Tech
As the world grows increasingly globalized, one of the ways that countries have come to rely on one another is through a more intricate and interconnected food supply chain. Food produced in one country is often consumed in another country -- with technological advances allowing food to be shipped between countries that are increasingly distant from one another.
Humans have consumed different types of fermented foods - from kimchi to yogurt - for thousands of years. Yet only recently, with the availability of new scientific techniques for analyzing their nutritional properties and microbiological composition, have scientists begun to understand exactly how the unique flavors and textures are created and how these foods benefit human health.
The antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine is frequently prescribed to treat symptoms of the autoimmune disease lupus. In addition to decreasing disease flares, the drug can also prevent blood clots, which are a major problem in individuals with lupus. A new study in Arthritis & Rheumatology shows that monitoring patients' blood levels of hydroxychloroquine can predict their clotting risk.
Individuals face a higher risk of dying following hip fractures. A new study published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research has found that living alone after experiencing a hip fracture may further elevate this risk.
For the study, researchers examined information on hip fractures from all hospitals in Norway from 2002 to 2013, and they combined the data with the 2001 National Population and Housing Census.
Findings from a recent study of individuals with depression suggest that Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) can improve how patients feel about themselves in difficult situations in ways that may help protect against relapse of depressive symptoms. The findings are published in Counselling and Psychotherapy Research.
By late fall, much of the Midwest is a pleasing landscape of dry, harvested corn fields. It makes for a bucolic rural scene on highway drives. But the corn litter that's left over doesn't seem useful, at least to untrained eyes.
But to those in the know, that corn residue is a valuable resource. Scattered leaves, husks, kernels, and cobs can serve as food to grazing cattle. When managed well, corn residue can increase farm income, provide affordable food for cattle, and efficiently use the land to feed people.
Researchers from University of Texas at San Antonio and University of Southern California published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that examines the difficult choices industry incumbents and new entrants face during times of potentially disruptive technological change.
The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled "Leapfrogging, Cannibalization, and Survival during Disruptive Technological Change: The Critical Role of Rate of Disengagement" and is authored by Deepa Chandrasekaran, Gerard Tellis, and Gareth James.
In modern times, manufacturers produce highly specialized materials for a wide array of uses, called polymers. Polymers have a variety of purposes owing to their versatile properties, ranging from being used in construction due to their high tensile strength and resistance to manufacturing plastic bags that require more lightweight, flexible materials, such as nylon or polyethene.
Grasslands are managed worldwide to support livestock production, while remaining natural or semi-natural ones provide critical services that contribute to the wellbeing of both people and the planet. Human activities are however causing grasslands to become a source of greenhouse gas emissions rather than a carbon sink. A new study uncovered how grasslands used by humans have changed our climate over the last centuries.
DALLAS - Jan. 5, 2021 - Researchers at the Children's Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern (CRI) have discovered a new metabolic vulnerability in a highly aggressive form of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). These findings could pave the way for new treatments for patients with mutations in two key genes - KRAS and LKB1. Patients whose tumors contain both of these mutations, known as KL tumors, have poor outcomes and usually do not respond to immunotherapy.
For the first time, researchers have used a novel catalyst process to recycle a type of plastic found in everything from grocery bags and food packaging to toys and electronics into liquid fuels and wax.
The team published their results on Dec. 10 in Applied Catalysis B: Environmental.
A joint research team from KAIST and UCSD has developed a deep neural network named DeepTFactor that predicts transcription factors from protein sequences. DeepTFactor will serve as a useful tool for understanding the regulatory systems of organisms, accelerating the use of deep learning for solving biological problems.
Sunlight offers a potential solution in the search for an energy source that does not harm the planet, but this depends on finding a way to efficiently turn electromagnetic energy into electricity. Researchers from KAUST have shown how a known herbicide can improve this conversion in organic devices.
While solar cells have traditionally been made from inorganic materials such as silicon, organic materials are starting to break through as an alternative because they are light, flexible and relatively inexpensive to make, even offering the possibility for printable manufacture.
Researchers in Japan have made the first observations of biological magnetoreception - live, unaltered cells responding to a magnetic field in real time. This discovery is a crucial step in understanding how animals from birds to butterflies navigate using Earth's magnetic field and addressing the question of whether weak electromagnetic fields in our environment might affect human health.
Two studies from the University of Copenhagen show that Danes aren't quite as good as Chinese at discerning bitter tastes. The research suggests that this is related to anatomical differences upon the tongues of Danish and Chinese people.