As opioid overdose deaths rose during the COVID-19 pandemic, people seeking treatment for opioid addiction had to wait nearly twice as long to begin methadone treatment in the United States than in Canada, a new Yale study has shown. In both countries during the pandemic, about one in 10 methadone clinics were not accepting new patients and a third of those cited COVID-19 as the reason, according to research published July 23 in the journal JAMA Network Open. An estimated 90,000 people in the United States died from drug overdoses last year. "We missed opportunities to save lives," said Paul Joudrey, assistant professor of internal medicine at the Yale School of Medicine and corresponding author of the paper. The findings highlight shortcomings providing prompt ...

EVANSTON, Ill., --- One of the keys to a long life may lie in your net worth. In the first wealth and longevity study to incorporate siblings and twin pair data, researchers from Northwestern University analyzed the midlife net worth of adults (mean age 46.7 years) and their mortality rates 24 years later. They discovered those with greater wealth at midlife tended to live longer. The researchers used data from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) project, a longitudinal study on aging. Using data from the first collection wave in 1994-1996 through a censor date of 2018, the researchers used survival ...

From the thrill of hearing an ice cream truck approaching to the spikes of pleasure while sipping a fine wine, the neurological messenger known as dopamine has been popularly described as the brain's "feel good" chemical related to reward and pleasure. A ubiquitous neurotransmitter that carries signals between brain cells, dopamine, among its many functions, is involved in multiple aspects of cognitive processing. The chemical messenger has been extensively studied from the perspective of external cues, or "deterministic" signals. Instead, University of California San Diego researchers recently ...

What The Study Did: Researchers investigated the association between net worth at midlife and subsequent longevity in individuals as well as with siblings and twins. Authors: Eric D. Finegood, Ph.D., of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/  (doi:10.1001/jamahealthforum.2021.1652) Editor's Note: The article includes conflicts of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including ...

What The Study Did: Using survey responses from students in some Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, high schools, researchers investigated how experiences of bullying based on race/ethnicity/national origin and other marginalized identities are associated with outcomes for health, mental health and violence among adolescents. Authors: Chardée A. Galán, Ph.D., of the University of Pittsburgh, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.16364) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional ...

Hershey, Pa. -- Financial instability, lack of infrastructure, a deteriorating sense of community and family fragmentation are key contributors to diseases of despair in Pennsylvania communities, according to Penn State College of Medicine and Highmark Health researchers. The researchers conducted four focus groups in Pennsylvania communities identified as having high rates of despair-related illnesses. Diseases of despair are medical diagnoses involving alcohol-related disorders, substance-related disorders and suicidal thoughts and behavior. Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton proposed the concept of deaths of despair in 2015 after observing a decline ...

The body's first encounter with SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19, happens in the nose and throat, or nasopharynx. A new study in the journal Cell suggests that the first responses in this battleground help determine who will develop severe disease and who will get through with mild or no illness. Building on work published last year identifying SARS-CoV-2-susceptible cells, a team of collaborators at Boston Children's Hospital, MIT, and the University of Mississippi Medical Center comprehensively mapped SARS-CoV-2 infection in the nasopharynx. They obtained samples from the nasal swabs ...

Glenview, Ill. - Published monthly, the journal CHEST® features peer-reviewed, cutting-edge original research in chest medicine: Pulmonary, critical care, sleep medicine and related disciplines. Journal topics include asthma, chest infections, COPD, critical care, diffuse lung disease, education and clinical practice, pulmonology and cardiology, sleep, and thoracic oncology. The July issue of CHEST journal includes 85 articles, clinically relevant research, reviews, case series, commentary and more. Each month, the journal also offers complementary web and multimedia activities, ...

Elderly patients with neurological conditions are significantly more likely to develop delirium shortly after they are hospitalised. A new study has discovered that a delayed transfer to a hospital floor is associated with greater short-term risk of delirium among patients aged 65 and over, and for those who arrive to the Emergency Department (ED) on days with higher risk of prolonged lengths of stay - found to be Sunday and Tuesday. Delirium is an acute cognitive disorder characterised by altered awareness, attentional deficits, confusion, and disorientation. Current estimates of new-onset delirium highlight the fact that delirium overwhelmingly develops in medical settings (as high as 82 per cent in intensive care settings) compared ...

Electromagnetic (EM) waves in the terahertz (THz) regime contribute to important applications in communications, security imaging, and bio- and chemical sensing. Such wide applicability has resulted in significant technological progress. However, due to weak interactions between natural materials and THz waves, conventional THz devices are typically bulky and inefficient. Although ultracompact active THz devices do exist, current electronic and photonic approaches to dynamic control have lacked efficiency. Recently, rapid developments in metasurfaces have opened new possibilities for the creation of high-efficiency, ultracompact THz ...

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--July 22, 2021--To speed up a chemical reaction, a chemist might place the reactants over a Bunsen burner. Adding heat increases the degree of random movements and collisions of particles, accelerating the reaction. In cell biology, one important "reaction" is the transformation of stem cells into all the other cells in the body, a process known as differentiation. Gladstone Institutes researchers have now discovered a molecular mechanism that acts like a Bunsen burner to "turn up the heat" and accelerate differentiation. However, instead of boosting temperature, this process amplifies random fluctuations ...

New York, NY (July 23, 2021) -- Mount Sinai researchers have developed a therapeutic agent that shows high effectiveness in vitro at disrupting a biological pathway that helps cancer survive, according to a paper published in Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, in July. The therapy is an engineered molecule, named MS21, that causes the degradation of AKT, an enzyme that is overly active in many cancers. This study laid out evidence that pharmacological degradation of AKT is a viable treatment for cancers with mutations in certain genes. AKT is a cancer gene that encodes an enzyme that is frequently abnormally activated in cancer cells to stimulate tumor growth. Degradation of ...

Advanced technologies have been used to solve a long-standing mystery about why some people develop serious illness when they are infected with the malaria parasite, while others carry the infection asymptomatically. An international team used mass cytometry - an in-depth way of characterising individual cells - and machine learning to discover 'immune signatures' associated with symptomatic or asymptomatic infections in people infected with the Plasmodium vivax parasite. This uncovered an unexpected role for immune T cells in protection against malaria, ...

How does a view of nature gain its gloss of beauty? We know that the sight of beautiful landscapes engages the brain's reward systems. But how does the brain transform visual signals into aesthetic ones? Why do we perceive a mountain vista or passing clouds as beautiful? A research team from the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics has taken up this question and investigated how our brains proceed from merely seeing a landscape to feeling its aesthetic impact. In their study, the research team presented artistic landscape videos to 24 participants. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), they measured the participants' brain activity as they viewed and rated the videos. Their findings have just been published in the ...

As Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University researchers completed their research on coloured architectural concrete, they found a surprising result--green pigmented cement had impurities that produced porous, poor quality concrete. Meanwhile, red and blue pigments had little effect. The research was conducted by Mehreen Heerah, a graduate of XJTLU's Department of Civil Engineering, Dr Graham Dawson of XJTLU's Department of Chemistry, and Isaac Galobardes of Mohammed VI Polytechnic University. Pigmented architectural concrete is used as a visually appealing alternative to grey concrete, such as in Barcelona's Ciutat de la Justícia, explains Dr Dawson. As the demand for pigmented architectural concrete grows, so does the importance of this research. Not easy ...

New research from the University of Otago debunks a long-held belief about our ancestors' eating habits. For more than 60 years, researchers have believed Paranthropus, a close fossil relative of ours which lived about one to three million years ago, evolved massive back teeth to consume hard food items such as seeds and nuts, while our own direct ancestors, the genus Homo, is thought to have evolved smaller teeth due to eating softer food such as cooked food and meats. However, after travelling to several large institutes and museums in South Africa, Japan and the ...

About six gigatons -- roughly 12 times the mass of all living humans -- of carbon appears to be emitted over land every year, according to data from the Chinese Global Carbon Dioxide Monitoring Scientific Experimental Satellite (TanSat). Using data on how carbon mixes with dry air collected from May 2017 to April 2018, researchers developed the first global carbon flux dataset and map. They published their results in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences. The map was developed by applying TanSat's satellite observations to models of how greenhouse gasses are exchanged among Earth's atmosphere, land, ...

Reston, VA--A new radiotracer that detects iron in cancer cells has proven effective, opening the door for the advancement of iron-targeted therapies for cancer patients. The radiotracer, 18F-TRX, can be used to measure iron concentration in tumors, which can help predict whether a not the cancer will respond to treatment. This research was published in the July issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine. All cancer cells have an insatiable appetite for iron, which provides them the energy they need to multiply. As a result, tumors have higher levels of iron than normal tissues. Recent advances in chemistry have led scientists to take advantage of this altered state, targeting the expanded cytosolic ...

MUSC Hollings Cancer Center was one of 28 clinical sites around the world that participated in the LOTIS-2 trial to test the efficacy of Loncastuximab tesirine, a promising new treatment for aggressive B-cell lymphoma. The results of the single-arm, phase 2 trial were published online in May 2021 in Lancet Oncology. Brian Hess, M.D., a Hollings researcher and lymphoma specialist at MUSC Health, was instrumental in bringing the phase 2 trial to Hollings. The manufacturer of Loncastuximab tesirine, ADC Therapeutics S.A., sponsored the trial. B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) is a blood cancer that begins in the lymph nodes, spleen or bone marrow. Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) is the most common subtype of aggressive NHL. New treatment options are vital for patients with DLBCL. ...

Due to the global efforts to meet sustainability standards, many countries are currently looking to replace concrete with wood in buildings. France, for example, will require that all new public buildings will be made from at least 50 percent wood or other sustainable materials starting in 2022. Because wood is prone to degradation when exposed to sunlight and moisture, protective coatings can help bring wood into wider use. Researchers at Aalto University have used lignin, a natural polymer abundant in wood and other plant sources, to create a safe, low-cost and high-performing coating for use in construction. 'Our new coating has great potential to ...

A new optogenetic tool, a protein that can be controlled by light, has been characterized by researchers at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB). They used an opsin - a protein that occurs in the brain and eyes - from zebrafish and introduced it into the brain of mice. Unlike other optogenetic tools, this opsin is not switched on but rather switched off by light. Experiments also showed that the tool could be suitable for investigating changes in the brain that are responsible for the development of epilepsy. The teams led by Professor Melanie Mark from the Behavioural Neurobiology Research Group and Professor Stefan Herlitze from the Department ...

As the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 continues to evolve, immunologists and infectious diseases experts are eager to know whether new variants are resistant to the human antibodies that recognized initial versions of the virus. Vaccines against COVID-19, which were developed based on the chemistry and genetic code of this initial virus, may confer less protection if the antibodies they help people produce do not fend off new viral strains. Now, researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital and collaborators have created an "atlas" that charts how 152 different antibodies attack a major ...

Many species within Kenya's Tana River Basin will be unable to survive if global temperatures continue to rise as they are on track to do - according to new research from the University of East Anglia. A new study published in the journal PLOS ONE today outlines how remaining within the goals of the Paris Agreement would save many species. The research also identifies places that could be restored to better protect biodiversity and contribute towards global ecosystem restoration targets. Researcher Rhosanna Jenkins carried out the study as part of her PhD at UEA's School of Environmental Sciences. She said: "This research shows how many species within Kenya's Tana River Basin will be unable to survive if global temperatures continue to rise as they are on track to do. "But remaining ...

For young soccer players, participating in repetitive technical training activities involving heading during practice may result in more total head impacts but playing in scrimmages or actual soccer games may result in greater magnitude head impacts. That's according to a small, preliminary study released today that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's Sports Concussion Conference, July 30-31, 2021. "Headers are a fundamental component to the sport of soccer. Therefore, it is important to understand differences in header frequency and magnitude across practice and game settings," said study author Jillian Urban, PhD, MPH, of Wake ...

University of Virginia School of Medicine researchers have discovered a previously unknown repair process in the brain that they hope could be harnessed and enhanced to treat seizure-related brain injuries. Common seizure-preventing drugs do not work for approximately a third of epilepsy patients, so new and better treatments for such brain injuries are much needed. UVA's discovery identifies a potential avenue, one inspired by the brain's natural immune response. Using high-powered imaging, the researchers were able to see, for the first time, that immune cells called microglia were not just removing damaged material after experimental seizures but actually appeared to be healing damaged neurons. "There has been mounting generic support for the idea that microglia ...