The highly pathogenic avian influenza virus H5N1 has adapted to spread between birds and marine mammals, posing an immediate threat to wildlife conservation, according to a study from the University of California, Davis, and the National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA) in Argentina. The study, published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, is the first genomic characterization of H5N1 in marine wildlife on the Atlantic shore of South America. For the study, scientists collected brain samples from four sea lions, one fur seal and a tern found dead at the most affected sea lion rookery in Argentina. All ...

A first-of-its-kind study led by researchers at the University of Oklahoma highlights a crucial biosphere feedback mechanism and its effects on releasing soil carbon into the atmosphere. Jizhong Zhou, the director of the Institute for Environmental Genomics and George Lynn Cross Research Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at OU, is the corresponding author of, “Experimental warming accelerates positive soil priming in a temperate grassland ecosystem,” recently published in Nature Communications. Zhou said the study is the first to utilize laboratory and field experimental ...

A new collaborative study between Boston Medical Center, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston Children’s Hospital, Hennepin Healthcare Research Institute, University of Pennsylvania, and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia finds exposure to neighborhood violence among children was associated with unmet health needs and increased acute care utilization. Published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine and based on nationally representative data on violence exposure and gold standard access to care measures from the National Health Interview Survey, this study shows that evidence-based interventions to improve access to care in communities ...

Neuroscientists at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center have found that an often-overlooked type of brain cell called glia has more of a role in brain function than previously thought. In the journal Cell Reports, Fred Hutch neuroscientist Aakanksha Singhvi, PhD, and her team report that a single glial cell uses different molecules to communicate with different neurons. Careful clustering of these molecules ensures that the glial cell can conduct a distinct “conversation” with each neuron. Through these molecular facilitators, glia can influence how neurons respond to environmental cues like ...

New method enables 3D tongue modelling, for example from fossilized hominin skulls, and might help understand the emergence of human speech. #### Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011808 Article Title: Predicting primate tongue morphology based on geometrical skull matching. A first step towards an application on fossil hominins Author Countries: France Funding: This work is a production of the members of the team "Origins of speech" hosted at Sorbonne University - Institut des Sciences du Calcul et des Données. The funders had no role in study design, data collection ...

PHILADELPHIA—The Pew Charitable Trusts announced today that it has selected six distinguished researchers as recipients of the 2024 Pew fellowship in marine conservation. The researchers—from Canada, China, Denmark, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, and the United States—join a community of more than 200 Pew marine fellows who have undertaken projects to deepen our understanding of the ocean and advance the sustainable use of marine resources. “The world’s oceans have never been under greater threat. Humankind relies on healthy oceans in countless ways,” said Susan K. Urahn, Pew’s ...

AUSTIN, Texas — Better prevention of Type II diabetes could save both lives and money. The U.S. spends over $730 billion a year — nearly a third of all health care spending — on treating preventable diseases like diabetes. For the 98 million adults who are prediabetic and at risk of developing Type II diabetes, preventive treatments such as the drug metformin can help stave off the disease. But the medicines are expensive. With limited budgets, insurers and health care facilities need to allocate them to the patients they can help the most. Currently, a health ...

Scientists have extensively researched the structure and sequence of genetic material and its interactions with proteins in the hope of understanding how our genetics and environment interact in diseases. This research has partly focused on ‘epigenetic marks’, which are chemical modifications to DNA, RNA, and the associated proteins (known as histones). Epigenetic marks influence when and how genes get switched on or off. They can also instruct cells about how to interpret and use genetic information, influencing various cellular processes. Changes in epigenetic marks therefore significantly impact gene regulation and cellular ...

The cardiac risks of smoking marijuana are comparable to those of smoking tobacco, according to researchers at UC San Francisco, who warn that the increasing use of cannabis across the country could lead to growing heart health problems.     The study found that people who used cannabis daily had a 25% increased risk of heart attack and a 42% increased risk of stroke compared to non-users.     Cannabis has become more popular with legalization. Recreational use is now permitted in 24 states, and as of 2019, nearly 4% said they used it daily and 18% used it annually. That is a significant increase since 2002, when 1.3% said they used it daily and 10.4% ...

About The Study: In this study of 5,279 children, early life air pollution was associated with increased asthma incidence by early and middle childhood, with higher risk among minoritized families living in urban communities characterized by fewer opportunities and resources and multiple environmental co-exposures. Reducing asthma risk in the U.S. requires air pollution regulation and reduction combined with greater environmental, educational, and health equity at the community level.  Authors: Antonella Zanobetti, Ph.D., ...

About The Study: The results of this study of 82,000 patients with acute ischemic stroke suggest that hourly heat exposure is associated with increased risk of acute ischemic stroke onset. This finding may benefit the formulation of public health strategies to reduce cerebrovascular risk associated with high ambient temperature under global warming.  Authors: Jing Zhao, Ph.D., and Haidong Kan, Ph.D., of Fudan University in Shanghai, China, are the corresponding authors.  To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/  (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.0627) Editor’s ...

A research team led by Professor Wang Cheng from the Department of Electrical Engineering (EE) at City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) has developed a world-leading microwave photonic chip that is capable of performing ultrafast analog electronic signal processing and computation using optics.   The chip, which is 1,000 times faster and consumes less energy than a traditional electronic processor, has a wide range of applications, covering 5/6G wireless communication systems, high-resolution radar systems, artificial intelligence, computer vision, and image/video processing.   The team's research findings were published in the prestigious scientific ...

A microscopic battle rages in our bodies, as our cells constantly fend off invaders through our immune system, a complex system of cells and proteins designed to protect us from harmful pathogens. One of its central components is the enzyme cyclic GMP-AMP synthase (cGAS), which acts as a sentinel, detecting foreign DNA and initiating an immune response. However, the immune system requires precise regulation to prevent cGAS from mistakenly attacking the body's own tissues, leading to autoimmune disorders, which now affect about 10% of the global population. Previous studies have revealed a little of how this ...

HOUSTON ― Researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center built a new atlas of lung cells, uncovering new cellular pathways and precursors in the development of lung adenocarcinoma, the most common type of lung cancer. These findings, published today in Nature, open the door for development of new strategies to detect or intercept the disease in its earliest stages. Led by Humam Kadara, Ph.D., professor of Translational Molecular Pathology and Linghua Wang, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of Genomic Medicine, the team generated an atlas of around 250,000 normal and cancerous ...

A genetic change in our ancient ancestors may partly explain why humans don’t have tails like monkeys, finds a new study led by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.   Published online February 28 as the cover story of the journal Nature, the work compared the DNA of tail-less apes and humans to that of tailed monkeys, and found an insertion of DNA shared by apes and humans, but missing in monkeys. When the research team engineered a series of mice to examine whether the insertion, in a gene called TBXT, affected their tails, they found a variety of tail effects, including some mice born without tails. ...

New Haven, Conn. — A new Yale study finds an increased risk of hospital readmission for older Americans within 180 days of undergoing major surgery — a risk that is particularly acute for individuals who are frail or have dementia. The findings were published Feb. 28 in the journal JAMA Network Open. Previous research by the same Yale team demonstrated that major surgery is a common event for older Americans and also demonstrated a heightened mortality risk within one year of major surgery for people who are age 65 and older. The new study is the first to describe both the short-term risk (within 30 days) and longer-term ...

LA JOLLA, CA—Molecules often have a structural asymmetry called chirality, which means they can appear in alternative, mirror-image versions, akin to the left and right versions of human hands. One of the great mysteries about the origins of life on Earth is that virtually all of the fundamental molecules of biology, such as the building blocks of proteins and DNA, appear in just one chiral form. Scripps Research chemists, in two high-profile studies, have now proposed an elegant solution to this mystery, showing how this single-handedness or “homochirality” could have become established in biology. The studies were published in the Proceedings ...

PARIS, France and BEER-SHEVA, Israel, February 28, 2024 – The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)[1], developed by NASA and ESA, has just obtained the first spectra of very low-mass galaxies less than a billion years after the Big Bang. A technological feat made possible by the unique combination of JWST sensitivity and the gravitational lensing effect of the Abell 2744 cluster: nearby galaxies act like cosmic magnifiers, distorting space and amplifying the light of background galaxies. By demonstrating that small galaxies are very likely at the origin of the reionization of the universe, this discovery represents a major breakthrough in our knowledge of the cosmos. The international research ...

People who have had a kidney transplant are at high risk for developing skin cancers. New research directed by investigators from the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center is exploring the best combination of treatments to target skin cancers while preserving the transplanted organs.  Now, they report results from a clinical trial testing a novel drug combination designed to stimulate the immune system to fight advanced, potentially lethal skin cancers while not permanently damaging patients’ transplanted kidneys. The treatment included two immune-suppressing drugs ...

Unlike most animals that rely on visual senses, bats navigate and locate prey or obstacles through echolocation. By emitting sounds and comparing them to the reflected echoes, bats can “visualize” movement in the environment. When sound waves encounter a moving object, they can undergo changes such as a Doppler shift in frequency or experience a delay, which the bat can sense. However, it is unclear which acoustic characteristics bats rely on to detect moving objects. Japanese horseshoe bats (Rhinolophus ferrumequinum nippon) emit ultrasound pulses that are characterized ...

Digital Science is pleased to announce the launch of two new products – Dimensions Research GPT and Dimensions Research GPT Enterprise – bringing the unmatched, trusted research coverage of Dimensions to the ChatGPT platform. Users can get AI-generated answers to research-related questions on the GPT platform informed by Dimensions’ huge database, making ChatGPT more research-specific for topic exploration.  Available to users of both the free and paid Dimensions Analytics web application, Dimensions Research GPT and Dimensions Research GPT Enterprise help overcome ...

(Boston)— Knee osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common form of arthritis, affecting approximately 600 million people worldwide and 34 million people in the U.S. There are no treatments available that prevent its progression to date. Recommended pharmacological treatments for symptoms have either small-to moderate effects or short-term effects, often with side effects, and lifestyle behaviors such as exercise and weight loss are under-utilized.   Historically, intra-articular mineralization (IAM) or calcium crystal deposits in the joint, were thought to be of no clinical consequence, and perhaps just something that happens with older ...

An international team of scientists led by ICREA researcher and Director of the Life Sciences Department at the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS), Alfonso Valencia, has developed a technology based on artificial intelligence (AI) for the study of minority diseases and has successfully applied it to identify the possible causes of the appearance of what are known as myasthenic-congenital syndromes, a group of rare inherited disorders that limit the ability to move and cause varying degrees of muscle weakness in patients. The lack of available data on minority, also known as rare, diseases makes research in this area extremely ...

A study by the Institut de Neurociències of the UAB (INc-UAB) demonstrates in animal models the benefits of vorinostat after having suffered a stroke. The drug, used in humans to treat cutaneous T-cell lymphoma, has been proved to mitigate brain injuries and help in restoring brain tissue. Ischemic stroke is the second leading cause of death worldwide and occurs when blood flow cannot reach the brain due to an obstruction. For a more or less long period of time, the brain does not receive oxygen and this causes damage and functional impairment. Hypertension is the most frequent modifiable risk factor for stroke and is associated with worse recoveries. Currently, ...

Philadelphia, February 28, 2024 – Although most Americans consume dairy and many dairy foods are rising in popularity, fluid milk consumption has seen a significant decline among US consumers since the 1960s. To reverse this trend—and ensure consumers are getting adequate amounts of dairy in their diets—the dairy sector has developed educational materials to reach consumers through informational infographics and TV and print ads, and on social media. But do these kinds of educational ...