At the beginning of March 2021, there is a big fuss among the more fanatical wing of CDA supporters. What is going on? Just before the Dutch Parliamentary elections, charismatic party leader Hugo de Jonge committed a slip of the tongue that even Joe Biden would not have made. 'As Jesus would say, don't pin me down on it,' he said in a respected talk show.

Neuroscientists at UCL have found no significant association between COVID-19 and the potentially paralysing and sometimes fatal neurological condition Guillain-Barré syndrome. Researchers say the findings, published in the journal  Brain*,  along with a linked scientific commentary** by UCL and other international experts, should provide the public with reassurance, as the UK's national coronavirus vaccination programme is rolled out.

Radars are being installed at the top of an engineering building at the University of Birmingham as part of a demonstration intended to test and prove the precision of quantum-enabled radar detection capabilities. A key part of keeping everyday life secure is being able to detect dangerous or unsafe situations before they occur.

New methods could lead to single-molecular systems for both diagnosing and treating cancer in real time A promising approach to treating cancer - called targeted alpha-particle therapy or TAT - could better harness the curative power of radiation treatments and lessen the severity of their more debilitating side effects.

Study: Nanotube films come in 466 colors, could be used in electronics, solar panels Nanomaterials researchers in Finland, the United States and China have created a color atlas for 466 unique varieties of single-walled carbon nanotubes. The nanotube color atlas is detailed in a study in Advanced Materials about a new method to predict the specific colors of thin films made by combining any of the 466 varieties.

During the corona crisis, neurotic people experience more negative emotions in their everyday lives, are more unstable emotionally and worry more about their health. These are the results of a study carried out by psychologists from the Universities of Münster and Bielefeld. The study has been published in the "Journal of Research in Personality'.

Fans are not amused about decisions made by video assistants Since the 2019/20 season, controversial referee calls in the English Premier League may be technically reviewed and, if deemed necessary, corrected. Using a Twitter analysis of 129 games in the English Premier League, a research team from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has now determined how decisions made by video referees affect the mood of the fans.

Just like people, cells get stressed too. A sudden drop in oxygen, overheating, or toxins can trigger a cascade of molecular changes that lead cells to stop growing, produce stress-protective factors, and form stress granules - proteins and RNA molecules huddled together into membrane-less organelles.

By Susanne Eigner Researchers from TU Graz and acib succeed in the first enzyme-driven biocatalytic synthesis of nucleic acid building blocks. This facilitates the development of antiviral agents and RNA-based therapeutics. Due to the COVID 19 pandemic and the associated intensive search for therapeutics and vaccines, the chemical substance class of nucleosides is experiencing an enormous increase in interest.

A wide array of technologies, ranging from lasers and optical telecommunication to quantum computing rely on nonlinear optical interaction. Typically, these nonlinear interactions, which allow a beam of light, for example, to change its frequency, are implemented by bulk materials. In a new study an international research team led by the University of Vienna have shown that structures built around a single layer of graphene allow for strong optical nonlinearities that can convert light.

Optics researchers from The University of Queensland and Nokia Bell Labs in the US have developed a new technique to demonstrate the time reversal of optical waves, which could transform the fields of advanced biomedical imaging and telecommunications. Time reversal of waves in physics doesn't mean travelling back to the future; it describes a special type of wave which can retrace a path backwards through an object, as if watching a movie of the travelling wave, played in reverse.

Compared with meat eaters, fish eaters have a lower risk of several adverse heart diseases, including stroke. These findings, which were part of new research looking at the diets and risk of developing or dying from heart diseases of more than 420,000 people in the UK, also concluded that vegetarianism was associated with a lower risk of developing heart disease.

A pioneering reconstruction of the brain belonging to one of the earliest dinosaurs to roam the Earth has shed new light on its possible diet and ability to move fast. Research, led by the University of Bristol, used advanced imaging and 3-D modelling techniques to digitally rebuild the brain of Thecodontosaurus , better known as the Bristol dinosaur due to its origins in the UK city.

Bioengineers at EPFL have developed a nanopore-based system that can read data encoded into synthetic macromolecules with higher accuracy and resolution than similar methods on the market. The system is also potentially cheaper and longer-lasting, and overcomes limitations that prevent us from moving away from conventional data storage devices that are rapidly maxing out in capacity and endurance.

Rice, Baylor work with city to find disease in Houston four times greater than testing showed A monthslong study to determine the number of Houstonians carrying COVID-19 antibodies revealed infections may have been four times greater than viral tests showed, according to collaborators at the Houston Health Department, Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine.

Finding could lead to potential therapies Researchers at McGill University are hopeful that the identification of the origin and a specific gene needed for tumour growth could lead to new therapeutics to treat a deadly brain cancer that arises in teens and young adults. The discovery relates to a subgroup of glioblastoma, a rare but aggressive form of cancer that typically proves fatal within three years of onset.

The game app hexxed may cast a spell on players who have to figure out the rules of the game and what the goal is. Neuroscientists hope to use player strategies to understand how people solve problems compared to how artificial intelligence solves problems. Fans of Candy Crush Saga, Flow Free or Minesweeper should check out a challenging new mobile game app, hexxed , that will stretch your brain as it helps brain researchers understand human strategic thinking and perhaps improve the reasoning of artificial intelligence.

The chain of command inside human cells is similar to the way a factory is run, two University of Queensland researchers say. But Dr Nathan Palpant and Associate Professor Mikael Boden 's big news is that they have found the password to the chief executive's computer - metaphorically speaking. "We discovered a simple but powerful rule revealing how cells are controlled by rare decision-making genes,' said Dr Palpant, from UQ's Institute for Molecular Bioscience.

An earwax self-sampling device could be used to measure chronic glucose levels, according to a study led by UCL and King's College London researchers. The pilot study, published in Diagnostics , reports that the new device was almost 60% more reliable at measuring chronic glucose levels averaged over a month than an existing gold standard technique.

A study performed in Ticino between Ente Ospedaliero Cantonale (EOC), USI Università della Svizzera italiana and Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele (UniSR, Milan, Italy) has shown how drugs against hypertension can reduce by more than 60% the risk of mortality in COVID-19 patients. The multidisciplinary study concerned 576 patients admitted to the EOC during the first wave of the epidemic, and was published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).