Culture
Lung cancer patients are at heightened risk for COVID-19 and the reported high mortality rate among lung cancer patients with COVID-19 has given pause to oncologists who are faced with patients with not one, but two severe, life-threatening diseases.
MANHATTAN, KANSAS -- An interdisciplinary team of Kansas State University researchers developed a computer simulation that revealed beef supply chain vulnerabilities that need safeguarding -- a realistic concern during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Caterina Scoglio, professor, and Qihui Yang, doctoral student, both in electrical and computer engineering, recently published "Developing an agent-based model to simulate the beef cattle production and transportation in southwest Kansas" in Physica A, an Elsevier journal publication.
The results of a study conducted by the University of Tartu on the prevalence of the coronavirus were presented to the Government Committee responsible for the emergency situation on Tuesday. The results from the second week of the study continue to confirm the low prevalence of the virus in Estonia.
A parent who knows a child's preferences and participates in the activities can guide the child assertively without diminishing the child's enthusiasm for physical activity and exercise. However, children's enthusiasm to move was most commonly associated with child-centered and stimulating parenting. In an interview study conducted at the Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences of the University of Jyväskylä, children perceived coercion as reducing their motivation for physical activity.
Although they do it differently than humans, plants also have memories. For example, many plants can sense and remember prolonged cold in the Winter to ensure they flower at the right time during the Spring. This so-called "epigenetic memory" occurs by modifying specialized proteins called histones, which are important for packaging and indexing DNA in the cell. One such histone modification, called H3K27me3, tends to mark genes that are turned off. In the case of flowering, cold conditions cause H3K27me3 to accumulate at genes that control flowering.
Scientists have discovered a new treatment to dramatically reduce swelling after brain and spinal cord injuries, offering hope to 75 million victims worldwide each year.
The breakthrough in treating such injuries - referred to as central nervous system (CNS) edema - is thought to be hugely significant because current options are limited to putting patients in an induced coma or performing risky surgery.
What The Viewpoint Says: Publicly available data were used to analyze the number of deaths from seasonal influenza deaths compared with deaths from COVID-19.
Authors: Jeremy Samuel Faust, M.D., M.S., of Harvard Medical School and 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/jamainternmed.2020.2306)
What The Study Did: Researchers looked at whether a patient's body weight and weight loss before bariatric surgery were associated with risk of death within 30 days after surgery using data from nearly 500,000 patients in the U.S. and Canada.
Authors: Wei Bao, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Iowa College of Public Health in Iowa City, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
New research from the University of Sheffield into stem cells could help make regenerative medicine safer
Regenerative medicine involves using pluripotent stem cells to repair damaged or diseased tissues in the body
The new research has suggested ways to reduce the likelihood of mutations occurring in these cells when cultured.
Research from the University of Sheffield has given new insight into the cause of mutations in pluripotent stem cells and potential ways of stopping these mutations from occurring.
Since 2013, following strict enforcement of provincial wildlife legislation in the less studied regions of Asia, the overall trend of illegal reptile poaching is steadily decreasing. But it's too early to claim that the issue is solved.
Astronomers using the Subaru Telescope have determined that the Earth-like planets of the TRAPPIST-1 system are not significantly misaligned with the rotation of the star. This is an important result for understanding the evolution of planetary systems around very low-mass stars in general, and in particular the history of the TRAPPIST-1 planets including the ones near the habitable zone.
Today Boa snakes have a patchy distribution in the islands that form the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean Sea, but the constrictors are nearly absent from archaeological deposits in the region. Whether this scarcity is due to past species distribution, poor preservation conditions, or a lack of interaction with human communities, remains unknown.
The laboratory of the UMA "BacBio" has proved that Bacillus subtilis cells, when deprived of an amyloid protein (TasA), exhibit a range of cytological anomalies and dysfunctions leading to their premature death. A discovery that enables progress to be made in understanding the role of these proteins, widely distributed in the microbial world, and helps improve biological control methods in sustainable agriculture. This research has been recently published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.
S. maltophilia strains occur in several natural and human associated ecosystems. The bacterium was long regarded as relatively unproblematic but is now considered to be one of the most feared hospital pathogens, as it frequently causes infections and is resistant to a number of antibiotics. This can be particularly dangerous for immune-compromised patients or for patients with underlying inflammatory lung diseases such as cystic fibrosis.
Modern bioinformatics allows us to take a look into the past and find out when certain species diverged during evolution, which of them still are genetically close to each other, and which are not. An international team of researchers, which, among others, includes the academic supervisor of ITMO University's Laboratory of Genomic Diversity and researchers from the University of Copenhagen, Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, and other research centers from all over the world, analyzed the genomes of extinct and living lions.