New Parkinson's disease therapeutics discovered by Ben-Gurion U researchers

A new negative pressure ventilator which could provide additional treatment options for patients with respiratory failure, including those with COVID-19 - and whose design can be easily adapted to developing countries - has been created by a team that includes anaesthetists, nurses and engineers. Details on the new exovent system - which is similar in design but much smaller in scale and easier to use than the devices used to help treat polio patients during the 1950s - are published in Anaesthesia (a journal of the Association of Anaesthetists). Use of this system ...

Protected areas are critical to mitigating extinction of species; however, they may also be in conflict with efforts to feed the growing human population. A new study shows that 6% of all global terrestrial protected areas are already made up of cropland, a heavily modified habitat that is often not suitable for supporting wildlife. Worse, 22% of this cropland occurs in areas supposedly enjoying the strictest levels of protection, the keystone of global biodiversity protection efforts. This finding was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by researchers at the University of Maryland's National Socio-Environmental ...

The Tiger Rattlesnake possesses the simplest, yet most toxic venom of any rattlesnake species, and now new research from a team lead by a University of South Florida biologist can explain the genetics behind the predator's fearsome bite. Published in the new edition of "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences," USF Department of Integrative Biology Assistant Professor Mark Margres and colleagues across the southeastern United States have sequenced the genome of the Tiger Rattlesnake to understand the genotype of the venom trait. Despite the simplicity of the Tiger Rattlesnake's venom, Margres says it is roughly 40 times more toxic than the venom of the Eastern Diamondback ...

A new therapy developed by researchers at Rush University Medical Center is showing success as a way to prevent COVID-19 symptoms in mice. In a study published in the Journal of Neuroimmune Pharmacology, mouse models with COVID-19 showed positive results when a small peptide was introduced nasally. The peptide proved effective in reducing fever, protecting the lungs, improving heart function and reversing cytokine storm -- a condition in which an infection triggers the immune system to flood the bloodstream with inflammatory proteins. The researchers also report success in preventing the disease from progression. "This ...

Disasters in high-risk industries can have catastrophic environmental, financial and human safety consequences. One way these industries help prevent and mitigate disasters is formal procedures designed to standardize how work is done. These procedures typically come in the form of a written document workers use while performing a task. Camille Peres, associate professor at the Texas A&M University School of Public Health, said that there are two models of safety companies usually follow to varying degrees, whether they realize it or not. Safety model one "is very much a control paradigm," Peres said. "The idea the company has is that if they control absolutely everything that's going on, then they will be safe." This ...

Before he joined the University of Texas at Arlington as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and founded the Robotic Vision Laboratory there, William Beksi interned at iRobot, the world's largest producer of consumer robots (mainly through its Roomba robotic vacuum). To navigate built environments, robots must be able to sense and make decisions about how to interact with their locale. Researchers at the company were interested in using machine and deep learning to train their robots to learn about objects, but doing so requires a large dataset of images. While there are millions of photos and videos of rooms, none were shot from the vantage point of a robotic vacuum. Efforts to train using images with human-centric perspectives failed. Beksi's ...

Following a series of studies on termite mound physiology and morphogenesis over the past decade, researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have now developed a mathematical model to help explain how termites construct their intricate mounds. The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Termite mounds are amongst the greatest examples of animal architecture on our planet," said L. Mahadevan, the Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics, of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and ...

Computer simulations hold tremendous promise to accelerate the molecular engineering of green energy technologies, such as new systems for electrical energy storage and solar energy usage, as well as carbon dioxide capture from the environment. However, the predictive power of these simulations depends on having a means to confirm that they do indeed describe the real world. Such confirmation is no simple task. Many assumptions enter the setup of these simulations. As a result, the simulations must be carefully checked by using an appropriate "validation protocol" involving experimental measurements. "We focused on a solid/liquid interface because interfaces are ubiquitous in materials, and those between oxides and water are key in many energy applications." -- Giulia Galli, theorist ...

New Rochelle, NY, January 19, 2021--Gene editing therapies, including CRISPR-Cas systems, offer the potential to correct mutations causing inherited retinal degenerations, a leading cause of blindness. Technological advances in gene editing, continuing safety concerns, and strategies to overcome these challenges are highlighted in the peer-reviewed journal Human Gene Therapy. Click here to read the full-text article free on the Human Gene Therapy website. "Currently, the field is undergoing rapid development with a number of competing gene editing strategies, including allele-specific knock-down, base editing, prime editing, and RNA editing, are under investigation. Each offers a ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - When the semester shifted online amid the COVID-19 pandemic last spring, Cornell University instructor Mark Sarvary, and his teaching staff decided to encourage - but not require - students to switch on their cameras. It didn't turn out as they'd hoped. "Most of our students had their cameras off," said Sarvary, director of the Investigative Biology Teaching Laboratories in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS). "Students enjoy seeing each other when they work in groups. And instructors like seeing students, because it's a way to assess whether or not they understand the material," Sarvary said. "When we switched to online learning, that component got lost. We wanted to investigate the reasons ...