Culture
Yellow fever is a viral infection spread by various species of mosquito and is rife in 34 countries in Africa and 13 in Latin America. Infection may be asymptomatic and go unnoticed or, on the contrary, it may progress rapidly to severe illness with fever, headache, muscle pain, nausea, vomiting and fatigue. The virus attacks the liver cells, often causing jaundice from which the disease gets its name. Severe bleeding occurs in 25 to 50 % of cases, with high levels of mortality observed 7 to 10 days after the onset of symptoms.
BUFFALO, N.Y. - It's sometimes thought that smokers who can't light up are likely to reach for food in lieu of cigarettes. But new research from the University at Buffalo suggests that smoking abstinence doesn't greatly affect the motivation for food.
The study, published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence, used cues and actual money to learn how much smokers might spend for cigarettes, food and water during abstinence. The results provide new insights for how different systems control motivation and reward.
AMHERST, Mass. - Applications like web browsers or smartphone apps often use a lot of memory. To address this, a research group co-led by Emery Berger, a professor of computer science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has developed a system they call Mesh that can automatically reduce such memory demands. Berger is presenting this work today at Cppcon, the C++ conference in Aurora, Colorado.
The drugs currently used to treat Chagas disease, a neglected tropical disease, have serious side effects and limited use in those with chronic disease. Now, researchers have reported in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases that memantine, a drug currently used to treat Alzheimer's disease, can diminish the number of parasites in mice with Chagas disease, and increase the survival rate of the animals.
For the sheep of St. Kilda, growing old brings with it a late-life decline in immune resistance against pervasive parasitic worms, which greatly reduces the animal's chances of surviving overwinter, regardless of overall physiological condition. The study's findings, which compiled the life histories of hundreds of wild sheep into a 26-year record of life and death, offer new insight into the little-understood role of immunosenescence in the wild.
Rapid eye movement, or REM, sleep is a fascinating period when most of our dreams are made. Now, in a study of mice, a team of Japanese and U.S. researchers show that it may also be a time when the brain actively forgets. Their results suggest that forgetting during sleep may be controlled by neurons found deep inside the brain that were previously known for making an appetite stimulating hormone. The study was funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), part of the National Institutes of Health.
Of the major food crops, only rice is currently able to survive flooding. Thanks to new research, that could soon change -- good news for a world in which rains are increasing in both frequency and intensity.
It is well established that weakened immune systems in old age affect people's health and fitness, but a study suggests that it is also an issue for wild animals.
Researchers studying wild Soay sheep on the remote St Kilda archipelago have revealed that the animals' immune responses to parasitic worms decline through adulthood.
Animals that show faster deterioration in resistance to the worms - which live in the sheep's gut - are more likely to die during the following winter.
People with psychopathic traits are predisposed toward antisocial behavior that can result in “unsuccessful” outcomes such as incarceration. However, many individuals with psychopathic traits are able to control their antisocial tendencies and avoid committing the antagonistic acts that can result.
One of the top qualities that we look for in a long-term partner is kindness, according to new research by Swansea University.
In a paper published by the Journal of Personality, researchers had over 2,700 college students from across the globe build themselves an ideal lifelong partner by using a fixed budget to "buy" characteristics.
While traits like physical attractiveness and financial prospects were important, the one that was given the highest priority was kindness.
DURHAM, N.C. -- Broken bones are a bigger deal the older you are: even after they've healed, the bones of older people are weaker and more likely to re-fracture. And since more than 6 million Americans break a bone each year, figuring out how to help people heal better would make a big difference.
In a paper published in JCI Insight on Sept. 19, Duke scientists found that a certain protein, which is more prevalent in older people, interferes with bone healing. They hope this discovery will lead to new treatments to help people heal after injuries or surgeries.
(Boston)--A method to create a faster and lower cost alternative for a gene therapy tool has been developed by Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) researchers.
Gene therapy is a clinical technique that introduce genes to treat disease. One approach is to use adeno-associated virus (AAV) as a tool to deliver the gene, but production of large quantities of AAV tends to be complicated and costly.
BUSM researchers have developed an advanced protocol to produce large quantities of AAVs, viral vectors that can deliver a specific gene into humans and animals.
Proteins are essential for every living cell and responsible for many fundamental processes. In particular, they are required as bio-catalysts in metabolism and for signalling inside the cell and between cells. Many diseases come about as a result of failures in this communication, and the origins of signalling in proteins have been a source of great scientific debate. Now, for the first time, a team of researchers at the University of Göttingen has actually observed the mobile protons that do this job in each and every living cell, thus providing new insights into the mechanisms.
An internationally respected group of scientists, including Professor Francois Engelbrecht from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, have urgently called on world leaders to accelerate efforts to tackle climate change. Almost every aspect of the planet's environment and ecology is undergoing changes in response to climate change, some of which will be profound, if not catastrophic, in the future.
MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. (Sept. 19, 2019)--College-student voting rates in the 2018 midterm elections doubled compared to the 2014 midterms, marking a watershed election year for student voter turnout, according to a report today from the Institute for Democracy & Higher Education (IDHE) at Tufts University's Tisch College of Civic Life. The report, Democracy Counts 2018, is based on an analysis of the voting patterns of more than 10 million college students on more than 1,000 campuses participating in the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE).