Association of social, economic inequality with COVID-19 across US counties

Many patients with multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer, eventually develop resistance to one treatment after another. That's in part because cancer stem cells drive the disease -- cells that continually self-renew. If a therapy can't completely destroy these malignant stem cells, the cancer is likely to keep coming back. Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Ionis Pharmaceuticals are taking a new, targeted approach to myeloma treatment -- silencing IRF4, a gene that allows myeloma stem cells and tumor cells to proliferate and survive. Past studies have shown that high IRF4 levels are associated with lower overall survival rates for patients with the disease. In a study published ...

Attine ants are farmers, and they grow fungus as food. Pseudonocardia and Streptomyces bacteria are their farmhands, producing metabolites that protect the crop from pathogens. Surprisingly, these metabolites lack common structural features across bacteria from different geographic locations, even though the ants share a common ancestor. Now, researchers report in ACS Central Science they have identified the first shared antifungal compound among many of these bacteria across Brazil. The compound could someday have medical applications. Attine ants originated as one species at a single location in the Amazon 50 million years ago. They have evolved to 200 species that have spread their farming practices ...

Renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power, could help decrease the world's reliance on fossil fuels. But first, power companies need a safe, cost-effective way to store the energy for later use. Massive lithium-ion batteries can do the job, but they suffer from safety issues and limited lithium availability. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Nano Letters have made a prototype of an anode-free, zinc-based battery that uses low-cost, naturally abundant materials. Aqueous zinc-based batteries have been previously explored for grid-scale energy storage ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Approximately 1.5 million heart attacks and strokes occur every year in men and women in the U.S. Sex and age play a large part in who experiences a heart attack, the methods used to treat these heart attacks, and the eventual post hospital outcomes of the people who experience heart attacks. Mayo Clinic researchers discuss these sex and age differences in study findings published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings. In this study, Mayo Clinic researchers wanted to see if age was a key factor in sex-related differences in patients with a heart attack. Using public all-payer hospitalization data from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample, the team of researchers ...

New research led by BirdLife International, the University of East Anglia (UEA) and British Antarctic Survey highlights how a proposed network of marine protected areas could help safeguard some of the most important areas at sea for breeding Antarctic penguins. The findings, published today in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, show that if all the Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) proposed around Antarctica were adopted, the permanent conservation of high-quality areas for a flagship group of Antarctic wildlife - the penguins - would increase by between 49% and 100% depending on the species. The Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica is home to thousands of unique species, including seals, whales and four species ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (Jan. 20, 2021)--Hot flashes, insomnia, and vaginal dryness are commonly reported symptoms that accompany the menopause transition. A new study suggests that such symptoms--especially psychological and sexual problems--are worse for women who have premature ovarian insufficiency (POI) than for women undergoing natural menopause. Study results are published online today in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS). Premature ovarian insufficiency is defined as the cessation of ovarian function that leads to menopause before the age of 40 years. The ...

A 15-year research and advocacy effort to make microwave ovens safer has led to a change in national manufacturing standards that will make microwaves more difficult for young children to open, protecting them from the severe microwave-related burns that scar hundreds of kids under 5 years old in the United States each year. Researchers at Rush University Medical Center and other leaders of the campaign, who worked diligently to document the frequency and severity of these injuries and young children's vulnerability to them, published the results of their efforts in The Journal of Pediatrics ...

January 20, 2021 - Plant breeders are constantly working to develop new bean varieties to meet the needs and desires of the food industry. But not everyone wants the same thing. Many consumers desire heirloom-type beans, which have great culinary quality and are visually appealing. On the other hand, farmers desire beans with better END ...

Scientists have discovered how bacteria commonly responsible for seafood-related stomach upsets can go dormant and then "wake up". Vibrio parahaemolyticus is a marine bacterium that can cause gastroenteritis in humans when eaten in raw or undercooked shellfish such as oysters and mussels. Some of these bacteria are able to turn dormant in poor growth conditions such as cold temperatures - and can remain in that state of hibernation for long periods before resuscitating. University of Exeter scientists have identified a population of these dormant cells that are better at waking up, and have discovered an enzyme involved in that waking up process. "Most of these bacteria die when they encounter poor growth conditions, but we identified sub-populations ...

BEER-SHEVA, Israel...January 20, 2021 -Ben-Gurion University of the Negev researchers have discovered that the protein BMP5/7 offers promising therapeutics that could slow down or halt the progression of Parkinson's disease. The findings were published in the prestigious clinical neurology journal, END ...