Research offers insights on how night shift work increases cancer risk

It is well-known that patients who undergo Fontan surgery slowly develop liver fibrosis for years post-operatively. In the past decade, these incidences have been steadily increasing and this is due partly to the need for an accurate diagnostic method. A research group led by Dr. Daisuke Tokuhara, Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Osaka City University Graduate School of Medicine and Dr. Yuki Cho have found that the conventional methods of ultrasound elastography and biomarkers via blood tests do not show the actual status of postoperative liver ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- In a study conducted shortly before COVID-19 vaccines became available in the U.S., more than two-thirds of nursing home and assisted living staff in Indiana indicated willingness to receive a vaccine immediately or in the future. The study was led by researchers from Regenstrief Institute, Indiana University and the State of Indiana. Vaccine uptake by front-line staff is important because it will help protect against serious illness and death for the high-risk people who receive care in these facilities. "The vaccines offer the opportunity to return to a more normal life within the nursing ...

Native to the southeastern United States, a weedy grass has spread northward to Canada and also made its way to Australia and Japan. Andropogon virginicus grows densely packed and up to seven feet tall, disrupting growth patterns of other plants and competing for resources. When burned, it grows back stronger. There is no way to effectively remove the weed once it has invaded. But there might be a way to use it to human advantage. An international team of researchers has found that A. virginicus extracts appear to be effective against several human diseases, including diabetes and cancer. The results were published on Dec. 31, 2020, in a special issue of Plants, titled ...

Hydrogen has been hailed as the 'fuel of the future' owing to several reasons. First, compared to the conventionally used hydrocarbons, hydrogen exhibits higher energy yield. Second, the commercial use of hydrogen fuel, which yields only water as a byproduct product, would help mitigate the imminent global warming crisis by reducing the use of exhaustible and polluting fossil fuels. Thus, ongoing research has been focusing on efficient and environment-friendly ways to produce of hydrogen fuel. Solar hydrogen production through photoelectrochemical (PEC) water-splitting reaction is an attractive "green" method of ...

Research from the University of Kent predicts an end to deregulated competitive pubic transport in the UK as a consequence of Covid-19 social distancing measures leading to drastically reduced ridership, requiring a major rethinking of the provision of public transport. This paper, published in Transport Policy, argues that the situation will require a fundamental approach to long-term policy for transport as a whole. This is an opportunity to reconstruct the system whilst addressing such problems as the environmental impact of transport, congestion and questions of transport justice such as accessibility ...

A new substance could improve the treatment of persistent cancers. Researchers at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and the University of Greifswald have developed a new inhibitor that makes drug-resistant tumour cells respond again to chemotherapy. The new substance blocks a protein in the cancer cells that normally transports the cancer drugs back out of the cells. The results were published in the scientific journal Molecules. In addition to radiation therapy, cytotoxic agents, also known as chemotherapy, are frequently used to treat cancer. They prevent cells from dividing and thus cancer cells are unable to multiply unchecked. "Cytotoxic agents remain a very important form ...

In 1952, Alan Turing, the father of computer science and artificial intelligence, proposed that certain repetitive natural patterns may be produced by the interaction of two specific substances through the "reaction-diffusion" process. In this system, activator promotes the reaction and inhibitor inhibits the reaction. When the two meet, the reaction diffuses. When the difference in diffusion coefficient between the two reaches a certain level, the high diffusion ratio between them will cause the system imbalance and induce the formation of periodic complex patterns. "Turing structure" exists widely in nature, such as the body patterns of zebras, the phyllotaxis of sunflowers, the follicle spacing of ...

The precise choice of treatment for breast cancer depends upon the status of the hormone receptors (for oestrogen and progesterone). Their conventional determination by means of immunohistochemistry (IHC) is associated with a certain error rate, which can be reduced by adding genomic data. Even conventional statistics can bring about a notable improvement but now it is possible to use decision theory to optimally combine diagnostic findings, particularly where they are contradictory. This is the finding of a recent study conducted by MedUni Vienna under the leadership of Wolfgang Schreiner from the Center for Medical Statistics, Informatics and Intelligent Systems (CeMSIIS). The methodology has applications way beyond breast cancer and can be deployed ...

Recently, research group, led by Prof. FU Yao and associate research fellow LU Xi From Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale and School of Chemistry and Materials Science of the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), has made significant achievements in the field of synthesis of chiral amines. They developed a mild and general nickel-catalysed asymmetric reductive hydroalkylation and realized the modular synthesis of chiral aliphatic amines. Results were published in Nature Communications on Feb. 26, 2021. Chiral amines are important chiral auxiliaries and key synthetic intermediates of pharmaceuticals and natural products. ...

With the help of the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT), astronomers have discovered and studied in detail the most distant source of radio emission known to date. The source is a "radio-loud" quasar -- a bright object with powerful jets emitting at radio wavelengths -- that is so far away its light has taken 13 billion years to reach us. The discovery could provide important clues to help astronomers understand the early Universe. Quasars are very bright objects that lie at the centre of some galaxies and are powered by supermassive black holes. As the black hole consumes the surrounding gas, energy is released, allowing astronomers to ...