Culture
Viruses such as HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C evade or disrupt the immune system to create persistent infections. These viruses remain a serious health threat, but researchers from the University of Missouri School of Medicine have discovered how an enzyme that regulates several cellular processes might be a key target to preventing viruses from disarming the human immune response.
Who says you can't get hotter with age?
Researchers from Johns Hopkins University and other institutions have found that, on average, the temperature of galaxy clusters today is 4 million degrees Fahrenheit. That is 10 times hotter than 10 billion years ago, and four times hotter than the Sun's outermost atmosphere called the corona. The findings are published in the Astrophysical Journal.
Scientists have shown that the size and makeup of groups of social birds can predict how efficiently they use and move through their habitat, according to new findings published today in eLife.
The study suggests that intermediate-sized groups of vulturine guineafowl - a ground-dwelling social bird found in east African savannahs - exhibit the most effective balance between a decreased ability to coordinate movements and increased accuracy of navigation.
Medical diagnoses involving alcohol-related disorders, substance-related disorders and suicidal thoughts and behaviors -- commonly referred to as diseases of despair -- increased in Pennsylvania health insurance claims between the years 2007 and 2018, according to researchers from Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute and Highmark Health Enterprise Analytics.
For adults, the goal of exercise is often to shed some pounds, but new research from the University of Georgia suggests the objective should be different for kids.
Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have explored all COVID-19 research published during the initial phase of the pandemic. The results, which were achieved by using a machine learning-based approach and published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, will make it easier to direct future research to where it is most needed.
There's bad news for parents who frequently plop their kids in front of the TV to give themselves a break: It might actually end up leaving moms and dads more stressed.
Why? Because the more television that kids watch, the more they're exposed to advertising messages. The more advertising they see, the more likely they are to insist on purchasing items when they go with their parents to the store - and perhaps make a fuss if told "no." All that, researchers say, may contribute to parents' overall stress levels, well beyond a single shopping trip.
A kidney transplant is often denied to patients who are obese due to an increased risk of surgical complications, particularly infections. Surgeons at UI Heath -- the clinical and academic health enterprise of the University of Illinois Chicago -- have pioneered the use of robotic-assisted surgery for kidney transplants in obese patients to successfully reduce surgical complications. The procedure has opened up a life-saving door to patients who would otherwise be stuck on dialysis to treat their kidney disease, which carries its own serious risks.
Even with decades of unprecedented development in computational power, the human brain still holds many advantages over modern computing technologies. Our brains are extremely efficient for many cognitive tasks and do not separate memory and computing, unlike standard computer chips.
In the last decade, the new paradigm of neuromorphic computing has emerged, inspired by neural networks of the brain and based on energy-efficient hardware for information processing.
Rank in social hierarchy is a condition not solely claimed by humans. In the animal kingdom, male peacocks exhibit brightly colored plumes to illustrate dominance, and underwater, male fish show pops of bright colors to do the same. Despite the links identified between social status, physiology and behavior, the molecular basis of social status has not been known, until now.
As the weather turns cooler and people move activities indoors, the number of new coronavirus (COVID-19) cases being reported in the United States is rising. This mirrors COVID-19 activity already seen in Europe and elsewhere across the globe.
Meanwhile, supply-chain problems are likely to cause limited supplies of filtering facepiece respirators, such as N95 masks. Yet strategies to decontaminate personal protective equipment, or PPE, remain unresolved in many hospitals with limited resources, both in the United States and abroad.
Heidelberg, November 10, 2020: Dementia is associated with an impaired self-perception with potentially harmful consequences for health status and clinical risk classification in this patient group with an extraordinary high risk of falling.
New Rochelle, NY, November 9, 2020--Use of thyroid hormone to boost hepatocyte proliferation enhanced the efficiency of CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene correction in the mouse liver. This dietary induction of hepatocyte regeneration may be a viable clinical strategy to enhance gene repair in the liver, according to the peer-reviewed journal Human Gene Therapy. Click here to read the full-text article free through December 9, 2020.
Despite advances in sequencing technologies and computational methods in the past decade, researchers have uncovered genomes for just a small fraction of Earth's microbial diversity. Because most microbes cannot be cultivated under laboratory conditions, their genomes can't be sequenced using traditional approaches. Identifying and characterizing the planet's microbial diversity is key to understanding the roles of microorganisms in regulating nutrient cycles, as well as gaining insights into potential applications they may have in a wide range of research fields.