A new study to be presented at this year's European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) (9-12 July) and published this week in The Lancet Infectious Diseases shows that, for residents of long-term care homes for adults aged 65 years and over, a single dose of either the Pfizer or Astra Zeneca COVID-19 vaccine offers around 60% protection against infection from SARS-CoV-2. The study is by Dr Madhumita Shrotri and Dr Laura Shallcross, UCL Institute of Health Informatics, University College London, UK, and colleagues. The greatest effects of SARS-CoV-2 have been in residents of long-term care facilities, who represent a small fraction of the general population but account for ...

A new study by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researchers has given scientists their first look at the genomic landscape of tumors that have grown resistant to drugs targeting the abnormal KRASG12C protein. Their work shows that, far from adopting a common route to becoming resistant, the cells take a strikingly diverse set of avenues, often several at a time. The findings, reported online today in the END ...

A human genetic mechanism hijacked by SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus behind the COVID-19 pandemic, to help it spread also makes it vulnerable to a new class of drug candidates, a new study finds. Led by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, a research team showed that coronavirus reproduction in infected human cells requires chemical changes made by the human protein METTL3 to RNA, a key form of genetic material. Additional human proteins involved in the recognition of modified RNA, YTHDF1 and YTHDF3, were also found to be important to the process. Published online in Genes and Development on June 24, the study showed for the first time that ...

Hospitalizations to treat pediatric gun injuries are expensive, and U.S. taxpayers and the poor are bearing the price, according to a new study from the Stanford University School of Medicine. The study, which published online June 23 in PLOS ONE, found that the average cost of an initial hospitalization for a pediatric firearm injury is around $13,000. A total of about $109 million is spent on such hospitalizations in the country each year. The figures do not capture the total costs of rehabilitating young gunshot victims, which can be much higher. Research into the financial, health and social costs of firearm injuries in the United States has focused mostly on adults, said the study's senior author, Stephanie Chao, ...

In a groundbreaking study, a team of UC Davis researchers has discovered a special type of stem cell that can reduce the amount of the virus causing AIDS, boosting the body's antiviral immunity and repairing and restoring the gut's lymphoid follicles damaged by the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), the equivalent of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in non-human primates. ...

Adult corals that survive high-intensity environmental stresses, such as bleaching events, can produce offspring that are better suited to survive in new environments. These results from a series of experiments conducted at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS) in 2017 and 2018 are deepening scientists' understanding of how the gradual increase of sea surface temperatures and other environmental disturbances may influence future coral generations. Researchers on the project included BIOS marine ecologists Samantha de Putron and Gretchen Goodbody-Gringley (now with the Central Caribbean Marine Institute), ecophysiologist Hollie Putnam at the University of Rhode Island (URI), and Kevin Wong, then ...

WACO, Texas (June 23, 2021) - When an organization supports its employees who choose to adopt children, the employees, their families, the adopted children and the organization itself experience positive benefits and outcomes, according to new research from Baylor University. The study, "It Takes a Village: How Organizational Support for Adoption Positively Affects Employees and Their Families," is published in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology. Researchers from Baylor's Hankamer School of Business include Matthew J. Quade, Ph.D., associate professor of management; ...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE STUDY SUGGESTS THAT SMOOTHER SILICONE BREAST IMPLANTS REDUCE SEVERITY OF IMMUNE SYSTEM REACTIONS According to researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Rice University in Houston, silicone breast implants with a smoother surface design have less risk of producing inflammation and other immune system reactions than those with more roughly textured coatings. Results of the experiments using mice, rabbits and samples of human breast tissue advance knowledge of how the body responds to such implants, providing new information to physicians and affirming ...

PHILADELPHIA - Researchers have been investigating the potential health-promoting qualities of extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) for decades, including its possible medicinal value for preventing cancer, Alzheimer's, and cardiovascular disease, as part of the well-known Mediterranean diet. However, consumers in the U.S. have been slow to embrace it as a staple in their diet. This reluctance, say scientists, might be in part due to EVOO's bitter taste and pungency, which is caused by the presence of substances known as phenolic compounds, the very ones believed to contribute to EVOO health benefits. In 2005, researchers from the Monell Chemical ...

Microscopy is an essential tool in many fields of science and medicine. However, many groups have limited access to this technology due to its cost and fragility. Now, researchers from the Universities of Göttingen and Münster have succeeded in building a high-resolution microscope using nothing more than children's plastic building bricks and affordable parts from a mobile phone. They then went on to show that children aged 9-13 had significantly increased understanding of microscopy after constructing and working with the LEGO® microscope. Their results were published in The Biophysicist. The researchers designed ...

New York, NY--June 23, 2021--A challenging frontier in science and engineering is controlling matter outside of thermodynamic equilibrium to build material systems with capabilities that rival those of living organisms. Research on active colloids aims to create micro- and nanoscale "particles" that swim through viscous fluids like primitive microorganisms. When these self-propelled particles come together, they can organize and move like schools of fish to perform robotic functions, such as navigating complex environments and delivering "cargo" to targeted locations. A Columbia Engineering team led by Kyle Bishop, professor of chemical engineering, is at the forefront of studying and designing the dynamics of active colloids powered by chemical reactions ...

A new study published in Nature Communications finds that piles of sand grains, even when undisturbed, are in constant motion. Using highly-sensitive optical interference data, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and Vanderbilt University present results that challenge existing theories in both geology and physics about how soils and other types of disordered materials behave. Most people only become aware of soil movement on hillsides when soil suddenly loses its rigidity, a phenomenon known as yield. "Say that you have soil on a hillside. Then, if there's an earthquake or it rains, this material that's apparently ...

WHAT: National Institutes of Health scientists and their collaborators have identified an internal communication network in mammals that may regulate tissue repair and inflammation, providing new insights on how diseases such as obesity and inflammatory skin disorders develop. The new research is published in Cell. The billions of organisms living on body surfaces such as the skin of mammals--collectively called microbiota--communicate with each other and the host immune system in a sophisticated network. According to the study, viruses integrated in the host genome, remnants of previous infections called endogenous retroviruses, can control how the host immune system and the microbiota ...

Beekeepers across the United States lost 45.5% of their managed honey bee colonies from April 2020 to April 2021, according to preliminary results of the 15th annual nationwide survey conducted by the nonprofit Bee Informed Partnership (BIP). These losses mark the second highest loss rate the survey has recorded since it began in 2006 (6.1 percentage points higher than the average annual loss rate of 39.4%). The survey results highlight the continuing high rates of honey bee colony turnover. The high loss rate was driven by both elevated summer and winter losses this year, with no clear progression toward improvement ...

Those with power, such as the wealthy are more likely to blame others for having shortcomings and they are also less troubled by reports of inequality, according to recent research from the University of California San Diego's Rady School of Management. The study published in END ...

BROOKLYN, New York, Wednesday, June 23, 2021 -- Owing to their tunable properties, hydrogels comprising stimuli-sensitive polymers are among the most appealing molecular scaffolds because their versatility allows for applications in tissue engineering, drug delivery and other biomedical fields. Peptides and proteins are increasingly popular as building blocks because they can be stimulated to self-assemble into nanostructures such as nanoparticles or nanofibers, which enables gelation -- the formation of supramolecular hydrogels that can trap water and small molecules. Engineers, to generate such smart biomaterials, are developing systems that can respond to a multitude of stimuli including heat. Although thermosensitive hydrogels are among widely ...

Irvine, CA - June 23, 2021 - A new University of California, Irvine-led study finds that the persistence of a marker of chronic cellular stress, previously associated with neurodegenerative diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD), also takes place in the brains of Huntington's disease (HD) patients. Chronic cellular stress results in the abnormal accumulation of stress granules (SGs), which are clumps of protein and RNAs that gather in the cell. Prior to this study, published in the Journal of Clinical ...

Boston, MA--Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, many African leaders implemented prevention measures such as lockdowns, travel bans, border closures, and school closures. While these efforts may have helped slow the spread of the virus on the continent and continue to be important for its containment, they inadvertently disrupted livelihoods and food systems and curtailed access to critical nutrition, health, and education services. A new series of studies by researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and colleagues from the Africa Research, Implementation Science and Education (ARISE) Network finds that these disruptions may have serious ...

AMES, Iowa -- A new study of small Iowa towns found that vulnerable populations within those communities face significantly more public health risks than statewide averages. The study, published this week in PLOS ONE, a peer-reviewed open access journal, was led by Benjamin Shirtcliff, associate professor of landscape architecture at Iowa State University. He focused on three Iowa towns - Marshalltown, Ottumwa and Perry - as a proxy for studying shifting populations in rural small towns, in particular how vulnerable populations in these towns ...

Our planet is warming due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions; but the warming differs from region to region, and it can also vary seasonally. Over the last four decades scientists have observed a persistent austral summer cooling on the eastern side of Antarctica. This puzzling feature has received world-wide attention, because it is not far away from one of the well-known global warming hotspots - the Antarctic Peninsula. A new study published in the journal Science Advances by a team of scientists from the IBS Center for Climate Physics at Pusan National University in South Korea, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, Ewha Womans University, and National Taiwan ...

A new study from archaeologists at University of Sydney and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, has provided important new evidence to answer the question "Who exactly were the Anglo-Saxons?" New findings based on studying skeletal remains clearly indicates the Anglo-Saxons were a melting pot of people from both migrant and local cultural groups and not one homogenous group from Western Europe. Professor Keith Dobney at the University of Sydney said the team's results indicate that "the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of early Medieval Britain were strikingly similar to contemporary Britain - full of people of different ancestries sharing a common language and culture". The Anglo-Saxon (or early medieval) period in England runs from the 5th-11th centuries AD. Early Anglo-Saxon dates from ...

Newspapers regularly carry stories of terrifying shark attacks, but in a paper published today, Oxford-led researchers reveal their discovery of a 3,000-year-old victim - attacked by a shark in the Seto Inland Sea of the Japanese archipelago. The research in Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, shows that this body is the earliest direct evidence for a shark attack on a human and an international research team has carefully recreated what happened - using a combination of archaeological science and forensic techniques. The grim discovery of the victim was made by Oxford researchers, J. Alyssa White and Professor Rick Schulting, while investigating evidence for violent trauma on the skeletal remains of prehistoric hunter-gatherers at ...

SAN ANTONIO, June 23, 2021 - A typical Western high-fat diet can increase the risk of painful disorders common in people with conditions such as diabetes or obesity, according to a groundbreaking paper authored by a team led by The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, also referred to as UT Health San Antonio. Moreover, changes in diet may significantly reduce or even reverse pain from conditions causing either inflammatory pain - such as arthritis, trauma or surgery - or neuropathic pain, such as diabetes. The novel finding could help treat chronic-pain patients by simply altering diet or developing drugs that block ...

By José Tadeu Arantes | Agência FAPESP – Mathematical models that describe the physical behavior of magnetic materials can also be used to describe the spread of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. This is the conclusion of a study conducted in Brazil by researchers affiliated with São Paulo State University (UNESP) in Rio Claro and Ilha Solteira and reported in an article published in Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications. The study was part of a project led by Mariano de Souza, a professor at UNESP’s Rio Claro Physics Department, and of the PhD research of Isys Mello, whose thesis advisor is Souza, last author of the article. Another co-author is Antonio Seridonio, a professor at UNESP’s Ilha Solteira Physics ...

Only 1 in 10 older adults in a large national survey who were found to have cognitive impairment consistent with dementia reported a formal medical diagnosis of the condition. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study to develop a nationally representative sample of roughly 6 million Americans age 65 or older, researchers at the University of Michigan, North Dakota State University and Ohio University found that 91% of people with cognitive impairment consistent with dementia told questioners they had a formal medical diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease or dementia. "(The discrepancy) was higher than I was expecting," ...