Culture
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- Brown University researchers have developed a new antibacterial coating for intravascular catheters that could one day help to prevent catheter-related bloodstream infections, the most common type of hospital-acquired infection.
It's widely accepted within agriculture that maintaining genetic diversity is important. In areas where crop plants are more diverse, pathogens might kill some plants but are less likely to wipe out an entire crop.
Few studies, however, have focused on such highly specialized pathogens in natural plant communities. In diverse plant communities, pathogens are thought to maintain diversity by killing common species, making room for rare ones. But what happens to diversity if, like in agriculture, pathogens harm some plants within a species, but not all?
During his first week in office, President Donald J. Trump issued an executive order known as the Expanded Global Gag Rule that cuts funding to foreign aid organizations that provide or refer women to abortions. A new journal article by researchers in the Global Health Justice and Governance program (GHJG) at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health argues that the policy is having a chilling effect, dampening debate, advocacy, and collaboration around abortion and other sexual and reproductive rights.
Restrictive entry and integration policies are having an adverse effect on the health of migrants in high-income countries, according to the most comprehensive assessment of the impact of general migration policies on migrant health, published in The Lancet Global Health journal.
Testosterone replacement is increasingly used by older men, particularly in the United States. The Food and Drug Administration has warned of the risk of heart attack and stroke on testosterone, and requested a large randomized controlled trial to assess the cardiovascular effects of testosterone.
States with more permissive gun laws and greater gun ownership have higher rates of mass shootings, and a growing divide is emerging between states with restrictive versus permissive gun laws. According to a new study, researchers at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health found that in most years permissive states had higher mass shooting rates compared to restrictive states.
Scientists are urging for improved regulation on pesticides after finding that they affect genes in bumblebees, according to research led by Queen Mary University of London in collaboration with Imperial College London.
For the first time, researchers applied a biomedically inspired approach to examine changes in the 12,000 genes that make up bumblebee workers and queens after pesticide exposure.
The study, published in Molecular Ecology, shows that genes which may be involved in a broad range of biological processes are affected.
Too much time in front of the bedroom TV deprives the child of more enriching developmental activities and may explain, in part, less optimal body mass, poor eating habits and socio-emotional difficulties as a teenager, says the study, published Dec. 26 in Pediatric Research.
"The early years are a critical period in a child's development," said study author Linda Pagani, a professor at UdeM's School of Psycho-Education, who will be discussing her study today at the International Convention of Psychological Science, in Paris.
Researchers at the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) have implemented an experimental test for quantum scrambling, a chaotic shuffling of the information stored among a collection of quantum particles.
Demand for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) degrees is on the rise. However, there are many barriers to gaining one.
One may be the appearance of the student seeking the degree, according to a new Rice University study. The extent to which students look racially stereotypical - that is, more or less like members of their racial group - influences how likely they are to persist in a STEM-related field.
Cold Spring Harbor, NY - It's no secret that our genes are what makes us... us! But genes are often also the basis for debilitating diseases. One of the major clues to understanding any illness is seeing which genes are acting unusually during disease onset. But it's not often clear if unusual gene activity is unique to the disease at hand, or is merely a more general symptom of an unhealthy body. Now, scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) have crafted a ranked list of usual suspects that could prove invaluable for researchers and clinicians.
BOSTON, MA - Daily bathing with an antiseptic soap, plus nasal ointment for patients with prior antibiotic resistant bacteria, reduced hospital acquired infections among patients with central venous catheters and other devices that pierce the skin, according to results of the ABATE Infection Trial. The trial was a 53 hospital randomized trial involving approximately 340,000 patients led by researchers from the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, the University of California Irvine, Rush University and HCA Healthcare (HCA).
Those of us who drive regularly are keenly aware of gas prices and their daily fluctuations. Many of the factors that influence the price per gallon -- the cost of crude oil, regional taxes and processing and transportation charges -- affect all pumps in a given area. Why then do some stations charge more for fuel than others in the same general geographic location?
An Australian study of more than 1200 women has found regular phone calls between first time mothers and other volunteer mothers with previous breastfeeding experience may be the key to boosting national breastfeeding rates.
La Trobe University and the Royal Women's Hospital's Ringing Up about Breastfeeding EarlY (RUBY) trial involved more than 1000 new mothers from the Women's, Monash and Sunshine hospitals, and 230 women with personal breastfeeding experience who volunteered to become telephone support peers.
Using computer simulations and 3D models, palaeontologists from the University of Bristol have uncovered more detail on how Mesozoic sea dragons swam.
The research, published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, sheds new light on their energy demands while swimming, showing that even the first ichthyosaurs had body shapes well adapted to minimise resistance and maximise volume, in a similar way to modern dolphins.
Ichthyosaurs are an extinct group of sea-going reptiles that lived during the Mesozoic Era, around 248-93.9 million years ago.