TAMPA, Fla. (June 17, 2021) - Tests that analyze biomarkers are used during cancer management to guide treatment and provide information about patient prognosis. These tests are often performed on tissue biopsy samples that require invasive procedures and can lead to significant side effects. In a new article published in the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer, Moffitt Cancer Center researchers show that PET/CT images can be used to measure levels of the PD-L1 biomarker of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients in a non-invasive manner and, in turn, predict a patient's response to therapy. ...

As pandemic restrictions begin to loosen around the country and summer temperatures rise, more people will be moving about on public rideshare electric scooters. With that comes this warning: Ride with safety. A Henry Ford Health System study published in The Laryngoscope, shows that head and neck injuries caused by use of e-scooters have been on the rise since rideshare systems were introduced to the public in late 2017. Kathleen Yaremchuk, M.D., Chair of the Department of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery and the study's senior author, said that a review of emergency visits in the last three years showed e-scooter injuries have increased significantly with many related to head and neck injuries. "Since e-scooters became a popular form of ...

In the Name of Racial Justice: Why Bioethics Should Care about Environmental Toxins Keisha Ray Facilities that emit hazardous toxins, such as toxic landfills, oil refineries, and chemical plants, are disproportionately located in predominantly Black, Latinx, and Indigenous neighborhoods. Environmental injustices like these threaten just distribution of health itself. Facilities that emit environmental toxins wrongly make people's race, ethnicity, income, and neighborhood essential to who is allowed to breathe clean air and drink clean water, and thus, who is allowed to be healthy. This ...

A large, retrospective, multicenter study involving Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis indicates that convalescent plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients can dramatically improve likelihood of survival among blood cancer patients hospitalized with the virus. The therapy involves transfusing plasma -- the pale yellow liquid in blood that is rich in antibodies -- from people who have recovered from COVID-19 into patients who have leukemia, lymphoma or other blood cancers and are hospitalized with the viral infection. The goal is to accelerate their disease-fighting response. Cancer patients may be at a higher risk of death related to COVID-19 because of their weakened immune systems. The data, collected as part ...

A new article, published as a Perspective in the journal Conservation Science and Practice, introduces a rapid assessment framework that can be used as a guide to make conservation and nature-based solutions more robust to future climate. Climate change poses risks to conservation efforts, if practitioners assume a future climate similar to the past or present. For example, more frequent and intense disturbances, such as wildfire or drought-induced tree mortality, can threaten projects that are designed to enhance habitat for forest-dependent species and sequester carbon. Overlooking such climate-related risks can result in failed conservation investments and negative outcomes for people, biodiversity, and ecosystem integrity as well as lead to carbon-sink reversal. Drawing ...

The Black Sea is an unusual body of water: below a depth of 150 metres the dissolved oxygen concentration sinks to around zero, meaning that higher life forms such as plants and animals cannot exist in these areas. At the same time, this semi-enclosed sea stores comparatively large amounts of organic carbon. A team of researchers led by Dr Gonzalo V. Gomez-Saez and Dr Jutta Niggemann from the University of Oldenburg's Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment (ICBM) has now presented a new hypothesis as to why organic compounds accumulate in the depths of the Black Sea - and other oxygen-depleted waters in the scientific journal Science Advances. The researchers posit that reactions with hydrogen sulfide play an important role in stabilizing ...

New Brunswick, N.J. (June 17, 2021) - Babies born by cesarean section don't have the same healthy bacteria as those born vaginally, but a Rutgers-led study for the first time finds that these natural bacteria can be restored. The study appears in the journal Med. The human microbiota consists of trillions of bacteria, viruses, fungi and other microorganisms - some beneficial, some harmful -- that live in and on our bodies. Women naturally provide these pioneer colonizers to their babies' sterile bodies during labor and birth, helping their immune system to develop. But antibiotics and C-sections disturb this passing of microbes and are related to increased risks of obesity, asthma and metabolic ...

Woodlands along streams and rivers are an important part of California's diverse ecology. They are biodiversity hotspots, providing various ecosystem services including carbon sequestration and critical habitat for threatened and endangered species. But our land and water use have significantly impacted these ecosystems, sometimes in unexpected ways. A team of researchers, including two at UC Santa Barbara, discovered that some riparian woodlands are benefitting from water that humans divert for our own needs. Although it seems like a boon to these ecosystems, the artificial ...

SAN ANTONIO (June 17, 2021) -- Middle-aged people with depressive symptoms who carry a genetic variation called apolipoprotein (APOE) ε4 may be more at risk to develop tau protein accumulations in the brain's emotion- and memory-controlling regions, a new study by researchers from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio) and collaborating institutions suggests. The Journal of Alzheimer's Disease published the findings in its June 2021 print issue. The research is based on depression assessments and positron emission tomography (PET) imaging conducted among 201 participants in the multigenerational Framingham Heart Study. The mean age of these participants was 53. Decades before diagnosis PET scans typically are conducted ...

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., June 17, 2021 -- A research team from Los Alamos National Laboratory and Purdue University have developed bio-inks for biosensors that could help localize critical regions in tissues and organs during surgical operations. "The ink used in the biosensors is biocompatible and provides a user-friendly design with excellent workable time frames of more than one day," said Kwan-Soo Lee, of Los Alamos' Chemical Diagnostics and Engineering group. The new biosensors allow for simultaneous recording and imaging of tissues and organs during surgical procedures. "Simultaneous recording and imaging could be useful during heart surgery in localizing critical regions and guiding surgical interventions such as a procedure for restoring normal ...

Nanodecoys made from human lung spheroid cells (LSCs) can bind to and neutralize SARS-CoV-2, promoting viral clearance and reducing lung injury in a macaque model of COVID-19. By mimicking the receptor that the virus binds to rather than targeting the virus itself, nanodecoy therapy could remain effective against emerging variants of the virus. SARS-CoV-2 enters a cell when its spike protein binds to the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor on the cell's surface. LSCs - a natural mixture of lung epithelial stem cells and mesenchymal cells - also express ACE2, making them a perfect vehicle ...

Current approaches for planning relocation for potentially millions of people affected by climate change and related risks are "woefully inadequate" and risk worsening societal inequities, experts wrote in a policy perspective on June 17 in Science. Policymakers and scientists need to rethink how they work together to develop, communicate and carry out relocation plans. "Relocation involves moving people away from risk and into totally new settings," said the team of experts led by Richard Moss. Moss is a Gerhard R. Andlinger Visiting Fellow at Princeton's Andlinger Center ...

The Yellow fever mosquito (scientific name, Aedes aegypti) spreads multiple untreatable viruses in humans and is primarily controlled using a pesticide called permethrin. However, many mosquitoes are evolving resistance to the pesticide. A new study by Karla Saavedra-Rodriguez of Colorado State University and colleagues, published in the journal PLOS Genetics, identifies mutations linked to different permethrin resistance strategies, which threaten our ability to control disease outbreaks. When treated mosquitoes encounter permethrin in the wild, they will do one of the following: immediately die, be knocked out but recover, or be unaffected. Saavedra-Rodriguez and her colleagues decided to investigate the genetic variations that lead to these ...

A new treatment approach focused on fixing cell damage, rather than fighting the virus directly, is effective against SARS-CoV-2 in lab models. Combination of two drugs reduces spread of SARS-CoV-2 infection in cells by up to 99.5%. If found safe for human use, this anti-viral treatment would make COVID-19 symptoms milder and speed up recovery times. When a person is infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, it invades their cells and uses them to replicate - which puts the cells under stress. Current approaches to dealing with infection target the virus itself with antiviral drugs. But ...

Patents with all-female inventor teams are more likely than all-male teams to address problems that specifically or disproportionately affect women, according to a new study. The findings, derived from an analysis of more than 440,000 U.S. biomedical patents filed from 1976 to 2010, suggest that who benefits most from innovation largely depends on who gets to invent. While the gender gap in research and innovation is well known, its broader impact on what gets invented - and for whom - isn't well understood. To address this question, Rembrand Koning and colleagues used machine learning text analysis to evaluate all U.S. biomedical patents filed from 1976 to 2010. They found that patents ...

Daunting and uncertain is the future for people who must decide whether, where, when, and how to vacate their homes as the climate changes. Communities who will absorb this influx of uprooted people also face challenges. In a special issue of Science, "Fallback Strategies: Planning for Climate-Induced Relocation," experts examine ways in which interdisciplinary basic and applied research can - and must - engage with and support communities and governments navigating this landscape. As this work is done, "we must consider not only what science can do, but how science ...

Using LIGO's suspended mirrors, researchers have demonstrated the ability to cool a large-scale object - the 10-kilogram optomechanical oscillator the suspended mirrors form - to nearly the motional quantum ground state. Upgrading LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) with such a modification would not only increase the device's sensitivity and range in detecting gravitational waves but could also provide new insights into large-scale quantum phenomena. For most mechanical objects to be coaxed into a quantum state, they need to be cooled to exceedingly low temperatures to overcome the thermal vibrations, or phonons, that mask the signature of quantum motion. This brings the ...

Marine-terminating glaciers may be less vulnerable to rapid and irreversible collapse than previously suggested, according to a new study, which finds that ice cliff collapse is limited by upstream thinning of the ice sheet and how quickly calved icebergs and sea-ice float away. The glaciers of Greenland and Antarctica slowly flow to the sea, terminating in massive vertical ice cliffs. Occasionally, these partially submerged margins can collapse under their own weight and trigger rapid disintegration of ice sheets. It's thought that this process, called marine ice cliff instability (MICI), could lead to the catastrophic retreat of some of the planet's largest ice sheets, substantially contributing to global sea level rise. However, current ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- To the human eye, most stationary objects appear to be just that -- still, and completely at rest. Yet if we were handed a quantum lens, allowing us to see objects at the scale of individual atoms, what was an apple sitting idly on our desk would appear as a teeming collection of vibrating particles, very much in motion. In the last few decades, physicists have found ways to super-cool objects so that their atoms are at a near standstill, or in their "motional ground state." To date, physicists have wrestled small objects such as clouds of millions of atoms, or nanogram-scale objects, into such pure quantum states. Now for the first time, scientists at MIT and elsewhere have cooled a large, human-scale object to close to its motional ground state. The object ...

Research conducted by Qiang et al has discovered a link between a protein in red blood cells and age-related decline in cognitive performance. Published in the open access journal PLOS Biology on 17th June 2021, the study shows that depleting mouse blood of the protein ADORA2B leads to faster declines in memory, delays in auditory processing, and increased inflammation in the brain. As life expectancies around the world increase, so are the number of people who will experience age-related cognitive decline. Because the amount of oxygen in the blood also declines with age, the team hypothesized that ...

CLEVELAND--Case Western Reserve University researchers studying prions--misfolded proteins that cause lethal incurable diseases--have identified for the first time surface features of human prions responsible for their replication in the brain. The ultimate goal of the research is to help design a strategy to stop prion disease in humans--and, ultimately, to translate new approaches to work on Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases. Scientists have yet to discover the exact cause of Alzheimer's disease, but largely agree that protein issues play a role in its emergence and progression. Alzheimer's disease afflicts more than 6 million people in the U.S., and the Alzheimer's Association ...

UTICA, NY -- More than 2 million coronary artery stents are implanted each year to help protect or restore normal blood flow to the heart, to treat patients suffering from angina or a heart attack due to coronary artery disease (CAD). While stents are highly effective and safe devices, scarring or clotting of unhealed stents can occur in a small percentage of subjects, leading to complications such as stent restenosis or thrombosis, which can be life-threatening. At present, approaches to understand stent healing based on their biological clotting status is unavailable in patients. To devise a potential solution to this problem, Dr. Jason McCarthy, an Associate Professor at the Masonic Medical Research Institute (MMRI), and his team have developed a fluorescent probe that binds ...

A long-term passive rewilding study has shown that natural woodland regeneration could make a significant contribution to meeting the UK's ambitious tree planting targets - potentially at no cost and within relatively short timescales. The research, led by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH), found natural growth due to seed dispersal by birds, mammals and wind can produce biodiverse and resilient woodland. Woodland development can be rapid, while avoiding the cost, management and plastic tubing involved in planting schemes. The study - published in the journal PLOS ONE - found that after just 15 years, previously bare agricultural ...

Physicists at Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich (LMU) and the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics (MPQ) have used ultrashort laser pulses to probe the dynamics of photoelectron emission in tungsten crystals. Almost a century ago, Albert Einstein received the Nobel Prize for Physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect. Published in 1905, Einstein's theory incorporated the idea that light is made up of particles called photons. When light impinges on matter, the electrons in the sample respond to the input of energy, and the interaction gives rise to what is known as the photoelectric effect. Light quanta (photons) are absorbed by the ...

Lugano, Switzerland, 17 June 2021 - Adding an immune checkpoint inhibitor to anti-HER2 treatment in breast cancer does not improve pathological complete response (pCR), according to the primary analysis of the IMpassion050 trial presented today during the ESMO Virtual Plenary. (1) The phase III trial is the first to report data comparing a neoadjuvant anti-HER2 based regimen with or without the anti-PD-L1 antibody atezolizumab in patients with high-risk, HER2-positive early breast cancer. The standard treatment for high-risk, HER2-positive early breast cancer is dual anti-HER2 blockade plus chemotherapy. While antibody therapy may enhance innate and adaptive immunity and activate cellular cytotoxicity, there is evidence ...