A team of scientists from around the globe, including those from Trinity College Dublin, has gained high-res structural insights into a key bacterial enzyme, which may help chemists design new drugs to inhibit it and thus suppress disease-causing bacteria. Their work is important as fears continue to grow around rising rates of antibiotic resistance.  The scientists, led by Martin Caffrey, Fellow Emeritus in Trinity’s School of Medicine and School of Biochemistry and Immunology, used next-gen X-ray crystallography and single particle cryo-electron microscopy ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Experiencing traumatic events such as natural disasters may have long-term consequences for the academic progress and future food security of youth — a problem researchers said could worsen with the increased frequency of extreme weather events due to climate change. In a study using data from Peru, researchers from Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences found that being exposed to a greater number of traumatic events or “shocks,” such as a natural disaster or loss of family income, in early ...

Researchers have demonstrated a new material for single-molecule electronic switches, which can effectively vary current at the nanoscale in response to external stimuli. The material for this molecular switch has a unique structure created by locking a linear molecular backbone into a ladder-type structure. A new study finds that the ladder-type molecular structure greatly enhances the stability of the material, making it highly promising for use in single-molecule electronics applications. Reported in the journal Chem, the study shows that the ladder-type molecule serves as a robust and reversible molecular switch over a wide range of conductivity levels and different molecular ...

A $7 million study beginning this summer at Wake Forest University and Wake Forest University School of Medicine will help determine whether a combination of resistance training plus bone-strengthening exercises and/or osteoporosis medication use can help older adults safely lose weight without sacrificing bone mass. That paradox – that shedding pounds can help stave off heart disease and diabetes while increasing bone loss and subsequent fracture risk – has been a focus of Wake Forest researcher Kristen Beavers for about a decade.  Her previous research ...

About The Study: Incidence rates of type 1 diabetes and diabetic ketoacidosis at diabetes onset in children and adolescents were higher after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic than before the pandemic. Increased resources and support may be needed for the growing number of children and adolescents with diabetes. Future studies are needed to assess whether this trend persists and may help elucidate possible underlying mechanisms to explain temporal changes.  Authors: Rayzel Shulman, M.D., ...

About The Study: The results of this systematic review and meta-analysis of 12 studies including 832 patients suggest that preoperative high-intensity interval training may improve cardiorespiratory fitness and reduce postoperative complications. These findings support including high-intensity interval training in pre-habilitation programs before major surgery.  Authors: John C. Woodfield, Ph.D., of the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, is the corresponding author.   To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media ...

Insights into healing and aging were discovered by National Institutes of Health researchers and their collaborators, who studied how a tiny sea creature regenerates an entire new body from only its mouth. The researchers sequenced RNA from Hydractinia symbiolongicarpus, a small, tube-shaped animal that lives on the shells of hermit crabs. Just as the Hydractinia were beginning to regenerate new bodies, the researchers detected a molecular signature associated with the biological process of aging, also known as senescence. According to the study published in Cell Reports, Hydractinia demonstrates that the fundamental biological processes of healing and aging are intertwined, ...

For the first time, researchers have succeeded in predicting how to change the optimum temperature of an enzyme using large computer calculations. A cold-adapted enzyme from an Antarctic bacterium was used as a basis. The study is to be published in the journal Science Advances and is a collaboration between researchers at Uppsala University and the University of Tromsø. The type of cold-adapted enzymes used by the researchers for their study can be found in bacteria and fish that live in icy water, for example. Evolution has shaped ...

The goal of fully protecting 10% of the EU's land area is ambitious for European countries that have been profoundly shaped by millennia of human transformation. A recently published study, coordinated by the University of Bologna, has carried out the first analysis at European level on the strictly protected areas (classified by the IUCN as integral reserves, wilderness areas and national parks) across the EU, studying how extensive integral protection is across biogeographical regions, countries and elevation gradients. "We have discovered – explains Prof. Roberto Cazzolla Gatti, conservation ...

This study is led by Dr. Jiali Liu (State Key Laboratory of Animal Biotech Breeding, College of Biological Sciences, China Agricultural University). Meiotic recombination-related gene (e.g., DMC1, HFM1, MEIOB, MAJIN, C14ORF39/SIX6OS1, STAG3, SYCE1, SYCP2-3, TERB1-2) mutations have been identified in human subfertility or infertility. Surprisingly, most patients have been found to have aberrant splicing of genes such as MEIOB, C14ORF39/SIX6OS1, STAG3, and SYCE1. Therefore, it is imperative to understand ...

Patients with limited hand function are soon set to benefit from an intelligent neuro-orthosis that will enable them to lead independent lives again. Prof. Dr. Alessandro Del Vecchio, a neuroscientist at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), is working on this aim in two new projects and has received over 1.3 million euros of funding from the Free State of Bavaria. The main focus of this research during the next three years will involve wireless measurements of muscle impulses and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to make the intended movements. Around 50 million people worldwide suffer from neuromotor impairments to their hands caused ...

15N isotope-labeled amino acids (15N-amino acids) provide a safe and effective tracer tool for studying the synthesis of natural products, protein metabolism, and disease diagnosis and treatment in living organisms. In addition, it is an important synthetic block for the synthesis of 15N-labeled drugs. Currently, 15N-labeled amino acids are generally synthesized by microbial fermentation and chemical reduction amination of ketoacids, but these methods usually require complex steps, high temperature conditions or the use of toxic cyanide, causing energy and environmental ...

Subtropical mode water (STMW) is a vertically homogeneous thermocline water mass, serving as heat, carbon, and oxygen silos in the ocean interior and providing memory of climate variability for climate prediction. Understanding physics governing STMW formation is thus of broad scientific significance and has received much attention. Traditionally, it has been considered that STMW is constructed by basin-scale atmospheric forcing. Due to the limitations resulting from sparse sampling of observations and coarse ...

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a serious neurological disease that usually causes permanent disability. Approximately 2.9 million people are affected worldwide, 240,000 in Germany alone. The exact cause of the disease is not yet clear, but a central feature is a loss of the insulating protective layer of axons – the neuronal connections in the central nervous system – which is triggered by autoimmune processes. The coating of the axons, known as myelin, is formed by highly specialised glial cells (i.e. oligodendrocytes) and enables the rapid transmission ...

Co-design, that is, designing software and hardware simultaneously, is one way of attempting to meet the computing-power needs of today’s artificial intelligence applications. Compilers, which translate instructions from one representation to another, are a key piece of the puzzle. A group of researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences summarized existing compiler technologies in deep learning co-design and proposed their own framework, the Buddy Compiler. The group’s review paper was published June 19 in Intelligent Computing, a Science Partner Journal. Although others have summarized optimizations, hardware architectures, co-design approaches, and compilation ...

The COVID-19 pandemic, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has resulted in more than 600 million confirmed cases and 6.5 million deaths worldwide. mRNA-based vaccines have emerged as a leading platform for COVID-19 protection and are extensively investigated in basic and clinical trials. SYS6006 (CSPC Pharmaceutical Group) is a newly investigational COVID-19 mRNA vaccine encoding a full-length S protein sequence of the prototype SARS-CoV-2 strain and incorporating the key mutations of main epidemic variants. In March 2023, it has been authorized for emergent use in China by the national medicinal ...

Protein aggregates accumulate during aging and are linked to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s or Huntington’s disease. A new study by the Nyström lab at Gothenburg University, in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Germany, describes a novel, engineered approach that makes protein aggregates amenable to spatial manipulations in both budding yeast and human cells. Many neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s or Huntington’s disease are associated with the aggregation of misfolded proteins ...

As businesses become increasingly global, changes are also taking place at an extraordinary pace. Compliance is critical for large economies, industry regulations, and enterprise operations. BGI Genomics prioritizes compliance management and strictly follow laws, regulations, and international practices while conducting business globally. BGI Genomics recently completed the rigorous evaluation of BSI, a major worldwide standard, testing, and certification authority. It was awarded the GB/T 35770-2022/ISO 37301:2021 Compliance Management System accreditation, making it the first enterprise in the industry to do so. ...

Constant monitoring of vital health signs is needed in a variety of clinical environments such as intensive care units, for patients with critical health conditions, health monitoring in aged care facilities and prisons, or in safety monitoring situations where drowsiness can cause accidents. This is now mostly achieved via wired or invasive contact systems. However, these are either inconvenient or, for patients with burns or for infants with insufficient skin area, are unsuitable. Scientists at the University of Sydney Nano Institute and the NSW Smart Sensing ...

Exploding populations of wild pigs and macaque monkeys in Southeast Asia are threatening native forests and disease outbreaks in livestock and people, according to research led by The University of Queensland. Dr Matthew Luskin, from UQ’s School of the Environment, and his team collated and analysed species population data from across the region, some of it collected with a network of cameras. “Macaques and wild pigs are taking over Southeast Asia’s disturbed forests,” Dr Luskin said. “Humans are largely to blame for this by altering forests with logging ...

Niigata, Japan - KOSÉ Corporation (Headquarters: Chuo-ku, Tokyo; President: Kazutoshi Kobayashi) has developed in collaborative research with Professor Kenji Izumi and his colleagues at Niigata University Graduate School of Medical and Dental Sciences (Faculty of Dentistry) a three-dimensional epithelial model that reproduces the human lip area from the oral mucosa to the lips and surrounding skin, using cell culture. The lips are one of the most important elements that determine the impressions of the face, and they are also an area where many people suffer from problems, ...

Niigata, Japan—Scientists have made significant progress in understanding the signals involved in regulating oral keratinocyte cell motility and proliferative capacity, offering new insights into potential pharmacological manipulation for regenerative medicine. A recent study, published in FEBS Open Bio, elucidated the role of the epidermal growth factor (EGF) and its downstream signaling cascade in controlling the behavior of oral keratinocytes.   Oral keratinocytes, which play a crucial role in the formation of the oral mucosa epithelial cell sheet, have long been enigmatic in terms of their signaling ...

Long COVID is not a single condition, and should not be treated as such, according to new data collected in nationwide study released May 31 in the Open Forum of Infectious Diseases. The study looked at persistent symptoms experienced by patients with COVID-19 both at three- and six-month intervals. In all, 5,963 patients participated in the study, with 4,504 of the participants testing positive for COVID-19 and 1,459 testing negative. Many of the participants, 2,000 in all, came from King County through the University of Washington School of Medicine. The four major symptom categories for people who tested positive for COVID-19 included: Minimal ...

Sophia Antipolis, 30 June 2023:  Loneliness is a bigger risk factor for heart disease in patients with diabetes than diet, exercise, smoking and depression, according to research published today in European Heart Journal, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).1 “The quality of social contact appears to be more important for heart health in people with diabetes than the number of engagements,” said study author Professor Lu Qi of Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, US. “We should not downplay the important of loneliness ...

ST. LOUIS - Research published in Outlook on Agriculture has shown that the population relative to available climate-suitable areas in Kenya has increased, posing a threat to the country’s economy and food security. The study, “Spatial changes to climate suitability and availability of agropastoral farming systems across Kenya (1980-2020),” was published online on May 29. The research team analyzed Kenya’s farming systems and climate zones between 1980-2020. Over that time, the population ...