Scientists have identified the protein that helps poison dart frogs safely accumulate their namesake toxins, according to a study published today in eLife. The findings solve a long-standing scientific mystery and may suggest potential therapeutic strategies for treating humans poisoned with similar molecules. Alkaloid compounds, such as caffeine, make coffee, tea and chocolate delicious and pleasant to consume, but can be harmful in large amounts. In humans, the liver can safely metabolise modest ...

Toxic chemicals produced from oil emissions and wildfire smoke have been found in muscle and liver samples from Southern Resident killer whales and Bigg’s killer whales. A study published today in Scientific Reports is the first to find polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in orcas off the coast of B.C., as well as in utero transfer of the chemicals from mother to fetus. “Killer whales are iconic in the Pacific Northwest—important culturally, economically, ecologically and more. Because they are able to metabolically process PAHs, these are most likely recent exposures. Orcas are our canary in the coal ...

Schar School Researchers To Receive Funding For Nonprofit Employment Data Project  Alan Abramson, Professor, Government and Politics; Mirae Kim, Associate Professor, Nonprofit Studies; and Stefan Toepler, Professor, Nonprofit Studies, are set to receive funding for: "Nonprofit Employment Data Project."  The researchers will produce a comprehensive report on nonprofit employment in the United States, based on new data that is expected to be released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) early in 2024. The researchers will also arrange for the transfer of the Nonprofit Works interactive database application, which is currently hosted by Johns ...

A low-cost technology involving nanoparticles loaded with antibiotics and other antimicrobial compounds that can be used in multiple attacks on infections by the bacterium responsible for most cases of tuberculosis has been developed by researchers at São Paulo State University (UNESP) in Brazil and is reported in an article published in the journal Carbohydrate Polymers. Results of in vitro tests suggest it could be the basis for a treatment strategy to combat multidrug bacterial resistance. According ...

Marzougui & Kan Developing Crashworthy Tangent End Treatment For Low-Speed & Curbed Roadways   Dhafer Marzougui, Associate Professor, Physics and Astronomy, and Cing-Dao Kan, Professor/Director, Center for Collision Safety and Analysis,  received $749,954 from the National Cooperative Highway Research Program for: "Development of a Crashworthy Tangent End Treatment for Low-Speed and Curbed Roadways."  This funding began in Nov. 2023 and will end in Nov. 2026.  ### About George Mason University George Mason University is Virginia's largest public research university. ...

Wars, drought, displacement, and instability are causing a dramatic increase in the number of pregnant and breastfeeding women around the world who suffer from malnutrition. Without access to sufficient nutrients in the womb, babies born to these women are more likely to die due to complications like pre-term birth, low birth weight, and susceptibility to diseases like malaria. To try to reduce the risk of malarial infection, the WHO recommends that pregnant women in low-income countries be treated with a combination of the antimalarial drugs sulfadoxine and pyrimethamine ...

Heart rates are easier to monitor today than ever before. Thanks to smartwatches that can sense a pulse, all it takes is a quick flip of the wrist to check your heart. But monitoring the cells responsible for heart rate is much more challenging — and it’s encouraged researchers to invent new ways to analyze them. Joseph Wu, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute and professor of medicine and of radiology, has devised a new stem cell-derived model of heart tissue ...

The Beach Boys’ iconic hit single “Good Vibrations” takes on a whole new layer of meaning thanks to a recent discovery by Rice University scientists and collaborators, who have uncovered a way to destroy cancer cells by using the ability of some molecules to vibrate strongly when stimulated by light. The researchers found that the atoms of a small dye molecule used for medical imaging can vibrate in unison ⎯ forming what is known as a plasmon ⎯ when stimulated by near-infrared light, causing the cell membrane of cancerous cells to rupture. ...

Stroke is an abrupt, devastating disease that instantly changes a person’s life and has the potentially to cause lasting disability or death. However, the condition also has profound effects on the patient’s loved ones — who are often called to make difficult decisions quickly. A new study led by Michigan Medicine finds that nearly 30% of caregivers of severe stroke patients experience high levels of anxiety, depression or post-traumatic stress during the first year after the patient leaves the hospital. The results are published in Neurology. “As physicians, we usually concentrate on our ...

MSU has a satellite uplink/LTN TV studio and Comrex line for radio interviews upon request. Images   Pandas, long portrayed as solitary creatures, do hang with family and friends — and they’re big users of “social media.” Scent-marking trees serve as a panda version of Facebook. An article in the international journal Ursus paints a new lifestyle picture of the beloved bears in China’s Wolong National Nature Reserve, a life that’s shielded from human eyes because they’re shy, rare and live in densely forested, remote areas. No one really knows how pandas hang, but a new study indicates pandas are around others more than previously thought. ...

The Department of Audiology and Speech Pathology at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences at Vanderbilt University have secured a $2,399,454 grant to fund a five-year project to address the need for diversity in highly trained professionals in speech-language pathology. The project, known as Project PAL (Preparing Academic Leaders in Speech-Language Pathology to Teach, Conduct Research, and Engage in Professional Service to Improve Outcomes for Children with High Need Communication Disorders), ...

American University won a $5.7 million cooperative research agreement from the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Accelerating Research Translation program. The award will help AU foster greater use of evidence in the public and private sectors by producing new knowledge on best practices in research translation, training scholars in the effective conduct of research translation, and supporting the dissemination of research findings that have the potential to benefit society. The ART program ...

The University of Tennessee Research Foundation (UTRF) celebrated the researchers whose achievements are making life better locally, nationally, and globally at its annual Innovation Awards ceremony, held December 14 at the Mooney Library at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) in Memphis. The Innovation Awards recognize researchers from all over the UT System who partner with UTRF to bring their innovations to market. “Turning research into practical, sustainable solutions calls for resilience, adaptability, and market savvy. Let's collectively celebrate the foundational research successes that made ...

When the University of Delaware’s Gregory Hicks started his research career two decades ago, he was one of only a few people in the United States studying chronic low back pain in people over 60 years old. Fast-forward to today, the research on back pain has ramped up, yet studies of older adults with the problem are still sparse. “Unfortunately, the societal attitude is that older people don’t warrant the same level of care that younger people do when it comes to musculoskeletal problems,” said Hicks, Distinguished Professor of Health Sciences at UD. “But I don’t believe that for a ...

To fill gaps in knowledge of yellow fever (YF), a group of researchers in Brazil affiliated with the Department of Pathology at the University of São Paulo’s Medical School (FM-USP), Hospital das Clínicas (HC, the hospital complex run by FM-USP), the Heart Institute (InCor, linked to HC) and Emílio Ribas Institute of Infectious Diseases (IIER) decided to study the pathogenesis of YF-associated heart injury. The team was led by Fernando Rabioglio Giugni, a cardiologist, and Amaro Nunes Duarte-Neto, an infectious disease specialist and pathologist; both work at FM-USP.  “There’s still no specific treatment for yellow fever. Patients receive ...

David Kaplan, the Stern Family Endowed Professor of Engineering, has been named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). Election as an academy fellow is the highest professional distinction awarded solely to inventors. The NAI was founded to recognize and encourage inventors with U.S. patents and enhance the visibility of academic technology and innovation. As a member of the Class of 2023, Kaplan will be honored at the NAI’s annual meeting on June 18, 2024 in Raleigh, North ...

Martin Taylor, MD, PhD, a physician investigator in the Department of Pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital and an instructor in Pathology at Harvard Medical School, is the lead corresponding author of a new study in Nature, Structural Analysis and Inhibition of Human LINE-1 ORF2 Protein Reveals Novel Adaptations and Functions. What Question Were You Investigating? About a fifth of the human genome is half a million copies of a transposon, a virus-like element known as LINE-1 (L1). L1 was ignored as “junk DNA” for years but is increasingly recognized to contribute to the pathology of autoimmunity, ...

Assisted reproductive technologies not associated with body mass index in children, except when using frozen embryos – according to new Danish study   ##### In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Medicine: http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1004324 Article Title: Overweight or obesity in children born after assisted reproductive technologies in Denmark: A population-based cohort study Author Countries: ...

Across the United States, about 2 million people are living with an amputation and another 185,000 amputations occur every year, according to the Amputee Coalition, a Washington DC-based support group. About 54% of these lost limbs were caused by vascular disease, including diabetes and peripheral arterial disease (PAD). And as more people are diagnosed with diabetes, in the US and worldwide, the number of amputations keeps rising. Now, experts at Cincinnati Children’s in collaboration with colleagues from Kanazawa University in Japan, have uncovered a new way to prompt blood vessel ...

Philadelphia, December 19, 2023 – Dairy industry professionals continuously work to ensure the highest possible welfare for dairy calves, including fine-tuning their housing to improve overall health, well-being, and performance. Two new studies in JDS Communications are illuminating our understanding of paired housing in the critical newborn and pre-weaned stages of dairy lives by showing that housing designed to facilitate early socialization can build behavior skills, shape calf personalities, and ultimately, set up animals ...

“[...] the biological mechanisms linking aging and osteoarthritis prevalence remain largely unknown.” BUFFALO, NY- December 19, 2023 – A new research paper was published in Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 15, Issue 23, entitled, “Sirtuin 6 activation rescues the age-related decline in DNA damage repair in primary human chondrocytes.” While advanced age is widely recognized as the greatest risk factor for osteoarthritis (OA), the biological mechanisms behind this connection remain unclear. Previous work has ...

The generation and manipulation of high-repetition pulses hold great promise across various applications, including high-speed photography, laser processing, and acoustic wave generation. Gigahertz (GHz) burst pulses, with intervals ranging from ~0.01 to ~10 nanoseconds, are particularly valued for visualizing ultrafast phenomena and improving laser processing efficiency. While methods for producing GHz burst pulses exist, challenges persist, such as low throughput of pulse energy, poor tunability of pulse intervals, and the complexity ...

An article published in the Chemical Engineering Journal describes a strategy to produce a material based on zinc oxide (ZnO) capable of degrading sertraline, an antidepressant that has been detected, like other drugs, in groundwater worldwide and is considered an emerging pollutant. This kind of substance has certain physicochemical properties that hinder removal by conventional wastewater treatment methods. The research was supported by FAPESP and conducted in Brazil by scientists at the Center for Development of Functional Materials (CDMF), the Brazilian ...

The University of Stuttgart and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) have announced an agreement to build two new supercomputers at the High-Performance Computing Center of the University of Stuttgart (HLRS). In the first stage, a transitional supercomputer, called Hunter, will begin operation in 2025. This will be followed in 2027 with the installation of Herder, an exascale system that will provide a significant expansion of Germany’s high-performance computing (HPC) capabilities. Hunter and Herder will offer researchers ...

X-ray imaging visualizes hidden structures and processes in living cells and organisms. The radiation that consists of highly energy-rich electromagnetic waves, however, has an ionizing effect and may damage the genetic material. This limits the possible observation period. While conventional X-ray images of soft tissue are of low contrast, phase contrast methods produce far better image contrasts at a reduced radiation dose. With higher resolution, however, gentle imaging becomes increasingly difficult, as a higher dose is required. Moreover, ...