Culture
Palm oil is often associated with tropical deforestation above all else. However, this is only one side of the story, as agricultural scientists from the University of Göttingen and the IPB University Bogor (Indonesia) show in a new study. The rapid expansion of oil palm has also contributed considerably to economic growth and poverty reduction in local communities, particularly in Asia. The study was published in the Annual Review of Resource Economics.
The organ of balance in the inner ear is surrounded by the hardest bone in the body. Using synchrotron X-rays, researchers at Uppsala University have discovered a drainage system that may be assumed to play a major role in the onset of Ménière's disease, a common and troublesome disorder. These results are published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Bethesda, MD (May 19, 2020) -- Gastroenterology, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA), has released a special issue providing clinicians and researchers an up-to-date resource on the risk factors, natural history, diagnosis and treatment of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).
In a new study, researchers from the Colorado School of Public Health at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus call attention to the emergence of mosquito-borne viral outbreaks in West Africa, such as dengue (DENV), chikungunya (CHIKV) and Zika (ZIKV) viruses.
The findings are published in the current issue of Acta Tropica.
ANN ARBOR, Michigan -- Recent large-scale efforts to categorize the molecular data of multiple cancer types has yielded so much information that researchers now have a new question: How to turn all this data into meaningful information that guides cancer research and patient care.
A new analytic tool developed by University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center researchers combines multiple data sets to help sift the signal from the noise.
As people get older, they often feel less energetic, mobile or active. This may be due in part to a decline in mitochondria, the tiny powerhouses inside of our cells, which provide energy and regulate metabolism. In fact, mitochondria decline with age not only in humans, but in many species. Why they do so is not well understood. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Cologne set out to understand how mitochondrial function is diminished with age and to find factors that prevent this process.
AUSTIN, Texas -- Seeing someone do something good for someone else motivates witnesses to perform their own helpful acts, an insight that could help drive cooperative behavior in communities navigating through the health crisis.
Scientists working at caesar have developed a small head-mounted microscope that allows access to the inner workings of the brain. The new system enables measurement of activity from neuronal populations located in the deep cortical layer with single-cell resolution, in an animal that is freely behaving.
WASHINGTON, May 19, 2020 -- As the infectious virus causing the COVID-19 disease began its devastating spread around the globe, an international team of scientists was alarmed by the lack of uniform approaches by various countries' epidemiologists to respond to it.
WASHINGTON, May 19, 2020 -- Airborne transmission of viruses, like the virus causing COVID-19, is not well understood, but a good baseline for study is a deeper understanding of how particles travel through the air when people cough.
In a paper published in Physics of Fluids, from AIP Publishing, Talib Dbouk and Dimitris Drikakis discovered that with even a slight breeze of 4 kph, saliva travels 18 feet in 5 seconds.
MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE and BOSTON, Mass. (May 19, 2020) - A team of researchers at Tufts University's School of Engineering and its School of Medicine, and physicians at Tufts Medical Center have developed a method using fluorescence to detect precancerous metabolic and physical changes in epithelial cells lining the cervix. According to the researchers, the new imaging method opens the door to a non-invasive, early-stage bedside diagnostic.
(Boston)--The same genes that greatly increase the risk of breast cancer in U.S. white women, including women of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, also greatly increase breast cancer risk among African American women. These genes include the BRCA1, BRCA2 and PALB2 genes, each of which was associated with a more than seven-fold risk of breast cancer, as well as four other genes associated with a more moderate increase in risk. Previous studies of women of African ancestry were too small to assess genes other than BRCA1 and BRCA2.
Food production has always shaped the lives of humans and the surface of the Earth. Be it plough or refrigerator, time and again innovations have transformed the ways we grow, process, and consume food over the last millennia. Today, with almost 40 per cent of all land on Earth used for food production, the food system massively impacts climate and environment - from nitrogen flows to water use, from biodiversity to greenhouse gas emissions.
A new study shows that when specific human brain cells are transplanted into animal models of multiple sclerosis and other white matter diseases, the cells repair damage and restore function. The study provides one of the final pieces of scientific evidence necessary to advance this treatment strategy to clinical trials.
Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel sources reached a maximum daily decline of 17 per cent in April as a result of drastic decline in energy demand that have occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The preliminary analysis, published today in Nature Climate Change, was conducted by researchers from the University of East Anglia, Stanford University, the CICERO Center for International Climate Research and CSIRO as part of the Global Carbon Project.