St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientist Madan Babu Mohan, Ph.D., Center of Excellence in Data-Driven Discovery director and member of the Department of Structural Biology, has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London. The Royal Society is the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence. Babu was selected to join the Royal Society for his pioneering data science-based strategies to reveal fundamental principles in biological systems. His scientific accomplishments include determining the molecular mechanisms governing G-protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) signaling, uncovering the roles of disordered protein regions in biology and disease, ...

AMES, IA — Like many first responders, law-enforcement investigators and detectives often struggle with sleep. Late-night shifts, stress, and the 24-hour nature of crime can throw off biological clocks and cut sleep cycles short. Along with the negative health implications, new research indicates officers who are fatigued have a harder time collecting information that could bring justice to victims. Zlatan Križan, a sleep scientist and psychology professor at Iowa State University, led the study. He ...

Washington, DC – Fungi produce metabolites that humans have used to improve health. For example, they secrete penicillin, which is then purified and used as an antibiotic for humans, leading to the development of many other antibiotics. However, the ecology of fungal metabolites in microbial communities is not well understood. In a new study, researchers use cheese rinds to demonstrate that fungal antibiotics can influence how microbiomes develop. The study is published in mBio, an open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology.  “My lab is interested in how ...

An increasing number of Floridians agree that human actions are causing climate change, including a record number of Florida Republicans, according to a new survey from Florida Atlantic University. This finding reinforces the trend observed in the prior seven Florida Climate Resilience Surveys, conducted by FAU’s Center for Environmental Studies within the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science.   Three main messages emerge from this latest poll. First, climate change is no longer an effective partisan wedge issue. Virtually all respondents (90 percent) ...

WASHINGTON—Anzela Niraula, Ph.D., of the University of Washington in Seattle, won the Endocrine Society's 2023 Endocrine Images Art Competition for her image of the microglia mandala. This contest celebrates the beauty of endocrine science, and entries were judged based on aesthetic value and significance to endocrine research. Niraula’s image of the microglia won the grand prize this year out of more than 25 entries. The image shows microglia and POMC neurons in close proximity within the arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus. Microglial regulation of POMC neurons holds significant implications ...

Researchers from University of International Business and Economics, University of Groningen, University of Cologne, and University of Chinese Academy of Sciences published a new Journal of Marketing article that examines the drivers of brand extension success. The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled “A Meta-Analysis of Brand Extension Success: The Effects of Parent Brand Equity and Extension Fit” and is authored by Chenming Peng, Tammo H.A. Bijmolt, ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Imagine you could travel to only 1% of the city where you live – areas that were easily accessible to other residents.   That’s the situation for manual wheelchair users traveling by public buses in Columbus, a first-of-its-kind study finds. The situation for those with powered wheelchairs is only somewhat better – the study found they have access to about 25% of the areas available to the general bus ridership.    But the main problem isn’t with the bus system itself – the key obstacle is with the sidewalks and other infrastructure that wheelchair users need to get from ...

Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of Mass General Brigham, today announces a historic $100 million gift from eminent biotechnology entrepreneur Gene Lay, MS, DVM, founder and CEO of BioLegend, Inc., through the Laygend Foundation. The landmark gift—the largest in the Brigham’s history—will establish The Gene Lay Institute of Immunology and Inflammation of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), also a founding member of Mass General Brigham, and Harvard Medical School (HMS). Vijay Kuchroo, DVM, PhD, an immunologist and principal investigator at the Brigham, will serve as inaugural director of the institute, which will be ...

Barcelona, Spain – 10 May 2023:  A small randomised trial in patients with post-COVID syndrome has found that hyperbaric oxygen therapy promotes restoration of the heart’s ability to contract properly. The research is presented at EACVI 2023, a scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).1 “The study suggests that hyperbaric oxygen therapy can be beneficial in patients with long COVID,” said study author Professor Marina Leitman of the Sackler School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University and Shamir Medical Centre, Be'er Ya'akov, Israel. “We used a sensitive measure of cardiac function which is ...

An international study led by MELIS-UPF researchers from the Infection Biology and Molecular Virology laboratories has identified and characterized Schlafen 12 (SLFN 12) as a novel HIV restriction factor. SLFN 12 shuts down viral protein production and helps virus-infected cells to escape from anti-HIV therapy and immune responses. These findings pave the way for improving therapeutic strategies that aim to cure HIV infections. Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infections, if left untreated, lead to the gradual destruction of the immune system, AIDS, in its final stages. Worldwide, some 650,000 ...

A new drug delivery system delivers an antioxidant directly to mitochondria in the liver, mitigating the effects of oxidative stress. Mitochondria are microscopic organelles found within cells, and are well-known as the “powerhouse of the cell.” They are by far the largest producer of the molecule adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which provides energy to many processes in living cells. The process by which mitochondria synthesize ATP generates a large amount of reactive oxygen species (ROS), chemical groups that are highly reactive. In a healthy cell, the ROS are controlled by the mitochondria; however, when this balance is lost, the excess ROS damages the mitochondria ...

With each breath, humans exhale more than 1,000 distinct molecules, producing a unique chemical fingerprint or “breathprint” rich with clues about what’s going on inside the body. For decades, scientists have sought to harness that information, turning to dogs, rats and even bees to literally sniff out cancer, diabetes, tuberculosis and more. Scientists from CU Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have made an important leap forward in the quest to diagnose disease using exhaled breath, reporting that a new laser-based breathalyzer powered by artificial intelligence (AI) can detect COVID-19 in real-time with ...

May 10 2023, Utrecht (The Netherlands) - When corona patients themselves measure the oxygen level in their blood at home, this is well applicable through the general practice. This was shown in a study conducted by UMC Utrecht during the pandemic. The study showed that patients could easily perform the oxygen measurement themselves at home, they felt safe doing so and the number of GP or hospital visits did not increase. The researchers believe that - by enabling care close to home - patients experience more control and that it contributes to relieving caregivers and keeping ...

A new paper in the European Journal of Endocrinology, published by Oxford University Press, indicates that overweight boys tend to have lower testicular volume, putting them at risk for infertility in adulthood. Infertility weighs on both the psychological health and the economic and social lives of people of childbearing age. Infertility affected 48 million couples in 2010. Although observers often overlook male infertility, researchers believe it is a factor contributing to couple infertility in about half of all cases. Yet ...

Anionic M0 complexes (M = group 10 metals) have attracted attention as active species for catalytic reactions; however, their molecular structures have very rarely been determined owing to their extremely high reactivity. Particularly, the structures of Pt0 complexes, which are expected to exhibit a high degree of reactivity, have not been determined, and their syntheses have been almost nonexistent. Associate Professor Hajime Kameo, and Professor Hiroyuki Matsuzaka from the Osaka Metropolitan University Graduate School of Science and CNRS Senior Researcher Didier Bourissou (Paul Sabatier University - Toulouse III) elucidated the ...

Air pollution has been shown to have a negative effect on the prognosis of ischemic stroke, or stroke caused by reduced blood flow to the brain, but the exact mechanism is unknown. A team of researchers recently conducted a study to determine whether or not increased inflammation of the brain, also known as neuroinflammation, is the main culprit.   The team published their findings in the February 16, 2023 issue of Particle and Fibre Toxicology. Mice exposed intranasally to urban aerosols from Beijing, China, for one week demonstrated increased neuroinflammation ...

Largest ever investigation into antidepressants used for chronic pain shows insufficient evidence to determine how effective or harmful they may be Study reviewed commonly prescribed medications including amitriptyline, duloxetine, fluoxetine, citalopram, paroxetine, and sertraline One third of people globally are living with long-term pain with many prescribed antidepressants to relieve symptoms   Most antidepressants used for chronic pain are being prescribed with “insufficient” evidence of their effectiveness, scientists have warned. A major investigation into medications used to manage long-term pain found that ...

Our industrialized society releases many and various pollutants into the world. Combustion in particular produces aerosol mass including black carbon. Although this only accounts for a few percent of aerosol particles, black carbon is especially problematic due to its ability to absorb heat and impede the heat reflection capabilities of surfaces such as snow. So, it’s essential to know how black carbon interacts with sunlight. Researchers have quantified the refractive index of black carbon to the most accurate degree yet which might impact climate models. There are many factors driving climate change; some are very familiar, such ...

Finding, cultivating, and bioengineering organisms that can digest plastic not only aids in the removal of pollution, but is now also big business. Several microorganisms that can do this have already been found, but when their enzymes that make this possible are applied at an industrial scale, they typically only work at temperatures above 30°C. The heating required means that industrial applications remain costly to date, and aren’t carbon-neutral. But there is a possible solution to this problem: ...

Salt marshes provide multiple ecosystem services, one of those is protection of the coast against flooding. This is especially important in low-lying countries like the Netherlands. Scientists from the University of Groningen and the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ), in collaboration with the local water authority, have monitored wave run-up during storms over a three-year period. The results, which were published in the Journal of Applied Ecology on 10 May, help the water authority to quantify the protective effect of salt marshes. For three years, ecologist Beatriz Marin-Diaz always had one eye on the weather ...

Immigrant adults with liver cancer in the United States have higher survival rates than people with the disease who were born in the U.S., according to new research from the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common form of liver cancer, contributes to more than 27,000 deaths annually in the United States. Immigrants comprise a significant proportion of those diagnosed with HCC in the U.S. Research has shown that birthplace, also referred to as nativity, impacts incidence and risk factors for HCC, but little was known about its influence on survival after diagnosis. The new study, just published in the Journal of the National ...

HOUSTON – (May 10, 2023) – Physicists have discovered “stacked pancakes of liquid magnetism” that may account for the strange electronic behavior of some layered helical magnets. The materials in the study are magnetic at cold temperatures and become nonmagnetic as they thaw. Experimental physicist Makariy Tanatar of Ames National Laboratory at Iowa State University noticed perplexing electronic behavior in layered helimagnetic crystals and brought the mystery to the attention of Rice theoretical physicist Andriy Nevidomskyy, who worked with Tanatar and former Rice graduate student Matthew Butcher to create a computational model that simulated the quantum states ...

Although some people might expect very dangerous jobs to be associated with the highest incidence of workplace accidents, a new study finds that accidents are actually most likely to occur within moderately dangerous work environments. “In highly dangerous environments, individuals engage in a high degree of safety behaviours, which offsets the chance of an accident,” said Dr. James Beck, lead author and a professor of psychology. “On the other hand, in moderately dangerous environments, people usually engage in some safety behaviours, yet most people do not engage in enough​ safety ...

Imagine sitting on a park bench, watching someone stroll by. While the scene may constantly change as the person walks, the human brain can transform that dynamic visual information into a more stable representation over time. This ability, known as perceptual straightening, helps us predict the walking person’s trajectory. Unlike humans, computer vision models don’t typically exhibit perceptual straightness, so they learn to represent visual information in a highly unpredictable way. But if machine-learning models had this ability, it might enable them to better estimate how objects or people will move. MIT researchers have discovered that a specific training ...

ORLANDO, May 9, 2023 – A University of Central Florida College of Medicine researcher has developed a new, more precise treatment for a major cause of illness around the world each year — acute respiratory viral infections. Acute respiratory viral infections include sicknesses such as the flu, pneumonia, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and coronavirus. These infections cause millions of illnesses worldwide, with the flu alone responsible for 3 million to 5 million cases of severe illness and up to 650,000 respiratory deaths each year, ...