About The Study: In this study that included 167,000 non-hospitalized patients, neutralizing monoclonal antibody (nMAb) treatment for COVID-19 was safe and associated with reductions in emergency department visits, hospitalization, and death, although it was not associated with reduced risk of hospitalization during the Omicron BA.1 epoch. These findings suggest that targeted risk stratification strategies may help optimize future nMAb treatment decisions.  Authors: Brian Anderson, M.D., of the MITRE Corporation in Bedford, Massachusetts, is the corresponding author.  To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website ...

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have investigated how preterm birth and foetal growth are related to the risk of atrial fibrillation up to middle-age. The study, which is published in JAMA Pediatrics, shows that being born preterm or large for gestational age was associated with increased risks of atrial fibrillation later in life. Being small for gestational age at birth was only associated with an increased risk of atrial fibrillation up to the age of 18.  The incidence of atrial fibrillation in the young has increased over the past few decades, from low levels. “Atrial fibrillation at a young age may involve a heavy socioeconomic burden for the affected ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Getting vaccines to people who need them isn’t always easy. Many vaccines require cold storage, making it difficult to ship them to remote areas that don’t have the necessary infrastructure. MIT researchers have come up with a possible solution to this problem: a mobile vaccine printer that could be scaled up to produce hundreds of vaccine doses in a day. This kind of printer, which can fit on a tabletop, could be deployed anywhere vaccines are needed, the researchers say. “We could someday ...

A team of physicists has illuminated certain properties of quantum systems by observing how their fluctuations spread over time. The research offers an intricate understanding of a complex phenomenon that is foundational to quantum computing—a method that can perform certain calculations significantly more efficiently than conventional computing.  “In an era of quantum computing it’s vital to generate a precise characterization of the systems we are building,” explains Dries Sels, an assistant ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – During the last ice age, massive icebergs periodically broke off from an ice sheet covering a large swath of North America and discharged rapidly melting ice into the North Atlantic Ocean around Greenland, triggering abrupt climate change impacts across the globe. These sudden episodes, called Heinrich Events, occurred between 16,000 and 60,000 years ago. They altered the circulation of the world’s oceans, spurring cooling in the North Atlantic and impacting monsoon rainfall around the world. But ...

Researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and Janssen Biotech, Inc. have shown in early tests that a bioengineered drug candidate can counter infection with Staphylococcus aureus – a bacterial species widely resistant to antibiotics and a major cause of death in hospitalized patients. Experiments demonstrated that SM1B74, an antibacterial biologic agent, was superior to a standard antibiotic drug at treating mice infected with S. aureus, including its treatment-resistant form known as MRSA. Published ...

GAO Caixia's group from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has developed a new genome editing technology that achieves efficient and precise targeted insertion of large DNA segments in plants. The new technology, called prime editing-mediated recombination of opportune targets (PrimeRoot), combines an optimized dual-ePPE editor protein previously published by the group with a highly efficient tyrosine site-specific recombinase, Cre. It can achieve ...

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center identified a novel cell signaling pathway that potentially could be targeted in therapy for patients with aggressive pancreatic cancers.  In laboratory studies with human pancreatic cancer cell lines and genetically engineered mouse models of pancreatic cancer, the investigators discovered that the High Mobility Group A1 (HMGA1) protein functions as a “molecular switch” that “flips on” genes required by tumor cells to grow in an uncontrolled fashion and form invasive tumors. One of these genes activated ...

Tokyo, Japan – We are all aware of the importance of eating healthy food, especially during pregnancy. A high-fat diet has dramatic consequences on the metabolism. It can lead to obesity, diabetes, chronic liver disease, and possibly cancer. Previous works have demonstrated that eating high amounts of fat during pregnancy affects the taste preference and metabolism in offspring. In most households, children and parents eat the same food. In other words, mums eating a high-fat diet will likely feed their children fatty foods. What are the consequences of maternal ...

DALLAS, April 24, 2023 — The American Heart Association and the National Football League (NFL), in collaboration with its 32 NFL clubs, are challenging kids to move more with an NFL PLAY 60 Fitness Break for the NFL Draft happening later this week. The free program on Wednesday, April 26 at 1 p.m. ET/ 12 p.m. CT/ 10 a.m. PT will offer a 15-minute synchronous broadcast to help students learn how to add movement to their day leading up to the live Draft coverage from Kansas City. Rooted in American Heart Association science, the Fitness Break broadcast helps students learn more about how physical activity supports ...

The Haber-Bosch process is the industrial approach for NH3 production today, which must be operated at energy-intensive high temperatures and pressures. The reduction of dinitrogen (N2) by electrocatalysis offers an alternative way for NH3 production at ambient conditions and a variety of electrocatalysts have been studied over the past few years. However, even the best catalytic system reported could only get unsatisfied performance (such as the selectivity and production rate of NH3) due to the ...

In the early 1990s, scientists who were studying the development of a roundworm identified a small RNA molecule that regulated the expression of specific genes. This marked the discovery of microRNAs (miRNAs), which are now known to be present across all forms of life. As it turns out, these molecules play essential roles in many biological processes. A few years later, researchers realized that diseases could dysregulate the expression of miRNAs, highlighting their potential as biomarkers. In fact, abnormal miRNA expression is a hallmark of all tumor-related diseases. Thus, miRNA detection techniques ...

Brain tumors located in regions that control speech, vision and motor function present additional challenges to neurosurgeons, as damaging the surrounding tissue can cause severe loss of those abilities.. Because of this, these regions are known as “eloquent brain areas” and require special attention and approaches to limit damage and deficits. The University of Cincinnati’s Paolo Palmisciano, MD, was part of a research team that examined how well a minimally invasive approach worked to limit vision and hearing loss in patients following brain tumor surgery. The research was published in the journal Brain Sciences, and the ...

The report, “Wrestling with Social and Behavioral Genomics: Risks, Potential Benefits, and Ethical Responsibility,” produced by The Hastings Center, a bioethics institute, provides direction for research and communications in this area of study with both significant social risks and potential benefits. It is  accompanied by an article that describes a fledgling effort to integrate community perspectives on the ethics of this research. A webinar to launch the consensus report will take place today at 3 PM EST. Register here. Research on genetic variants and human social and behavioral characteristics, or phenotypes, including anxiety, subjective well-being, ...

The objective of this study is to identify these loci and decipher the polygenic architecture of malic acid content in tomato fruit. The authors carried out a GWAS using six milestone models with two-environment repeats. A series of associated SNP variations were identified from GWAS, and 15 high-confidence annotated genes were obtained based on the lead SNPs and the malic acid accumulation. The optimal allelic combination of the 15 loci was presented for tastier tomato. ...

A severe windstorm that battered the UK more than a century ago produced some of the strongest winds[OS1]  that Britain has ever seen, a team of scientists have found after recovering old weather records.  Old weather measurements, first recorded on paper after Storm Ulysses hit the UK in February 1903, have shed new light on what was one of the most severe storms to have hit the British Isles. By turning hand-written weather data into digital records, the research team has laid the way to better understand other historical storms, ...

The steady decline in cultivable land owing to the rapidly increasing global population has necessitated the use of efficient plant breeding methods that could be used to improve agricultural yields. However, in addition to genetic methods, we need approaches to control and improve complex crop traits. To this end, plant scientists make use of various cutting-edge imaging techniques that quantify crop traits (height, leaf shape, leaf color, etc.). Traditional imaging methods, however, are tedious, destructive, and non-sustainable. ...

Lehigh University materials science and engineering (MSE) professor Masashi Watanabe is the 2023 recipient of the Microanalysis Society Presidential Science Award, which recognizes a senior scientist for “outstanding technical contributions to the field of microanalysis over a sustained period of time.” Watanabe is a Fellow of the Microanalysis Society and a former MAS president. The career achievement honor highlights his work in advancing quantitative analysis in scanning transmission ...

WASHINGTON, April 24, 2023 – Superconductors can conduct electricity without any resistance or power loss, and they can effortlessly cause magnets to levitate above them. These properties would make superconductors useful for high-speed trains or long-distance power transmission, except for one glaring problem: superconductors only work at low temperatures, more than a hundred degrees below zero. This one requirement makes building a hyperefficient electrical grid or high-speed rail network very expensive. Unless, that is, a superconductor network could accomplish ...

HIGHLIGHTS SARS-CoV-2 may spread through contaminated shipping containers How long Omicron variants persist on shipping materials may be influenced by temperature, humidity and material Researchers measured the viability of BA.1 and BA.5 Omicron variants on 4 shipping materials The virus was most stable, and most likely to spread, at the lowest temperature. Washington, DC – The virus that causes COVID-19 spreads through droplets and small particles, but contaminated surfaces of shipping materials ...

In a first-of-its-kind effort, social media researchers from Drexel University, Vanderbilt University, Georgia Institute of Technology and Boston University are turning to young social media users to help build a machine learning program that can spot unwanted sexual advances on Instagram. Trained on data from more than 5 million direct messages — annotated and contributed by 150 adolescents who had experienced conversations that made them feel sexually uncomfortable or unsafe — the technology can quickly and accurately flag risky DMs.  The project, which was recently published by the Association for Computing Machinery in its Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, ...

SPOKANE, Wash.—Safety concerns related to the widely used painkiller diclofenac may be tied to a little-studied drug-metabolizing enzyme whose expression can vary as much as 3,000 times from one individual to the next, according to new research. Published in the journal Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics, findings from the study could be used to develop ways to identify individuals at risk of serious side effects from diclofenac and to determine safer dosing standards for specific populations, including women, young children and people of certain ethnicities. Used to combat pain and inflammation ...

Proton-exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC), which are being developed for use in electric vehicles, rely on nanoparticles called catalysts to trigger electricity-producing reactions between hydrogen and oxygen. Most PEMFC catalysts contain platinum – a scarce and precious metal. There is therefore a pressing global need to develop catalysts that can generate the most power while minimizing platinum content. Manufacturers integrate these catalysts in complex assemblies called catalyst layers. Until now, they had to do so without a detailed picture of the resulting structure, as traditional imaging processes almost always cause some degree of damage. Vasiliki Tileli, head ...

New research finds there is significant variation in the anatomy of the human digestive system, with pronounced differences possible between healthy individuals. The finding has implications for understanding the role that the digestive tract’s anatomy can play in affecting human health, as well as providing potential insights into medical diagnoses and the microbial ecosystem of the gut. “There was research more than a century ago that found variability in the relative lengths of human intestines, but this area has largely been ignored since then,” says Amanda Hale, co-first author of the study and a Ph.D. ...

As the movement toward “deprescribing” medications among older adults grows, a new poll shows strong interest in this idea. A full 80% of adults aged 50 to 80 would be open to stopping one or more of the prescription medicines they’ve been taking for more than a year, if a health care provider said it was possible. Already, 26% said they have done so in the past two years. Of those willing to stop a medicine, 67% said they would likely ask for advice about doing so at their next visit with a provider, according to the new ...