Eczema severity, association with learning problems in children

Chestnut Hill, Mass. (4/14/2021) -- Using abundant cobalt and a unique experimental approach to probe ways to speed a sluggish catalytic reaction to harvest hydrogen from water, researchers from Boston College and Yale University discovered a mechanistic switch in the oxygen evolution reaction, a significant step towards optimizing electrocatalysts for water splitting to produce clean energy. The mechanism switches by varying the amount of voltage, or applied potential, the team reports in the journal Chem. At moderate potential, two oxygen atoms bound to the catalyst surface react to form the oxygen-oxygen ...

In the cell nucleus histones play a crucial role packaging DNA into chromatin. Histones are however very sticky to both DNA and RNA, so to ensure they are transported to the cell nucleus after synthesis and bind to the right portion of DNA to organize the chromatin, they are guarded by complexes of histone chaperones. Histone chaperones are proteins that bind to histones to help protect them from non-specific binding events until they reach their goal. This process fails sometimes and histones get stuck during their supply to chromatin without any purpose. In a study published in Molecular Cell, researchers have shown that the protein DNAJC9 holds an important role in ...

Reconfigurable materials can do amazing things. Flat sheets transform into a face. An extruded cube transforms into dozens of different shapes. But there's one thing a reconfigurable material has yet to be able to change: its underlying topology. A reconfigurable material with 100 cells will always have 100 cells, even if those cells are stretched or squashed. Now, researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a method to change a cellular material's fundamental topology at the microscale. The research is published in Nature. "Creating ...

Researchers from Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) use genetic engineering in mice to further understand how cell fate is determined in the head Tokyo, Japan - Mammalian embryonic development is an extremely complex and precise process. Specific molecular events act as cues that tell cells in the embryo where to move and what type to mature into. The expression levels of different genes in these cells can change at certain points of development, helping produce the signals that further the progression. Now, researchers at Tokyo Medical and Dental University ...

The Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota, renowned for its exceptionally well preserved volcanic-influenced ecosystem, was buried in lacustrine and occasionally fluvial sediments in northern Hebei and western Liaoning, China. It includes large amount of evolutionarily significant taxonomy, e.g. feathered dinosaurs, early birds, mammals and flowering plants, representing one of the most diversified terrestrial biotas of the Mesozoic and providing exceptional windows into some major fundamental issues in earth and biological sciences, such as the origins of birds and angiosperm, and co-evolution of life and environments. The evolutionary radiation of the Jehol Biota can be broadly divided to ...

In Austria, suicides have fallen by 4% since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, thereby consolidating the pre-2019 trend. An international study now shows that this pattern is similar to the global suicide trends during the initial phase of the coronavirus pandemic up until the end of October. "Figures are now also available from Statistik Austria for the whole of 2020 and these confirm the results of the study," says Thomas Niederkrotenthaler from the Center for Public Health (Department of Social and Preventive Medicine), who took part in the study on behalf of MedUni Vienna along with Paul Plener, Head of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. A total of around 70 scientists in 21 countries were involved in the study. On average, the trends were found ...

Common ragweed is an annual plant native to parts of the United States and southern Canada. It's an invasive species that has spread to Europe. An important agricultural weed, this plant is particularly well-adapted to living at roadsides, and there are several theories why. Its rapid expansion in Europe can't be explained by its natural dispersal rate, which is limited to distances of around 1 meter. Rather, there are other factors in play, human-mediated, that support its invasion success - along roads, for example, it spreads mainly thanks to agricultural machineries, soil movements, roadside maintenance and ...

Ethiopia may produce less specialty coffee and more rather bland tasting varieties in the future. This is the result of a new study by an international team of researchers that looked at the peculiar effects climate change has on Africa's largest coffee producing nation. Their results are relevant both for the country's millions of smallholder farmers, who earn more on specialty coffee than on ordinary coffee, as well as for baristas and coffee aficionados around the world. "Climate change has conflicting impacts on coffee production in Ethiopia. The area that is suitable for average quality coffee might actually increase ...

Chronic inflammation is increasingly a focus of research. A recent study has now identified differences in indicators of inflammation between novel diabetes subgroups. But what does this mean for the future? Symptoms that increase with age, such as cardiovascular disease, kidney damage or dementia, are common consequences of type 2 diabetes. In addition to metabolic disorders, chronic inflammatory reactions are important causes. The inflammatory cytokines typical for this can have numerous effects on various organs. One of the consequences of this is that the organs ...

An innovative new technique that encourages cancer cells in the kidneys to self-destruct could revolutionise the treatment of the disease, a new study in the journal Pharmaceutics reports. During this unique study, researchers from the University of Surrey and Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University in Russia investigated whether certain naturally occurring proteins within the body can be used to treat cancer. Focusing on cathepsin S, a member of the lysosomal cathepsin proteins that are known to affect cancer progression, and p21 BAX, a protein that can stimulate cell destruction, researchers found that both can be deployed simultaneously ...