Culture
Researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago have discovered that endothelial cells -- those that create the inner lining of blood vessels -- have unique genetic signatures based on their location in the body.
ITHACA, N.Y. - After times of major conflict, such as the civil wars in Liberia from 1980 to 2003, peace often leaves a power vacuum, especially in remote areas not yet reached by a developing government.
"In areas of limited statehood, a country's central authority lacks the ability to implement and enforce rules and decisions," Sabrina Karim, assistant professor of government, wrote in new research published in the American Political Science Review.
Ichthyosaurs were fish-like reptiles that first appeared about 250 million years ago and quickly diversified into highly capable swimmers, filling a broad range of sizes and ecologies in the early Mesozoic oceans. However, this rapid pace didn't last long and an evolutionary bottleneck 200 million years ago, through which only one lineage of ichthyosaurs survived, led to much slower evolution in much of their long history.
Scientists have discovered hundreds of unusually large, bacteria-killing viruses with capabilities normally associated with living organisms.
The huge phages were found by scouring a large database of DNA generated from nearly 30 different environments, ranging from the guts of premature infants and pregnant women to a Tibetan hot spring, a South African bioreactor, hospital rooms, oceans, lakes and deep underground.
The joint research project of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that had previously demonstrated the use of new spin structures for future magnetic storage devices has yet achieved another milestone. The international team is working on structures that could serve as magnetic shift registers, so called racetrack memory devices. This type of storage promises low access times, high information density, and low energy consumption.
Cities change as they grow -- not only by adding area or population but also in a variety of other ways, from the length and width of their roads to economic growth to the distribution of elementary schools. Social scientists often clash over the best way to measure change as a city swells. Traditionally, they've taken a cross-sectional approach, which means collecting data on a large number of cities of diverse sizes at the same moment in time. More recently, some researchers have begun studying individual cities over time, in what's called temporal scaling.
Sugarcane bagasse and other kinds of agricultural waste biomass can be used as raw materials for the manufacturing of fine chemicals. To this end, however, it is necessary to develop technologies that are competitive with the processes currently used by the petrochemical industry to obtain these high-value compounds for specialized applications.
Scientists have a pretty good handle on how the birds and the bees work, but it comes to mating, almost all millipedes have been a mystery--until now. For the first time, researchers have puzzled out how these tiny creatures' complex genitalia work, thanks to new imaging techniques and blacklights that make the different tissues glow. The findings are published in a new paper in the journal Arthropod Structure and Development.
There is a growing consensus that the gut microbiome is involved in many aspects of physical and mental health, including the onset of Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, and even some behaviors. The microbiota of the small intestine in particular are likely to have important effects on human health because most nutrients and drugs are absorbed by the body in this location. To study the gut microbiome, researchers typically use mice and rats because these animals are easy to take care of, reproduce quickly, and have many biological similarities to humans.
In 2018, California wildfires burned more than 1.8 million acres and caused smoke to drift hundreds of miles. As the frequency and intensity of wildfires increases with climate change, California agricultural workers are at greater risk of smoke exposure as they often have no option but to work outdoors.
Within days of birth, a few drops of blood are collected from every newborn in California--and across the United States -- which are then stored on filter paper and screened for dozens of genetic and congenital disorders, such as phenylketonuria (PKU), an inherited metabolic disorder that can result in intellectual disability, seizures, heart and behavioral problems.
Citation rates of scholarly journal articles are tracked in many medical specialties and can affect health care treatment and research. Until the publication of a recent Rutgers-led study in JAMA Network Open, there have been no comprehensive bibliometric studies of obstetrics and gynecology articles.
EAST LANSING, Mich. - A Michigan State University- and University of Maryland-led study featured on the cover of this week's Science magazine should sound alarm bells regarding the "biodiversity crisis" or the loss of wildlife around the world.
BOSTON - E-cigarettes have been sold for more than a decade, seemingly without incident, but in the summer of 2019 serious lung injuries began appearing among some e-cigarette users -- especially adolescents and young adults. By last January of 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported more than 2,700 hospitalizations for EVALI, or e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury, and confirmed 60 deaths in 27 states with more under investigation.
A new study led by researchers at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center found that treating soft tissue sarcoma with radiation over a significantly shorter period of time is safe, and likely just as effective, as a much longer conventional course of treatment.