Culture
Argonne computational resources supported the largest comprehensive analysis of COVID-19 genome sequences in the U.S. and helped corroborate growing evidence of a protein mutation.
Before COVID-19 first entered the United States in March, Houston Methodist Hospital had already begun preparations to test for and sequence the virus on a large scale, given the news coming out of Wuhan, China.
Throughout the pandemic, infectious disease experts and frontline medical workers have asked for a faster, cheaper and more reliable COVID-19 test. Now, leveraging the so-called "lab on a chip" technology and the cutting-edge genetic editing technique known as CRISPR, researchers at Stanford have created a highly automated device that can identify the presence of the novel coronavirus in just a half-hour.
Archaeologists from The Australian National University (ANU) have discovered a rare child burial dating back 8,000 years on Alor Island, Indonesia.
The one-of-its-kind burial for the region is from the early mid-Holocene and gives important insights into burial practices of the time.
Lead researcher Dr Sofia Samper Carro said the child, aged between four and eight, was laid to rest with some kind of ceremony.
"Ochre pigment was applied to the cheeks and forehead and an ochre-coloured cobble stone was placed under the child's head when they were buried," she said.
Trial participants who received a multinutrient formulation over an extended period of time showed a significantly less rapid deterioration in cognitive performance than the patients in a control group, who received only a placebo. These findings are from an ongoing European study LipiDiDiet in which 311 patients in eleven hospitals have been monitored for three years. The research results have been published in the highly ranked international journal 'Alzheimer's & Dementia. The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association' .
CABI scientists have led new research which reveals strong evidence that a natural enemy of the prolific Asian fruit fly Drosphila suzukii - previously believed to be one species - is in fact two with only one of the parasitoid proving suitable as a biological control agent against the pest.
The scientists from CABI's Swiss Centre Delémont, as well as colleagues from INRAE in France, used a combination of molecular analysis and crossing experiments to gather evidence that Ganaspis brasiliensis is a complex of at least two cryptic species.
Nurses and other healthcare providers should talk to patients about their cannabis use the same way they talk about other habits like smoking and drinking: routinely and without judgment.
Tsukuba, Japan - Social rewards such as praise are known to enhance various stages of the learning process. Now, researchers from Japan have found that praise delivered by artificial beings such as robots and virtual graphics-based agents can have effects similar to praise delivered by humans, with important practical applications as social services such as education increasingly move to virtual and online platforms.
A simple COVID-19 test kit combines virus amplification with a CRISPR-Cas system for effective SARS-CoV-2 detection. The kit, called iSCAN, uses reagents that can be locally manufactured.
"Our whole iSCAN procedure can be completed in less than an hour and can be easily adopted as a point-of-care detection system at airports and borders," says KAUST Ph.D. student Ahmed Mahas.
University of Adelaide wine researchers are developing a fast and simple method of authenticating wine - a potential solution against the estimated billions of dollars' worth of wine fraud globally, but also offering a possible means of building regional branding.
The team of scientists were able to identify the geographical origins of wines originating from three wine regions of Australia and from Bordeaux in France with 100% accuracy with a novel technique of molecular fingerprinting using 'fluorescence spectroscopy', a technology that analyses fluorescence of molecules.
Tokyo - Why did Japan largely contain COVID-19 despite famously jam-packed Tokyo and despite the country's proximity to China? With no penalties and only requests for cooperation, Japan's state of emergency somehow averted the large-scale outbreaks seen elsewhere. At least one viable answer has now emerged.
A new comparative analysis of people's mobility during the virus' first wave illustrates how drastically the Tokyo masses slowed. That slowdown may have throttled the spread of infections.
HANOVER, N.H. - November 5, 2020 - The biological clock of a popular food crop controls close to three-quarters of its genes, according to research from Dartmouth College.
The genetic research shows how the crop uses internal responses to the day-night cycle—known as circadian rhythms—to regulate processes such as reproduction, photosynthesis and reactions to stressful conditions.
Researchers at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have identified new therapeutic targets for Alzheimer's disease (AD) by studying the patients' brain with a newly-developed methodology. This novel approach also enables researchers to measure the effects of potential drugs on AD patients, opening new directions for AD research and drug development.
A new study from the University of Eastern Finland shows that individualised and family-based physical activity and dietary counselling considerably slows down the development of insulin resistance, which is a precursor of type 2 diabetes, in 6-9-year-old children. Published in Diabetologia, the study focused on predominantly normal-weight children.
For the first time, researchers have compared air pollution in urban and suburban areas across all of China. Using data from the China National Environmental Monitoring Center (CNEMC), the researchers found that one air pollutant, called particulate matter (PM2.5), may be overestimated in winter, while another pollutant, called ozone (O3), is significantly underestimated.
Plants can be infected by multiple viruses at once. However, the composition of the pathogen community varies, even if individuals belong to the same species and the same population. Ecologists at the University of Zurich have now shown that these differences are primarily due to genetic variation among the hosts. The loss of genetic diversity could thus render species more vulnerable to infections and extinction.