Culture
Agência FAPESP – Yellow fever virus is normally confined to the Amazon region, but the virus circulated in the Southeast of Brazil between 2016 and 2018, causing the worst epidemic and epizootic outbreaks there for decades. The Ministry of Health confirmed 2,251 cases of yellow fever in humans and 1,567 cases in monkeys in Brazil between December 2016 and June 2019.
The volume and timbre of music have a significant impact on how people perceive the acoustics in a concert hall, according to two recent studies carried out by the research group of Aalto University Professor Tapio Lokki. Both have been published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, one of the most prestigious journals in its field.
People who experience strokes while infected with COVID-19 appear to be left with greater disability after the stroke, according a study led by UCL and UCLH researchers.
Having COVID-19 at stroke onset was also associated with more than double the mortality rate of other stroke patients, according to the findings published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry.
Even if a black hole can be described with a mathematical model, it doesn't mean it exists in reality. Some theoretical models are unstable: though they can be used to run mathematical calculations, from the point of view of physics they make no sense. A physicist from RUDN University developed an approach to finding such instability regions. The work was published in the Physics of the Dark Universe journal.
Zoologists at the University of Cologne studied the nervous systems of insects to investigate principles of biological brain computation and possible implications for machine learning and artificial intelligence. Specifically, they analysed how insects learn to associate sensory information in their environment with a food reward, and how they can recall this information later in order to solve complex tasks such as the search for food.
One of the novel coronavirus' most insidious tricks is that it can block the ability of cells to produce protective proteins without hindering its own ability to replicate.
Now, a multidisciplinary team of Yale researchers has discovered how SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, accomplishes this trick by blocking production of cellular proteins, including immune molecules, and contributes to severe illness in its host.
New research by BAT has found that smokers who switched completely from smoking cigarettes to using BAT's flagship tobacco heating product (THP), glo, substantially reduced their exposure to certain cigarette smoke toxicants over three months.
For many of the toxicants measured, the levels found in participants were similar to those in people that stopped using tobacco completely.
EUGENE, Ore. -- Nov. 5, 2020 -- Conservation efforts on the edges of the Amazon forest, especially in light of recent deforestation by human disturbance, could help the region weather the storm of climate change, researchers say.
That assessment comes from an analysis of vegetation changes and carbon isotope signatures in the soil at 83 sites. The project, led by University of Oregon doctoral student Jamie Wright, established a record of soil changes associated with both climate and human activity over the last 1,600 years based on radiocarbon dating.
Peculiar hybrid structures called retrons that are half RNA, half single-strand DNA are found in many species of bacteria. Since their discovery around 35 years ago, researchers have learned how to use retrons for producing single strands of DNA in the lab, but no one knew what their function was in the bacteria, despite much research into the matter. In a paper published today in Cell, a Weizmann Institute of Science team reports on solving the longstanding mystery: Retrons are immune system "guards" that ensure the survival of the bacterial colony when it is infected by viruses.
Since the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) Medicaid expansion program went into effect 10 years ago, the U.S. has seen a larger reduction in the number of uninsured low-income, rural residents, compared to their urban contemporaries.
But the likelihood of repeated visits to emergency rooms for non-urgent reasons has not decreased.
That's what Washington State University's Bidisha Mandal discovered in a new paper published in the journal Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy.
Scientists at the University of Cambridge, in collaboration with Justus-Liebig University, Germany, have uncovered how the genome of SARS-CoV-2 - the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 - uses genome origami to infect and replicate successfully inside host cells. This could inform the development of effective drugs that target specific parts of the virus genome, in the fight against COVID-19.
Quick flashes of light in the night sky have been linked to the growing mass of satellites and debris zipping around Earth's orbit.
The orbital flashes, often mistaken for stars, are extremely common, occurring 1,000 times an hour, according to new research led by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that may improve the accuracy of astronomical data.
Stargazers have long been tantalized by the inexplicable glimmers and the study published Nov. 5 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters provides a potential explanation for those mysterious flashes.
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Dealing with a global pandemic has taken a toll on the mental health of millions of people. A team of MIT and Harvard University researchers has shown that they can measure those effects by analyzing the language that people use to express their anxiety online.
PITTSBURGH, Nov. 5, 2020 - Today in Science, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine describe a new method to extract tiny but extremely powerful SARS-CoV-2 antibody fragments from llamas, which could be fashioned into inhalable therapeutics with the potential to prevent and treat COVID-19.
These special llama antibodies, called "nanobodies," are much smaller than human antibodies and many times more effective at neutralizing the SARS-CoV-2 virus. They're also much more stable.
LOS ANGELES (Nov. 5, 2020) -- An enzyme that helps COVID-19 (coronavirus) infect the body also plays a role in inflammation and patient outcomes in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), according to a new study led by Cedars-Sinai.