MELVILLE, N.Y., June 9, 2021 -- The prolonged impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the interaction restrictions created widespread lockdown fatigue and increased social tension in multiunit housing. But small improvements in quality-of-life routines may help people cope with the health restrictions better than they previously could. During the 180th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, which will be held virtually June 8-10, Braxton Boren, from American University, will discuss noise prevention techniques and the use of alterative acoustic stimulation to help those who find themselves in pandemic-related lockdowns. The session, "The Soundscape of Quarantine," will take place Wednesday, June 9, at 1:45 p.m. Eastern U.S. While there have been studies about ...

The SARS-CoV-2 papain-like protease (PLpro) plays an essential role in processing viral proteins needed for replication. In addition, the enzyme can cut and inactivate some human proteins important for an immune response. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Infectious Diseases have found other targets of PLpro in the human proteome, including proteins involved in cardiovascular function, blood clotting and inflammation, suggesting a link between the inactivation of these proteins and COVID-19 symptoms. Viruses like SARS-CoV-2 make multiple proteins as one long "polyprotein." Viral enzymes called proteases recognize specific amino acid sequences in this polyprotein and cut them to release individual proteins. ...

A cell-penetrating peptide developed by researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center can prevent, in an animal model, the often-fatal septic shock that can result from bacterial and viral infections. Their findings, published this week in Scientific Reports, could lead to a way to protect patients at highest risk for severe complications and death from out-of-control inflammatory responses to microbial infections, including COVID-19. "Life-threatening microbial inflammation hits harder (in) patients with metabolic syndrome, a condition afflicting millions of people in the United States and worldwide," said the paper's corresponding author, Jacek Hawiger, MD, PhD, the Louise B. McGavock Chair in Medicine and Distinguished Professor of Medicine ...

BRIEFING NOTE: Researchers will announce these results at the 238th AAS meeting on Wednesday, June 9 at 12:15 p.m. E.D.T. Press registration details can be found here: https://aas.org/meetings/aas238/press. Interested journalists can also tune in to AAS briefings streamed live at: https://www.youtube.com/c/AASPressOffice. Please note that you will not be able to ask questions via YouTube; to ask questions, you'll need to register for the meeting and join the briefings via Zoom. Recordings will be archived on the AAS Press Office YouTube channel afterward. To catch sight of a fast radio burst is to be extremely lucky in where and when you point your radio dish. Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are oddly bright flashes of light, registering ...

OAKLAND, Calif. -- The significant declines in heart attack hospitalizations and emergency care for possible strokes seen in Northern California at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic were not seen in subsequent surges, new research from Kaiser Permanente shows. The study, published June 2 in JAMA, suggests public health campaigns that encouraged people to seek care if they were experiencing signs or symptoms of a stroke or heart attack were effective. "In May 2020, we reported that, in the early months of the pandemic, the weekly number of patients admitted to our hospitals for a heart attack fell to nearly half of what would be expected," said the study's lead author Matthew ...

A new study identifies a novel biomarker indicating resilience to chronic stress. This biomarker is largely absent in people suffering from major depressive disorder, and this absence is further associated with pessimism in daily life, the study finds. Nature Communications published the research by scientists at Emory University. The researchers used brain imaging to identify differences in the neurotransmitter glutamate within the medial prefrontal cortex before and after study participants underwent stressful tasks. They then followed the participants for four weeks, using a survey protocol to regularly assess how participants rated their expected and experienced outcomes for daily activities. "To our knowledge, this is the first work to show ...

A new study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society suggests that survival rates after heart transplant surgery are similar in adults ages 18 to 69 and adults ages 70 and older. Researchers examined a large U.S. database of patients who were listed as candidates for surgery to replace their failing hearts with healthier donor hearts. The researchers found that: Only 1 in 50 people who are considered for heart transplant surgery and 1 in 50 people who receive a heart transplant are ages 70 or older. For older adults in the study, the likelihood of surviving one or five years after a heart transplant was about the same as for younger adults. Having a ...

Early in her career neuroscientist Allyson Mackey began thinking about molars. As a researcher who studies brain development, she wanted to know whether when these teeth arrived might indicate early maturation in children. "I've long been concerned that if kids grow up too fast, their brains will mature too fast and will lose plasticity at an earlier age. Then they'll go into school and have trouble learning at the same rate as their peers," says Mackey, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Penn. "Of course, not every kid who experiences stress or [is] low income will show this pattern of accelerated development." What would help, she thought, was a scalable, objective way—a physical manifestation, ...

Even the best face masks work only as well as their fit. And poorly fitting face masks greatly increase the risk of infection from airborne pathogens compared to custom-fitted masks, according to a new study by the University of Cincinnati. Researchers in UC's College of Engineering and Applied Science used computerized tomography or CT scans of three different-sized face masks attached to three different-sized dummy heads to measure the gaps between the face and the fabric. Then they calculated the leaks from these gaps to determine the infection risk.  They found that while N95 masks are effective barriers against airborne diseases like COVID-19, poorly ...

Scientists have developed polypeptide-based materials that act as effective vectors for delivering gene therapies. The first-of-its-kind platform enables the vectors to be adapted to suit the specific gene therapy cargo. The work, led by researchers from RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences and funded by Science Foundation Ireland, is published in Biomaterials Science. A major challenge for gene therapies is preparing them in a way that can deliver the genetic information into the host cells. For the Covid-19 vaccines that use mRNA technology, the genetic information is delivered ...

DARIEN, IL - A study of nearly 2,500 adults found that having trouble falling asleep, as compared to other patterns of insomnia, was the main insomnia symptom that predicted cognitive impairment 14 years later. Results show that having trouble falling asleep in 2002 was associated with cognitive impairment in 2016. Specifically, more frequent trouble falling asleep predicted poorer episodic memory, executive function, language, processing speed, and visuospatial performance. Further analysis found that associations between sleep initiation and later cognition were partially explained by both depressive symptoms and vascular ...

DARIEN, IL - A 15-year longitudinal study shows that childhood insomnia symptoms that persist into adulthood are strong determinants of mood and anxiety disorders in young adults. Results show that insomnia symptoms persisting from childhood through adolescence and into adulthood were associated with a 2.8-fold increased risk of internalizing disorders. Insomnia symptoms that newly developed over the course of the study were associated with a 1.9-fold increased risk of internalizing disorders. No increased risk of internalizing disorders was found for those children in whom insomnia symptoms remitted during the study period. "We found that about ...

MELVILLE, N.Y., June 9, 2021 -- The world is filled with myriad sounds that can overwhelm a person with relentless acoustics. Noise is so prevalent in everyday life that the concept and achievement of comfortable quiet is hard to define. During the 180th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, which will be held virtually June 8-10, Aggelos Tsaligopoulos, from the University of the Aegean, will describe how quiet could be measured in the hopes of better understanding its impact on people. The session, "Towards a new understanding of the concept of quietness," will take place Wednesday, ...

In a major scientific leap, University of Queensland researchers have created a quantum microscope that can reveal biological structures that would otherwise be impossible to see. This paves the way for applications in biotechnology, and could extend far beyond this into areas ranging from navigation to medical imaging. The microscope is powered by the science of quantum entanglement, an effect Einstein described as "spooky interactions at a distance". Professor Warwick Bowen, from UQ's Quantum Optics Lab and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems (EQUS), said it was the first entanglement-based sensor with performance beyond the best possible existing technology. "This breakthrough will spark all sorts of new technologies - from better navigation ...

While the IPCC is in the midst of the drafting cycle of the Sixth Assessment Report, whose publication will start in the second half of 2021 - one of the most relevant events for the global climate change community, there is an ongoing debate on how to assess the feasibility of ambitious climate mitigation scenarios developed through integrated assessment models and to what extent they are actually achievable in the real world. In their new study published in Environmental Research Letters, researchers from the RFF-CMCC European Institute on Economics and the Environment (EIEE) and IIASA developed a systematic ...

What The Study Did: An observational study of more than 27,000 veterans who received a positive test result for COVID-19 reports that risk factors such as housing problems, financial hardship, alcohol use, tobacco use and substance use weren't associated with higher mortality. Authors: J. Daniel Kelly, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of California, San Francisco, 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.2021.13031) Editor's Note: The article includes funding/support disclosures. Please ...

What The Study Did: This study looked at whether there was an association between rideshare use, motor vehicle crash traumas and impaired driving convictions in Houston, Texas, by comparing traumas and convictions before and after the introduction of Uber. Authors: Christopher R. Conner, M.D., Ph.D., of the McGovern Medical School at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, 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/jamasurg.2021.2227) Editor's Note: The article includes funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, ...

A condition that affects the blood, known as idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP), may be associated the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in rare cases, research suggests. The very small increased risk of the condition - which is characterised by low platelet counts - is estimated to be 11 per million doses, similar to figures seen in vaccines for flu and MMR. A low number of platelets - blood cells that help prevent blood loss when vessels are damaged - can result in no symptoms or can lead to an increased risk of bleeding or, in some cases, clotting. Researchers say that the increased chance of developing ITP after receiving the vaccine remains smaller than the risk of developing it because of Covid-19 and should ...

Batteries have come a long way since Volta first stacked copper and zinc discs together 200 years ago. While the technology has continued to evolve from lead-acid to lithium-ion, many challenges still exist--like achieving higher density and suppressing dendrite growth. Experts are racing to address the growing, global need for energy-efficient and safe batteries. The electrification of heavy-duty vehicles and aircraft requires batteries with more energy density. A team of researchers believes a paradigm shift is necessary to make a significant impact in battery technology for these industries. ...

Scientists from the lab of Franz Klein from the Department of Chromosome Biology at the Max Perutz Labs, a joint venture of the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna, have now discovered that cells sometimes liberate DNA fragments at sites of paired, or double, DSBs. Whilst this presents an obvious risk of germline mutations as a consequence of erroneous repair or of integration of fragments from elsewhere at break sites, it may also be a source of evolutionary diversity. The study is published as a research article in Nature. Genetic information in humans is encoded in 23 chromosome pairs, where one pair consists of two slightly different copies or homologs. One is inherited from the father and one from the mother. Human gametes, however, are haploid - they start ...

Researchers at the University of Geneva (UNIGE) demonstrate that innovative projects spearheaded by United Nations (UN) country offices are remodeling the institution and expanding its role. Digital initiatives, particularly those scaled through headquarters, were shown to have the strongest impact, changing ways of working, embedding new skills, and restructuring teams across the UN. These findings, published in the Journal of Management Studies, highlight that fostering even single innovative projects could lead to fundamental transformations in the UN. How do International Organizations build innovation capabilities ...

Scientists from the University of Melbourne and University of Queensland have revealed the mystery behind the unique reproductive parts of the much-loved echidna. In the paper, "The Unique Penile Morphology of the Short-Beaked Echidna, Tachyglossus aculeatus", the team detail how the male monotreme's testes never descend, have no scrotum, and when not in use, their penis is stored internally. They also detail how the echidna penis has four heads, which are actually rosette-like glans at the end. Just two of the four glans ever become functional during erection ...

Led by Professor Andreas Hartmann, from the University of Freiburg (Germany), the researchers analyzed the presence of several pollutants in water from many karst aquifers of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, relating fast infiltration processes to an increased concentration of these substances. The findings of this research are published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). This way, they warn that during rainfall events -when aquifers recharge, especially during autumn rainfall- the concentration of pollutants and pathogenic microorganisms can significantly exceed the safe levels, causing serious consequences for human consumption. "About one quarter of the ...

Obesity is generally linked to poor eating habits and the availability of tasty, high-calorie foods. However, a new study led by researchers from the Magnetic Resonance Imaging Research Unit in the Department of Radiology at Hospital del Mar and the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by the "la Caixa" Foundation, has found that more elements are involved. Thanks to images obtained by functional magnetic resonance imaging, the researchers found that certain parts of the brains of obese children show alterations with respect to normal-weight or overweight children of the same age. ...

At the heart of almost every sufficiently massive galaxy there is a black hole whose gravitational field, although very intense, affects only a small region around the centre of the galaxy. Even though these objects are thousands of millions of times smaller than their host galaxies our current view is that the Universe can be understood only if the evolution of galaxies is regulated by the activity of these black holes, because without them the observed properties of the galaxies cannot be explained. Theoretical predictions suggest that as these black holes grow they generate sufficient energy to heat ...