New clues on why pregnancy may increase risk of organ transplant rejection

Polarons are fleeting distortions in a material's atomic lattice that form around a moving electron in a few trillionths of a second, then quickly disappear. As ephemeral as they are, they affect a material's behavior, and may even be the reason that solar cells made with lead hybrid perovskites achieve extraordinarily high efficiencies in the lab. Now scientists at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have used the lab's X-ray laser to watch and directly measure the formation of polarons for the first time. They reported their findings in Nature ...

Using a new combination of emitter molecules, researchers in Japan have demonstrated the promise of a novel approach to finally overcome a major challenge facing displays using organic light-emitting diodes: a blue light source matching the excellent performance of the red and green ones. By splitting energy conversion and emission processes between two molecules, the researchers achieved devices that produce pure-blue emission with high efficiency, maintain brightness for relatively long times, and lack any expensive metal atoms--a set of properties that has so far been difficult ...

Babies who suffer oxygen deficiencies during birth are at risk of brain damage that can lead to developmental delays, cerebral palsy and even death. To prevent this, most women in labor undergo continuous monitoring of the baby's heart rate and receive supplemental oxygen if the heart rate is abnormal, with the thought that this common practice increases oxygen delivery to the baby. However, there is conflicting evidence about whether the long-recommended practice improves infant health. Now, a comprehensive analysis - led by Washington University School ...

New Columbia Engineering study--first to investigate the long-term effect of soil moisture-atmosphere feedbacks in drylands--finds that soil moisture exerts a negative feedback on surface water availability in drylands, offsetting some of the expected decline New York, NY--January 4, 2021--Scientists have thought that global warming will increase the availability of surface water--freshwater resources generated by precipitation minus evapotranspiration--in wet regions, and decrease water availability in dry regions. This expectation is based primarily on atmospheric thermodynamic processes. As air temperatures rise, more water evaporates into the air from the ocean and land. Because warmer air can hold more water vapor than dry air, a more humid atmosphere ...

ANN ARBOR, Michigan -- Michael Green, M.D., Ph.D., noticed that when his patients had cancer that spread to the liver, they fared poorly - more so than when cancer spread to other parts of the body. Not only that, but transformative immunotherapy treatments had little impact for these patient. Uncovering the reason and a possible solution, a new study, published in Nature Medicine, finds that tumors in the liver siphon off critical immune cells, rendering immunotherapy ineffective. But coupling immunotherapy with radiotherapy to the liver in mice restored the immune cell function and led to better outcomes. "Patients with liver metastases receive little benefit from immunotherapy, a treatment that has been a game-changer for many cancers. Our research suggests ...

MADISON, Wis. -- Deforestation dropped by 18 percent in two years in African countries where organizations subscribed to receive warnings from a new service using satellites to detect decreases in forest cover in the tropics. The carbon emissions avoided by reducing deforestation were worth between $149 million and $696 million, based on the ability of lower emissions to reduce the detrimental economic consequences of climate change. Those findings come from new research into the effect of GLAD, the Global Land Analysis and Discovery system, available on the free and interactive ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Scientists have developed a machine-learning method that crunches massive amounts of data to help determine which existing medications could improve outcomes in diseases for which they are not prescribed. The intent of this work is to speed up drug repurposing, which is not a new concept - think Botox injections, first approved to treat crossed eyes and now a migraine treatment and top cosmetic strategy to reduce the appearance of wrinkles. But getting to those new uses typically involves a mix of serendipity and time-consuming and expensive randomized clinical trials to ensure that a drug deemed effective for one disorder will be useful as a treatment for something else. The Ohio State University researchers ...

The healing process that follows a brain injury could spur tumour growth when new cells generated to replace those lost to the injury are derailed by mutations, Toronto scientists have found. A brain injury can be anything from trauma to infection or stroke. The findings were made by an interdisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Toronto, The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre who are also on the pan-Canadian Stand Up To Cancer Canada Dream Team that focuses on a common brain cancer known as glioblastoma. "Our data suggest that the right mutational change in particular cells in the brain could be modified by injury to give rise to a tumour," says Dr. Peter Dirks, Dream ...

Spintronics refers to a suite of physical systems which may one day replace many electronic systems. To realize this generational leap, material components that confine electrons in one dimension are highly sought after. For the first time, researchers created such a material in the form of a special bismuth-based crystal known as a high-order topological insulator. To create spintronic devices, new materials need to be designed that take advantage of quantum behaviors not seen in everyday life. You are probably familiar with conductors and insulators, which permit and restrict the flow of electrons, respectively. ...

Some racial and ethnic groups suffer relatively more often, and fare worse, from common ailments compared to others. Prostate cancer is one disease where such health disparities occur: risk for the disease is about 75 percent higher, and prostate cancer is more than twice as deadly, in Blacks compared to whites. Yet whites are often overrepresented as research participants, making these differences difficult to understand and, ultimately, address. With this problem in mind, scientists at the USC Center for Genetic Epidemiology and the Institute for Cancer Research, London, ...