245 articles from WEDNESDAY 8.7.2020

NFL outperforms other blood tests to predict and diagnose traumatic brain injury

A study from the National Institutes of Health showed that neurofilament light chain (NfL) delivered superior diagnostic and prognostic performance as a blood biomarker for mild, moderate, and severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) when compared to blood proteins glial fibrillary acidic protein, tau, and ubiquitin c-terminal hydrolase-L1. The research was conducted by scientists at the NIH Clinical...

Numerous jobs linked to increased risk of knee reconstruction

A major review of knee osteoarthritis (OA), which can lead to knee surgery, pain and loss of mobility, reveals widespread risk of OA, demonstrating a need for prevention outside of traditional workplaces. It the biggest meta-analysis and systematic review of the potentially debilitating knee OA and the first systematic review into the association between job 'titles' and knee OA - finding...

Nurses and midwives take the lead in providing HIV services in Eastern and Southern Africa

"Nurse-initiated and managed antiretroviral therapy" (NIMART) is an innovative approach to making effective medications more accessible to people living with HIV (PLWH) in low-resource countries. A new study identifies challenges and opportunities to promoting nurse- and midwife-led HIV services in eastern and southern Africa, reports the July/August issue of The Journal of the Association of...

Outdoor light linked with teens' sleep and mental health

Research shows that adolescents who live in areas that have high levels of artificial light at night tend to get less sleep and are more likely to have a mood disorder relative to teens who live in areas with low levels of night-time light. The research was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), part of the National Institutes of Health, and is published in JAMA...

Porous graphene ribbons doped with nitrogen for electronics and quantum computing

A team of physicists and chemists has produced the first porous graphene ribbons in which specific carbon atoms in the crystal lattice are replaced with nitrogen atoms. These ribbons have semiconducting properties that make them attractive for applications in electronics and quantum computing, as reported by researchers from the Universities of Basel, Bern, Lancaster and Warwick in the Journal of...

Programmable balloons pave the way for new shape-morphing devices

A team of researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) has designed materials that can control and mold a balloon into pre-programmed shapes. The system uses kirigami sheets -- thin sheets of material with periodic cuts -- embedded into an inflatable device.

Record efficiency for printed solar cells

A new study reports the highest efficiency ever recorded for full roll-to-roll printed perovskite solar cells. It marks a key step towards cheaper and more efficient ways of generating solar energy.

Reducing radioactive waste in processes to dismantle nuclear facilities

Margarita Herranz, professor of nuclear engineering at the UPV/EHU, leads one of the working groups in the Europe H2020 INSIDER project. The project aims to improve the management of contaminated materials by designing a methodology which allows the best scenarios in the dismantling, closing down and remediation of nuclear facilities to be specified and selected; the ultimate aim is for the waste...

Regulating the properties of MAPbBr3 single crystal via voltage and application

Defect density is one of the most significant characteristics of perovskite single crystals (PSCs) that determines their optical and electrical properties, but few strategies are available to tune this property. Developing a technique for modifying the defect population of PSCs without requiring chemical additives is urgently need. Here, they demonstrate that voltage regulation engineering is...

Research advances understanding of how the brain focuses while ignoring distractions

When trying to complete a task we are constantly bombarded by distracting stimuli. How does the brain filter out these distractions and enable us to focus on the task at hand? Psychologists at the University of California, Riverside, have made a discovery that could lead to an answer. Experimenting on mice, they located the precise spot in the brain where distracting stimuli are blocked.

Researchers uncover a critical early step of the visual process

The key components of electrical connections between light receptors in the eye and the impact of these connections on the early steps of visual signal processing have been identified for the first time, according to research published today in Science Advances by The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).

Rock 'n' control

The goal of "Femtochemistry" is to film and control chemical reactions with short flashes of light. Using consecutive laser pulses, atomic bonds can be excited precisely and broken as desired. So far, this has been demonstrated for selected molecules. Researchers at the University of Göttingen and the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry have now succeeded in transferring this...