Culture
One of the major concerns about the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic has been the burden that cases will place on the health care system. A new study published April 23 in the journal Health Affairs found that the spread of the virus could cost hundreds of billions of dollars in direct medical expenses alone and require resources such as hospital beds and ventilators that may exceed what is currently available.
The findings demonstrate how these costs and resources can be cut substantially if the spread of COVID-19 coronavirus can be reduced to different degrees.
The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico is following an asteroid approaching Earth this week and while it poses no threat, it appears to know our planet is facing a pandemic.
"The small-scale topographic features such as hills and ridges on one end of asteroid 1998 OR2 are fascinating scientifically," says Anne Virkki, head of Planetary Radar at the observatory, "But since we are all thinking about COVID-19 these features make it look like 1998 OR2 remembered to wear a mask."
Fishing for a living can seem so Zen - a time to be in the moment, just the fisher, the boat, the water.
Yet scientists are throwing a bit of shade on that perception, showing all the arrangements before and after the fish takes the bait - including the bait itself, in fact - must be considered to make effective and equitable policy about global fishing.
Daniela Beckmann, Mirko Feldmann, Olena Shchyglo and Professor Denise Manahan-Vaughan from the Department of Neurophysiology of the Medical Faculty worked together for the study.
When sensory perception fades
The Kem Kem beds in Morocco are famous for the spectacular fossils found there, including at least four large-bodied non-avian theropods, several large-bodied pterosaurs and crocodilians.
Recognition of the needs of wives and intimate partners in supporting the recovery of veterans and front-line emergency workers affected by post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been highlighted in a new study led by Flinders University.
Their contribution to trauma recovery, and their own need for support, are not well understood by military and emergency service organisations, healthcare providers and government, the researchers found when they interviewed 22 partners of Australian veterans, paramedics, fire and police officers.
Researchers have confirmed that neuropeptide somatostatin can improve cognitive function in the brain. A research group of Professor Seung-Hee Lee from the Department of Biological Sciences at KAIST found that the application of neuropeptide somatostatin improves visual processing and cognitive behaviors by reducing excitatory inputs to parvalbumin-positive interneurons in the cortex.
Images from the Akatsuki spacecraft unveil what keeps Venus's atmosphere rotating much faster than the planet itself.
An international research team led by Takeshi Horinouchi of Hokkaido University has revealed that this 'super-rotation' is maintained near the equator by atmospheric tidal waves formed from solar heating on the planet's dayside and cooling on its nightside. Closer to the poles, however, atmospheric turbulence and other kinds of waves have a more pronounced effect. The study was published online in Science on April 23.
Another piece of the puzzle about the longevity of the corpus luteum in lynxes has been uncovered. Scientists at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) and the Leibniz Institute for Molecular Pharmacology (Leibniz-FMP) discovered that selected anti-oxidative enzymes, especially the enzyme superoxide dismutase (SOD2), may play an important role to maintain the unusual longevity of the corpus luteum in lynxes. It is highly likely that SOD2 not only detoxifies the reactive oxygen radicals in the cells, but also inhibits programmed cell death.
Kadir Dede and Dr. Enno Ohlebusch at Ulm University in Germany have devised a method for constructing pan-genome subgraphs at different granularities without having to wait hours and days on end for the software to process the entire genome. Scientists will now be able to create visualizations of pan-genomes on different scales much more rapidly.
The research article "Dynamic construction in pan-genome structures", was published in De Gruyter's open access journal Open Computer Science.
Quantum computing is increasingly becoming the focus of scientists in fields such as physics and chemistry, and industrialists in the pharmaceutical, airplane, and automobile industries. Globally, research labs at companies like Google and IBM are spending extensive resources on improving quantum computers, and with good reason. Quantum computers use the fundamentals of quantum mechanics to process significantly greater amounts of information much faster than classical computers.
Falling visibility in three major African cities reveals that air pollution has increased significantly over the last 45 years - leaving citizens facing further short-term increases in man-made pollution due to increasing urbanization and economic development, a new study reveals.
Africa is not well-equipped with air quality monitoring, so scientists have used visibility data for capital cities in Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda as a substitute measurement.
Two specific cell types in the nose have been identified as likely initial infection points for COVID-19 coronavirus. Scientists discovered that goblet and ciliated cells in the nose have high levels of the entry proteins that the COVID-19 virus uses to get into our cells. The identification of these cells by researchers from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, University Medical Centre Groningen, University Cote d'Azur and CNRS, Nice and their collaborators, as part of the Human Cell Atlas Lung Biological Network, could help explain the high transmission rate of COVID-19.
The Special Turku Coronary Risk Factor Intervention Project (STRIP) of the University of Turku, Finland, examines the benefits of promoting cardiovascular health by dietary counselling from infancy to early adulthood. Altogether 1,116 children and their families from Turku participated in the study starting when the children were 7 months of age.
In 1996, palaeontologists found skeletal remains of a giant shark at the northern coast of Spain, near the city Santander. Here, the coast comprises meter high limestone walls that were deposited during the Cretaceous period, around 85 million years ago, when dinosaurs still roamed the world.