Culture
Australia has often been unfairly portrayed as an old and idle continent with little geological activity, but new research suggests that we remain geologically active and that some of our mountains are still growing.
The University of Melbourne study reveals that parts of the Eastern Highlands of Victoria, including popular skiing destinations such as Mt Baw Baw and Mt Buller, may be as young as five million years, not 90 million years as originally thought.
An alternating cycle of 50 days of strict lockdown followed by 30 days of easing could be an effective strategy for reducing the number of COVID-19-related deaths and admissions to intensive care units, say an international team of researchers.
The coronavirus pandemic has imposed an unprecedented challenge on global healthcare systems, societies and governments. The virus SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19 disease, has been detected in every country, with more than 4.6 million confirmed cases and a death toll of 312,000 worldwide to date.
The largest prospective study of adult COVID-19 patients in USA to date confirms that critical illness is common among hospitalized patients (22%, 257/1150). Critically ill COVID-19 patients frequently require mechanical ventilation (79%, 203/257) and death rates among such patients are high (39%, 101/257). Risk factors associated with in-hospital death, including older age and chronic heart and lung disease, are consistent with reports from Italy, China and the UK.
When early tetrapods transitioned from water to land the way they breathed air underwent an evolutionary revolution. Fish use muscles in their head to pump water over their gills. The first land animals utilized a similar technique--modern frogs still use their head and throat to force air into their lungs. Then another major transformation in vertebrate evolution took place that shifted breathing from the head to the torso. In reptiles and mammals, the ribs expand to create a space in the chest that draws in breath. But what caused the shift?
A collaboration between scientists at the Medical University of South Carolina and clinicians at the Greenwood Genetic Center has yielded new findings about how a particular gene might regulate brain development.
A paper published in Biological Psychiatry showcases how the researchers connected problems in mice with a defective copy of the MEF2C gene to issues suffered in real life by patients seen at the Greenwood Genetic Center who also have a defective copy of that gene.
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- As millions continue working from home during the pandemic or are required to report to jobs as essential employees, many have raised questions about how these work conditions impact our health -- and not just as they relate to COVID-19.
A new study from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business finds that our mental health and mortality have a strong correlation with the amount of autonomy we have at our job, our workload and job demands, and our cognitive ability to deal with those demands.
Researchers in the Ludwig Center at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center report they have identified a drug treatment that could--if given early enough--potentially reduce the risk of death from the most serious complication of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), also known as SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Sometimes proteins misfold. When that happens in the human brain, the pileup of misfolded proteins can lead to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and ALS.
Proteins do not misbehave and misfold out of the blue. There is a delicate ecosystem of biochemical interactions and environments that usually let them twist, unfold, refold and do their jobs as they're meant to.
However, as researchers from Michigan Technological University explore in an article published in ACS Chemical Neuroscience, even a small change may cause long-term consequences.
COLD SPRING HARBOR, NEW YORK -- In an important, comprehensive, and timely review, an expert team from the University of California Berkeley details the methodologies used in nucleic acid-based tests for detecting the presence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. They show that these tests vary widely in applicability to mass screening and urge further improvements in testing technologies to increase speed and availability.
According to a UC Davis study, adolescents and young adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and those with typical development show similar proactive cognitive control. However, symptoms of depression in individuals with autism were linked to less proactive control.
Researchers at the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed a new technique that can determine the specific molecular form, location, and the amount of lipids in samples of rat brain tissue. The technique provides more information than previous methods.
Traditional stroke treatments like clot-dissolving tPA and surgical removal of big clots in the brain are good choices as well when the stroke results from SARS-CoV-2 infection, investigators report.
Medical personnel treating coronavirus cases in China have higher rates of anxiety and other mental health symptoms than the general population, according to a new study in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Ning Sun of Ningbo College of Health Science in Ningbo China, and colleagues.
To better understand and mitigate the health risks faced by astronauts from exposure to space radiation, we ideally need to be able to test the effects of Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCRs) here on Earth under laboratory conditions. An article publishing on May 19, 2020 in the open access journal PLOS Biology from Lisa Simonsen and colleagues at the NASA Langley Research Center, USA, describes how NASA has developed a ground-based GCR Simulator at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL), located at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Dr. Akhilesh K. Gaharwar, associate professor, has developed a highly printable bioink as a platform to generate anatomical-scale functional tissues. This study was recently published in the American Chemical Society's Applied Materials and Interfaces.
Bioprinting is an emerging additive manufacturing approach that takes biomaterials such as hydrogels and combines them with cells and growth factors, which are then printed to create tissue-like structures that imitate natural tissues.