People who are ‘double jointed,’ a condition formally known as generalised joint hypermobility, may be at heightened risk of  long COVID, suggests a case-control study published in the open access journal BMJ Public Health. They were 30% more likely not to have fully recovered from COVID-19 infection than those without hypermobile joints, and to be experiencing the persistent fatigue associated with long COVID, the findings indicate. Other than older age, the likelihood of developing long COVID seems to be greater ...

The air quality around planned new schools in England is “alarmingly poor,” with 86% of sites exceeding  World Health Organization (WHO) targets on major air pollutants, reveals an analysis published online in the Archives of Disease in Childhood. The consequences for health from exposure to excessive levels of air pollutants are well known, say the researchers, who call for air quality assessment at all stages of planning to be mandated, and legislation and guidance to be updated as a matter of urgency. Children are particularly vulnerable to the harmful effects of air pollution, because their bodies, organs, and immune systems are still developing, explain ...

A major report on the remains of a stilt village that was engulfed in flames almost 3,000 years ago reveals in unprecedented detail the daily lives of England’s prehistoric fenlanders.   Must Farm, a late Bronze Age settlement, dates to around 850BC, with University of Cambridge archaeologists unearthing four large wooden roundhouses and a square entranceway structure – all of which had been constructed on stilts above a slow-moving river. The entire hamlet stood approximately two metres above the riverbed, with walkways bridging some of the main houses, and ...

Soft tissue preservation in the geological record is relatively rare, and, except where deliberate intervention halts the process of decay (like embalming or freezing), the survival of entire organs is particularly unusual. The spontaneous preservation of the brain in the absence of any other soft tissues - that is, the brain’s survival amongst otherwise skeletonised remains - has historically been regarded as a ‘one-of-a kind’ phenomenon. A new study conducted by researchers at the University of Oxford, led ...

Scientists have developed an ingestible capsule dotted with sensors that can detect pressure in a patient’s guts and detect points of failure. The ingestible system will give colorectal medical teams an unprecedented understanding of the movement of a patient’s digestive tract, or lack thereof. Instead of simply taking images of inside the guts, the system will sense whether it’s contracting, how much pressure is exerted and exactly where it might be inactive. The system has been tested in a synthetic gut and animals. A patent for the technology is pending. The team from Heriot-Watt University and the University of Birmingham, with colleagues from the University ...

Milan, Italy: Researchers have developed a genetic test that can identify how patients with triple negative early-stage breast cancer will respond to immunotherapy drugs. This means that patients who are unlikely to respond to these drugs can avoid the adverse side effects associated with them and can be treated with other therapies.   Professor Laura van ‘t Veer told the 14th European Breast Cancer Conference that the latest results from the I-SPY2 trial [1] suggest that the current standard of care for patients with triple negative breast cancer should be reconsidered.   “Immunotherapy drugs can ...

E-cigarette users with a limited smoking history experience similar DNA changes to specific cheek cells as smokers, finds a new study led by researchers at UCL (University College London) and University of Innsbruck. This study is an incremental step in helping researchers to build a deeper understanding of the long-term effects of e-cigarettes on health. Although it does not show that e-cigarettes cause cancer, studies with long-term follow up are important to assess whether e-cigarettes have harmful effects and, if so, what they are. The study, published in Cancer Research, ...

Milan, Italy: New data from the KEYNOTE-756 phase 3 clinical trial show that adding the immunotherapy drug, pembrolizumab, to chemotherapy before and after surgery for breast cancer leads to better outcomes for patients regardless of their age or menopausal status.   The findings, presented at the 14th European Breast Cancer Conference (EBCC 14) today (Wednesday), add to information available on the effect of pembrolizumab in patients with early-stage breast cancer that is at high risk of recurring or spreading further, and that is oestrogen ...

The economic impact of federally sponsored research at The University of Texas at Arlington was $38 million in 2022, with expenditures spread among 725 unique vendors, according to a new report. Of that total, the University spent about $24 million on research-related goods and services in Texas. The research dollars also supported the salaries of 1,562 people during this time—including 517 faculty and 746 students. “Research at UTA helps solve some of society’s most important problems, and it is also a vital economic driver in our economy and in the careers of our students and researchers,” said Kate Miller, vice president of research and ...

Researchers at Rice University have unlocked the potential to use 3D printing to make sustainable wood structures, offering a greener alternative to traditional manufacturing methods. Wood has historically been marred by wasteful practices generated during shaping processes, driving up costs and environmental impact. Now researchers in materials science and nanoengineering at Rice have developed an additive-free, water-based ink made of lignin and cellulose, the fundamental building blocks of wood. The ink can be used to produce architecturally ...

In the quest to decipher the evolutionary relationships of extinct organisms from fossils, researchers often face challenges in discerning key features from weathered fossils, or with prioritizing characteristics of organisms for the most accurate placement within a phylogenetic tree. Enter neural networks, sophisticated algorithms that underlie today’s image recognition technology. While previous attempts to utilize neural networks in classifying extinct organisms within phylogenetic trees have struggled, a new study, recently published in PNAS Nexus, heralds a significant breakthrough. The model has been trained ...

Some animals possess the remarkable ability to regenerate lost structures, exemplified by a lizard regrowing its tail. However, this regenerative process must be tightly regulated by the body to ensure proper tissue organization and to prevent abnormal growths, such as cancer. Yet, the precise mechanisms underlying this regulation are not well known. In a recent study published in PLOS Genetics, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have identified an RNA-regulator called Brat as a key player in restraining tissue regeneration through its modulation of downstream growth factors. “There are constraints and protective factors that are important for ...

**Note: the release below is a special early release from the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID 2024, Barcelona, Spain, 27-30 April). Please credit the congress if you use this story** New research presented early ahead of this year’s European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID 2024, Barcelona, 27-30 April) from a team of researchers in the Netherlands shows how the latest CRISPR-Cas gene editing technology can be used to eliminate all ...

Spring weather brings welcome conditions for flowers and plant life to bloom across the land. The right mixture of temperature, moisture, and light helps keep the green world vibrant. Underwater plant life generally responds to similar environmental encouragements, but a curious discovery in Lake Erie circa 2012 led microbiologists to study an unseasonal display of winter abundance. Blooms of diatoms—microscopic, photosynthetic algae—were alive and well beneath (and within) the lake’s ...

Cape lions used to roam the Cape Flats grassland plains of South Africa, in what is now known as Western Cape Providence. When Europeans arrived in South Africa in the mid-1600s, Cape lions, along with many other African carnivores and herbivores, were hunted as agricultural practice to protect livestock and humans. By the mid-1800s, less than 200 years since European arrival, Cape lions had been hunted to extinction. European naturalists described the Cape lion as having a particularly black mane and as being morphologically distinct. However, alternative depictions and descriptions of Cape ...

Getting screened for cervical cancer isn’t fun. And getting an alert that your initial exam showed a potential sign of trouble, and that you need to go back for a test or procedure to rule out cancer, is even less fun. Plus, those follow-up procedures can cost hundreds of dollars, even though a law makes the initial cervical cancer screening test free to all eligible patients. So it’s no wonder that many of those eligible don’t get screened in the first place – and that among those who get screened and have initial abnormal ...

Scientists from Massey University in New Zealand, the University of Mainz in Germany,  Sorbonne University in France, and the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) discuss the limit of the periodic table and revising the concept of the “island of stability” with recent advances in superheavy element research. Their work is the cover feature of the February 2024 Nature Review Physics. In addition to the Nature Reviews Physics feature, Physics Reports published a review on the atomic electronic structure theory for superheavy elements. What is the heaviest bound nucleus ...

In the realm of physics, synthetic dimensions (SDs) have emerged as one of the frontiers of active research, offering a pathway to explore phenomena in higher-dimensional spaces, beyond our conventional 3D geometrical space. The concept has garnered significant attention, especially in topological photonics, due to its potential to unlock rich physics inaccessible in traditional dimensions. Researchers have proposed various theoretical frameworks to study and implement SDs, aiming at harnessing phenomena like synthetic gauge fields, quantum Hall physics, discrete solitons, and topological phase transitions in four dimensions or higher. Those proposals ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Greenhouse gas emissions significantly increase in countries in the Global South within a few years after initially borrowing from the International Monetary Fund using structural loans, but not when more flexible lending conditions are involved. However, with countries’ second or subsequent IMF loans, their emissions spike almost immediately, regardless of the lending conditions involved, a recent study suggests. Structural loans, one of IMF’s two primary lending instruments, specify the precise changes borrowers are required ...

A new study from researchers at the University of California, Davis, shows a ketogenic diet significantly delays the early stages of Alzheimer’s-related memory loss in mice. This early memory loss is comparable to mild cognitive impairment in humans that precedes full-blown Alzheimer’s disease. The study was published in the Nature Group journal Communications Biology. The ketogenic diet is a low-carbohydrate, high fat and moderate protein diet, which shifts the body’s metabolism from using glucose as the main fuel source to burning fat and producing ketones for energy. UC Davis researchers previously found that mice lived 13% longer on ketogenic diets. Slowing ...

Alexandria, VA, USA – A study aiming to investigate whether the spike protein of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) can sensitize nociceptors and promote pain-like behaviors in mice was presented at the 102nd General Session of the IADR, which was held in conjunction with the 53rd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Dental, Oral, and Craniofacial Research and the 48th Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association for Dental Research, on March 13-16, 2024, in New Orleans, LA, USA. The abstract, “SARS-Cov-2 Spike Protein Sensitizes ...

Alexandria, VA, USA – A study aiming to develop a Lipid nanoparticles (LNP) platform for treating oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) utilizing p53 mRNA was presented at the 102nd General Session of the IADR, which was held in conjunction with the 53rd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Dental, Oral, and Craniofacial Research and the 48th Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association for Dental Research, on March 13-16, 2024, in New Orleans, LA, USA.  The abstract, “mRNA Lipid Nanoparticles for Next-Generation ...

Alexandria, VA, USA – A study aiming to determine if a relationship exists between constructs of Indigeneity and untreated caries in First Nations children in Manitoba and Ontario, controlling for selected was presented at the 102nd General Session of the IADR, which was held in conjunction with the 53rd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Dental, Oral, and Craniofacial Research and the 48th Annual Meeing of the Canadian Association for Dental Research, on March 13-16, 2024, in New Orleans, LA, USA. The abstract, “Indigeneity: A Strength-Based Approach to Oral Health of Indigenous Children.” was presented during ...

Alexandria, VA, USA – A study aiming to determine a set of oral health care services to be delivered within the comprehensive outpatient benefit package of the National Health Insurance Program (NHIP) of the Philippines was presented at the 102nd General Session of the IADR, which was held in conjunction with the 53rd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Dental, Oral, and Craniofacial Research and the 48th Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association for Dental Research, on March 13-16, 2024, in New Orleans, LA, USA. The abstract, “Proposing an Oral Health Benefit Package Under the National Health Insurance Program of the ...

    Images   Teardrop-shaped particles designed to inactivate multiple strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus could one day complement existing treatments for COVID-19, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of Michigan and Jiangnan University in Wuxi, China.   The COVID mRNA vaccines have been highly effective at preventing severe cases of the disease, but COVID-19 can still hospitalize vaccinated individuals, especially the elderly. New strains also continue to emerge, requiring constant updates to vaccines to maintain their effectiveness.     "Our immune system has ...