Thanks to the rapid development of nanotechnology, a research team led by Profs. NIE Guangjun, WU Yan and ZHAO Yuliang from the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology (NCNST) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) recently designed personalized tumor vaccines based on bacterial cytoplasmic membranes and cell membranes from resected tumor tissue. This work was published in Science Translational Medicine. Cancer vaccines are an effective anti-tumor therapeutic option that utilize tumor antigens to stimulate patients' immune response and specifically kill tumor cells. Postoperative recurrence and metastasis after surgery can thus be effectively inhibited by the activated immune system. Therefore, ...

Quantum key distribution (QKD) is a method for secure communication that uses quantum mechanics to encrypt information. While the security of QKD is unbreakable in principle, if it is incorrectly implemented, vital information could still be stolen by attackers. These are known as side-channel attacks, where the attackers exploit weaknesses in the setup of the information system to eavesdrop on the exchange of secret keys. Researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed two methods, one theoretical and one experimental, to ensure that QKD communications cannot be attacked in this way. The first is an ultra-secure cryptography protocol that can be deployed in any communication network that needs long-term ...

Researchers at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), have developed the Families Sharing Health Assessment and Risk Evaluation (SHARE) workbook, which helps people use their family history to assess their risk for heart disease, diabetes, breast cancer and colorectal cancer. Since 2012, Laura Koehly, Ph.D., and her research team have measured the accessibility and usability of the workbook by working with communities and continually updating the workbook to address issues. Koehly is the chief of the Social ...

A joint research group from KAIST and Institut Pasteur Korea has identified repurposed drugs for COVID-19 treatment through virtual screening and cell-based assays. The research team suggested the strategy for virtual screening with greatly reduced false positives by incorporating pre-docking filtering based on shape similarity and post-docking filtering based on interaction similarity. This strategy will help develop therapeutic medications for COVID-19 and other antiviral diseases more rapidly. This study was reported at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of ...

Washington, DC (July 6, 2021) --The International Whaling Commission (IWC) was founded to regulate whaling. Today, it also increasingly focuses on the value of live whales for planetary health. A new workshop report confirms the great ecological value of whales to help mitigate climate change, transport nutrients, enhance marine productivity, and promote biodiversity in marine ecosystems. The world's leading experts gathered for a three-day workshop in April that was co-hosted by the IWC and the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS). The meeting came in response to a 2016 IWC resolution, introduced by the government of Chile, to compile scientific information about the ecological roles of cetaceans (whales and dolphins). The workshop discussions ...

Researchers at the National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center in Japan show that excessive blood pressure reduction for acute intracerebral hemorrhage is risky in people with decreased kidney function Suita, Japan -- Stroke and chronic kidney disease are both difficult to handle in their own rights, but having a stroke when your kidneys are already poor is more than just double the trouble. A new study led by Kazunori Toyoda at the National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center (NCVC) in Japan shows that excessive blood pressure reduction for acute intracerebral hemorrhage can have dire consequences when kidney function is low. The study was published in the scientific journal Neurology®. Intracerebral hemorrhage is a disease for which effective treatment is expected ...

Rare-earth compounds have fascinated researchers for decades due to the unique quantum properties they display, which have so far remained totally out of reach of everyday compounds. One of the most remarkable and exotic properties of those materials is the emergence of exotic superconducting states, and particularly the superconducting states required to build future topological quantum computers. While these specific rare-earth compounds, known as heavy fermion superconductors, have been known for decades, making usable quantum technologies out of them has remained a critically ...

A new study suggests sea discoloration data obtained from satellite images as a novel criterion in predicting if eruption looms for an underwater volcano. There have been frequent eruptions of submarine volcanoes in recent years. The past two years alone recorded the explosions of Anak Krakatau in Indonesia, White Island in New Zealand, and Nishinoshima Island in Japan. Observing signs of volcanic unrest is crucial in providing life-saving information and ensuring that air and maritime travel are safe in the area. Although predicting when a volcano will erupt can be difficult as each behaves differently, scientists are on the lookout for these telltale signs: heightened seismic activity, expansion of magma pools, increases in volcanic gas release, ...

A pioneering cultivation strategy that recreates a mangrove environment in the lab has enabled identification of novel bacteria residing in Red Sea mangroves and will help improve understanding of mangrove ecosystem stability, resilience and sustainability. Mangroves are highly productive, dominant coastal ecosystems that line between 60-70 percent of the world's tropical and subtropical coastlines. They harbor diverse microbial communities thought to make up 80 percent of the ecosystem's biomass. Many of the microbial species, families and taxa are unknown to science. The cultivation strategy was developed by a team of KAUST researchers, including Fatmah Sefrji and Ramona Marasco. "Red Sea mangroves are particularly interesting because they represent an extreme and unique ...

The aconitase superfamily currently contains four functional enzymes including the archetypical aconitase (referred to as "other aconitase enzymes"), and one hypothetical aconitase X (AcnX). The aconitase enzymes catalyze the homologous stereospecific isomerization, and their three-dimensional structures and catalytic mechanisms including the [4Fe-4S] iron-sulfur cluster are very similar each other (Fig. 1a). Therefore, the aconitase superfamily (enzymes) is a typical example that is suitable for the so-called "recruitment hypothesis of enzyme evolution"; the gene duplication of multi-specific enzymes, followed by the narrowing of substrate specificity (ref. 1). AcnX (subfamily) is further classified into "AcnXType-I" consisting of a single ...

Researchers at The University of Queensland, working to gain a better understanding of how brain cells work, have discovered the underlying mechanism of a rare genetic mutation that can cause epilepsy. Dr Victor Anggono from UQ's Queensland Brain Institute said his team made the ground-breaking findings while researching nerve cell communications, which are an important process in normal brain function. ''We're both excited and astounded to make such an important contribution to the field of cellular and molecular neuroscience,'' Dr Anggono said. He stressed that the mutation was extremely rare, with only one reported case in the world to date. Dr Anggono's team studied protein structures, called receptors, that ...

A study by researchers in the Scene understanding and artificial intelligence (SUNAI) research group, of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya's (UOC) Faculty of Computer Science, Multimedia and Telecommunications, has developed a method that can learn to identify mosquitoes using a large number of images that volunteers took using mobile phones and uploaded to Mosquito Alert platform. Citizen science to investigate and control disease-transmitting mosquitoes As well as being annoying because of their bites, mosquitoes can be the carriers of pathogens. Rising temperatures worldwide are facilitating their spread. This is the case with the tiger ...

While the UK was in lockdown, certain species of captive amphibians became more visible, a new study suggests. The COVID-19 pandemic forced the closure of zoos across the UK for several months from March 2020, with gradual re-openings from summer into autumn and winter. These closures provided a team of researchers, from the University of Exeter and WWT Slimbridge Wetland Centre, a unique opportunity to study the effect of visitor presence on several species of amphibian at Slimbridge. The project assessed the number of individuals of six species - common toad, common frog, smooth newt, pool frog, golden mantella and golden poison dart frog - visible to observers while their exhibit was closed, when it partially reopened to more staff and when it reopened to visitors. "Amphibians ...

Lung cancer has the highest mortality rate of all cancers, and treatment options are extremely limited, especially for patients with oncogenic mutations in the KRAS gene. A great deal of hope was invested in the licensing of immune checkpoint inhibitors, but the reality is that some patients respond very well to this treatment while it is completely ineffective in others. In a paper just published in Science Translational Medicine, a MedUni Vienna research group led by Herwig Moll (Center for Physiology and Pharmacology) identified a potential marker for the success of immunotherapy in lung cancer patients and explained the underlying molecular processes. K-Ras it is a monomeric G protein that plays a key role in the growth of malignant ...

When you pour cream into a cup of coffee, the viscous liquid seems to lazily disperse throughout the cup. Take a mixing spoon or straw to the cup, though, and the cream and coffee seem to quickly and seamlessly combine into a lighter color and, at least for some, a more enjoyable beverage. The science behind this relatively simple anecdote actually speaks to a larger truth about complex fluid dynamics and underpins many of the advancements made in transportation, power generation, and other technologies since the industrial era--the seemingly random chaotic motions known as turbulence play a vital role in chemical and industrial ...

The ratios between the lengths of the second and fourth fingers, known as the 2D:4D ratio, are different in males and females, which is often explained by levels of androgens and oestrogens. However, an alternative theory states that men have bigger body parts, including fingers, which impacts the 2D:4D ratio. A research team including HSE University scholars refuted this hypothesis by collecting data on finger length from 7,500 people. The results of the study were published in Scientific Reports. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-87394-6 The ...

A new study conducted before COVID-19 busted open the leaky pipeline for women in leadership underscores the bias that men are naturally presumed to have leadership potential and women are not and highlights the increased efforts needed by organizations to address the incorrect stereotype post-pandemic. The research published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology highlights the continuing bias in leadership assessments of women, explores the contradictions between the perception and the reality of women's leadership, and shows why the slow rate of career advancement for women will likely continue at a snail's pace. "The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women's career progression will likely be felt for years to come as ...

Faba beans are an excellent source of food protein, but about 4% of the world's population are afflicted by favism, which renders them sensitive to the faba bean anti-nutrients vicine and convicine. Now, an international research team has identified the VC1 gene as responsible for the production of these compounds. Faba beans have actually been a source of food protein since pre-historic times, but a fraction of the population, mostly from warm southern regions, cannot tolerate them. Pythagoras and his followers avoided them, and Roman priests of Jupiter ...

You have probably often said to yourself: "This time, I will only buy what I need!" But then you still ended up coming home with things that were not on your shopping list. How can you prevent such impulse buying? A team from the Chair of Psychology II at Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg in Bavaria, Germany, looked at this question. The answer is not that simple, says psychologist Dr Anand Krishna. It depends on what type of person you are: a pleasure-seeker or a person who focuses on security. Anand Krishna and his JMU colleagues Sophia Ried and Marie Meixner have published ...

The two major challenges in industrial enzymatic catalysis are the limited number of chemical reaction types that are catalyzed by enzymes and the instability of enzymes under harsh conditions in industrial catalysis. Expanding enzyme catalysis to a larger substrate scope and greater variety of chemical reactions and tuning the microenvironment surrounding enzyme molecules to achieve high enzyme performance are urgently needed. Recently, a research team led by Prof. Jun Ge from Tsinghua University, China reviewed their efforts using the de novo approach to synthesize hybrid enzyme catalysts that can address these two challenges and the structure-function relationship is discussed to reveal ...

A research team at the University of Córdoba has developed and evaluated models for the prediction of solar radiation in nine locations in southern Spain and North Carolina (USA). Measuring solar radiation is costly, as are all the tasks related to the maintenance and calibration of the most commonly used sensors: pyranometers and radiometers. The result is a paucity of reliable data. Hence, a research group from the University of Córdoba has developed and evaluated several Machine Learning models to predict solar radiation in nine locations (southern Spain and North Carolina, USA) spanning a range of different geo-climatic conditions ...

Washington, DC, July 8, 2021 - A study in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP), published by Elsevier, reports that the type of one-on-one treatment plans delivered to toddlers, aged 12-30 months, diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) did not lead to any significantly different outcomes. Neither the type of evidence-based intervention provided, nor the number of hours of therapy were shown to have an impact. The treatments, or intervention methods, delivered by specialized staff to the very young, during the study were either the Early ...

Of the Swedish men in their late teens who performed well in the physical fitness tests for military conscription, a relatively high proportion were able to avoid hospital care when they became infected with COVID-19 during the pandemic up to 50 years later. This has been shown by University of Gothenburg researchers in a register study, with results now published in the BMJ Open. The study is based on the Swedish Conscription Register, which contains particulars of over 1.5 million young Swedish men who began their military service in the years 1969-2005. Almost all of these men then underwent both a bicycle test and a strength test. Some 2,500 of the men included in the Conscription Register were later, in spring 2020, hospitalized with COVID-19. For their study, the scientists ...

A research study from the The Lundbeck Foundation Initiative for Integrative Psychiatric Research iPSYCH shows that people with ADHD, who also have another psychiatric diagnosis, are more likely to stop taking their ADHD medicine. ADHD is one of the most common psychiatric disorders in childhood and is commonly treated with medication. ADHD medicine can be divided into two groups: medicine that has a stimulating effect - also known as stimulants - and non-stimulants, which are often used if a person does not respond well to the other form of medicine. The medication can be an effective way of reducing symptoms, by ...

Researchers have used the latest wireless technology to develop a new radio receiver for astronomy. The receiver is capable of capturing radio waves at frequencies over a range several times wider than conventional ones, and can detect radio waves emitted by many types of molecules in space at once. This is expected to enable significant progresses in the study of the evolution of the Universe and the mechanisms of star and planet formation. Interstellar molecular clouds of gas and dust provide the material for stars and planets. Each type of molecule emits radio waves at characteristic frequencies and astronomers have detected emissions from various molecules ...