Eurekalert

In March 2020, daily life in the United States changed in an instant as the country locked down to deal with the initial wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. New research reveals how residents in one community returned to their routines as the restrictions lifted, according to a team of Penn State scientists.

Columbia research finds that some cases of OCD are caused by damaging gene variants that, while rare, provide a needed starting point for the development of better therapeutics.

An international team including astronomers from UC Davis has observed the first example of a new type of supernova. The discovery, confirming a prediction made four decades ago, could lead to new insights into the life and death of stars.

A new discovery in rats shows that the brain responds differently in immersive virtual reality environments versus the real world. The finding could pave the way for "virtual reality therapy" for learning and memory-related disorders ranging including ADHD, autism, Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy and depression.

Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital have developed a "designer" probiotic -- a thoughtfully engineered yeast that can induce multiple effects for treating IBD.

All life on Earth 500 million years ago lived in the oceans, but scientists know little about how these animals and algae developed. A newly discovered fossil deposit near Kunming, China, may hold the keys to understanding how these organisms laid the foundations for life on land and at sea today, according to an international team of researchers.

Engineers at MIT and Harvard have designed a prototype face mask that can diagnose the person wearing the mask with Covid-19 within about 90 minutes. The technology can also be used to design wearable sensors for a variety of other pathogens or toxic chemicals.

A worldwide team led by scientists at Las Cumbres Observatory has discovered the first convincing evidence for a new type of stellar explosion -- an electron-capture supernova. The discovery also sheds new light on the thousand-year mystery of the supernova from A.D. 1054 that was seen all over the world in the daytime, before eventually becoming the Crab Nebula.

A worldwide team led by UC Santa Barbara scientists at Las Cumbres Observatory has discovered the first convincing evidence for a new type of stellar explosion -- an electron-capture supernova. While they have been theorized for 40 years, real-world examples have been elusive. They are thought to arise from the explosions of massive super-asymptotic giant branch (SAGB) stars, for which there has also been scant evidence.

The thin, flexible, lightweight device could be used in patients who need temporary pacing after cardiac surgery or while waiting for a permanent pacemaker. All components of the pacemaker are biocompatible and naturally absorb into the body's biofluids over the course of five to seven weeks, without needing surgical extraction.

What if your face mask could tell you if you have COVID-19? Now it can, thanks to researchers from the Wyss Institute and MIT. They embedded freeze-dried cell-free biological reactions that can detect SARS-CoV-2 in a patient's breath into a face mask, creating a wearable diagnostic that can quickly and accurately diagnose COVID-19.

A gene variant that lowers white blood cell levels and is common in individuals with African ancestry contributes to unnecessary bone marrow biopsies, according to a study published June 28 in JAMA Internal Medicine. The findings from three institutions, led by investigators at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, provide an example of how using genetic data could reduce a health disparity.

What The Study Did: High school students in Austria were surveyed about their well-being, sleep quality, eating and symptoms of depression and anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic.

What The Study Did: Researchers compared health care access and quality scores for the United States with high-income countries with universal health insurance coverage and compared scores among U.S. states with varying insurance coverage.

What The Study Did: The rates, duration and dosages of opioids prescribed to children, adolescents and young adults from 2006 to 2018 were examined in this study.

In a statement published in JAMA Pediatrics, researchers at the Nationwide Children's Hospital, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the nonprofit research institute RTI International responded to a call from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) requesting information on how to prevent Black youth suicide. The researchers emphasize the need for research and action of suicide prevention among Black youth must start from the ground up.

Amyloid diseases, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, type-2 diabetes and other life-threatening diseases, involve pathologic deposits of normally soluble proteins or peptides as insoluble amyloid fibrils. When this happens in vital organs, such as the brain, kidney, liver and heart, it causes organ damage and, if left untreated, death. Unfortunately, the available treatment options are very limited.

Newly-available scientific evidence, which could prove critical to the success of climate-related lawsuits, is often not produced in court

Patients with a type of blood cancer called multiple myeloma had a widely variable response to COVID-19 vaccines--in some cases, no detectable response--pointing to the need for antibody testing and precautions for these patients after vaccination, according to a study published in Cancer Cell in June.

Oregon State University researchers have some good news for the well-meaning masses who place bird feeders in their yards: The small songbirds who visit the feeders seem unlikely to develop an unhealthy reliance on them.