(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Previous research has revealed that the Apolipoprotein-ε4 (APOE-ε4) allele increases the risk for a variety of diseases in aging populations, specifically Alzheimer’s and cardiovascular disease. And yet, despite the negative effects of this genetic variant, it remains prevalent in approximately 20% of the human population. In a quest to determine how this negative allele is surviving natural selection, a group of researchers have discovered that the APOE-ε4 allele is associated with higher fertility in women.  In a new paper released in Science Advances, researchers including UC Santa ...

Researchers at Trinity College Dublin study the factors influencing healthy brain ageing in Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries and find the lessons learned there, can also be applied to home. Ageing is not a uniform process across the globe. Most research into cognitive and functional ageing has been conducted in the US and Europe, in high-income settings. Researchers from the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI) at Trinity College are filling the knowledge gap that exists for Latin American populations on the factors ...

Key Takeaways Lung and heart transplant recipients experienced diminished and delayed antibody responses to the first two COVID-19 mRNA vaccine doses, but most developed stronger responses following a third dose A third dose also boosted cross-protection against SARS-CoV-2 viral variants For lung and heart transplant recipients, vaccine doses beyond the third dose are likely important for maintaining immunity BOSTON – Transplant recipients must take life-long immunosuppressive medications to prevent rejection, but these drugs ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $11 million in funding for 15 projects in exploratory research for extreme-scale science that will leverage emerging trends and advances in high-end computing, massive datasets, scientific machine learning, artificial intelligence, and novel computing architectures. “There is a wide expanse of exciting opportunities as we reach beyond exascale computing,” said Ceren Susut, DOE Acting Associate Director of Science for Advanced Scientific Computing Research. “These ...

Researchers working with Chuan Wang, an associate professor of electrical and systems engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, have developed ink pens that allow individuals to handwrite flexible, stretchable optoelectronic devices on everyday materials including paper, textiles, rubber, plastics and 3D objects. In a paper published Aug. 7 in Nature Photonics, the team reports their simple and versatile fabrication approach to allow anyone to make a custom light-emitting diode (LED) or photodetector ...

URBANA, Ill. – Madagascar is one of the poorest countries in the world and access to health care is limited for many people. Childhood vaccinations are a crucial component of preventative care, but vaccination rates remain below the World Health Organization’s goal of reaching 95% of children. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign examines the effectiveness of a health intervention program that enlists community-based health workers to promote child vaccination uptake. “Childhood vaccinations are a cost-effective investment that can have large ripple effects. Vaccines can reduce child mortality ...

It is now almost a rule of thumb: As soon as an athlete falls to the ground with a sudden cardiac arrest, social media is awash with claims that COVID-19 vaccinations are to blame. This was the case with English footballer Charlie Wyke, cyclist Sonny Colbrelli and, most recently, with college basketballer, and son of LeBron, Bronny James. In the view of Harald Jorstad, Sports Cardiologist at Amsterdam UMC, there is no evidence to support these claims, but timing of the vaccination can be structured to not ...

BEAUFORT, N.C. – Microscopic plastic particles have been found in the fats and lungs of two-thirds of the marine mammals in a graduate student’s study of ocean microplastics. The presence of polymer particles and fibers in these animals suggests that microplastics can travel out of the digestive tract and lodge in the tissues. The study, slated for the Oct. 15 edition of Environmental Pollution, appeared online this week. Harms that embedded microplastics might cause to marine mammals are yet to be determined, ...

Text-to-image (T2I) generative artificial intelligence tools are increasingly powerful and widespread tools that can create nearly any image based on just a few inputted words. T2I generative AI can create convincingly realistic photos and videos which are being used more and more for a multitude of purposes, from art to political campaigning.  However, the algorithmic models that power these tools are trained on data from humans, and can replicate human biases in the images they produce, such as biases around gender and skin tone. These biases can harm marginalized populations, reinforcing stereotypes and potentially leading to discrimination.  To address these implicit biases, ...

Sodium, Potassium and zinc have all been promising contenders for lithium’s place in rechargeable batteries of the future, but researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) have added an unusual and more abundant competitor to the mix: chloride, the richest negatively charged ions in seawater.  Xiaowei Teng, the James H. Manning professor of Chemical Engineering at WPI, has discovered a new redox chemistry empowered by chloride ions for the development of seawater green batteries. Modern lithium-ion batteries used in various applications, including electric vehicles, can be problematic for grid storage, given their ...

A new analysis shows that infectious bacteria exposed to the antibiotic albicidin rapidly develop up to a 1,000-fold increase in resistance via a gene amplification mechanism. Mareike Saathoff of Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, and colleagues present these findings August 10th in the open access journal PLOS Biology. Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is a growing problem associated with millions of deaths around the world every year. Understanding how bacteria evolve resistance is key to developing more effective antibiotics and strategies for using them. In recent years, albicidin has emerged as a promising antibiotic capable of killing a wide range of bacterial species ...

Pushing into a new chapter of technologically advanced biological sensors, scientists from the University of California San Diego and their colleagues in Australia have engineered bacteria that can detect the presence of tumor DNA in a live organism. Their innovation, which detected cancer in the colons of mice, could pave the way to new biosensors capable of identifying various infections, cancers and other diseases. The advancement is described Aug. 11, 2023, in the journal Science. Bacteria previously have been designed to carry out various diagnostic and therapeutic functions, but lacked the ability to identify specific DNA sequences and mutations outside ...

In two studies, researchers demonstrate how climate modeling approaches can fill gaps in our understanding of hominin evolution and migration. Over the last several decades, research efforts into the lives of hominins – humans and their close ancestors – have shifted from identifying fossils and artifacts to understanding the environmental and climate settings in which they lived and how these factors could have influenced hominin evolution and migration. However, like the hominin fossil record, environmental and climate records that accurately capture environmental change and span the period over which ...

In two studies, researchers present new ways to convert common waste plastics, polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), into high-value chemical products, including alcohols, aldehydes, surfactants, and detergents. The approaches provide a pathway toward creating a circular plastics economy and the ability to produce high-value chemicals more sustainably. Waste plastics are increasingly being considered a potentially abundant source of feedstock to produce valuable chemical compounds. However, some plastics, particularly polyolefin plastics like PE and PP – widely used commodity plastics that account ...

In this Special Issue of Science, three Reviews, a Policy Forum, and a Perspective highlight Australia’s exceptional exposure to the risks of climate change and ecosystem degradation. Australia is home to Earth’s most ancient ecosystems and oldest continuous indigenous cultures, which have survived for more than 60,000 years. However, the continent’s unique ecosystems and cultural history have proved vulnerable to waves of European colonization and its associated social and environmental impacts. Ongoing climate change and the ...

Increases in global ecosystem water use efficiency – the ratio between carbon assimilation to water evapotranspiration – have stalled since 2001 due to a rising vapor pressure deficit, according to a new study. The findings highlight one way that the adverse effects of our warming climate may undermine human reliance on nature-based climate solutions to achieve carbon neutrality. The rapid rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) has led to substantial changes in global terrestrial carbon and water cycles. One of these impacts has been a generalized increase in ecosystem water use efficiency (WUEeco). On a global scale, WUEeco plays ...

A new study published in the journal Science by an international team finds that past changes in atmospheric CO2 and corresponding shifts in climate and vegetation played a key role in determining when and where early human species interbred. Modern-day people carry in their cells a small quantity of DNA deriving from other human species, namely the Neanderthals and the elusive Denisovans. Back in 2018, scientists announced to the world the discovery of an individual [Figure 1], later nicknamed Denny, who lived 90,000 years ago and who was identified as a daughter to a Denisovan father and a Neanderthal mother [Slon et al. 2018]. Denny, along with fellow mixed-ancestry ...

A new study published in the journal Science finds that around 1.12 million years ago a massive cooling event in the North Atlantic and corresponding shifts in climate, vegetation and food resources disrupted early human occupation of Europe. The study published by an international group of scientists from the UK, South Korea and Spain presents observational and modelling evidence documenting that unprecedented climate stress changed the course of early human history. Archaic humans, known as Homo erectus moved from Africa into central Eurasia around 1.8 million years. From there on they spread towards western Europe, reaching the Iberian peninsula around 1.5 million ...

Scientists at UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and UCLA Health led an international research team that published two articles detailing changes in DNA – changes that researchers found are shared by humans and other mammals throughout history and are associated with life span and numerous other traits. “We've discovered that the life spans of mammals are closely associated with chemical modifications of the DNA molecule, specifically known as epigenetics, or more accurately, methylation. In essence, mammals with longer life spans exhibit more pronounced DNA methylation landscapes, whereas those ...

Paleoclimate evidence shows that around 1.1 million years ago, the southern European climate cooled significantly and likely caused an extinction of early humans on the continent, according to a new study led by UCL researchers. Published in the journal Science, the team of researchers discovered the occurrence of previously unknown extreme glacial conditions around 1.1 million years ago. The glacial cooling pushed the European climate to levels beyond what archaic humans could tolerate, emptying the continent of human populations. The oldest known human remains in ...

A team led by Virginia Tech researchers has developed a new method for upcycling plastics into high-value chemicals known as surfactants, which are used to create soap, detergent, and more. Plastics and soaps tend to have little in common when it comes to texture, appearance, and, most importantly, how they are used. But there is a surprising connection between the two on a molecular level: The chemical structure of polyethylene — one of the most commonly used plastics in the world today — is strikingly similar ...

Plants orient their organs in response to the gravity vector, with roots growing towards gravity and shoots growing in the opposite direction. The movement of statoliths responding to the inclination relative to the gravity vector is employed for gravity sensing in both plants and animals. However, in plants, the statolith takes the form of a high-density organelle, known as an amyloplast, which settles toward gravity within the gravity sensing cell. Despite the significance of this gravity sensing mechanism, the exact process behind it has eluded scientists ...

LOS ANGELES — There are currently few effective treatment options for patients with recurrent ovarian cancer and other solid tumors, but City of Hope researchers are trying to change that.  Researchers with City of Hope, one of the largest cancer research and treatment organizations in the nation, have published preclinical research in Nature Communications demonstrating that a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-engineered T cell therapy worked against ovarian cancer in the laboratory and in preclinical models.  “City of Hope’s ...

SAN DIEGO (AUG. 10, 2023) — A new study on gray-necked rockfowl has found a much smaller range of suitable habitat for this elusive African bird than was previously assumed, and may warrant a downgrade in its conservation status. Scientists from the Cameroon Biodiversity Association (CAMBIO) in Cameroon, in partnership with San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, set out to better understand how much suitable habitat remains for the rockfowl, and where the birds can still be found. Understanding suitable habitat and its extent is crucial for protecting species. However, scientists have limited knowledge ...

Physicians, psychologists, advanced practice providers, dietitians, and others who are committed to treating and preventing obesity in Louisiana have come together to formally launch the Louisiana Obesity Society, a new statewide professional organization. The Louisiana Obesity Society will be hosting its inaugural annual conference in conjunction with the Louisiana Chapter of American Society of Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery on Saturday, Aug. 12, at the Renaissance New Orleans Arts Warehouse District Hotel in New Orleans. The Louisiana Obesity Society was created to support providers treating obesity through education and networking. The society will also advocate ...