news 2020

A leading University of Queensland academic is using his research to improve vaccination rates across the country. Dr Tom Aechtner from UQ's School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry has launched the world's first Massive Open Online Couse (MOOC), AVAXX101 , dedicated to anti-vaccination and vaccine hesitancy.

A promising new drug to combat sepsis has been developed by researchers at The Australian National University (ANU), potentially saving millions of lives each year. ANU Professor Christopher Parish and his team have been working on the drug for more than 10 years, with the drug being developed from compounds originally designed to fight cancer.

Short-term disturbances caused by aircraft noise at night can lead to cardiovascular death within hours. This is shown in analyses by a team of researchers from the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute and Empa. The researchers used a dataset covering the years 2000 to 2015 to investigate how mortality rates in the Zurich airport area are related to acute nighttime aircraft noise exposure; they recently published their findings in the European Heart Journal.

Study: Deep learning microscope images thick tissues with extended depth-of-field When surgeons remove cancer, one of the first questions is, "Did they get it all?” Researchers from Rice University and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have created a new microscope that can quickly and inexpensively image large tissue sections, potentially during surgery, to find the answer.

At Caltech, as throughout the rest of the world, 2020 was a year like no other. This unprecedented year was filled with personal and professional challenges as well as fast-breaking and paradigm-shifting events, all of which were framed by (and helped to shape) incredible advances and discoveries in science, engineering, and technology, realized thanks to the ingenuity, insight, and perseverance of Caltech's community of researchers and scholars, students and staff.

A commonly-used treatment for chronic subdural haematoma - the build-up of 'old' blood in the space between the brain and the skull, usually as a result of minor head injury - could lead to a worse outcome than receiving no medication, suggests new research from the University of Cambridge. Our trial sought to determine if dexamethasone should be offered routinely to all patients with chronic subdural haematoma or if its use should be abandoned.

Researchers have identified the driving force behind a cellular process linked to neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson's and motor neurone disease. There is still so much to learn about this system, which is incredibly important to fundamental biomedical science Clemens Kaminski In a study published today in Science Advances , researchers from the University of Cambridge show that tiny components within the cell are the biological engines behind effective protein production.

A new study has revealed paying patients are 20 per cent less likely to die or develop major complications, such as reintervention or stroke, after cardiac surgery than NHS patients - findings researchers say cannot be explained by socioeconomic factors alone. The study, led by academics at the University of Bristol, looked at the data of over 280,000 patients who underwent adult cardiac surgery over a ten-year period from 2009 to 2018 at 31 NHS cardiac units in England.

Under a cross-disciplinary program spearheaded by EPFL, scientists will develop an AI-based system that can predict whether Covid-19 patients will develop severe cardiovascular complications and, in the longer term, detect the likely onset of inflammatory disease. Covid-19 comes with a range of symptoms - from a sore throat and the loss of taste to more serious ones like lung failure.

Sorbonne University Alliance Multidisciplinary research Mathematician Pascal Frey heads the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ISCD). Frey takes stock of ten years of interdisciplinary research and innovation around scientific computing, simulation and data analysis. The Institute is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year.

Alzheimer's disease is characterized by the presence of amyloid plaques 1 in the patient's brain. These plaques sequester copper, and contain approximately five times as much as a healthy brain. Two CNRS scientists from the Coordination Chemistry Laboratory recently developed, with their colleagues from the Guangdong University of Technology and Shenzhen University (China), a molecule that regulates the circulation of copper in the brain.

A team of scientists has shown that a key type of immune cell "self-renews? in humans. It is an unexpected discovery, as it was previously thought this specific type of "senescent? killer immune cell had reached "end-stage? and would die following one more stint at helping people fight off - or live with - certain infections.

Researchers at UCL and the Francis Crick Institute have rebuilt a human thymus, an essential organ in the immune system, using human stem cells and a bioengineered scaffold. The study in mice marks an important step towards building artificial thymi for use in transplants. The thymus is an organ in the chest where T lymphocytes, which play a vital role in the immune system, mature.

High levels of cadmium, a chemical found in cigarettes and in contaminated vegetables, are associated with higher death rates in patients with influenza or pneumonia-and may increase the severity of COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses, according to a new study. "Our study suggests the public in general, both smokers and nonsmokers, could benefit from reduced exposure to cadmium,” said lead author Sung Kyun Park, associate professor of epidemiology and environmental health sciences at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

Researchers have developed a way to use a simple home aroma diffuser to test whether N95 and other types of sealing masks, such as KN95 and FFP2 masks, are properly fitted, a result which could be used to help protect healthcare workers and the public from contracting or transmitting COVID-19.

The proportion of adults with diagnosed diabetes trebled between 1994 and 2019, report researchers from UCL and the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen), who have analysed the latest results from the Health Survey for England (HSE). The report, which is commisisoned by NHS Digital, analyses data from over 8,200 adults and 2,000 children living in private households in England and shows the percentage of people who have been diagnosed with diabetes has risen since 1994, from 3% to 9% among men and from 2% to 6% among women.

Poverty linked to higher risk of Covid-19 death, study suggests People in Scotland's poorest areas are more likely to be affected by severe Covid-19 - and to die from the disease - than those in more affluent districts, according to a study of critical care units. The first nationwide study of its kind found patients from the most economically disadvantaged areas had a higher chance of critical care admission, and that intensive care units there were more likely to be over capacity.

The majority of University of Bristol students are complying with government COVID-19 guidelines and are self-isolating when receiving a positive test, indicates a study that has investigated student social contact patterns and behaviours. The research led by scientists at the University of Bristol is published on the pre-print server medRxiv.

An international team of researcher developed a traction force microscopy platform which allows for quantifying the pulls and pushes exerted via T-cell microvilli, in both tangential and normal directions, during T-cell activation Mechanical forces play a vital role for many biological mechanisms, such as the sensation of infected cells by T-cells.

The UK Government's hesitancy to bring in tougher Covid restrictions exacerbated investor herding, market volatility and greater harm to its economy compared to countries with swifter and more decisive pandemic responses, new research indicates. Countries with more stringent government responses to the coronavirus crisis benefitted from lower levels of investor herding, newly published research from the University of Sussex Business School , Southampton Business School and University of Brescia (Italy) reveals.