Culture
An international team of scientists led by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the University of Kiel has successfully reconstructed genomes from Stone Age and Medieval European strains of the hepatitis B virus. This unprecedented recovery of ancient virus DNA indicates that hepatitis B was circulating in Europe at least 7000 years ago. While the ancient virus is similar to its modern counterparts, the strains represent a distinct lineage that has likely gone extinct and is most closely related to chimpanzee and gorilla viruses.
Women who experience vaginal bleeding for more than one day during the first trimester of pregnancy may be more likely to have a smaller baby, compared to women who do not experience bleeding in the first trimester, suggest researchers at the National Institutes of Health. On average, full-term babies born to women with more than one day of bleeding in the first trimester were about 3 ounces lighter than those born to women with no bleeding during this time.
Many national recommendations on whether to screen newborn babies for rare conditions do not assess the evidence on the key benefits and harms of screening, warn researchers in a study published by The BMJ today.
Effective screening programmes can save lives, whereas ineffective programmes can do more harm than good, yet decisions about which conditions to screen for vary widely between countries, despite similar populations and healthcare systems.
The British Medical Association recently proposed guidance to cap the number of patients a GP sees each day to prevent unsafe working levels, but should this be recommended? Experts debate the issue in The BMJ today.
Limits to workload could protect GPs and patients in a system that has become dangerous, says Laurence Buckman, a GP partner in London.
10 minute consultations are too short for the amount of work patients' needs require and the pressure to perform better and longer for more patients is now dangerous for both doctors and patients, he explains.
Researchers have identified six genes that predispose carriers to develop the brain tumor medulloblastoma and have used the discovery to craft genetic counseling and screening guidelines. The study appears today in the journal The Lancet Oncology.
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Hopp Children's Cancer Center at the NCT Heidelberg (KiTZ), Germany, and The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, led the research.
A new result from the Q-weak experiment at the Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility provides a precision test of the weak force, one of four fundamental forces in nature. This result, published recently in Nature, also constrains possibilities for new particles and forces beyond our present knowledge.
Earth's magnetic field provides an invisible but crucial barrier that protects Earth from the solar wind--a stream of charged particles launched from the sun's outer layers. The protective properties of the magnetic field can fail due to a process known as magnetic reconnection, which occurs when two opposing magnetic field lines break and reconnect with each other, dissipating massive amounts of energy and accelerating particles that threaten air traffic and satellite communication systems.
Quantum chance is intrinsically different than classic chance. That is what the violations of Bell inequalities, a crucial step in understanding quantum mechanics, states. One drawback remains though: until now, testing these inequalities relied on experimental configurations that use parameters set from data generated by quantum systems. Effectively it was testing quantum physics using quantum physics.
LA JOLLA, CA - May 9, 2018 - Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have devised what they call a "neuronal cookbook" for turning skin cells into different types of neurons. As reported today in the journal Nature, the research opens the door to studying common brain conditions such as autism, schizophrenia, addiction and Alzheimer's disease under reproducible conditions in a dish.
RIVERSIDE, Calif. (http://www.ucr.edu) --Dozens of potentially habitable planets have been discovered outside our solar system, and many more are awaiting detection.
Is anybody -- or anything -- there?
The top 1% of the forest has been sharing some vital information with researchers. Ninety-eight scientists and thousands of field staff have concluded the largest study undertaken to date with the Smithsonian Forest Global Earth Observatory (ForestGEO), and what they have found will have profound implications toward ecological theories and carbon storage in forests. Rather than examining tree species diversity in temperate and tropical ecosystems, this global study emphasized forest structure over a vast scale.
May 8, 2018 - For patients with substance use disorders seen in the emergency department or doctor's office, locating and accessing appropriate treatment all too often poses difficult challenges.
URBANA, Ill. - Free radicals, those DNA-damaging single-oxygen atoms, are produced in spades during exercise. Dogs that exercise a lot, like hunting dogs, may need to consume more antioxidants than their less-active counterparts to protect against this damage. But what diet formulation best meets the needs of these furry athletes? A new University of Illinois study provides some answers in a real-world scenario.
In the latest issue, it can be seen that people are becoming more and more aware of glyphosate, the active substance used in certain plant protection products, with three quarters of the population already having heard of it. Despite this, food in Germany is still regarded as safe by over 80 percent of respondents, and more than half trust the state authorities that they protect the health of consumers.
OAK BROOK, Ill. - Damage to some of the pathways that carry information throughout the brain may be responsible for attention deficit in patients who have had a subcortical stroke in the brain's right hemisphere, according to a study published online in the journal Radiology. Researchers hope the findings may provide a measure for selecting suitable patients for early interventions aimed at reducing cognitive decline following stroke.