TikTok bumps up video length to 3 minutes

TikTok on Thursday began letting users post videos up to three minutes in length, tripling the prior cap to stay ahead of competitors.

Spanish couple develop high-tech specs to help son see

When their two-year-old son Biel started falling over a lot and had difficulty climbing stairs after learning to walk, Jaume Puig and his wife sought medical help to figure out the problem.

Seasoned US pilot Wally Funk to fulfill space dream 60 years on

Sixty years after joining a private program with the hope of one day becoming an astronaut, US pilot Wally Funk will finally see her dream come true at age 82.

Myanmar orders 2 million to stay home as COVID-19 cases spike

Myanmar authorities imposed stay-at-home-measures on the country's second city Friday as coronavirus cases in the coup-wracked country surge, with many health workers striking to protest against the junta.

India virus death toll tops 400,000; experts say it's higher

India on Friday crossed the grim milestone of more than 400,000 people lost to the coronavirus, a number that though massive is still thought to be a vast undercount because of a lack of testing and reporting.

Worst June for Brazil Amazon forest fires since 2007: data

The Brazilian Amazon has suffered its worst June for forest fires since 2007, official data showed Thursday, indicating another devastating dry season for the world's largest rainforest.

Approximately 1,000 evacuated as Canadian fires engulf town

About 1,000 people were evacuated in western Canada, authorities said Thursday, as fires raged amid an unprecedented heat wave, charring most of at least one town.

One, two, three! The Japanese stretch routine performed by millions

It might not make the cut for Olympians at Tokyo 2020, but each day in Japan's parks, schools and offices millions perform the country's most popular stretching routine: radio taiso.

Australia further curbs new arrivals due to risks of variant

Australia plans to halve commercial passenger arrivals due to virus risks as parts of the country emerged from lockdowns Friday.

Hundreds believed dead in heat wave despite efforts to help

Many of the dead were found alone, in homes without air conditioning or fans. Some were elderly—one as old as 97. The body of an immigrant farm laborer was found in an Oregon nursery.

J&J's says its COVID-19 vaccine effectively combats Delta variant

Johnson and Johnson's single-shot COVID-19 vaccine is effective against the highly contagious Delta variant, with an immune response lasting at least eight months, the company said Thursday.

1st COVID-19 death from Delta variant confirmed in Reno area

Northern Nevada's Washoe County has confirmed its first death related to the COVID-19 Delta variant, which was the most common variant among samples collected at the state public health lab last month and is accounting for one in four new cases reported nationally, the health district said Thursday.

New auto sales, prices rise as chip shortage cuts US supply

U.S. consumers continued to spend wildly on new automobiles in the second quarter, pushing sales up 50.2% over last year despite tight dealer inventories and record high prices.

'Nobody's winning' as drought upends life in US West basin

Ben DuVal knelt in a barren field near the California-Oregon border and scooped up a handful of parched soil as dust devils whirled around him and birds flitted between empty irrigation pipes.

Richard Branson announces trip to space, ahead of Jeff Bezos

Virgin Galactic's Richard Branson is aiming to beat fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos into space by nine days.

Vaccines grown in eggs induce antibody response against an egg-associated glycan

Over years of studying antibody responses against the flu in the Wilson lab at the University of Chicago, researchers kept coming up with a strange finding: antibodies that seemed to bind not only to the flu virus, but to every virus the lab could throw at them. Since antibodies are usually highly specific to individual pathogens, in order to maximize their targeted protective response, this pattern was extremely unusual.

Diversity in leadership essential to engage minority-ethnic medical students with academia

Minority-ethnic medical students must have more role-models in senior leadership positions if they are to engage with academia. This is one of the conclusions drawn by a group of medical students writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine about the drivers and barriers to engaging with academia.

Don't worry, the kids are cool if you cash in on their inheritance

Cash in on the kids' inheritance and spend up big on the retirement plans—that's the message coming from the University of South Australia as new research reveals that older people are keen to spend their well-earned savings, rather than passing them on to their kids.

Scientists say COVID-19 test offers solution for population-wide testing

In an article appearing in Nature Biomedical Engineering, a team of scientists from the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and UCLA School of Engineering report real-world results on SwabSeq, a high-throughput testing platform that uses sequencing to test thousands of samples at a time to detect COVID-19. They were able to perform more than 80,000 tests in less than two months, with the test showing extremely high sensitivity and specificity.

Large-scale drug analysis reveals potential new COVID-19 antivirals

Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute and University of Dundee have screened thousands of drug and chemical molecules and identified a range of potential antivirals that could be developed into new treatments for COVID-19 or in preparation for future coronavirus outbreaks.

Poorer survival in obese colorectal cancer patients possibly linked to lower chemotherapy doses

Obese patients with colorectal cancer receive lower cumulative doses of adjuvant chemotherapy, relative to their body surface area (BSA), than non-obese patients, show results from a large meta-analysis reported at the ESMO World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancer 2021. Further findings showed that cumulative relative chemotherapy dose was associated with survival so may explain the poorer survival that has been seen in obese patients receiving adjuvant chemotherapy for colorectal cancer.

Bowel cancer data reinforce need to reduce unnecessary antibiotic use

Doctors and patients are being advised to reduce unnecessary antibiotic use following new data suggesting that these medicines may increase the risk of cancer of the large intestine (colon), especially in people under 50 years. The results, presented at the ESMO World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancer (30 June-3 July) raise fresh concerns about the impact of the estimated 65% increase in global antibiotic consumption reported between 2000 and 2015, despite not showing a direct cause and effect.

Microbes in cow stomachs can break down plastic

Plastic is notoriously hard to break down, but researchers in Austria have found that bacteria from a cow's rumen—one of the four compartments of its stomach—can digest certain types of the ubiquitous material, representing a sustainable way to reduce plastic litter.