Earth
COLUMBIA, Mo. -- When Saathvik Kannan's father, a faculty member at the University of Missouri, saw his friend, Kamlendra Singh, a research professor at MU, on television being interviewed for his research identifying possible treatments for COVID-19, he called Singh to congratulate him on his work.
One of the biggest challenges to the development of medical treatments for cancer is the fact that there is no single kind of cancer. Cancers derive from many kinds of cells and tissues, and each have their own characteristics, behaviors, and susceptibilities to anti-cancer drugs. A treatment that works on colon cancer might have little to no effect on lung cancer, for example.
Two groups of tiny, delicate marine organisms, sea butterflies and sea angels, were found to be surprisingly resilient--having survived dramatic global climate change and Earth's most recent mass extinction event 66 million years ago, according to research published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences led by Katja Peijnenburg from Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands.
A routine test used to monitor patients' breathing may be unreliable and putting them at risk, a study suggests.
Incorrect results can mean clinical staff fail to spot how unwell a patient with respiratory problems is becoming, researchers say.
This widely used method, which counts breaths over a 30-second period, fails to take account of people's irregular breathing patterns, the team says.
The practice - key to assessing risk in many Covid-19 cases - could be improved by increasing the time of measurement to two minutes, the study concluded.
A new 3D-printing method will make it easier to manufacture and control the shape of soft robots, artificial muscles and wearable devices. Researchers at UC San Diego show that by controlling the printing temperature of liquid crystal elastomer, or LCE, they can control the material's degree of stiffness and ability to contract--also known as degree of actuation. What's more, they are able to change the stiffness of different areas in the same material by exposing it to heat.
What The Study Did: This observational study investigated whether presenting comorbidities in patients with COVID-19 in New York differed by race/ethnicity and whether case fatality rates varied among different ethnic and racial groups while accounting for presenting comorbidities and other risk factors.
Authors: Madhur K. Garg, M.D., and Andrew D. Racine, M.D., Ph.D., of the Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, are the corresponding authors.
What The Study Did:Researchers examined changes in how common cardiovascular disease was in the highest-income earners compared with the rest of the population in the United States between 1999 and 2016.
Authors: Salma M. Abdalla, M.B.B.S., M.P.H., of the Boston University School of Public Health, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.18150)
Analysis of samples taken to test for respiratory viruses over the past five years suggests that the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 was associated with a large drop in circulation of other common respiratory viruses during the first wave. The study, presented at this week's ESCMID Conference on Coronavirus Disease (ECCVID), is by Dr Stephen Poole, BRC Clinical Research Fellow from the Southampton NIHR BRC, Southampton, UK, and colleagues.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Millions of people turn to their mobile devices when seeking medical advice. They're able to share their symptoms and receive potential diagnoses through chatbot-based symptom-checker (CSC) apps.
But how do these apps compare to a trip to the doctor's office?
MADISON, Wis. -- Nearly 30 years after recording a temperature of minus 93.2 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 69.6 Celsius) in Greenland, the measurement has been verified by the World Meteorological Organization as the coldest recorded temperature in the Northern Hemisphere.
Thunderstorms are weather disturbances characterized by concentrations of thunder, lightning and fierce winds.
When they accumulate in clusters, these storms are often accompanied by violent cloud bursts and flooding, which can devastate the areas affected.
Denmark is no stranger to this phenomenon. In 2011, large parts of Copenhagen were submerged by deluges that lead to roughly 6 billion kroner in damages reported to insurance companies.
A new way of analyzing the chemical composition of soil organic matter will help scientists predict how soils store carbon -- and how soil carbon may affect climate in the future, says a Baylor University researcher.
The severe droughts in the USA and Australia are the first sign that the tropics, and their warm temperatures, are apparently expanding in the wake of climate change. But until now, scientists have been unable to conclusively explain the reasons for this, because they were mostly focusing on atmospheric processes. Now, experts at the AWI have solved the puzzle: the alarming expansion of the tropics is not caused by processes in the atmosphere, but quite simply by warming subtropical ocean.
Tsukuba, Japan - To stay, or not to stay? When it comes to nutrient resource patches, researchers from Japan and Switzerland have discovered that marine bacteria have a knack for exploiting them efficiently, timing movements between patches to get the best resources.
In a study published this month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A., researchers from the University of Tsukuba and ETH Zurich have revealed that marine bacteria optimize nutrient uptake by switching between dispersal and resource exploitation.
A marine heatwave (ocean heatwave) is an extended period of time in which the water temperature in a particular ocean region is abnormally high. In recent years, heatwaves of this kind have caused considerable changes to the ecosystems in the open seas and at the coast. Their list of negative effects is long: Marine heatwaves can lead to increased mortality among birds, fish and marine mammals, they can trigger harmful algal blooms, and greatly reduce the supply of nutrients in the ocean.