Researchers develop roadside barrier design to mitigate air pollution

Researchers from the HealthPartners Institute and University of Minnesota in Minneapolis conducted an observational analysis of interviews and characteristics of primary care clinics, comparing the strategies, facilitators and barriers to high performance in treating patients with diabetes. The purpose of the study was to learn what strategies and factors seem most important to leaders of primary care clinics to ensure high performance. The percentage of Minnesota diabetes patients who achieved optimal diabetes care measures increased from 12 to 45 percent between 2004 and 2017, while national measures of diabetes care outcomes did not improve significantly around the same time ...

Smoke from local wildfires can affect the health of Colorado residents, in addition to smoke from fires in forests as far away as California and the Pacific Northwest. Researchers at Colorado State University, curious about the health effects from smoke from large wildfires across the Western United States, analyzed six years of hospitalization data and death records for the cities along the Front Range, which reaches deep into central Colorado from southern Wyoming. They found that wildfire smoke was associated with increased hospitalizations for asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and some cardiovascular health outcomes. They also discovered that wildfire smoke was associated with deaths from asthma and cardiovascular disease, but that ...

Researchers at Skoltech and their colleagues proposed a photonic device from two optical resonators with liquid crystals inside them to study optical properties of this system that can be useful for future generations of optoelectronic and spinoptronic devices. The paper was published in the journal Physical Review B. The simplest kind of optical resonator consists of two mirrors directly opposite each other, "squeezing" light between them. When you stand inside a mirror resonator, you see infinite copies of yourself in the mirrors; when a liquid crystal - the kind in your computer and smartphone screen - is placed into a much smaller and a bit more complex resonator, ...

Cancer patients often experience fragmented care, particularly as they undergo cancer treatments. Although family physicians seek to provide continuous and comprehensive care, they often lose touch with their cancer patients during the treatment phase. Researchers conducted a randomized intervention that aimed to improve continuity of care and interprofessional collaboration as perceived by lung cancer patients and their family physicians. The components of the intervention included the bidirectional exchange of patient information and care summaries between oncology teams and family physicians. Oncology ...

While many celebrate apple blossoms as classic signs of spring, they are also welcoming entry gates for pathogens. Full of nutrients to lure pollinators and promote pollen germination, flowers also attract bacteria like Erwinia amylavora, a pathogen that causes a damaging disease called fire blight. However, recent work by scientists at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station suggests that these flowery infection sites might also be perfect targets for applying microbial fire blight biocontrol measures. In a paper recently published in Phytobiomes Journal, researchers Zhouqi ...

LA JOLLA, CA--Translational research led by scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) has resulted in a promising combination therapeutic candidate for adults with recent-onset type 1 diabetes. The combination therapy was recently tested in a randomised, double-blind, placebo- controlled, phase 2 trial run and funded by pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk. The results, published recently in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, point to a potential way to treat the autoimmune disease without leaving the body vulnerable to infectious disease. The therapeutic candidate combines anti-IL-21 antibody with the diabetes drug liraglutide. This ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. - In the midst of a pandemic that has claimed more than 2 million lives worldwide and disrupted nearly every facet of society since it appeared more than a year ago, understanding the factors that create and facilitate disease outbreaks is more important than ever. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have determined that cognitive biases -- patterns of errors in thinking that affect judgments and behaviors, often unconsciously -- can help create and worsen foodborne disease outbreaks. "Unethical behavior isn't always intentional; conflicts of interest and other unconscious motivations can lead people to behave ...

WHAT: Approximately two years after establishing a human cerebral organoid system to study Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), National Institutes of Health researchers have further developed the model to screen drugs for potential CJD treatment. The scientists, from NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), describe their work in Scientific Reports. Human cerebral organoids are small balls of human brain cells ranging in size from a poppy seed to a pea; scientists use human skin cells to create them. CJD, a fatal neurodegenerative brain disease of humans caused by infectious prion proteins, affects about 1 in 1 million people each year. It can arise spontaneously, result from ...

Philadelphia, March 9, 2021 - Schizophrenia is a neurodevelopmental disorder that disrupts brain activity producing hallucinations, delusions, and other cognitive disturbances. Researchers have long searched for genetic influences in the disease, but genetic mutations have been identified in only a small fraction--fewer than a quarter--of sequenced patients. A new study now shows that "somatic" gene mutations in brain cells could account for some of the disease neuropathology. The study, led by senior author Jeong Ho Lee, MD, PhD, at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and the team of Stanley Medical Research Institute, appears in Biological ...

According to the current BfR-Corona-Monitor of the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), 43 percent of the respondents have already had themselves tested for the virus. The survey, which has been conducted regularly for almost a year now, documents how the population is dealing with the situation, what they are doing to protect themselves and how they are informing themselves about the current events. "For 50 weeks now, our survey has provided insights into the current situation and its development," says BfR-President Professor Dr. Dr. Andreas Hensel. "Over time, we see that the vast majority of the population is implementing the key protective measures." BfR-Corona-Monitor as to 2-3 March 2021: https://www.bfr.bund.de/cm/349/210302-bfr-corona-monitor-en.pdf Regarding ...