New research from the RIKEN Center for Brain Science (CBS) in Japan shows that a deficit in histone methylation could lead to the development of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). A human variant of the SUV39H2 gene led researchers to examine its absence in mice. Published in Molecular Psychiatry, the study found that when absent, adult mice exhibited cognitive inflexibility similar to what occurs in autism, and embryonic mice showed misregulated expression of genes related to brain development. These findings represent the first direct link between the SUV39H2 gene and ASD. Genes are turned ...

What The Study Did: The association between primary care payment models and the use of telemedicine for Medicare Advantage enrollees during the COVID-19 pandemic was examined in this study. Authors: Brian W. Powers, M.D., M.B.A., of Humana Inc. in Louisville, Kentucky, 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.2021.1597) Editor's Note: The article includes conflicts of interest disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author ...

What The Study Did: Researchers investigated whether death, other hospital outcomes and processes of care differed between patients cared for by female and male physicians at hospitals in Canada. Authors: Fahad Razak, M.D., M.Sc., of the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada, 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.2021.1615) Editor's Note: The article includes conflicts of interest disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support. #  #  # Media advisory: The full study is linked to this news ...

What The Study Did: National health care systems have different capacities to correctly identify people who died of COVID-19. Researchers in this study analyzed the gap between excess mortality and  COVID-19 confirmed mortality in 67 countries to determine the extent to which official data on COVID-19 deaths might be considered reliable. Authors: Davide Golinelli, M.D.,  Alma Mater Studiorum-University of Bologna in Italy, 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.2021.17359) Editor's ...

Messenger RNA vaccines against COVID-19 were not detected in human milk, according to a small study by UC San Francisco, providing early evidence that the vaccine mRNA is not transferred to the infant. The study, which analyzed the breast milk of seven women after they received the mRNA vaccines and found no trace of the vaccine, offers the first direct data of vaccine safety during breastfeeding and could allay concerns among those who have declined vaccination or discontinued breastfeeding due to concern that vaccination might alter human milk. The paper appears in JAMA Pediatrics. Research has demonstrated that vaccines with mRNA inhibit transmission ...

Although the risk of a child being admitted to hospital due to COVID-19 is small, a new UK study has found that around 1 in 20 of children hospitalised with COVID-19 develop brain or nerve complications linked to the viral infection. The research, published in The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health and led by the University of Liverpool, identifies a wide spectrum of neurological complications in children and suggests they may be more common than in adults admitted with COVID-19. While neurological problems have been reported in children with the newly described post-COVID condition paediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome temporally ...

A scientific review has found evidence that a disruption in blood clotting and the first line immune system could be contributing factors in the development of psychosis. The article, a joint collaborative effort by researchers at RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, Cardiff University and the UCD Conway Institute, is published in Molecular Psychiatry. Recent studies have identified blood proteins involved in the innate immune system and blood clotting networks as key players implicated in psychosis. The researchers analysed these studies and developed a new theory that proposes the imbalance of both of these systems leads to inflammation, which in turn contributes to the development of psychosis. The work proposes that alterations ...

Tokyo, Japan - Primary immunodeficiencies, such as severe combined immunodeficiency disease (SCID), occur when the immune system does not work properly, leading to increased susceptibility to various infections, autoimmunity, and cancers. Most of these are inherited and have an underlying genetic causes. A team at TMDU has identified a novel disorder resulting from a mutation in a protein called AIOLOS, which functions through a previously unknown pathogenic mechanism called heterodimeric interference. The gene family known as IKAROS zinc finger proteins (IKZFs) is associated with the development of lymphocyte, a type of white blood cell involved ...

URBANA, Ill. - U.S. corn and soybean varieties have become increasingly heat and drought resistant as agricultural production adapts to a changing climate. But the focus on developing crops for extreme conditions has negatively affected performance under normal weather patterns, a University of Illinois study shows. "Since the 1950s, advances in breeding and management practices have made corn and soybean more resilient to extreme heat and drought. However, there is a cost for it. Crop productivity with respect to the normal temperature and precipitation is getting lower," says Chengzheng Yu, doctoral student in the Department ...

New research led by the University of Cambridge suggests that autism can be detected at 18-30 months using the Quantitative Checklist for Autism in Toddlers (Q-CHAT), but it is not possible to identify every child at a young age who will later be diagnosed as autistic. The results are published today in The BMJ Paediatrics Open. The team at the Autism Research Centre in Cambridge conducted a prospective population screening study of nearly 4,000 toddlers using a parent-report instrument they developed, called the Quantitative Checklist for Autism in Toddlers (Q-CHAT). Toddlers were screened at 18 months and followed up at 4 years. The ...

Northwestern University engineers have developed the first full, three-dimensional (3D), dynamic simulation of a rat's complete whisker system, offering rare, realistic insight into how rats obtain tactile information. Called WHISKiT, the new model incorporates 60 individual whiskers, which are each anatomically, spatially and geometrically correct. The technology could help researchers predict how whiskers activate different sensory cells to influence which signals are sent to the brain as well as provide new insights into the mysterious nature of human touch. The research was published last week in the Proceedings ...

Bat conversations might be light on substance, according to researchers from the University of Cincinnati. Echoes from bats are so simple that a sound file of their calls can be compressed 90% without losing much information, according to a study published in the journal PLOS Computational Biology. The study demonstrates how bats have evolved to rely on redundancy in their navigational "language" to help them stay oriented in their complex three-dimensional world. "If you can make decisions with little information, everything becomes simpler. That's nice because you don't need a lot of complex neural machinery to process and store that information," study co-author Dieter Vanderelst ...

Physicists of the Technische Universität Dresden introduce the first implementation of a complementary vertical organic transistor technology, which is able to operate at low voltage, with adjustable inverter properties, and a fall and rise time demonstrated in inverter and ring-oscillator circuits of less than 10 nanoseconds, respectively. With this new technology they are just a stone's throw away from the commercialization of efficient, flexible and printable electronics of the future. Their groundbreaking findings are published in the renowned journal "Nature Electronics". Poor performance is still impeding the commercialization ...

Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) and the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, have taken a big step toward developing targeted treatments and vaccines against a family of viruses that attacks the gastrointestinal tract. Each year in the United States circulating strains of the human norovirus are responsible for approximately 20 million cases of acute gastroenteritis. Hallmark symptoms include severe abdominal cramping, diarrhea and vomiting. Several vaccine candidates are in clinical trials, but it is unclear how effective they will be, given the periodic emergence of novel norovirus variants. Developing ...

All cancers fall into just two categories, according to new research from scientists at Sinai Health, in findings that could provide a new strategy for treating the most aggressive and untreatable forms of the disease. In new research out this month in Cancer Cell, scientists at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute (LTRI), part of Sinai Health, divide all cancers into two groups, based on the presence or absence of a protein called the Yes-associated protein, or YAP. Rod Bremner, senior scientist at the LTRI, said they have determined that all cancers ...

WHAT: A new study published in Nature Communications suggests that gene therapy delivered into the brain may be safe and effective in treating aromatic L-amino acid decarboxylase (AADC) deficiency. AADC deficiency is a rare neurological disorder that develops in infancy and leads to near absent levels of certain brain chemicals, serotonin and dopamine, that are critical for movement, behavior, and sleep. Children with the disorder have severe developmental, mood dysfunction including irritability, and motor disabilities including problems with talking ...

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., July 15, 2021-- Using a D-Wave quantum-annealing computer as a testbed, scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory have shown that it is possible to isolate so-called emergent magnetic monopoles, a class of quasiparticles, creating a new approach to developing "materials by design." "We wanted to study emergent magnetic monopoles by exploiting the collective dynamics of qubits," said Cristiano Nisoli, a lead Los Alamos author of the study. "Magnetic monopoles, as elementary particles with only one magnetic pole, have been hypothesized by many, and famously by Dirac, but have proved elusive so far." They realized an artificial spin ice by using the superconducting qubits of the quantum machine as a magnetic building block. Generating magnetic materials ...

Great leaps in science and technology have been propelled by recent advances in seeing fast evolving physical phenomena, as they happen. Femtosecond lasers from the infrared to the X-ray region have enabled us to 'watch', in real time, atoms dance in molecules and solids on femtosecond and picosecond timescales. Watching such fascinating motions not just in real time but at the spatial locations where they happen, is a bigger challenge. It is precisely this advance that has been made by a team of researchers at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, York University and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratories, UK [1]. They exploded a solid surface with an ultrahigh ...

Fear is an important reaction that warns and protects us from danger. But when fear responses are out of control, this can lead to persistent fears and anxiety disorders. In Europe, about 15 percent of the population is affected by anxiety disorders. Existing therapies remain largely unspecific or are not generally effective, because the detailed neurobiological understanding of these disorders is lacking. What was known so far is that distinct nerve cells interact together to regulate fear responses by promoting or suppressing them. Different circuits of nerve cells are involved in this process. A kind of "tug-of-war" takes place, with one brain circuit ...

A new way of producing coherent light in the ultra-violet spectral region, which points the way to developing brilliant table-top x-ray sources, has been produced in research led at the University of Strathclyde. The scientists have developed a type of ultra-short wavelength coherent light source that does not require laser action to produce coherence. Common electron-beam based light sources, known as fourth-generation light sources, are based on the free-electron laser (FEL), which uses an undulator to convert electron beam energy into X-rays. Coherent light sources are powerful tools that enable research in many areas of medicine, biology, material sciences, chemistry and physics. This new way of producing coherent radiation could revolutionise light sources, as it would ...

In the field of industrial engineering, using simulations to model, predict and even optimise the response of a system or device is widespread, as it is less expensive and less complex -and, sometimes, less dangerous- than fabricating and testing several prototypes. This type of simulation studies uses numerical methods that, depending on the problem to be addressed -for example, reducing the aerodynamic forces of an aircraft by changing its shape or using the minimum possible amount of material on elements under loading without breaking- require the simulation of a wide variety of possible combinational cases, which entails high computational costs. The researchers from the School of Industrial Engineering of the University of Malaga Francisco Javier Granados Ortiz ...

Neuro-evolutionary robotics is an attractive approach to realize collective behaviors for swarms of robots. Despite the large number of studies that have been devoted to it and although many methods and ideas have been proposed, empirical evaluations and comparative analyses are rare. A publication in the journal Nature Communications, led by Mauro Birattari and his team at the research center IRIDIA, École Polytechnique de Bruxelles, Université Libre de Bruxelles, compares some of the most popular and advanced neuro-evolutionary methods for offline design of robot swarms. "Concretely, these ...

RUDN University biologists discovered the way how macrophages (the cells of the "first line" immune response) respond to inflammation and identified how the immune response depends on their origin. It turned out that when exposed to an inflammatory stimulus, two opposing mechanisms are activated in macrophages simultaneously -- inducing and inhibiting inflammation. These data can potentially be useful in the treatment of cancer, as targeted activation of macrophages will strengthen the immune response of the organism in the fight against a tumor. The results were published in the journal Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy. Macrophages are the cells responsible for phagocytosis -- they capture bacteria, the dead cells remains ...

A collaborative group from Tohoku University and Johns Hopkins University have provided valuable insights into the glass transition. When a liquid is cooled rapidly, it gains viscosity and eventually becomes a rigid solid glass. The point at which it does so is known as the glass transition. But the exact physics behind the glass transition, and the nature of glass in general, still pose many questions for scientists. Metallic Glasses (MGs) are highly sought after since they combine the flexibility of plastic with the strength of steel. They are amorphous materials with a disordered atomic structure and exhibit unique and divergent thermodynamic ...

Neuromodulation at high spatial resolution has been an invaluable approach for treating neurological diseases and advancing fundamental knowledge in the field of neuroscience, as firing of a small population or even single neurons can specifically alter animal behavior or brain state. Optogenetics is a powerful method capable of modulating population neural activity in rodents, yet its requirement for viral transfection limits its applications in nonhuman primates and humans. As a rapidly growing modality, focused ultrasound has been harnessed in a myriad of brain neuromodulation applications. However, conventional piezo-based transducers offer a spatial resolution of several millimeters. It is also challenging ...