Monday 3 June 2019

Remote sensing of toxic algal blooms

Harmful algal blooms in the Red Sea could be detected from satellite images using a method developed at KAUST. This remote sensing technique may eventually lead to a real-time monitoring system to help maintain the vital economic and ecological resources of the Red Sea.

* This article was originally published here

Sleep, wake, repeat: How do plants work on different time zones?

It's widely understood that humans have a circadian clock. When we travel long distances, things get knocked out of kilter.

* This article was originally published here

Significant barriers to care for patients seeking medication for opioid use

Buprenorphine-naloxone (buprenorphine), a highly effective, evidence-based treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD), is difficult to access in states with high rates of death associated with OUD, according to new research led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The study also found that access to buprenorphine is especially challenging among patients with Medicaid coverage.

* This article was originally published here

Water filters, efficient cookstoves improve health in vulnerable Rwandan populations

A large-scale program to deliver water filters and portable biomass-burning cookstoves to Rwandan homes reduced the prevalence of reported diarrhea and acute respiratory infection in children under 5 years old by 29 percent and 25 percent, respectively, according to new findings published today in the journal PLOS Medicine.

* This article was originally published here

Large national study tracks veterans' health, highlights areas of unmet needs

For the first time, a large national population of United States veterans used the same standardized tool that the general population uses for tracking health.

* This article was originally published here

ASCO: low-dose chemo benefits advanced gastroesophageal cancer

(HealthDay)—For frail and elderly patients with advanced gastroesophageal cancer (aGOAC), low-dose chemotherapy is noninferior to high-dose chemotherapy for progression-free survival, according to a study presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Clinical Oncology, held from May 31 to June 4 in Chicago.

* This article was originally published here

Lithium boosts muscle strength in mice with rare muscular dystrophy

Standing up from a chair, climbing stairs, brushing one's hair—all can be a struggle for people with a rare form of muscular dystrophy that causes progressive weakness in the shoulders and hips. Over time, many such people lose the ability to walk or to lift their arms above their heads.

* This article was originally published here

A pair of fledgling planets directly seen growing around a young star

Astronomers have directly imaged two exoplanets that are gravitationally carving out a wide gap within a planet-forming disk surrounding a young star. While over a dozen exoplanets have been directly imaged, this is only the second multi-planet system to be photographed. (The first was a four-planet system orbiting the star HR 8799.) Unlike HR 8799, though, the planets in this system are still growing by accreting material from the disk.

* This article was originally published here

How a leap of faith can take science forward

At the movies, scientific discoveries are often portrayed as a Eureka moment in the laboratory. Reality, however, couldn't be more different—early-stage academic inventions often require long cycles of testing, validation and regulatory approvals before they can be turned into something useful, such as a new vaccine.

* This article was originally published here

Six fingers per hand

Polydactyly is the extraordinary condition of someone being born with more than five fingers or toes. In a case study published in Nature Communications, researchers from the University of Freiburg, Imperial College London, the University Hospital of Lausanne, and EPFL have for the first time examined the motor skills and sensorimotor brain areas in people with polydactyly. The results show that an extra finger can significantly extend the manipulation abilities and skill. It enables people with six fingers to perform movements with one hand where people with only five fingers would need two hands. The augmented motor abilities observed in the polydactyly subjects are made possible by dedicated areas in the sensorimotor brain areas. These findings may serve as blueprint for the development of additional artificial limbs extending motor abilities.

* This article was originally published here

Using a simulation framework to study spine behaviors of quadruped robots

Researchers at the Robert Bosch center for cyber physical systems in Bangalore, India, have recently proposed a simulation framework to systematically study the effects of spinal joint actuation on the locomotion performance of quadruped robots. In their study, outlined in a paper pre-published on arXiv, they used this framework to investigate the spine behaviors of a quadruped robot called Stoch 2 and their effects on its bounding performance.

* This article was originally published here