Culture
Suicide is now the second most common cause of death among American youth. Fatal suicides rose 30 percent between 2000 and 2016, and 2016 alone saw 1.3 million nonfatal suicide attempts. Now, a study led by Boston Children's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital demonstrates that a predictive computer model can identify patients at risk for attempting suicide from patterns in their electronic health records -- an average of two years ahead of time.
Using the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan, Marta Cerruti, an Associate Professor in McGill's Department of Materials Engineering, and her team analyzed damaged heart valves from patients who had undergone transplants.
Their findings, recently published in Acta Biomaterialia, show considerable differences in the mineral deposits found in aortic valves of men and women who suffer from stenosis, a life-threatening heart condition caused by a narrowing of the aortic valve opening.
A new study led by McGill University has found that tectonic plates beneath the Earth's surface can show varying degrees of roughness and could help explain why certain earthquakes are stronger than others.
Earthquakes happen when the rocks beneath the Earth's surface break along geological fault lines and slide past each other. The properties of these faults - such as the roughness of their surface - can have an influence on the size of seismic events, however their study has been challenging because they are buried deep beneath the Earth's surface.
New research finds a connection between destructive white blood cells and a more severe disease course in patients with COVID-19.
"We found that patients with COVID-19 infection have higher blood levels of neutrophil extracellular traps, also called NETs, which are a product of an inflammatory type of neutrophil cell death called NETosis," says first author Yu (Ray) Zuo, M.D., a Michigan Medicine rheumatologist.
Below please find a summary and link(s) of new coronavirus-related content published today in Annals of Internal Medicine. The summaries below are not intended to substitute for the full article as a source of information. A collection of coronavirus-related content is free to the public at http://go.annals.org/coronavirus.
Ventilator Triage Policies During the COVID-19 Pandemic at U.S. Hospitals Associated With Members of the Association of Bioethics Program Directors
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- While most people will say they are extremely concerned with their online privacy, previous experiments have shown that, in practice, users readily divulge privacy information online.
In a study published in the latest Proceedings of Computer-Human Interaction (CHI 2020), a team of Penn State researchers identified a dozen subtle -- but powerful -- reasons that may shed light on why people talk a good game about privacy, but fail to follow up in real life.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- People find it convenient to use Facebook or other social media accounts to sign up for most new apps and services, but they prefer to use their e-mail address or open a new account if they feel the information in the app is too sensitive, according to a team of researchers.
In a study, the researchers said participants were willing to use their Facebook ID to access relationship apps, such as class reunion and matchmaking apps, but balked at using the same feature for an app that arranges extramarital affairs.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - Individuals who fear talking in front of a crowd could soon have a new tool to ease public speaking anxiety: their smart speaker.
A team of researchers at Penn State has developed a public-speaking tutor on the Amazon Alexa platform. The tutor enables users to engage in cognitive restructuring exercise - a psychological technique that helps anxious individuals recognize and modify negative thinking behaviors. When users deployed the tutor in a recent study, their pre-speech anxiety was relieved, according to the researchers.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - Giving users of smart assistants the option to adjust settings for privacy or content delivery, or both, doesn't necessarily increase their trust in the platform, according to a team of Penn State researchers. In fact, for some users, it could have an unfavorable effect.
Atoms and molecules behave very differently at extreme temperatures and pressures. Although such extreme matter doesn't exist naturally on the earth, it exists in abundance in the universe, especially in the deep interiors of planets and stars. Understanding how atoms react under high-pressure conditions--a field known as high-energy-density physics (HEDP)--gives scientists valuable insights into the fields of planetary science, astrophysics, fusion energy, and national security.
The use of big data can help scientists' chart not only the degradation of the environment but can be part of the solution to achieve sustainability, according to a new commentary paper.
The paper, 'Opportunities for big data in conservation and sustainability', published today in Nature Communications, said increased computing speeds and data storage had grown the volume of big data in the last 40 years, but the planet was still facing serious decline.
NASA is celebrating the Hubble Space Telescope's 30 years of unlocking the beauty and mystery of space by unveiling a stunning new portrait of a firestorm of starbirth in a neighboring galaxy.
In this Hubble portrait, the giant red nebula (NGC 2014) and its smaller blue neighbor (NGC 2020) are part of a vast star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, located 163,000 light-years away. The image is nicknamed the "Cosmic Reef," because it resembles an undersea world.
Hubble Space Telescope's iconic images and scientific breakthroughs have redefined our view of the Universe. To commemorate three decades of scientific discoveries, this image is one of the most photogenic examples of the many turbulent stellar nurseries the telescope has observed during its 30-year lifetime. The portrait features the giant nebula NGC 2014 and its neighbour NGC 2020 which together form part of a vast star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, approximately 163 000 light-years away.
The larvae of the roundworm Heligmosomoides polygyrus bakeri (Hpb) need a very special environment in order to survive: They have to invade the mucosal layer of the intestine in rodents, the only place where they can then develop into adult worms capable of reproduction. To do this, the tiny larvae have to outdo the host's immune system, which defends the host against the intruders with inflammatory reactions, the secretion of fluids and muscle contractions. "Normally the larvae of the parasitic worm would have no chance of withstanding these immune responses.
In an unprecedented effort, hundreds of thousands of researchers and clinicians worldwide are locked in a race against time to develop cures, vaccines, and better diagnostic tests for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2.