Culture
Specific respiratory microbiome communities may be linked to influenza susceptibility, according to a study published January 9, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Betsy Foxman from the University of Michigan, USA, and colleagues.
Observations from Gemini Observatory identify a key fingerprint of an extremely distant quasar, allowing astronomers to sample light emitted from the dawn of time. Astronomers happened upon this deep glimpse into space and time thanks to an unremarkable foreground galaxy acting as a gravitational lens, which magnified the quasar's ancient light. The Gemini observations provide critical pieces of the puzzle in confirming this object as the brightest appearing quasar so early in the history of the Universe, raising hopes that more sources like this will be found.
The streams of electromagnetic energy released from a star destroyed by the tidal forces of a supermassive black hole nearly 290 million light years away encode valuable information about the physical properties of black holes, a new study finds. The results provide a new way to identify types of black holes that have been challenging to observe using other means. It's thought that a black hole lies at the center of nearly all massive galaxies. Most are inactive and do not produce any observable electromagnetic radiation, making them difficult to detect.
ANN ARBOR--Long ago in a galaxy far, far away, fewer galaxies were born than expected--and that could create new questions for galaxy physics, according to a new University of Michigan study.
The study examined the satellite galaxies of Messier 94, or M94, a galaxy similar in size to our Milky Way. Researchers have long known the Milky Way has about 10 smaller, satellite galaxies surrounding it, each with at least a million stars, and up to more than a billion, such as the Magellanic Clouds.
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was associated with cardiovascular disease and cancer, as well as the metabolic syndrome, in a new study.
In the Journal of Neuroscience Research study of 84 individuals diagnosed with PTSD (39 victims of terrorist attacks and 45 victims of other traumatic events), males were more likely to have circulatory and metabolic complications, whereas females had a higher prevalence of benign and malignant cancers.
A new device developed by Stanford University researchers could make it easier for doctors to monitor the success of blood vessel surgery. The sensor, detailed in a paper published Jan. 8 in Nature Biomedical Engineering, monitors the flow of blood through an artery. It is biodegradable, battery-free and wireless, so it is compact and doesn't need to be removed and it can warn a patient's doctor if there is a blockage.
A protein required for development of mosquito eggs may provide a mosquito-selective target for insecticide development, according to a new study publishing on January 8 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology, by Jun Isoe of the University of Arizona and colleagues. Because the protein is specific to mosquitoes, it may be possible to interrupt their egg formation without harming other insects.
Depending on where you live, the buzz of a nearby mosquito can be a nuisance, or it can be deadly. Worldwide, more than 500 million people suffer from diseases transmitted by the blood-feeding insects, including malaria, Dengue Fever, Zika, and West Nile, and nearly a million deaths are attributed to mosquito-borne illnesses each year.
Maunakea, Hawaii - Astronomers have found a new exoplanet that could alter the standing theory of planet formation. With a mass that's between that of Neptune and Saturn, and its location beyond the "snow line" of its host star, an alien world of this scale was supposed to be rare.
Aparna Bhattacharya, a postdoctoral researcher from the University of Maryland and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), led the team that made the discovery, which was announced today during a press conference at the 233rd Meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle.
More than half of female surgeons in the UK have faced or witnessed discrimination in the workplace, suggest the results of a confidential online poll, published in the online journal BMJ Open.
Orthopaedics was seen as the most sexist of all the surgical specialties, the responses showed.
Despite women making up over half of medical school entrants in the UK, less than a third opt for a career in surgery, which is widely acknowledged to be a male-dominated environment.
Caring for preterm babies in single family rooms appears to reduce the incidence of sepsis and improve exclusive breastfeeding rates compared with traditional open ward neonatal units, according to a systematic review and meta-analysis published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health journal.
Nevertheless, extremely preterm babies (
An international collaboration led by scientists from the National University of Ireland, Galway, The University of St Andrews, Trinity College Dublin and the Zoological Society of London has uncovered why the venom of some snakes makes them so much deadlier than others.
A diving beetle demonstrating various adaptations to the life underground, including depigmentation and evolutionary loss of eyes, was discovered at the bottom of a clay pound in the cave Soprador do Carvalho, Portugal. The species turned out to be the very first in the whole order of beetles (Coleoptera) to be known exclusively from the underground waters of the country.
UNSW researchers at the Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology (CQC2T) have shown for the first time that they can build atomic precision qubits in a 3D device - another major step towards a universal quantum computer.
Researchers at the University of Sussex, Imperial College London and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have for the first time used game theory to enable robots to assist humans in a safe and versatile manner.
The research team used adaptive control and Nash equilibrium game theory to programme a robot that can understand its human user's behaviour in order to better anticipate their movements and respond to them.
The researchers believe the breakthrough could help robots complementing humans for sport training, physical rehabilitation or shared driving.