Associations of government-mandated closures, restrictions with mobility, SARS-CoV-2 infections in Nigeria

Suppose Smokey the Bear were to go on a tear and start setting forest fires instead of putting them out. That roughly describes the behavior of certain cells of our immune system that become increasingly irascible as we grow older. Instead of stamping out embers, they stoke the flames of chronic inflammation. Biologists have long theorized that reducing this inflammation could slow the aging process and delay the onset of age-associated conditions, such as heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, cancer and frailty, and perhaps even forestall the gradual loss of mental acuity that happens to nearly everyone. Yet the question of ...

What The Study Did: Researchers examined individuals' motivation to self-test and to distribute self-test kits given the urgent need to increase COVID-19 testing coverage and contact tracing. Author: Cedric Bien-Gund, M.D., of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.34001) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support. #  #  ...

What The Study Did: This investigation analyzed U.S. county-level associations of income inequality, racial/ethnic composition and political attributes with COVID-19 cases and mortality. Author: Tim F. Liao, Ph.D., of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.34578) Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support. #  #  # Media advisory: ...

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 ...