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Apr92021 by adminNo Comments

Kim Jong-un warns of North Korea crisis similar to deadly 90s famine

World

EPANorth Korean leader Kim Jong-un has urged citizens to prepare for hard times ahead, following warnings from human rights groups that the country faces dire food shortages and economic instability.Speaking at a party conference, Mr Kim appeared to compare the situation to a deadly famine in the 1990s.North Korea has shut its borders due to the coronavirus pandemic.Trade with China, its economic lifeline, has come to a standstill. This is on top of existing international economic sanctions over Pyongyang's nuclear programme. Imagine a North Korean family...North Korea's sidelined human rights crisisThe South Koreans enslaved in the North's minesWhat did Kim say?In a rare admission of looming hardship, the authoritarian leader of the single-party state on Thursday called on officials to "w...

Jan132021 by adminNo Comments

Social networks explain why independent cultures interpret the world in similar ways

Science

Jan. 13 (UPI) -- How can cultures that developed on opposite sides of the world come to similar understandings about colors, shapes, familial relationships and other categorical systems? The traditional explanation for this cross-cultural continuity is that humans are born with categories wired into their brains. Advertisement Researchers with the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, however, have an alternative explanation. It's not the human brain, exactly, that yields categorical consensus across disparate groups, researchers contend in a new paper, published in the journal Nature Communications, but the dynamics of consensus building among large groups of people. The phenomenon of "category convergence" has long been recognized by archaeologists in th...

Aug182020 by adminNo Comments

Black, White COVID-19 patients with access to care die at similar rates, study shows

Health

Aug. 18 (UPI) -- White Americans hospitalized with COVID-19 are just as likely to die from the disease as Black Americans, according to a study published Tuesday by JAMA Network Open. Just over 23% of White patients with COVID-19 being treated in the hospital ultimately died after getting infected, compared to 19% of Black patients, the data showed. Advertisement Researchers have previously found that Black and Hispanic Americans are hospitalized for the new coronavirus at a rate up to three times their share of the general population, but with access to care the death rates appear to even out. "These findings suggest that while Black U.S. residents might be at higher risk of contracting COVID-19 and represent a disproportionate share of COVID-19 deaths, mortality for those able to access...

Apr292020 by adminNo Comments

Cigarettes, vaping cause similar damage to blood vessels, study finds

Health

April 29 (UPI) -- E-cigarette users experience damage to their arteries and blood vessels similar to that of traditional cigarette smokers, an analysis published Wednesday by the Journal of the American Heart Association has found. Researchers who studied the arteries and blood vessels of current and former smokers and vapers, or people who used both, noted that both groups had augmentation indices -- a measure of arterial stiffness -- similar to traditional cigarette users, meaning that their arteries were just as stiff. They also observed that endothelial cells, or the cells that line blood vessels, appeared to be equally as damaged whether people used e-cigarettes, combustible cigarettes or both. "Many people believe e-cigarettes are safer than combustible cigarettes," study co-author...

Dec222019 by adminNo Comments

Division of mitochondria, key to animal evolution, is similar across species

Science

Dec. 20 (UPI) -- Scientists knew mitochondrial division is present across different species, but researchers weren't sure how exactly mitochondrial division is conserved -- or even whether it divides the same way in different organisms. Now, researchers have shown that the genes powering mitochondrial replication, or division, a key component of animal evolution, are conserved across different species. The endosymbiotic theory, an evolutionary theory, holds that more complex organisms called eukaryotes evolved from primitive single-celled organisms known as prokaryotes. Researchers have previously shown that mitochondria, the cellular organelles responsible for energy production, originated in prokaryotic bacteria, but were adopted by eukaryotes. The conservation of similar mitochondrial...