Concordia researchers break down the COVID-19 diagnostic arsenal

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- Supermassive black holes, or SMBHs, are black holes with masses that are several million to billion times the mass of our sun. The Milky Way hosts an SMBH with mass a few million times the solar mass. Surprisingly, astrophysical observations show that SMBHs already existed when the universe was very young. For example, a billion solar mass black holes are found when the universe was just 6% of its current age, 13.7 billion years. How do these SMBHs in the early universe originate? A team led by a theoretical physicist at the University of California, Riverside, has come up with an explanation: a massive seed black hole that the collapse of a dark matter halo could produce. Dark matter halo is the halo of invisible matter ...

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. -- A new approach to studying conjugated polymers made it possible for an Army-funded research team to measure, for the first time, the individual molecules' mechanical and kinetic properties during polymerization reaction. The insights gained could lead to more flexible and robust soft electronic materials, such as health monitors and soft robotics. Conjugated polymers are essentially clusters of molecules strung along a backbone that can conduct electrons and absorb light. This makes them a perfect fit for creating soft optoelectronics, such as wearable electronic devices; however, as flexible as they are, these polymers are difficult to study in bulk because they aggregate ...

DALLAS (SMU) -- A team of SMU biological scientists has confirmed that P-glycoprotein (P-gp) has the ability to remove a toxin from the brain that is associated with Alzheimer's disease. The finding could lead to new treatments for the disease that affects nearly 6 million Americans. It was that hope that motivated lead researchers James W. McCormick and Lauren Ammerman to pursue the research as SMU graduate students after they both lost a grandmother to the disease while at SMU. In the Alzheimer's brain, abnormal levels of amyloid-β proteins clump together to form plaques that collect between neurons and can disrupt cell function. ...

Why can some people weather the stress of social isolation better than others, and what implications does this have for their health? New research from the Communication Neuroscience Lab at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania found that people who felt a strong sense of purpose in life were less lonely during the COVID-19 pandemic. Did they achieve less loneliness by flouting public health guidance? No. Although lonelier people were less likely to want to follow public health guidance, people with a stronger sense of purpose also expressed more willingness to engage in social distancing, hand washing, and other ...

A new study looking at the way human cells activate the immune system in response to SARS-CoV-2 infection could open the door to even more effective and powerful vaccines against the coronavirus and its rapidly emerging variants keeping the global pandemic smoldering. Researchers from Boston University's National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard say it's the first real look at exactly what types of "red flags" the human body uses to enlist the help of T cells--killers sent out by the immune system to destroy infected cells. Until now, COVID vaccines have been focused on activating a different type of immune cell, B cells, which are responsible for creating antibodies. Developing vaccines to activate ...

Steroid (sex) hormones play a central role in sexual development: They help determine how boys become boys and girls become girls. If these hormones are disrupted during fetal life, it can lead to a string of reproductive disorders at birth and later in life, including malformed genitals and decreased fertility. Many environmental chemicals are known to disrupt the hormone system and are often referred to as endocrine disrupting chemicals. Azole fungicides constitute one group that can act as endocrine disruptors. Azoles are used to combat yeast infestations in seed and food crops, but are also used in medications for humans. Most azoles used in medicines are tightly regulated and their use is well controlled. However, some are sold over-the-counter, for ...

Philadelphia, June 16, 2021 - The SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 may have the ability to reactivate dormant tuberculosis (TB). In a novel study scientists END ...

In a new publication from Cardiovascular Innovations and Applications; DOI https://doi.org/10.15212/CVIA.2021.0011, Xiao-lei Yin, Dong-xue Liang, Lu Wang, Jing Qiu, Zhi-yun Yang, Jian-zeng Dong and Zhao-yuan Ma from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China; Capital Medical University, Beijing, China and The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, China analyse coronary angiography video interpolation methods to reduce x-ray exposure frequency based on deep learning. Cardiac coronary angiography is a major technique that assists physicians during interventional heart surgery. Under X-ray irradiation, the physician ...

In a new publication from Cardiovascular Innovations and Applications; DOI https://doi.org/10.15212/CVIA.2021.0013, Sharen Lee, Gary Tse, Xin Wang, Adrian Baranchuk and Tong Liu from Laboratory of Cardiovascular Physiology, Hong Kong, China, Second Hospital of Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin, China and Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada consider ST-segment depression in leads I and aVL. The 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) is a routinely performed test but is susceptible to misinterpretation even by experienced physicians. The authors report a case of a 72-year-old lady with no prior cardiac history presenting with atypical chest pain. Her initial electrocardiogram shows an initial ST depression followed by positive deflections leads I and aVL. ...

Commonplace pharmaceuticals, such as ibuprofen, can carry with them an inherent flaw in their atomic structure, which pairs the active, beneficial ingredient with a potentially ineffective -- or even toxic -- counterpart. New research could hold the key to more easily isolating the good while removing the unwanted. Dr. Shoufeng Lan, assistant professor in the J. Mike Walker '66 Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University, is leading a team investigating the use of electromagnetic control over the synthesis of chiral compounds at an atomic level -- a process that could lead to a plethora of practical ...