ICE violated internal medical standards, potentially contributing to deaths

New research from the University of Georgia finds that older Mexican Americans who live in low English-speaking neighborhoods are at greater risk for poor health and even an early death. Language barriers can be a significant deterrent to health. People who don't speak English well are less likely to seek health care or receive health information. This can lead to delay of care and missed health screenings for chronic disease and cancers. Language isolation is also linked to poor mental health. These issues only compound as non-English speakers age, said study co-author Kerstin Emerson, a clinical ...

A single dose of the Sputnik V vaccine may elicit significant antibody responses against SARS-CoV-2, finds a study published July 13 in the journal Cell Reports Medicine. "Due to limited vaccine supply and uneven vaccine distribution in many regions of the world, health authorities urgently need data on the immune response to vaccines to optimize vaccination strategies," says senior author Andrea Gamarnik (@GamarnikLab) of the Fundación Instituto Leloir-CONICET in Buenos Aires, Argentina. "The peer-reviewed data we present provide information for guiding public health decisions in light of the current global health emergency." Past research has shown that two doses of Sputnik V results in 92% efficacy against ...

Feeling extra sweaty from a summer heat wave? Don't worry--not all your perspiration has to go to waste. In a paper publishing July 13 in the journal Joule, researchers have developed a new device that harvests energy from the sweat on--of all places--your fingertips. To date, the device is the most efficient on-body energy harvester ever invented, producing 300 millijoules (mJ) of energy per square centimeter without any mechanical energy input during a 10-hour sleep and an additional 30 mJ of energy with a single press of a finger. The authors say the device represents a significant ...

WASHINGTON, July 13, 2021 -- The rhythm in a working heart is regulated by electrical impulses. Disturbances of this bioelectrical process can result in cardiac arrhythmias, or irregularities in heartbeat -- a common ailment that can lead to illness and death. In Biophysics Reviews, by AIP Publishing, researchers from Harvard Medical School provide a state-of-the-art update on how electrical impulses in the heart travel from cell to cell. A functioning heart contracts to pump blood to the body and the lungs. Within the heart, a pacemaker acts as an electrical clock, sending out a signal that tells the heart when to contract. The whole muscle moves together, because ...

No longer science fiction, farm robots are already here--and they have created two possible extremes for the future of agriculture and its impacts on the environment, argues agricultural economist Thomas Daum in a Science & Society article published July 13 in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution. One is a utopia, where fleets of small, intelligent robots farm in harmony with nature to produce diverse, organic crops. The other is a dystopia in which large, tractor-like robots subdue the landscape through heavy machinery and artificial chemicals. He describes the utopian scenario as a mosaic ...

PITTSBURGH, July 13, 2021 - Substantially more people in the U.S. with opioid use disorder are receiving evidence-based treatment for the disease, but there are still considerable gaps in care along racial lines, according to the largest analysis to date of opioid use disorder among Medicaid recipients. The results, published today in JAMA, provide insights that policymakers and medical providers can act on to improve access to quality care for opioid use disorder, one of the leading causes of death in the U.S. The analysis was possible because of a unique network that partnered academic institutes with state Medicaid programs to overcome barriers to data sharing between states. "Medicaid plays an incredibly important role in our ...

A new wearable device turns the touch of a finger into a source of power for small electronics and sensors. Engineers at the University of California San Diego developed a thin, flexible strip that can be worn on a fingertip and generate small amounts of electricity when a person's finger sweats or presses on it. What's special about this sweat-fueled device is that it generates power even while the wearer is asleep or sitting still. This is potentially a big deal for the field of wearables because researchers have now figured out how to harness the energy that can be extracted from human sweat even when a person is not moving. This type of device is ...

What The Study Did: Researchers used a large data resource of U.S. COVID-19 cases and control patients who tested negative from multiple health systems across the country to evaluate COVID-19 severity and risk factors over time and assess the use of machine learning to predict clinical severity. Authors: Tellen D. Bennett, M.D., of the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora, and Christopher G. Chute, M.D., of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, are corresponding authors. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.16901) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the ...

Osaka, Japan - BRCA1, a protein that is well-known for its role in hereditary breast cancer, is an important part of the cellular system that repairs double-strand DNA breaks. Now, researchers from Japan have discovered a new way in which cells protect these broken DNA ends to make sure that they are repaired correctly. In a study published in Cell Reports, researchers from Osaka University have revealed that protein phosphatase 1 (PP1) binds to double-strand breaks early on to promote repair by a process known as nonhomologous end joining instead of by homologous ...

For their own benefit and to grow beyond control, tumours manipulate cell signals to make it appear as if the cells have the nutrients they need. That is the case in follicular lymphoma, a type of tumour that affects the B lymphocytes of the immune system. One in six follicular lymphoma patients has mutations in RagC, a gene involved in the mTOR nutrient signalling pathway. The team led by Alejo Efeyan, head of the Metabolism and Cell Signalling Group at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), has discovered that genetic inhibition of the RagC protein blocks the activation of B lymphocytes and delays the onset of follicular lymphomas without side effects. The study, which was carried out in animal models, was published this ...