Meat taxes and other livestock emissions regulations could be feasible, acceptable and effective, argue climate researchers

SAN DIEGO, October 2, 2023 — A type of head and neck cancer predominantly diagnosed in people who reside in low- and middle-income countries may be treated effectively with fewer, but higher doses of radiation, a large new international study suggests. The study – a randomized phase III clinical trial involving 10 countries across four continents – found delivering a course of radiation in 20 rather than 33 treatment sessions was just as effective at controlling cancer for patients with alcohol and tobacco-related, locally advanced disease, without increasing side ...

The latest issues of three of the American Psychiatric Association’s journals, The American Journal of Psychiatry, Psychiatric Services and The American Journal of Psychotherapy are now available online. The October issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry is focused on research devoted to understanding factors influencing depression, PTSD, and suicidal behavior. Highlights include: Genetic Contribution to the Heterogeneity of Major Depressive Disorder: Evidence From a Sibling-Based Design Using Swedish National Registers. Maternal Perinatal Stress Trajectories and Negative Affect and Amygdala Development in Offspring. Networks of Neurodevelopmental Traits, Socioenvironmental ...

Survival rates for men with metastatic prostate cancer have increased by an average of six months, something which coincides with the gradual introduction of ‘dual treatment’ since 2016. This is according to a register study of all Swedish men diagnosed between 2008 and 2020. The results are published in the medical journal JAMA Network open. Dual treatment means that patients receive both standard hormone therapy (GnRH therapy) and chemotherapy or androgen receptor blockers. Research has previously shown that men receiving this treatment live approximately one year longer than those receiving GnRH treatment alone. “Dual treatment for men with newly diagnosed metastatic ...

A strategy for cellular reprogramming involves using targeted genetic interventions to engineer a cell into a new state. The technique holds great promise in immunotherapy, for instance, where researchers could reprogram a patient’s T-cells so they are more potent cancer killers. Someday, the approach could also help identify life-saving cancer treatments or regenerative therapies that repair disease-ravaged organs. But the human body has about 20,000 genes, and a genetic perturbation could be on a combination of genes or on any of the over 1,000 transcription factors that regulate the genes. ...

Let’s say you typically eat eggs for breakfast but were running late and ate cereal. As you crunched on a spoonful of Raisin Bran, other contextual similarities remained: You ate at the same table, at the same time, preparing to go to the same job. When someone asks later what you had for breakfast, you incorrectly remember eating eggs. This would be a real-world example of a false memory. But what happens in your brain before recalling eggs, compared to what would happen if you correctly recalled cereal? In a paper published in Proceedings ...

Photos Savannas and grasslands in drier climates around the world store more heat-trapping carbon than scientists thought they did and are helping to slow the rate of climate warming, according to a new study.   The study, published online Oct. 2 in Nature Climate Change, is based on a reanalysis of datasets from 53 long-term fire-manipulation experiments worldwide, as well as a field-sampling campaign at six of those sites.   Twenty researchers from institutions around the globe, including two at the University of Michigan, looked at where and why fire has changed the amount of carbon stored in topsoil. They found that within savanna-grassland regions, ...

A centuries-old technique for constructing arched stone windows has inspired a new way to form tailored nanoscale windows in porous functional materials called metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). The method uses a molecular version of an architectural arch-forming “centring formwork“ template to direct the formation of MOFs with pore windows of predetermined shape and size.[1]. New MOFs designed and made in this way range from narrow-windowed materials with gas separation potential to larger-windowed structures with potential medical applications due to their excellent oxygen-adsorption capacity. “One of the most challenging ...

DALLAS (SMU) – It’s long been understood that human settlement contributes to conditions that make Pacific Islands more susceptible to wildfires, such as the devastating Aug. 8 event that destroyed the Maui community of Lahaina. But a new study from SMU fire scientist Christopher Roos published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution shows that climate is an undervalued part of the equation. Roos, SMU environmental archaeologist and professor of anthropology, traveled with his team to the Sigatoka ...

Researchers at Helmholtz Munich and the Technical University of Munich have made significant progress in advancing high-resolution optoacoustic imaging for clinical use. Their innovative deep-learning framework, known as DeepMB, holds great promise for patients dealing with a range of illnesses, including breast cancer, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and inflammatory bowel disease. Their findings have been now published in Nature Machine Intelligence. In order to understand and detect diseases scientists and medical staff often rely on imaging methods such as ultrasound or X-ray. However, ...

According to textbooks, proteins work by folding into stable 3D shapes that, like Lego blocks, precisely fit with other biomolecules. Yet this picture of proteins, the "workhorses of biology," is incomplete. Around half of all proteins have stringy, unstructured bits hanging off them, dubbed intrinsically disordered regions, or IDRs. Because IDRs have more dynamic, “shape-shifting” geometries, biologists have generally thought that they cannot have as precise of a fit with other biomolecules as their folded ...