Authors say the findings underscore the urgent need for preventive measures for people with MS who are inadequately protected by COVID-19 vaccination alone. *Please mention the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID 2024, Barcelona, 27-30 April) if using this material* New real-world research being presented at this year’s European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID 2024) in Barcelona, Spain (27-30 April) reveals that people living with multiple sclerosis (MS) face a much higher ...

New research to be presented at this year’s European Congress on Obesity in Venice, Italy (12-15 May) shows that having obesity in childhood is associated with a more than doubling of the risk of later developing multiple sclerosis. The study is by Professor Claude Marcus and Associate Professor Emilia Hagman, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden, and colleagues. Emerging evidence implies a link between high BMI in adolescence and an increased risk of Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Yet, most studies evaluating this association are cross-sectional, have retrospective design with self-reported data, have used solely genetic correlations, or use paediatric ...

Rice University’s Emerging Scholars Program (RESP) has received a five-year, $2.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation. The funding aims to bolster achievements in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) among students from under-resourced families and communities. The grant will enable RESP to expand its reach and impact, offering increased support to its scholars via summer tuition scholarships, housing subsidies and research stipends. The number of scholars in the program will increase from 40 to 50 in Summer 2024 and to 60 in Summer 2025. “Rice ...

A stroke often impacts a person’s ability to move their lower body from the hips down to the feet. This leads to diminished quality of life and mental health in addition to increased susceptibility to falls. But now, UBC Okanagan researchers are exploring new treatment methods to help bridge the service delivery gap, and recovery outcomes, for patients after a stroke. “Shortened length of inpatient stays and continued challenges in transitioning back to the community—including poor access to continued stroke rehabilitation services—have resulted in substantial unmet recovery needs,” ...

With nearly 5 million deaths linked to antibiotic resistance globally every year, new ways to combat resistant bacterial strains are urgently needed. Researchers at Stanford Medicine and McMaster University are tackling this problem with generative artificial intelligence. A new model, dubbed SyntheMol (for synthesizing molecules), created structures and chemical recipes for six novel drugs aimed at killing resistant strains of Acinetobacter baumannii, one of the leading pathogens responsible for antibacterial resistance-related deaths. The researchers described their model and experimental validation of these new compounds in a study published March 22 in the journal ...

A major global catastrophe could disrupt trade in liquid fuels used to sustain industrial agriculture, impacting the food supply of island nations like New Zealand that depend on oil imports. A new study in the journal Risk Analysis suggests that New Zealand and other island nations dependent on imported fuel can plan for future emergencies by stepping up their production of biofuel from locally grown crops (like canola) and farming more fuel-efficient crops (like wheat and potatoes rather than dairy). In the event of a major disruption in liquid fuel imports, results showed that New ...

A research team from New Jersey Institute of Technology is uncovering mysteries surrounding fluids in nanoporous materials, and has been recently awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support this research. The research is focused on the elasticity, or compressibility, of fluids in these nanopores. Understanding the elastic properties of fluids has significant implications across multiple disciplines. Engineering applications, geological exploration, materials science and environmental studies ...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – A nationwide study of 196 cities shows that housing discrimination from 90 years ago still casts a historical shadow of inequities in colon cancer care today, S.M. Qasim Hussaini, M.D., of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and colleagues at the American Cancer Society and Johns Hopkins School of Public Health report in the journal JCO Oncology Practice. In the 1930s, the federally sponsored Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, or HOLC, used racial composition to map out residential areas worthy of receiving mortgage loans and those areas to avoid. Neighborhoods ...

Waltham — March 28, 2024 — For patients considering or undergoing plastic and reconstructive surgery (PRS) procedures, using social media to gather information and answer questions can enhance patient empowerment – potentially leading to increased autonomy and better decision-making, reports a study in the April issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.  "Our study suggests that connecting to social media is associated with meaningful increases in empowerment for PRS patients, ...

Artificial intelligence excels at sorting through information and detecting patterns or trends. But these machine learning algorithms need to be trained with large amounts of data first. As researchers explore potential applications for AI, they have found scenarios where AI could be really useful — such as analyzing X-ray image data to look for evidence of rare conditions or detecting a rare fish species caught on a commercial fishing boat — but there's not enough data to accurately train the algorithms.  Jenq-Neng Hwang, University of Washington professor of electrical and computer and engineering, specializes in these issues. ...

DETROIT - A groundbreaking study published in the journal iScience presents crucial insights into the ocular effects of Zika virus infection during pregnancy and offers promising avenues for therapeutic intervention. Produced by a team of researchers in the Department of Ophthalmology, Visual and Anatomical Sciences at the Wayne State University School of Medicine, the paper, “Targeting ABCG1 and SREBP-2 mediated cholesterol homeostasis ameliorates Zika virus-induced ocular pathology,” provides compelling evidence of the ...

You’ve probably seen nature depicted in art, but how often do you see an artwork hiding in nature? When they saw the back of a lizard in the Southern Western Ghats, a group of scientists from the Thackeray Wildlife Foundation in India were reminded of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. As soon as they figured out it was a new species, it was only apt to name it in honour of the famous painter. “Cnemaspis vangoghi is named for Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) as the striking colouration of the new species is reminiscent of one of his most iconic paintings, The ...

Hyenas are generalist predators (and scavengers) with a broad range of prey species. They are known for hunting (or scavenging) larger mammals such as antelopes and occasionally feed on smaller mammals and reptiles. Being flexible in the choice of prey is a strategy of generalists – and this even extends to small passerine birds, as scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) and the University of Ljubljana observed in Namibia: Spotted hyenas pursued red-billed queleas, picked them from the ground or the surface of a waterhole and swallowed them whole, at a success rate of approximately one bird every three minutes. These observations were described ...

Using a bioluminescent oxygen indicator, Felix Beinlich and colleagues discovered a spontaneous, spatially defined occurrence of “hypoxic pockets” in the mouse brain. Their technique offers a way to learn more about brain oxygen tension (pO2), a measure of oxygen delivery and demand in brain tissue that changes dynamically but is not well understood. The findings could have implications for how rest and exercise affect pO2 in the human brain, including the role of these activities in conditions such as dementia, Beinlich et al. suggest. The researchers used a genetically encoded bioluminescent oxygen indicator called Green NanoLuc in mouse cortical astrocytes to ...

The dissolved organic matter (DOM) from hundreds of plant and animal remains could be used to track and possibly restore the health of freshwater bodies, Andrew J. Tanentzap and Jérémy A. Fonvielle write in this Perspective. The broad range of compounds, or chemodiversity, of DOM has multiple effects in freshwaters, including providing nutrients to support food web productivity, reducing or enhancing contamination from pollutants, and influencing the metabolism of microorganisms important to the biogeochemical cycle. DOM may also reduce the heat that ...

There should be mandatory indoor air quality standards, say an international group of experts led by Professor Lidia Morawska.   Professor Morawska, Vice-Chancellor Fellow at the University of Surrey and Distinguished Professor at Queensland University of Technology, led the appeal to the World Health Organization to recognise the airborne transmission of the virus which causes COVID-19 early in the pandemic – and help minimise it.   Now, in a paper published by the prestigious journal Science, Professor Morawska's international team recommends setting standards for ventilation rate and three key indoor pollutants: carbon ...

Women affected by premenstrual disorders have a higher risk of perinatal depression compared with those who do not, according to research published March 28th in the open access journal PLOS Medicine. The relationship works both ways: those with perinatal depression are also more likely to develop premenstrual disorders after pregnancy and childbirth. This study suggests that a common mechanism might contribute to the two conditions. Menstruating women experience cyclical hormone fluctuations through puberty, menstrual cycle, pregnancy ...

The human brain consumes vast amounts of energy, which is almost exclusively generated from a form of metabolism that requires oxygen. Consequently, the efficient and timely allocation and delivery of oxygen is critical to healthy brain function, however, the precise mechanics of this process have largely remained hidden from scientists.    A new bioluminescence imaging technique, described today in the journal Science, has created highly detailed, and visually striking, images of the movement ...

All plants mediate their environmental interactions via chemical signals. An example is the alkaloid gramine produced by barley, one of the world’s most widely grown cereals. Gramine provides protection against herbivorous insects and grazing animals and inhibits the growth of other plants. Despite long-standing interest, the key gene for the formation of gramine remained elusive. The researchers discovered a cluster of two genes in barley for gramine biosynthesis. The first gene (HvNMT) had already been discovered 18 years ago. In their study the researchers from IPK and the Leibniz University Hannover now identified a second gene (AMI synthase, HvAMIS), and ...

The source of pollutants in rivers and freshwater lakes can now be identified using a comprehensive new water quality analysis, according to scientists at the University of Cambridge and Trent University, Canada. Microparticles from car tyres, pesticides from farmers’ fields, and toxins from harmful algal blooms are just some of the organic chemicals that can be detected using the new approach, which also indicates the impact these chemicals are likely to have in a particular river or lake. Importantly, the approach can also point to the origin of specific organic matter dissolved in the water, because it has a distinct ...

Women with premenstrual syndrome (PMS) or premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) have a higher risk of perinatal depression. Conversely, women with perinatal depression have a higher risk of developing premenstrual disorders. This is shown in a study from Karolinska Institutet published in the journal PLOS Medicine. Premenstrual disorders like PMS or PMDD and perinatal depression are similar in the way that symptoms appear in connection with hormonal changes. This fact has given rise to the hypothesis ...

Each day, hundreds of billions of cells in our body cycle through a period of growth and division. Yet in that time, only about 30 minutes is spent on the critical orchestration of mitosis, when chromosomes are carefully segregated from one parent cell to the next generation of two daughter cells. It’s during this crucial period of cell division that things can go haywire. Chromosomes can be misdirected, leading to damaged and diseased cells that progress to different types of cancer. University of California San Diego scientists reporting in the journal Science have found a key mechanism that keeps track of mitosis timing and ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Bovine tuberculosis (TB) is a livestock disease that results in large economic losses to animal agriculture worldwide. The disease can also transmit to humans and cause severe illness and death. Researchers from Penn State, Addis Ababa University and the University of Cambridge have now demonstrated that a vaccine for TB currently used in humans significantly reduces infectiousness of vaccinated livestock, improving prospects for elimination and control. The study published today (March 28) in the journal Science.  The spillover ...

March 28, 2024, Mountain View, CA -- The SETI Institute is pleased to announce that Dr. Andrew Siemion will be honored with the prestigious 2024 Drake Award for his exceptional and pioneering contributions to SETI and radio astronomy and his leadership in the field. Siemion's distinguished career includes his role as the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI at the SETI Institute, Principal Investigator for the Breakthrough Listen Initiative at the University of Oxford, along with holding an Honorary Professorship ...

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet, in collaboration with JLP Health and others, have identified how the tick-borne Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever virus enters our cells. The results are published in Nature Microbiology and are an important step in the development of drugs against the deadly disease. Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever virus (CCHF virus) is spread through tick bites and can cause haemorrhagic fever. The disease is serious and has a mortality rate of up to 40 per cent depending on the health status of the person infected. Common symptoms ...