(Press-News.org) Antimicrobials are used to kill or slow the growth of bacteria, viruses and other microorganisms. They can be in the form of antibiotics, used to treat bodily infections, or as an additive or coating on commercial products used to keep germs at bay. These life-saving tools are essential to preventing and treating infections in humans, animals and plants, but they also pose a global threat to public health when microorganisms develop resistance to them, a concept known as antimicrobial resistance.
One of the main drivers of antimicrobial resistance is the misuse and overuse of antimicrobial agents, which includes silver nanoparticles, an advanced material with well-documented antimicrobial properties. It is increasingly used in commercial products that boast enhanced germ-killing performance - it has been woven into textiles, coated onto toothbrushes, and even mixed into cosmetics as a preservative.
Are silver nanoparticles a silver bullet against microbes?
Leanne Gilbertson's group studies the mechanisms behind bacterial resistance to silver nanoparticles to determine if their ubiquitous use is a solution to the antimicrobial resistance challenge or if it is perhaps fueling the fire
2021-07-13
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Study: Racial/ethnic and language inequities in ways patients obtain COVID-19 testing
2021-07-13
The COVID-19 pandemic caused an unprecedented disruption to health care delivery, with resources shifted toward telehealth services and mass viral testing. While early studies in the pandemic highlighted differences in health care utilization among patients with commercial insurance, data from publicly insured or uninsured "safety-net" patient populations continue to emerge.
A recent study from researchers at the University of Minnesota and Hennepin Healthcare Research Institute (HHRI) is among the first to examine how different socio-demographic groups used telehealth, outpatient (i.e., clinic), emergency department and inpatient (i.e., hospital) care to test for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. ...
Higher-order topological superconductivity in monolayer Fe(Te,Se)
2021-07-13
In particle physics, a Majorana Fermion is charge neutral and its antiparticle is just itself. In condensed matter physics, a Majorana zero mode (MZM) is a quasi-particle excitation, which appears in the surfaces or edges of topological superconductors. Unlike the ordinary particles or quasi-particles that obey boson or fermion statistics, MZM obeys non-abelian statistics, a key property that makes MZM the building block for realizing topological quantum computation. Currently major experimental efforts focus on heterostructures made of superconductors and spin-orbit coupled systems (such as semiconducting nano-wires and topological insulators), where evidences of MZMs have been found. Unambiguous detection and manipulation of MZMs in these heterostructures, ...
Mosquito-resistant clothing prevents bites in trials
2021-07-13
North Carolina State University researchers have created insecticide-free, mosquito-resistant clothing using textile materials they confirmed to be bite-proof in experiments with live mosquitoes. They developed the materials using a computational model of their own design, which describes the biting behavior of Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that carries viruses that cause human diseases like Zika, Dengue fever and yellow fever.
Ultimately, the researchers reported in the journal Insects that they were able to prevent 100 percent of bites when a volunteer wore their clothing - a base layer undergarment and a combat shirt initially designed for the military - in a cage with 200 live, disease-free mosquitoes. Vector Textiles, an NC State startup company, ...
Photorhabdus Virulence Cassette as a causative agent in Photorhabdus asymbiotica
2021-07-13
Contractile injection systems (CISs) are widely distributed in bacteria and archaea that can form a nanomachine resembling the contractile tails of bacteriophage (T4, P2, etc.) to translocate proteins and nucleic acids . The P. asymbiotica was shown to be involved in the human infection with severe skin lesions. The PVC loci within P. asymbiotica genome produce molecular needle complexes and encode several putative effector genes. It would be a candidate P. asymbiotica weapon that participates in the attack of mammalian cells, but substantial evidences will be needed to verify this hypothesis.
In this study, researchers have characterized the PAU_RS16575 as a potent PVC effector, which is widely present in bacteria. ...
High performance polarization sensitive photodetectors on 2D β-InSe
2021-07-13
To extract the polarization information of incident light, polarization-sensitive photodetectors (PSPDs) exhibit significant practical application in both military and civil areas, like bio-imaging, remote sensing, night vision, and helmet-mounted sight for fighter plane. Optical filters combined with polarizers are usually needed for traditional photodetectors to realize polarized light detection. But it will increase the size and complexity of devices. To obtain a small-size PSPD, one-dimensional (1D) nanomaterials with geometrical anisotropy, such as nanowires, nanoribbons, and nanotubes, have been used as the sensitive materials for PSPDs, which can directly identify the polarization information of incident light without any optical filters and polarizers. However, it is not ...
Google trends, the COVID-19 vaccine and infertility misinformation
2021-07-13
Google searches related to infertility and coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines increased by 34,900% after a pair of physicians submitted a petition questioning the safety and efficacy data of the COVID-19 Pfizer vaccine. Referencing the petition, anti-vaccine activists circulated claims that misconstrued the information regarding the possibility that the vaccine could impact fertility in women.
The inaccurately represented information spread rapidly on social media channels, potentially influencing public perception and decision-making among pregnant patients or those ...
Less is more: the efficient brain structural and dynamic organization
2021-07-13
The human brain has extreme ability in thinking and computation, but it only requires a very low energy power of about 20W, which is much lower than that of electronic computers. The neuronal connections in the brain network have a globally sparse but locally compact modular topological characteristics, which greatly reduces the total resource consumption for establishing the connections. The spikes of each neuron in the brain are sparse and irregular, and the clustered firing of the neuronal populations has a certain degree of synchronization, forming neural avalanches with scale-free characteristics, and the network can sensitively respond to external stimuli. However, it is still not clear how the ...
US citizen migrant children in Mexico lacking adequate health insurance
2021-07-13
While attending a conference at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City several years ago, Sharon Borja was struck by the story of a young man who, as a child, joined his parents repatriating to their native country of Mexico. Like millions of Mexican immigrants, the family had called the United States home for years, and having been born in the U.S., he was an American citizen. Walking one day in his newfound urban Mexican neighborhood, a couple carrying a wooden stick approached him on the street and encouraged him to ...
Cuts to local government funding in recent years cost lives, study finds
2021-07-13
A new study from researchers at the University of Liverpool shows that decreasing local government funding over recent years probably contributed to declines in life expectancy in some areas of England, which was stalling even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Local government funding and life expectancy in England, a longitudinal ecological study published in The Lancet Public Health, linked annual local government funding data from the Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government with life expectancy and mortality data from Public Health England between 2013 and 2017.
Corresponding author Dr Alexandros ...
ICE violated internal medical standards, potentially contributing to deaths
2021-07-13
A USC analysis of deaths among individuals in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody found that ICE violated its own internal medical care standards in 78% of cases, potentially contributing to deaths in relatively young and healthy men.
The study appears in END ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
First ‘Bible map’ published 500 years ago still influences how we think about borders
Why metabolism matters in Fanconi anemia
Caribbean rainfall driven by shifting long-term patterns in the Atlantic high-pressure system, study finds
Potential treatment to bypass resistance in deadly childhood cancer
RSV vaccines could offer protection against asthma
Group 13 elements: the lucky number for sustainable redox agents?
Africa’s forests have switched from absorbing to emitting carbon, new study finds
Scientists develop plastics that can break down, tackling pollution
What is that dog taking? CBD supplements could make dogs less aggressive over time, study finds
Reducing human effort in rating software
Robots that rethink: A SMU project on self-adaptive embodied AI
Collaborating for improved governance
The 'black box' of nursing talent’s ebb and flow
Leading global tax research from Singapore: The strategic partnership between SMU and the Tax Academy of Singapore
SMU and South Korea to create seminal AI deepfake detection tool
Strengthening international scientific collaboration: Diamond to host SESAME delegation from Jordan
Air pollution may reduce health benefits of exercise
Ancient DNA reveals a North African origin and late dispersal of domestic cats
Inhibiting a master regulator of aging regenerates joint cartilage in mice
Metronome-trained monkeys can tap to the beat of human music
Platform-independent experiment shows tweaking X’s feed can alter political attitudes
Satellite data reveal the seasonal dynamics and vulnerabilities of Earth’s glaciers
Social media research tool can lower political temperature. It could also lead to more user control over algorithms.
Bird flu viruses are resistant to fever, making them a major threat to humans
Study: New protocol for Treg expansion uses targeted immunotherapy to reduce transplant complications
Psychology: Instagram users overestimate social media addiction
Climate change: Major droughts linked to ancient Indus Valley Civilization’s collapse
Hematological and biochemical serum markers in breast cancer: Diagnostic, therapeutic, and prognostic significance
Towards integrated data model for next-generation bridge maintenance
Pusan National University researchers identify potential new second-line option for advanced biliary tract cancer
[Press-News.org] Are silver nanoparticles a silver bullet against microbes?Leanne Gilbertson's group studies the mechanisms behind bacterial resistance to silver nanoparticles to determine if their ubiquitous use is a solution to the antimicrobial resistance challenge or if it is perhaps fueling the fire