Scientists discover how humans develop larger brains than other apes

Scientists have genetically engineered immune cells, called myeloid cells, to precisely deliver an anticancer signal to organs where cancer may spread. In a study of mice, treatment with the engineered cells shrank tumors and prevented the cancer from spreading to other parts of the body. The study, led by scientists at the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) Center for Cancer Research, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), was published March 24, 2021, in Cell. "This is a novel approach to immunotherapy that appears to have promise as a potential treatment for metastatic cancer," said the study's leader, Rosandra Kaplan, M.D., of NCI's Center for Cancer Research. Metastatic cancer--cancer that has spread from its original location to other parts of the body--is notoriously ...

What The Study Did: Researchers evaluated the association between a recent diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment or dementia and the risk of attempting suicide among older adults. Authors: Amy L Byers, Ph.D., M.P.H., of the University of California, San Francisco, 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/jamapsychiatry.2021.0150) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding and support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial ...

What The Study Did: This comparative effectiveness research study that included a high proportion of non-White individuals assesses whether remdesivir administered alone or with corticosteroids is associated with time to clinical improvement or time to death in patients hospitalized with confirmed COVID-19. Authors: Brian T. Garibaldi, M.D,. M.E.H.P., of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, 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.2021.3071) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. ...

What The Study Did: This survey study investigated the frequency and nature of sexist and racial/ethnic microaggressions against female and racial/ethnic-minority surgeons and anesthesiologists and the association with physician burnout. Authors: Neha T. Sudol, M.D., of the Southern California Permanente Medical Group in Irvine, 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/jamasurg.2021.0265) Editor's Note: The article includes funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial ...

Female adult sockeye from the Fraser River are dying at significantly higher rates than their male counterparts on the journey back to their spawning grounds, finds new UBC research. For every male salmon that doesn't make it to their natal stream, at least two, sometimes three female salmon die. "This is causing skewed sex ratios in their spawning grounds, something that has been observed in recent years," says lead researcher Dr. Scott Hinch, a professor in the faculty of forestry and head of the Pacific Salmon Ecology and Conservation Laboratory at UBC. "The implications on the health of Fraser River stocks are concerning, particularly as Pacific ...

Three-dimensional or "volumetric" images are widely used in medical imaging. These images faithfully represent the 3D spatial relationships present in the body. Yet 3D images are typically displayed on a two-dimensional monitor, which creates a dimensionality mismatch that must be resolved in a clinical setting where practitioners must search a 2D or a 3D image to find a particular trait or target of interest. To learn more about this problem, Craig K. Abbey, Miguel A. Lago, and Miguel P. Eckstein, of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at University of California Santa Barbara, used techniques from the field of vision science to examine how the observers use information in images to perform a given task. Their research, published in the Journal of ...

Syracuse, N.Y. - As opioid use disorders and overdoses continue to skyrocket in the United States, a study by researchers from Syracuse University and Pennsylvania State University shows that unmarried young adults who do not have children are mostly likely to misuse opioids. The growing number of these "disconnected" young adults may also result in continued rises in substance use disorders and overdoses, the researchers say. The study, "Opioid misuse and family structure: Changes and continuities in the role of marriage and children over two decades," was published ...

Living tissue can heal itself from many injuries, but giving similar abilities to artificial systems, such as robots, has been extremely challenging. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Nano Letters have developed small, swimming robots that can magnetically heal themselves on-the-fly after breaking into two or three pieces. The strategy could someday be used to make hardier devices for environmental or industrial clean up, the researchers say. Watch a video of the self-healing swimmers here. Scientists have developed small robots that can "swim" through fluids ...

Today, Cochrane, a global independent network that gathers and summarizes the best evidence from research to help informed health decision-making, publishes an updated systematic review assessing rapid tests for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 infection (COVID-19). The review shows that rapid antigen tests are better at correctly identifying cases of COVID-19 in people with symptoms than in people without symptoms. There are large differences in the accuracy of different brands of test, with very few meeting the World Health Organization (WHO) minimum acceptable performance standards. During the COVID-19 pandemic, swift diagnosis of people who are infected with SARS-CoV-2 is important. Then decisions ...

The more nitrate there is in mothers' drinking water, the smaller the babies they give birth to. But alarmingly, the declining birth weight can also be registered when the women are exposed to nitrate levels below the EU's threshold of 50 milligrams of nitrate per litre. This is shown by a register-based study of more than 850,000 births in Denmark carried out in a Danish-American partnership led by Professor Torben Sigsgaard from the Department of Public Health at Aarhus University and Professor Leslie Stayner and Dr. Vanessa Coffman from the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, School of Public Health. On the ...