Monarch butterflies are more likely to survive their long migrations if they have more and larger white spots on their wings, possibly because it gives them an aerodynamic advantage

Approximately one in ten NHS healthcare workers experienced suicidal thoughts during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, finds a new University of Bristol-led study published in PLOS ONE today [21 June]. Concerns were raised about the risk of suicide among healthcare workers during the pandemic after a number of high-profile cases were reported in the media. Researchers from the University of Bristol, King’s College London and UCL (University College London), sought to investigate the prevalence and incidence of suicidal thoughts and behaviour among NHS healthcare workers in England and their relationship with occupational ...

Ruxolitinib, a drug that is already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for treating certain cancers and skin conditions, is effective at inhibiting CaMKII, a protein kinase linked to cardiac arrhythmias. In a new study published June 21, 2023, in Science Translational Medicine, researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Chicago invented a new reporting technique to monitor activity of CaMKII while screening the effects of nearly 5,000 FDA approved drugs on human cells that expressed the ...

New global research on child mortality rates in Ethiopia shows while there has been a significant decline in these rates in past three decades, too many children under the age of five are still dying. The analysis found the mortality rate in the under-five demographic decreased by almost 4.5 per cent every year between 1990 and 2019. However, despite the progress, it’s still one of the highest rates in the world with an estimated 190,000 under 5 deaths in 2019 at the rate of 52 deaths per 1000 livebirths. The country’s neonatal mortality rate is 26.6 deaths per 1000 livebirths. Lead author Dr Gizachew Tessema from the Curtin School of Population ...

When a photon interacts with a material, an interaction occurs that causes its atoms to change their quantum state (a description of the physical properties of nature at the atomic level). The resulting state is called, aptly, photoexcitation. These photoexcitations are conventionally assumed to kill one another when they come near each other, radically limiting their density and mobility. This in turn limits how efficient tools that rely on photoexcitation such as solar cells and light-emitting devices can be. But in a study published June 19 in the journal Nature Chemistry, scientists at Northwestern University and Purdue University challenge this assumption ...

Medication-assisted treatment (MAT), such as naltrexone, is a well-documented successful treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD). However, there are multiple barriers for clinicians to use MAT, including clinician lack of confidence in using the treatment, their own misconceptions about the patient population, and, until recently, federally required training. Additionally, there is a stigma associated with MAT and the patients who would most benefit from it. Improving access to MAT training and integrating it into clinician programs and curriculums may remove identified barriers, decrease stigma, and enable newly trained clinicians to treat patients. To address these barriers, ...

In a new study titled, “Understanding Feeling ‘High’ and Its Role in Medical Cannabis Patient Outcomes,” published in the journal, Frontiers in Pharmacology, researchers at The University of New Mexico, in collaboration with Releaf App™ found that patients who reported feeling “High” experienced 7.7% greater symptom relief and an increase in reporting of positive side effects such as “Relaxed” and “Peaceful.” However, these benefits must be weighed against a more than 20% increase in negative side effect reporting. Senior author and Associate Professor of Psychology, ...

Screening newborns for severe combined immunodeficiency disease (SCID) significantly increases the survival of children after bone marrow transplantation, a new North American study finds. Published today in The Lancet with an accompanying editorial, the retrospective study was co-led by Elie Haddad, an Université de Montréal medical professor and clinician scientist, pediatrician and immunologist at the UdeM-affiliated CHU Sainte-Justine mother-and-child hospital. The research shows that the gradual adoption of newborn screening for SCID since 2008 in North America has boosted the survival rate from 73 per cent between 1982 and 2009 to ...

Specially designed gardens could reduce the amount of a toxic chemical associated with tires entering our waterways by more than 90 per cent, new research shows. Tired toxins The chemical 6PPD-quinone can form when car tires interact with the atmosphere. It enters rivers and streams when rain runs off roads into waterways. It is toxic to coho salmon, rainbow trout and some other fish. “Rain gardens”, or bioretention cells, are gardens engineered to reduce flooding and soak up contaminants when road runoff is directed ...

One of the main reasons plants use water is to allow them to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This means that, in plants, the water and carbon cycles are tightly linked. In a new study, researchers from the University of Missouri and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) used this foundational principle to identify sustainable farming practices aimed at helping staple crops like corn and soybeans thrive during extreme weather conditions that have become more common in the Midwest.  This study examined how farming practices affect crop resilience to climate change by examining water and carbon ...

SAN FRANCISCO — PLOS today is announcing that it will soon launch two new journals: PLOS Mental Health and PLOS Complex Systems. PLOS sees these new journals as an opportunity to give evolving research communities opportunities to forge a new path for research in the field. Whether that means welcoming new ways of sharing research transparently or cementing new policies that enable research to be evaluated and rewarded more fairly, or simply finding a broader audience where research can make a greater real-world impact. PLOS Mental Health provides a dedicated venue for all mental health research, connecting global experts from a broad range of disciplines and addressing challenges ...