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Fast turnaround of COVID-19 test results for healthcare workers is critical. Investigators have now developed a COVID-19 testing strategy that maximizes the proportion of negative results after a single round of testing, allowing prompt notification of results. The method also reduces the need for increasingly limited test reagents, as fewer additional tests are required. Their strategy is described in The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics, published by Elsevier.

Henry Ford Health System researchers find that opioids are unnecessary for pain relief following knee surgery.

A Lancaster University professor has introduced a new concept for rapidly analysing for the presence of a virus from colds to coronaviruses. However, although the concept can identify that someone has a type of coronavirus for example, it would not be able to determine the type of coronavirus, or variants. Additional tests would still be required to find out the specific virus someone was infected with.

A new study involving University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Associate Professor Karen Lloyd finds a new microbial ecosystem thriving in violent conditions.

Amsterdam, April 26, 2021 - Individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) face a wide range of symptoms and challenges. A team from Parkinson's UK, including several Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) contributors, surveyed patients to find out which PD symptoms troubled them most and how priorities may change with condition duration. Their goal was to identify where improved treatments and strategies are most needed to help maintain independence and quality of life. They report their findings in the Journal of Parkinson's Disease.

Brain changes in people with Alzheimer's disease and in those with mild traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) have significant similarities.

A study by a University of Illinois Chicago pediatric dentist has shown a novel way to track potential COVID-19 cases -- testing children who visit the dentist. The study also showed an over 2% positivity rate for the asymptomatic children tested.

A team of researchers from multiple institutions have successfully come up with a novel way of transforming an otherwise less-conducting organic material into an efficient conductor of electricity for electronic application. This paves the way for development of cost-effective, structurally and functionally amenable semiconductor devices, thus marking the dawn of a new era in semiconductor technology.

Blood transfusions are a common procedure in medical practice in which donated blood is used to replace blood lost to injury or surgery or to treat serious medical conditions. The procedure is not performed as routinely in the treatment of pet cats - but, as in people, can be lifesaving. The availability of donors has been a limitation in primary care veterinary practice, but with the growth of blood banks providing greater access to feline blood, the procedure is likely to become more commonplace.

Researchers led by Maurizio Porfiri at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, apply data science to predict how the cascading effects of the migration in Bangladesh will ultimately affect 1.3 million people across the country by 2050.

A NUST MISIS professor was part of an international research team that has found evidence for the existence of the Zeeman spin-orbit coupling in antiferromagnetic conductors. This work may pave the way for the next generation of electronics. The study was published in npj Quantum Materials.

A new study by five doctoral students in neuroscience at the University of Minnesota Medical School calls attention to a lack of regulation and unknown long-term health effects of tear gas. Based on their research, the group recommends changing the protocols around the use of tear gas as a crowd control measure at both the local and national level.

A national study of 20,000 patients conducted by RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences and the HSE Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) has identified the underlying conditions that are associated with more severe outcomes from COVID-19 in an Irish setting.

As a potential framework for assessing an asymptomatic person's risk of developing dementia, the National Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer's Association have endorsed a research tool based on three biomarkers called the AT(N) framework--A, for amyloid, T for tau, and (N) for neurodegeneration or atrophy. However, a new study by researchers in Seattle suggests a subset of people classified by this approach as having the highest risk for dementia will not develop dementia in their lifetime.

Deaths of people who suffered strokes increased during the first lockdown compared to the three previous years, new data analysis has found. Despite the pandemic, health care quality was maintained at a high level.

According to the Motorik-Modul-Längsschnittstudie (MoMo, Motor Module Longitudinal Study) of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Karlsruhe University of Education (PHKA), mental health of children and adolescents decreased during the first lockdown. For children aged between 4 and 10 years and for girls irrespective of their age, mental health was found to promote physical activity during Covid-induced lockdown in spring 2020. This is reported in Children (DOI: 10.3390/children8020098).

New research finds that steroids should not be used to treat smell loss caused by COVID-19. Instead, the international team of smell experts recommend 'smell training' - a process that involves sniffing at least four different odours twice a day for several months.

One third of people in the UK managed to access the hospital care they needed at the peak of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.Researchers looked at the extent to which people managed to access NHS healthcare in April 2020 and as lockdown restrictions eased.They found equal access to NHS hospital care for people at different levels of income. But those on higher incomes had better access to GP consultations, prescriptions, medical helplines at the peak of the first wave.

Smart assistant devices often need to perform speech translation, which does not always produce the desired voice identity due to drawbacks in the conventional voice conversion (VC) model. In a new study, researchers from Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology designed a VC model that mimics and controls speaker voice identity during speech translation using two deep learning based training frameworks, opening doors to voice modification, voice restoring, and voice cloning applications.

Entering Monday with some cool news: Researchers from Skoltech (Russia) and their colleagues from SINTEF (Norway) have developed a mathematical model of freezing water droplets moving in cold air. This model is a part of a joint RFBR-supported Russian-Norway research project. The project is focused on predicting ice accretion on ships and other offshore structures operating in the Arctic climate, which may interfere with their proper functioning and endanger crew members and cargo.