In the first few months of the corona pandemic, street patrol officers responded to new demands with a "medium stress level" although the individual experience of strain varied greatly. For example, factors leading to a high stress level were little work experience in the police force or feeling unprepared.

It was a year dominated by COVID-19 research, along with some beetles, batteries, and a Nobel Prize T he coronavirus pandemic has taught us many valuable lessons this year, and perhaps foremost among them is the importance of science. Researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have always strived to find science-based solutions for society's most pressing issues.

How stars form in galaxies remains a major open question in astrophysics. A new UZH study sheds new light on this topic with the help of a data-driven re-analysis of observational measurements. The star-formation activity of typical, nearby galaxies is found to scale proportionally with the amount of gas present in these galaxies.

Researchers from TU Graz, Med Uni Graz and Uni Graz are working on a digital interactive information system that automatically tailors medical content to individuals and their needs. Additional Images for download at the end of the text Can this digital medium make predictions about the individual information needs of users, recognize their cognitive abilities, and use this data to convey high-quality medical content in a comprehensible and clear manner?

By Christoph Pelzl Researchers from TU Graz, Med Uni Graz and Uni Graz are working on a digital interactive information system that automatically tailors medical content to individuals and their needs. Additional Images for download at the end of the text Can this digital medium make predictions about the individual information needs of users, recognize their cognitive abilities, and use this data to convey high-quality medical content in a comprehensible and clear manner?

Writing in PNAS, scientists from Cologne university present important new constraints showing that plate tectonics started relatively slow, although the early Earth's interior was much hotter than today. In an international collaboration earth scientists at the University of Cologne discovered that during Earth's early history mantle convection on, i.e. the internal mixing of our planet, was surprisingly slow and spatially restricted.

Since 1970 a worldwide unique test has been running in the Empa testing hall in Dübendorf, in which the long-term behaviour of bonded steel reinforcements on a concrete beam is being investigated. Investigations such as these have contributed to the fact that adhesive-bonded reinforcement is now state of the art as a strengthening method and that engineers have confidence in this retrofitting method.

From stars in another galaxy to a microscopic virus that has taken hold of the entire Earth: in this overview we present the most-read news items about research at KU Leuven in 2020. Bioscience engineers and economists from KU Leuven mapped out how wood could replace petroleum in the chemical industry.

Eating too much junk food has been linked with poor sleep quality in teens, a University of Queensland-led study has found. UQ School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences researcher Associate Professor Asad Khan said frequent consumption of soft drinks and fast food was strongly associated with sleep disturbance in adolescents around the world.

There's been a lot going on in 2020, so nobody can be blamed for missing a few things. But amid a tumultuous year in which many pivoted to COVID-19 research , University of Chicago scholars and scientists have also been hard at work continuing to understand the planet and the universe we live in, to improve our lives, and to build a future that's clean, safe and sustainable.

The weathering of rocks at the Earth's surface may remove less greenhouse gases from the atmosphere than previous estimates, says new research from the University of Cambridge.

The weathering of rocks at the Earth's surface may remove less greenhouse gases from the atmosphere than previous estimates, says new research from the University of Cambridge.

'Entanglement' is a ubiquitous concept in modern physics research: it occurs in subjects ranging from quantum gravity to quantum computing. In a publication that appeared in Physical Review Letters last week, UvA-IoP physicist Michael Walter and his collaborator Sepehr Nezami shed new light on the properties of quantum entanglement - in particular when many particles are involved.

Have you ever wondered how we remember the last place we saw our car keys or other objects like mobile phones and glasses? This new research shows we have a type of brain cell that's sensitive to the distance and direction of objects, they call these Vector Trace cells. These are in addition to GPS-like brain cells, which can store maps of places we have been, like our kitchen or a holiday destination.

Although the individual risk of becoming infected with the coronavirus and falling ill with COVID-19 is currently estimated as being higher than was the case in summer, the willingness to be vaccinated is still not particularly great. In mid-2020, just under 55 percent of the respondents of a representative survey stated that they would probably, or very probably, be vaccinated.

Study shows link between cervical cancer and HIV infection A research team at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has quantified the effects of an infection with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) on the development of cervical cancer. Their results show that the risk of developing cervical cancer is six times higher in women who are infected with HIV.

When T-cells of our immune system become active, tiny traction forces at the molecular level play an important role. They have now been studied at TU Wien. Highly complicated processes constantly take place in our body to keep pathogens in check: The T-cells of our immune system are busy searching for antigens - suspicious molecules that fit exactly into certain receptors of the T-cells like a key into a lock.

COVID-19 and lockdown measures drove some individuals more than others to use alcohol to cope with stress, a new study has revealed. While overall alcohol consumption appeared to fall, a study published in  BMJ Open  found that more than one in three adults (36%) increased their consumption during the first lockdown.

A study of more than 23,000 samples carried out by teams across the UK shows Oxford Nanopore's COVID-19 test, LamPORE, is highly accurate for the detection of SARS-CoV-2, in both symptomatic and asymptomatic population settings. The study was performed on both swab and saliva samples across four NHS sites, showing very high LamPORE test accuracy, as follows: These data support the use of LamPORE for testing of both symptomatic people, and those without symptoms.

A team of ETH researchers led by Karsten Weis has developed a method that allows them to study the assembly process for large protein complexes in detail for the first time. As their case study, the biologists chose one of the largest cellular complexes: the nuclear pore complex in yeast cells. Cells produce a great number of different protein complexes, each of which is made up of many individual proteins.