Frontiers | Science News

Science News post list

1,106 news posts in Featured news

Featured news

17 Sep 2020

Men and women experience similar rates of anxiety due to job insecurity

By Nora Belblidia, science writer Despite gender disparities in the workforce, male and female workers in Europe report similar rates of anxiety in response to job insecurity across countries. Economic stress and anxiety can contribute to poor mental health outcomes as more people work non-traditional jobs with little stability, and according to Dr. Egidio Riva, a co-author of the study investigating these trends, such effects need to be taken seriously by both governments and employers alike. As more people work temporary gigs with little protection, or fear layoffs in an unstable economy, job insecurity is on the rise. These stresses understandably contribute to poor mental health and feelings of anxiety. But given gender disparities in the workforce – women are more likely to work temporary jobs and receive lower pay – researchers were curious whether job insecurity affected men and women differently. A study published in Frontiers in Sociology analyzed data from the European Working Conditions Survey, looking at results from 2005, 2010, and 2015. The survey asked people to what extent they thought they might lose their job in the next six months and whether they had experienced anxiety over the last 12 months. The study found that, in […]

Featured news

05 Aug 2020

Bird nests attract flying insects and parasites due to higher levels of carbon dioxide

By Nora Belblidia, science writer Researchers in Spain have examined bird nests in order to understand how flying insects and parasites detect gases as a way to locate their hosts. The study found that nests that had higher concentrations of carbon dioxide attracted more biting midges, a type of insect that carries a common blood parasite that infects local birds. The findings have implications regarding how diseases spread, which will be affected as carbon levels rise due to climate change. Flying insects and parasites are often vectors for disease, but a mosquito needs to first find someone before they can bite them. In a recent study published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, researchers examined bird nests in order to understand how insects and parasites detect gases such as carbon dioxide and methane as a way to locate their hosts. The researchers focused on blue tit bird nest boxes located in a deciduous forest in central Spain. They found that the nests contained more biting midges when concentrations of carbon dioxide were higher inside the nest compared to the forest air. “This is important because biting midges are the main vector of Haemoproteus, the most abundant blood parasite infecting birds […]

Featured news

04 Aug 2020

Supporting our people and the scientific community: Frontiers’ response to COVID-19

We are living in immensely challenging times. Everyone has to play their part.  Kamila Markram, CEO and co-founder Throughout the course of this year, half the world’s population was or still is under some form of restrictive lockdown measure in an effort to stop the spread of the COVID-19, whilst researchers are racing to understand, cure and mitigate the virus.  As an organization steeped in science, Frontiers is doing everything we can to support the scientific response to COVID-19, as well as our people, employees, editors and authors.   Supporting the scientific response  Our COVID-19 call to action received so much response from you, the academic community, that we introduced numerous new initiatives to help inform the scientific response to the pandemic and promote research advancements.  A hub of knowledge: In March we launched the Coronavirus Knowledge Hub. It has subsequently grown into an incredibly rich, online resource of trusted information and analysis from leading experts on COVID-19 and has received over 11 million views on social media. It showcases a range of Coronavirus initiatives, which includes more than 100 Research Topics, hundreds of peer-reviewed coronavirus articles, interviews with COVID-19 experts and nearly 1.5 billion USD in funding calls.  Priority peer review: To ensure time-sensitive scientific developments become openly available as soon as possible, we established an international, interdisciplinary group of approximately 200 research experts to fast-track the peer-review of COVID-19 articles. Whilst understanding that some of […]

Featured news

27 Jul 2020

Studying COVID-19’s envelope protein

By Carolyn E. Unck | KAUST Discovery A likeness between genes of the SARS and COVID-19 viruses could inform research into potential treatments Understanding any similarities between SARS and COVID-19 inflammation could help in a clinical setting. A protein in the viruses causing COVID-19 and SARS is almost identical. Researchers propose testing if targeting COVID-19 with FDA-approved drugs, already tested in mice infected with SARS, could improve the outcomes for COVID-19 patients experiencing severe respiratory symptoms. The finding was a collaborative effort from teams at KAUST following a comparison of Betacoronavirus genomes. “We have long-standing expertise in analyzing genomic data at KAUST’s Computational Bioscience Research Center,” says molecular biologist, Takashi Gojobori. Gojobori, Carlos M. Duarte and a team of scientists compared the genomes of 24 Betacoronaviruses, including four SARS-CoV-2 viruses, which causes COVID-19. Two of the four were sequenced in the United States, while the other two were sequenced in China. “SARS-CoV-2 appears to have recently evolved from other related Betacoronaviruses, such as the ones causing SARS and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS),” explains Intikhab Alam, first author of the study. “We wanted to understand the genetic make up of SARS-CoV-2. Seeing what has changed might help find ways to detect the virus and understand its […]