Earth
Frozen water can take on up to three forms at the same time when it melts: liquid, ice and gas. This principle, which states that many substances can occur in up to three phases simultaneously, was explained 150 years ago by the Gibbs phase rule. Today, researchers from Eindhoven University of Technology and University Paris-Saclay are defying this classical theory, with proof of a five-phase equilibrium, something that many scholars considered impossible.
School closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted access to low or no-cost school breakfast and lunch programs for millions of low-income children. States and school districts developed innovative solutions to meet the nutritional needs of children and respond to the rapidly growing food insecurity crisis, yet the number of replacement meals is likely far short of what they provided prior to the pandemic, according to a study led by a researcher at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. The findings are published in the American Journal of Public Health.
People who smoke are increasingly using e-cigarettes to try to quit smoking, a study by researchers at the University of Otago, Wellington, has found.
The researchers found that between 2016 and 2018 the level of awareness, as well as the use of e-cigarettes, increased among smokers and those who had recently quit smoking.
The principal investigator of the study, Professor Richard Edwards from the University's Department of Public Health, says e-cigarette use was most common among those aged 18-24 years and among those who had recently quit smoking.
Researchers from Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) in collaboration with Takeda-CiRA program and other international institutions have developed a Polygenic Risk Score to help predict drug-induced liver injury, validated by patients' genomic data, cell cultures and organoids
How do birds make decisions and which brain regions are particularly active when they solve tasks? Researchers from the Department of Biopsychology at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) are investigating these questions. So far, only anesthetized birds and therefore passive experiments could be examined using the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Thus, the examination of brain processes during active tasks was not possible.
DALLAS - Sept. 17, 2020 - When used to manage infections, the drug itraconazole is generally given at a single, fixed dose to all patients. But determining the correct dosage of the drug to help treat cancer isn't that simple, new research by UT Southwestern suggests.
Tokyo, Japan - In a new climate modeling study, researchers from the Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo have revealed major implications for global drought and aridity when limiting warming to 1.5°C rather than 2°C above pre-industrial levels. Drought has serious negative impacts on both human society and the natural world and is generally projected to increase under global climate change. As a result, assessment of the risk of drought under climate change is a critical area of climate research.
The secret of how fibre shapes the structure of plant cell walls has been revealed, with potentially wide-ranging applications ranging from nutrition and health to agriculture.
Researchers from The University of Queensland and KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden have uncovered the mechanics of how plant cell walls balance the strength and rigidity provided by cellulose with its ability to stretch and compress.
A study of interim data from two hospitals in an early US COVID-19 hotspot, to be presented at the ESCMID Conference on Coronavirus Disease (ECCVID, held online 23-25 September), shows that race and ethnicity were not significantly associated with higher in-hospital COVID-19 mortality, and that rates of moderate, severe, and critical forms of COVID-19 were similar between racial and ethnic groups.
One of the long-standing goals of research on the light-induced dynamics of molecules is to observe time-dependent changes in the structure of molecules, which result from the absorption of light, as directly and unambiguously as possible. To this end, researchers have developed and applied a plethora of approaches. Of particular promise among these approaches are several methods developed in the last years that rely on diffraction (of light or electrons) as means of encoding the internuclear spacings between the atoms that together form the molecule.
Tokyo, Japan -- Migraines affect millions of people worldwide, often lasting days and severely disrupting lives. More than simply super-intense headaches, some migraines actually result from pathological excitation of neurons in the brain. A new study in mice led by Kohichi Tanaka at Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) shows that susceptibility to migraines could be related to a molecular transporter that normally works to prevent excessive excitation of neurons.
Macrophages are immune system cells. They are essential in the early response to infections, and they also have a key role in the proper functioning of our tissues and the regulation of obesity. Now, researchers at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC) have shown how this regulation unfolds in a paper published in Nature Metabolism, which could be useful to design new treatments for the obese and overweight, and for some associated pathologies, including fatty liver disease and type 2 diabetes.
"Do not erase." "Recycle me." "Free to a good home." Humans post these signs to indicate whether something has value or not, whether it should be disposed of or not. Inside our cells, a sophisticated recycling system uses its own enzymatic signs to flag certain cells for destruction -- and a different set of enzymes can remove those flags.
An international effort that brought together more than 60 ice, ocean and atmosphere scientists from three dozen international institutions has generated new estimates of how much of an impact Earth's melting ice sheets could have on global sea levels by 2100. If greenhouse gas emissions continue apace, Greenland and Antarctica's ice sheets could together contribute more than 15 inches (38 centimeters) of global sea level rise - and that's beyond the amount that has already been set in motion by Earth's warming climate.
Like its ancient cathedrals, Europe has a remarkable--but poorly understood--legacy of old-growth forests. These primeval landscapes, scattered on remote hillsides and forested valleys across many countries, are a "living treasure," says University of Vermont scientist Bill Keeton.
A new study, by scientists from 28 institutions including UVM, presents the first comprehensive assessment of the conservation status of these primary forests in Europe--and shows that many of them are not protected and at risk of being destroyed.