Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, attacks nerve cells known as motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord, gradually leading to paralysis. The loss of function of an important gene, C9orf72, may affect communication between motor neurons and muscles in people with this disease. These findings were revealed by the team of Dr Kessen Patten of the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) in the prestigious journal Communications Biology. A mutation in the C9orf72 gene is the primary genetic cause of ALS. The mutation in C9orf72 consists of an expansion of a sequence of six DNA bases (GGGGCC) that is very unusual, going from a few copies (less than 20 in a healthy person) to more than 1000 copies. The mutation, in part resulting in a loss of function, ...

DALLAS, June 30, 2021 -- Regularly eating a Southern-style diet may increase the risk of sudden cardiac death, while routinely consuming a Mediterranean diet may reduce that risk, according to new research published today in the Journal of the American Heart Association, an open access journal of the American Heart Association. The Southern diet is characterized by added fats, fried foods, eggs, organ meats (such as liver or giblets), processed meats (such as deli meat, bacon and hotdogs) and sugar-sweetened beverages. The Mediterranean diet is high in fruits, vegetables, fish, whole grains and legumes and low in meat and dairy. "While this study was observational in nature, the results suggest that diet may be a modifiable risk factor for sudden cardiac death, and, therefore, diet ...

Arlington, Va., June 30, 2021 - Much has been rightfully made of the valiant work of doctors and nurses during the coronavirus pandemic. But what of infection preventionists (IP), whose job was to keep those workers and their facilities safe, and who many Americans do not even know exist? At the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology's (APIC's), 48th Annual Conference, the head of infection prevention at a top New York City hospital presented an iterative diary, kept in real time by infection preventionists during the height of the pandemic, from March-July 2020. Almost 50 IPs completed more than 150 surveys over 14 survey rounds during those four dark months and told of the fear that frontline medical workers felt. "Fear ...

How common COVID-19 is among infants may depend on the degree of the pandemic virus circulating in a community, a new study finds. Published online June 30 in the journal Pediatrics, the study found specifically that rates of the infection with the virus that causes COVID-19 were higher among infants hospitalized, not for COVID-19 - but instead because they were being evaluated for a potential serious bacterial infection (SBI) - during periods of high COVID-19 circulation in New York City. The study also found rates of COVID-19 positivity in this age group were lower when infection rates in the city were low. Led by researchers from NYU Langone Health, the study also examined the clinical course of the infection in young infants and found that the most ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (June 30, 2021)--The link between obesity and the risk of endometrial cancer has been well documented. A new study, however, shows that an even lower body mass index (BMI) than previously thought can signal an increased risk in Asian women with postmenopausal bleeding. Study results are published online today in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS). Endometrial cancer is the sixth most common form of cancer in women worldwide and is a leading cause of cancer death. Because there is currently no routine screening for endometrial cancer in asymptomatic women, it is important for healthcare professionals to be aware of added risk factors so that ...

Our universe is expanding, but our two main ways to measure how fast this expansion is happening have resulted in different answers. For the past decade, astrophysicists have been gradually dividing into two camps: one that believes that the difference is significant, and another that thinks it could be due to errors in measurement. If it turns out that errors are causing the mismatch, that would confirm our basic model of how the universe works. The other possibility presents a thread that, when pulled, would suggest some fundamental missing new physics is needed to stitch it back together. For several years, each new piece ...

Oncotarget published "High in vitro and in vivo synergistic activity between mTORC1 and PLK1 inhibition in adenocarcinoma NSCLC" which reported that the aim of this study was therefore to define combination of treatment based on the determination of predictive markers of resistance to the mTORC1 inhibitor RAD001/Everolimus. When looking at biomarkers of resistance by RT-PCR study, three genes were found to be highly expressed in resistant tumors, i.e., PLK1, CXCR4, and AXL. The authors have then focused this study on the combination of RAD001 Volasertib, a PLK1 inhibitor, and observed a high antitumor activity ...

For decades, researchers have been working toward mitigating excess atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. One promising approach captures atmospheric CO2 and then, through CO2 electrolysis, converts it into value-added chemicals and intermediates--like ethanol, ethylene, and other useful chemicals. While significant research has been devoted to improving the rate and selectivity of CO2 electrolysis, reducing the energy consumption of this high-power process has been underexplored. In ACS Energy Letters, researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign report a new opportunity to use magnetism to reduce the energy required for CO2 electrolysis by up to 60% in a flow electrolyzer. In a ...

PULLMAN, Wash. - Fire can put a tropical songbird's sex life on ice. Following habitat-destroying wildfires in Australia, researchers found that many male red-backed fairywrens failed to molt into their red-and-black ornamental plumage, making them less attractive to potential mates. They also had lowered circulating testosterone, which has been associated with their showy feathers. For the study published in the Journal of Avian Biology, the researchers also measured the birds' fat stores and the stress hormone corticosterone but found those remained at normal levels. "Really, it ended up all coming down to testosterone," said ...

Male jackdaws don't stick around to console their mate after a traumatic experience, new research shows. Jackdaws usually mate for life and, when breeding, females stay at the nest with eggs while males gather food. Rival males sometimes visit the nest and attack the lone female, attempting to mate by force. In the new study, University of Exeter researchers expected males to console their partner after these incidents by staying close and engaging in social behaviours like preening their partner's feathers. However, males focussed on their own safety - they still brought food to the nest, but they visited less often and spent less time with the female. "Humans often console friends or family in distress, but it's unclear whether animals do this in the wild," said Beki ...

A new analysis of 58 studies and 44305 patients published in Anaesthesia (a journal of the Association of Anaesthetists) shows that, contrary to some previous research, being male and increasing body mass index (BMI) are not associated with increased mortality in COVID-19 in patients admitted into intensive care (ICU). However, the study, by Dr Bruce Biccard (Groote Schuur Hospital and University of Cape Town, South Africa) and colleagues finds that a wide range of factors are associated with death from COVID-19 in ICU. Patients with COVID-19 in ICU were 40% more likely to die with a history of smoking, 54% more likely with high blood pressure, 41% more likely with diabetes, ...

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the discovery of insulin, a scientific breakthrough that transformed Type 1 diabetes, once known as juvenile diabetes or insulin-dependent diabetes, from a terminal disease into a manageable condition. Today, Type 2 diabetes is 24 times more prevalent than Type 1. The rise in rates of obesity and incidence of Type 2 diabetes are related and require new approaches, according to University of Arizona researchers, who believe the liver may hold the key to innovative new treatments. "All current therapeutics for ...

Los Angeles, Calif. - The AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG), the largest global HIV research network, today announced that findings from a sub-study of REPRIEVE (A5332/A5332s, an international clinical trial studying heart disease prevention in people living with HIV) have been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Network Open (JAMA Network Open). The study found that approximately half of study participants, who were considered by traditional measures to be at low-to-moderate risk of future heart disease, had atherosclerotic plaque in their coronary arteries. While it is well-known that people living with HIV are at ...

(OTTAWA, ON) The University of Ottawa, the University of Montreal and the Assembly of First Nations are pleased to announce the newly published First Nations Food, Nutrition and Environment Study (FNFNES) in the Canadian Journal of Public Health. Mandated by First Nations leadership across Canada through Assembly of First Nations Resolution 30 / 2007 and realized through a unique collaboration with researchers and communities, the First Nations Food, Nutrition and Environment Study is the first national study of its kind. It was led by principal investigators Dr. Laurie Chan, a professor ...

UCLA engineers have demonstrated successful integration of a novel semiconductor material into high-power computer chips to reduce heat on processors and improve their performance. The advance greatly increases energy efficiency in computers and enables heat removal beyond the best thermal-management devices currently available. The research was led by Yongjie Hu, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering. Nature Electronics recently published the finding in this article. Computer processors have shrunk down to nanometer scales over the years, with billions of transistors sitting on a single computer chip. While the increased number of transistors helps make computers faster and more powerful, it also generates ...

Scientists and doctors at University College London Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health (UCL GOS ICH) and Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) have given hope of a gene therapy cure to children with a rare degenerative brain disorder called Dopamine Transporter Deficiency Syndrome (DTDS). The team have recreated and cured the disease using state-of-the-art laboratory and mouse models of the disease and will soon apply for a clinical trial of the therapy. Their breakthrough comes just a decade after the faulty gene causing the disease was first discovered by the lead scientist of this work. The results, published in Science Translational Medicine, are so promising that the UK regulatory agency MHRA has advised ...

Boulder, Colo., USA: Article topics include the Great Unconformity of the Rocky Mountain region; new Ediacara-type fossils; the southern Cascade arc (California, USA); the European Alps and the Late Pleistocene glacial maximum; Permian-Triassic ammonoid mass extinction; permafrost thaw; the southern Rocky Mountains of Colorado (USA); "gargle dynamics"; invisible gold; and alluvial fan deposits in Valles Marineris, Mars. These Geology articles are online at https://geology.geoscienceworld.org/content/early/recent . A new kind of invisible gold in pyrite hosted in deformation-related dislocations Denis Fougerouse; Steven M. Reddy; Mark ...

Natural wood remains a ubiquitous building material because of its high strength-to-density ratio; trees are strong enough to grow hundreds of feet tall but remain light enough to float down a river after being logged. For the past three years, engineers at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Engineering and Applied Science have been developing a type of material they've dubbed "metallic wood." Their material gets its useful properties and name from a key structural feature of its natural counterpart: porosity. As a lattice of nanoscale nickel struts, metallic wood is full of regularly spaced cell-sized pores that radically decrease its density without sacrificing the material's ...

Knowing the weight of a commodity provides an objective way to value goods in the marketplace. But did a self-regulating market even exist in the Bronze Age? And what can weight systems tell us about this? A team of researchers from the University of Göttingen researched this by investigating the dissemination of weight systems throughout Western Eurasia. Their new simulation indicates that the interaction of merchants, even without substantial intervention from governments or institutions, is likely to explain the spread of Bronze Age technology to weigh goods. The results were ...

Keep your checklists handy because the 62nd Supplement to the American Ornithological Society's Check-list of North American Birds, publishing today in Ornithology, includes numerous updates to the classification of the continent's bird species. A few highlights from this year's supplement, detailed below, include species splits for Mew Gull, Barred Owl, and Sedge Wren, among quite a few others; a transfer back to an old genus for Ruby-crowned Kinglet; and a revision of the linear sequence of passerine families. The Check-list, published since 1886, is updated annually by the AOS's North American Classification Committee (NACC), the official authority on the names and ...

RICHLAND, Wash.--Researchers have increased the lifetime of a promising electric vehicle battery to a record level, an important step toward the goal of lighter, less expensive and long-lasting batteries for future electric vehicles. The work is reported June 28 in the journal Nature Energy. Such batteries--the goal of research groups the world over--are seen as an important part of the solution to reduce the effects of climate change, and scientists are exploring a dizzying array of options. One solution on the horizon is a lithium-metal battery for electric vehicles. These ...

(San Antonio, June 29, 2021) - UTSA criminology and criminal justice professors Michael R. Smith and Rob Tillyer working in collaboration with University of Cincinnati Professor Robin Engel examined racial and ethnic disparities in the use of force by the Fairfax County Police Department (FCPD). One of the nation's largest county police departments, the FCPD serves Fairfax County, Va., a major metropolitan county near Washington, D.C. The team presented the results of its 18-month study today to the Public Safety Committee of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. ...

The historic 2020 hurricane season, with its record-breaking 30 tropical storms and hurricanes, left in its wake hundreds of deaths in the United States, tens of billions of dollars in damages, and one important question: Is this what the future will look like? While most climate scientists agree that hurricane severity, at least in terms of rainfall, will likely increase as the planet warms, there remains uncertainty about the future frequency of hurricanes. Today's climate models offer a range of possible futures, some predicting an increase in North Atlantic hurricane frequency, others a decrease. These conflicting results beg the question: are these ...

HOUSTON - (June 29, 2021) - When you think about trade and market relationships, you might think about brokers yelling at each other on the floor of a stock exchange on Wall Street. But it seems one of the basic functions of a free market is quietly practiced by fungi. New research from a Rice University economist suggests certain networks of fungi embrace an important economic theory as they engage in trading nutrients for carbon with their host plants. This finding could aid the understanding of carbon storage in soils, an important tool in mitigating climate change. A research paper entitled "Walrasian equilibrium behavior in nature" is available online and will appear in an upcoming edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Ted Loch-Temzelides, ...

Among low-income, uninsured, or publicly insured women ages 25-64 years who were not up to date on cervical cancer screening, 72% perceived financial barriers to screening. The most commonly reported barriers were screening appointment costs (71%) and follow-up/future treatment costs (44%), according to a study published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Women’s Health. Click here to read the article now. Screening is effective at reducing the incidence of and mortality associated with cervical cancer. However, disparities exist in cervical cancer incidence and mortality and in cervical cancer screening based ...