When SARS-CoV-2 enters the human body, the virus’ spike protein binds to a cell, allowing the virus to infiltrate and begin replicating. A new study from Tulane University, conducted in partnership with Florida International University and published in Protein Science, has identified a protein that may be the glue that helps COVID’s spike protein stick. The study found that a small piece of a proteoglycan called perlecan LG3 – a protein most commonly found in blood vessels and the brain – ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2024 MINNEAPOLIS – Migraine is often underdiagnosed and untreated, and even when it is treated, it can be difficult to treat early enough as well as find strategies to prevent attacks. A new study looks at ways to more accurately predict when a migraine will occur—through the use of mobile apps to track sleep, energy, emotions and stress—to enhance the ability to prevent attacks. The study is published in the January 24, 2024, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of ...

While surgeons have more commonly used the exoscope in various intracranial procedures, its use in spinal surgery has been underreported.  Researchers and neurosurgeons at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) retrospectively compared the operative microscope to the 3D exoscope in a recent study published in World Neurosurgery and found better outcomes among both surgeons and patients when using the exoscope.  Stephen Kalhorn, M.D., FAANS, was the principal investigator on the study, and he says the traditional operative microscope has ...

Researchers, staff members and licensees from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory received top honors in the Federal Laboratory Consortium’s annual awards competition for excellence in technology transfer, excellence in technology transfer innovation, outstanding researcher and regional technology transfer. The Federal Laboratory Consortium, or FLC, recently announced 32 award winners, ORNL included, for contributions to technology transfer, which turns cutting-edge research into impactful products and services. The FLC represents more than 300 federal laboratories, agencies and research centers ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — An estimated 1,600 people in the U.S. contract a serious infection from Listeria bacteria in food each year and, of those individuals, about 260 people die, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Penn State researchers may now better understand how the bacteria, called Listeria monocytogenes, survive and persist in fruit-packing plants by evading and surviving sanitizers.   According to their study, which is now available online and will be published in the June issue of the journal Biofilm, biofilms — comprising otherwise harmless microorganisms that attach to each ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Four researchers in Purdue University’s colleges of Engineering and Science, the Purdue Institute for Cancer Research and the Purdue Institute for Drug Discovery have received a total of $150,000 from the Trask Innovation Fund to strengthen the appeal of their patent-pending intellectual property for commercial use. The fund is managed by the Purdue Innovates Incubator, which provides programming for the Purdue University community to ideate, refine and support their solutions. The fund awards up to $50,000 for short-term projects that enhance the commercial value of Purdue intellectual ...

JMIR Publications is pleased to announce a new theme issue titled “Machine Learning-Based Predictive Models Using Genomic Data” in JMIR Bioinformatics and Biotechnology. The peer-reviewed journal is indexed in SCOPUS and focused on research in bioinformatics, computational biology, and biotechnology. This new theme issue aims to explore cutting-edge research at the intersection of machine learning and genomics, fostering advancements in predictive modeling for biological insights. JMIR Bioinformatics and Biotechnology welcomes contributions from global researchers, educators, and practitioners. We encourage submissions exploring diverse aspects of bioinformatics ...

Humpback whale singing dominates the marine soundscape during winter months off Maui. However, despite decades of research, many questions regarding humpback whale behavior and song remain unanswered. New research revealed a daily pattern wherein whales move their singing away from shore throughout the day and return to the nearshore in the evening. The findings were led by the University of Hawaiʻi, in partnership with NOAA’s Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary, and published in Royal Society Open Science.  “Singers may be attempting to reduce the chances of their song being drowned ...

New oviraptor dinosaur from the US Hell Creek Formation lived at the end of the Age of Dinosaurs and weighed about the same as an average woman ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0294901 Article Title: A new oviraptorosaur (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from the end-Maastrichtian Hell Creek Formation of North America Author Countries: USA, Canada Funding: Funding for histology processing provided to HNW by Oklahoma State University for Health Sciences. Funding to GFF provided by the Royal Society (Grant NIF\R1\191527) and a Banting Fellowship ...

Modelling shows how microplastics may bioaccumulate in the Galápagos Islands food web, with Galápagos penguins most affected, according to a study published January 24, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Karly McMullen from the University of British Columbia, Canada, under the supervision of Dr. Juan José Alava and Dr. Evgeny A. Pakhomov of the Institute for the Ocean and Fisheries, University of British Columbia, Canada, and colleagues. We know that microplastics are building up in our oceans, but the extent of the damage to marine organisms is still being assessed. Here, McMullen and colleagues focused ...

Obesity among primary school children in the UK spiked during the COVID-19 lockdown, with a 45% increase between 2019/20 and 2020/21 among 4-5-year-olds, according to a study published on January 24, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Iván Ochoa-Moreno from the University of Southampton, UK, and colleagues. The authors estimated that without reversals, increased obesity rates in Year 6 children alone will cost society an additional £800 million in healthcare. During the first year of the pandemic, school closures dramatically altered the routines of young children. Cancellation of organized sports, ...

A new study suggests that heatwaves are exacerbating socioeconomic inequalities in Brazil, with people who are female, elderly, Black, Brown, or who have lower educational levels potentially facing greater risk of death during heatwaves. Djacinto Monteiro dos Santos of Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on January 24, 2024. As climate change progresses, heatwaves are becoming hotter, longer, and more frequent in many regions ...

DNA from ancient feces can offer archaeologists new clues about the life and health of Japanese people who lived thousands of years ago, according to a study published January 24, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Luca Nishimura and Ituro Inoue from the National Institute of Genetics, Japan, Hiroki Oota from The University of Tokyo, Mayumi Ajimoto from Wakasa History Museum, and colleagues. Fossilized feces, also known as coprolites, can preserve an array of genetic material from the digestive tracts ...

At least 8% of the human genome is genetic material from viruses. It was considered ‘junk DNA’ until recently, but its role in human development is now known to be essential Researchers at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) describe for the first time the role of these viruses in a key process in development, when cells become pluripotent few hours after fertilization The finding, published in Science Advances, is relevant for regenerative medicine and for the creation of artificial ...

LOS ANGELES — Researchers at City of Hope, one of the largest cancer research and treatment organizations in the United States, and Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), a precision medicine research organization that is part of City of Hope, have developed and tested an innovative machine-learning approach that could one day enable the earlier detection of cancer in patients by using smaller blood draws. The study was published today in the journal Science Translational Medicine. “A huge body of evidence shows that cancer caught at later stages kills people. This new technology gets us closer to a world ...

Francis Crick Institute press release Under strict embargo: 19:00hrs GMT 24 January 2024 Peer reviewed Experimental study Animals Gene behind heart defects in Down syndrome identified Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute and UCL have identified a gene that causes heart defects in Down syndrome, a condition that results from an additional copy of chromosome 21. Reducing the overactivity of this gene partially reversed these defects in mice, setting the scene for potential future therapies for heart conditions in people with Down syndrome. Down syndrome ...

Genova (Italy), 24 January 2024 - Over the past four years, the research team at the Artificial and Mechanical Intelligence (AMI) lab at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT-Italian Institute of Technology) in Genova (Italy) has developed advanced avatar technologies, known as the iCub3 system, in continuous testing with real-world scenarios. The system was utilized to enable a human operator to remotely visit locations 300 km away, to entertain the public at events and television appearances, and ...

Mass Eye and Ear physician-researchers show that retinal imaging can help predict a person’s risk of developing ocular, neuropsychiatric, cardiac, metabolic, and pulmonary diseases. The team also identified genetic loci associated with retinal thinning, which could help develop personalized treatment plans and future therapies for eye diseases such as glaucoma and macular degeneration. The retina is said to provide a window into a person’s systemic health. In a new study published January 24th in Science Translational Medicine, physician-researchers from Mass ...

In a study published in Science Advances on Jan. 24, researchers led by Prof. ZHU Maoyan from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences reported their recent discovery of 1.63-billion-year-old multicellular fossils from North China. These exquisitely preserved microfossils are currently considered the oldest record of multicellular eukaryotes. This study is another breakthrough after the researchers’ earlier discovery of decimeter-sized eukaryotic fossils in the Yanshan area ...

DURHAM, N.C. – Biomedical engineers at Duke University have demonstrated that one of the most dangerous mutations found in skin cancers might moonlight as a pathway to mending a broken heart. The genetic mutation in the protein BRAF, a part of the MAPK signaling pathway that can promote cell division, is one of the most common and most aggressive found in melanoma patients. In a new study, researchers show that introducing this mutation to rat heart tissue grown in a laboratory can induce growth. Repairing ...

This month, the Ecological Society of America spotlights the challenge posed by invasive alien species in China with the release of a Special Feature, “Management of Biological Invasions in China,” in the latest issue of its journal Ecological Applications. Accelerating rates of biological invasion have led to growing concerns about the destructive impacts of invasive alien species, or IAS, on the environment and human societies. This is especially true in China, which has witnessed a surge in ...

Researchers with the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University and the DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) grew a twisted multilayer crystal structure for the first time and measured the structure’s key properties. The twisted structure could help researchers develop next-generation materials for solar cells, quantum computers, lasers and other devices. “This structure is something that we have not seen before – it was a huge surprise to me,” said Yi Cui, a professor at Stanford and SLAC and paper co-author. “A new quantum electronic property could appear ...

Since the creation of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) in 1968, the U.S. government has paid over $51 billion to cover flood losses. Almost half of these payouts went to just 25 counties, among the fastest-growing counties by population. A new paper published in the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists examines whether insuring people against potential flood losses contributes directly to population growth in flood-prone areas. In “Does the National Flood Insurance Program Drive Migration ...

Fresh research into the physics of vibrating nanobubbles reveals that they do not heat up as much as previously thought. Vibrating nanobubbles have surprising uses as ultrasound contrast agents in cancer diagnosis. They can also be forced to collapse - destroying nearby microscopic contaminants - for waste-water treatment and surface cleaning of delicate microfluidic devices. The stiffness of a nanobubble as it vibrates is strongly related to their internal temperature, and being able to understand ...

With over 2,780 fishing ports and 993 commercial and industrial ports, Japan faces the challenge of safeguarding these important coastal assets from the destructive forces of tsunamis. A promising solution lies in the form of a movable barrier system, where gates rising from the seafloor act as barriers, protecting ports against tsunamis, storm surges and high waves. However, during natural disasters, power outages may disrupt the electricity needed to operate the gate. To address this, researchers led by Professor Hiroshi Takagi from Tokyo Institute of Technology have proposed ...