Tech
HOUSTON - (Dec. 22, 2020) - Baylor College of Medicine researcher Meng Wang had already shown that bacteria that make a metabolite called colanic acid (CA) could extend the lifespan of worms in her lab by as much as 50%, but her collaboration with Rice University synthetic biologist Jeffrey Tabor is providing tools to answer the bigger question of how the metabolite imparts longer life.
A broken heart is often harder to heal than a broken leg. Now researchers say that a broken heart can contribute to lasting chronic pain.
In a reflections column published Dec. 21 in the Annals of Family Medicine, pain experts Mark Sullivan and Jane Ballantyne at the University of Washington School of Medicine, say emotional pain and chronic physical pain are bidirectional. Painkillers, they said, ultimately make things worse.
LA JOLLA, CA--Most living things need oxygen to grow and thrive. Even cancerous tumors. That's why tumors will readily sprout new blood vessels if their oxygen is starved, creating new lifelines for survival.
A study published today from Scripps Research pinpoints the precise molecular machinery that makes this happen, providing scientific insights that can potentially be translated into medicines that help kill tumors and stop cancer from spreading in the body.
Mammals with big brains tend to be less abundant in local areas than those with smaller brains, new research has shown.
The University of Reading led an international team of scientists in considering the effect of brain size for the first time in studying why populations densities of land mammals like mice, monkeys, kangaroos and foxes vary so widely in local areas, even among similar creatures.
Around a third of the world's population carries Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite that puts people with a weakened immune system at risk and can trigger malformations in the womb. The single-celled pathogen also leads to economic losses in agriculture, with toxoplasmosis increasing the risk of abortion among sheep, for example.
Any Neapolitan ice cream lover knows three flavors are better than one. New research from Northwestern University has found that by studying all three "flavors" involved in a supernova, they've unlocked more clues as to how and why stars die.
Scientists look at neutrinos (subatomic particles) for critical information about supernova explosions. While previous research identified three "flavors" of neutrinos, many researchers continued to simplify studies on the topic by studying "vanilla" while ignoring "chocolate" and "strawberry."
WASHINGTON, December 22, 2020 -- Because of the role they play in coronavirus transmission, understanding aerosol concentrations and persistence in public spaces can help determine infection risks. However, measuring these concentrations is difficult, requiring specialized personnel and equipment.
That is, until now.
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Gun safety policies, including universal background checks and mandatory waiting periods, receive wide support among American gun owners, yet most Americans fail to recognize this fact, a new study suggests.
That disconnect may make it hard to adopt these policies, according to the researchers.
The study found that when people learned about the true levels of support for these policies, they were more likely to say both in public and private that they would support the policies. That was true for gun owners as well as those who don't own guns.
The cardiovascular system is astonishing. It uses the blood that circulates in our veins and arteries to transport oxygen and nutrients to every tissue in the body. At EPFL, Lucio Pancaldi, a PhD student, and Selman Sakar, an assistant professor, have decided to harness hydrokinetic energy (mechanical energy resulting from the motion of liquids) to get to places in the human body without resorting to invasive methods.
WASHINGTON, December 22, 2020 -- Simply wearing a mask may not be enough to prevent the spread of COVID-19 without social distancing.
In Physics of Fluids, by AIP Publishing, researchers tested how five different types of mask materials impacted the spread of droplets that carry the coronavirus when we cough or sneeze.
Every material tested dramatically reduced the number of droplets that were spread. But at distances of less than 6 feet, enough droplets to potentially cause illness still made it through several of the materials.
Advances in neuroscience and engineering have generated great hope for Luke Skywalker-like prosthetics: robotic devices that are almost indistinguishable from a human limb. Key to solving this challenge is designing devices that not only can be operated with a user's own neural activity, but can also accurately and precisely receive and relay sensory information to the user.
Researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have invented a new method of anti-counterfeiting called DeepKey. Developed in just eight months, this security innovation uses two dimensional (2D)-material tags and artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled authentication software.
As the recently published article in the journal Open Ophthalmology Journal shows, there are significant differences among the measures of corneal parameters obtained by the three most commonly used ophthalmic devices, called topographers.
The lockdowns that resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic have reduced greenhouse gas emissions. However, in the recovery phase, emissions could rise to levels above those projected before the pandemic. It all depends on how the stimulus money that governments inject into their economies is spent. A team of scientists, led by Dr Yuli Shan and Professor Klaus Hubacek from the University of Groningen, has quantified how different recovery scenarios may affect global emissions and climate change. Their results were published in Nature Climate Change on 22 December.
Policies to contain the Covid-19 pandemic require widespread cooperation in order to be successful. Is the German population more likely to follow these measures when they are voluntary or when they are enforced? Dr Katrin Schmelz, a behavioural economist and psychologist at the University of Konstanz and the Thurgau Institute of Economics, investigated this question.