD, FRSC, FCAE, Chair of the Expert Panel. "The difficulties graduates face raise important questions about the nature of PhD ...

"74 percent of the respondents consider the national vaccination strategy to be appropriate," says BfR-President Professor Dr. Dr. Andreas Hensel. "This indicates that the strategy is accepted." While some regulations, such as the cancellation of events or the quarantine measures, have always been met with approval in recent months, other measures are now less accepted. Whereas shortly before Christmas, 84 percent of the respondents considered the contact restrictions to be appropriate, 74 percent say so in the current survey. Over the same period, approval of the closure of shops fell by ten percentage points to 56 percent. In the previous ...

BROOKLYN, New York, Monday, January 26, 2021 - Atomically thin, 2D hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) is a promising material whose protean ability to undergo phase transformations to strong, super lightweight, chemically stable, oxidation-resistant films makes them ideal for protective coatings, nanotechnology thermal applications, deep-UV light emitters, and much more. The possibilities embodied in different polytypes of h-BN include the ultra-hard diamond phase, a cubic structure (c-BN) with strength and hardness second only to actual carbon diamonds. Key to fabricating such materials is the ability to induce and control the transformation between their various crystalline phases, in a way that is efficient and cost effective enough to allow for economies of scale. While ...

An international group of scientists is predicting markedly different outcomes for different species of coral reef fishes under climate change - and have made substantial progress on picking the 'winners and losers'. Associate Professor Jodie Rummer from James Cook University's ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies co-authored a study that exposed two species of coral reef fishes to elevated temperatures and measured their responses over time. "We collected five-lined cardinalfish and redbelly yellowtail fusilier from the Great Barrier Reef, and under controlled conditions in the laboratory at JCU, slowly raised the temperature ...

The scientific process is an iterative and collaborative journey. Research is published, others can weigh in on results, and hypotheses can be corroborated, refuted, or further refined and tested. Though it may seem like second guessing or perhaps become contentious in some cases, this often overlooked aspect of the scientific method makes science better by continuing to challenge scientific assertions, thereby expanding and deepening our understanding. An example of this process has been published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in a collaboration between researchers from Louisiana State University, the University of Puerto Rico, and UConn. This new paper is a follow-up to an earlier response published in the same journal in 2018 that told of a collapsing ...

Hydrogen is an important factor in a sustainable energy system. The gas stores energy in chemical form and can be used in many ways: as a fuel, a feedstock for other fuels and chemicals or even to generate electricity in fuel cells. One solution to produce hydrogen in a climate-neutral way is the electrochemical splitting of water with the help of sunlight. This requires photoelectrodes that provide a photovoltage and photocurrent when exposed to light and at the same time do not corrode in water. Metal oxide compounds have promising prerequisites for this. For example, solar water splitting devices using bismuth ...