The presence and accumulation of the antioxidant pigment anthocyanin dictates fruit hue in plums, and the synthesis of this compound is known to be regulated by the MYB10 genes. Now, researchers from the Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CRAG) and the Institute of Agrifood Research and Technology (IRTA) have found the gene that determines Japanese plum skin colour. In a END ...

New research by scientists at Oxford Brookes University has identified specific genes which could provide vital information about the biology of developmental coordination disorder (DCD), also known as dyspraxia. Dyspraxia is a common motor coordination condition which is estimated to affect at least one child in every classroom. DCD can impact a child's handwriting and coordination skills such as tying a shoelace or catching a ball. The condition can limit school achievement, impact cognitive development, constrain career opportunities and increase children's risk of developing mental health issues. Despite the condition affecting five per cent of children, as common as dyslexia or autism, very little is known about why some children struggle ...

Therapy based on the Nintendo® Wii Balance Board can help improve balance in children with cerebral palsy, according to an analysis published in END ...

Advanced age is often considered a contraindication for heart transplantation, but a new study published in the END ...

It all started, when Patrice Cani, FNRS researcher at University of Louvain (UCLouvain), and his team repeatedly observed that a bacterium (called Subdoligranulum) is almost absent in obese and diabetic people, while it is systematically present in healthy people. So, they decided to take a closer look at this "family" of bacteria. There is as yet only one cultivated strain of this family available in the world (the only known member of a large family) and, no luck, it is not the strain that was observed to be decreased in sick people. This is not unusual: nearly 70% of bacteria in the intestine have not yet been identified (this is called the dark matter of the ...

It's incumbent upon counselors to initiate or respond to clients' concerns about racial, ethnic, and cultural issues, but guidelines lack specific instructions. An article published in the Journal of Counseling & Development provides counselors with strategies for broaching and discussing topics of race, ethnicity, and culture with clients. The article describes a model for broaching these issues and explains a series of steps--joining, assessment, preparation, and delivery--involved in using it. "This and other articles serve as the foundation for the next phase in our research on counselor implementation of broaching and its impact on client mental health outcomes," the authors wrote. INFORMATION: ...

A study published in Career Development Quarterly has looked at whether beliefs and attitudes influence career aspirations of college students with different genders and sexual orientations. Among 1,129 college students at a midwestern urban university, stronger self-efficacy beliefs--or perceptions about whether a person has the ability to achieve a desired outcome--led both male and lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, intersex, and questioning (LGBQIQ) students to seek out leadership positions within their chosen career field. Stronger feminist attitudes were associated with an increase in achievement efforts for LGBQIQ college students, but not for heterosexual students. "The results of the study not only demonstrate that beliefs and attitudes influence ...

New research reveals that only a minority of U.S. Medicare beneficiaries with knee osteoarthritis in 2005-2010 used non-surgical care such as physical therapy and knee injections, and few were treated by rheumatologists, physiatrists, or pain specialists. The study, which is published in END ...

Oncotarget published "Differential expression of Vitamin D binding protein in thyroid cancer health disparities" which reported that thyroid cancer incidence, recurrence, and death rates are higher among Filipino Americans than European Americans. In this study, the authors determined the correlation between differential DBP expression in tumor tissues and cancer staging in Filipino Americans versus European Americans. The majority of Filipino Americans presented with advanced tumor staging. In contrast, European Americans showed early staging and very few advanced tumors. On the contrary, in the tumor tissues derived from European Americans, moderate to strong DBP staining was detected ...

Oncotarget published "[18F]FDG and [18F]FES positron emission tomography for disease monitoring and assessment of anti-hormonal treatment eligibility in granulosa cell tumors of the ovary" which reported that the authors evaluated 22 PET/CTs from recurrent Anti-hormonal granulosa cell tumors (AGCT) patients to determine tumor FDG and FES uptake by qualitative and quantitative analysis. They included all consecutive patients from two tertiary hospitals between 2003-2020. Expression of ERα and ERβ and mitoses per 2 mm2 were determined by immunohistochemistry and compared to FES and FDG uptake, respectively. Qualitative assessment showed low-to-moderate FDG uptake in most patients, and intense uptake in ...

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. -- Women's mental health likely has a higher association with dietary factors than men's, according to new research from Binghamton University, State University of New York. Lina Begdache, assistant professor of health and wellness studies at Binghamton University, had previously published research on diet and mood that suggests that a high-quality diet improves mental health. She wanted to test whether customization of diet improves mood among men and women ages 30 or older. Along with research assistant Cara M. Patrissy, Begdache dissected the different food groups that are associated with mental distress in men and women ages 30 years and older, as well as studied ...

The oxide dispersion strengthened copper alloy (ODS-Cu) is superior in thermal conductivity, electrical conductivity, heat resistance and friction tolerance, etc. Although the ODS-Cu can be expected to have various industrial applications, its joint with other materials is extremely difficult because of its intrinsic poor weldability. The research group of Dr. Masayuki Tokitani in the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) National Institute for Fusion Science (NIFS) has developed an extremely novel joint technique that enables us to fabricate any component made of ODS-Cu. This technique highly contributes to producing the efficient heat removal component for the fusion reactor. Copper ...

Microphones are perhaps the most common electronic sensor in the world, with an estimated 320 million listening for our commands in the world's smart speakers. The trouble is that they're capable of hearing everything else, too. But now, a team of University of Michigan researchers has developed a system that can inform a smart home--or listen for the signal that would turn on a smart speaker--without eavesdropping on audible sound. The key to the device, called PrivacyMic, is ultrasonic sound at frequencies above the range of human hearing. Running dishwashers, computer monitors, even finger snaps, all generate ultrasonic sounds, which have a frequency of 20 kilohertz ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Scientists working to understand the cellular processes linking high cholesterol to breast cancer recurrence and metastasis report that a byproduct of cholesterol metabolism causes some cells to send out cancer-promoting signals to other cells. These signals are packaged in membrane-bound compartments called extracellular vesicles. Reported in the journal Endocrinology, the discovery could lead to the development of new anti-cancer therapies, researchers say. "Extracellular vesicles play an important role in normal physiology, but they also have been ...

A population-based study, published today in JAMA, has found flu vaccination during pregnancy does not lead to an increased risk of adverse early childhood health outcomes. Although pregnant people are not more susceptible to acquiring influenza infection, they are at an increased risk of severe illness and complications if they get the flu during pregnancy. For this reason, all pregnant people are advised to receive a flu shot each year, yet only 36 percent received it according to a study monitoring four flu seasons in Nova Scotia. Safety concerns are reportedly a leading reason people may not receive influenza ...

DARIEN, IL - Dreams result from a process that often combines fragments of multiple life experiences and anticipates future events, according to novel evidence from a new study. Results show that 53.5% of dreams were traced to a memory, and nearly 50% of reports with a memory source were connected to multiple past experiences. The study also found that 25.7% of dreams were related to specific impending events, and 37.4% of dreams with a future event source were additionally related to one or more specific memories of past experiences. Future-oriented dreams became proportionally more common later in the night. "Humans ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Mayo Clinic researchers and colleagues at the University of Minnesota showed that COVID-19 exacerbates the damaging impact of senescent cells in the body. In preclinical studies, the senolytic drugs discovered at Mayo significantly reduced inflammation, illness, and mortality from COVID infection in older mice. The findings appear in the journal Science. Senescent cells (damaged or non-functioning cells that persist in the body) contribute to many aspects of aging and illness, including inflammation and multiple chronic diseases. Based on the "Amplifier/Rheostat Hypothesis" of senescent ...

A study of the associations between drinking alcohol and the chances of becoming pregnant suggests that women who want to conceive should avoid heavy drinking. In the second half of menstrual cycle even moderate drinking is linked to reduced chances of pregnancy. The study, published today (Wednesday) in Human Reproduction [1], one of the world's leading reproductive medicine journals, investigated alcohol intake and fecundability, which is defined as the probability of conceiving during a single menstrual cycle. It is the first study to look at this according to the difference phases of women's menstrual cycles. Researchers led by Dr Kira Taylor, associate professor of epidemiology and population ...

As new research on anaesthesia trainee morale is published, an impassioned plea is today being made in an open letter from the Association of Anaesthetists to the UK's four Health Secretaries: to urgently double the number of training posts for anaesthetists this summer and for subsequent years so that the UK can safely negotiate the current COVID-19 pandemic, any future pandemics, and deal with the huge backlog of surgical procedures that has built up during lockdown. The Association has sent a separate letter to go to each Health Secretary - Matt Hancock MP in the UK Department of Health, Humza Yousaf MSP in Scotland, Baroness Eluned Morgan MS in Wales, and Robin Swann MLA in ...

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness and the World Health Organization, depression affects 16 million Americans and 322 million people worldwide. Emerging evidence suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic is further exacerbating the prevalence of depression in the general population. With this trajectory, it is evident that more effective strategies are needed for therapeutics that address this critical public health issue. In a recent study, publishing in the June 9, 2021 online edition of Nature Translational Psychiatry, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine used a combination of modalities, such as measuring brain function, cognition and lifestyle factors, to generate individualized predictions of depression. The machine learning and personalized ...

In "Atchafalaya," John McPhee's essay in the 1989 book The Control of Nature, the author chronicles efforts by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to prevent the Atchafalaya River from changing the course of the Mississippi River where they diverge, due to the Atchafalaya's steeper gradient and more direct route to the gulf. McPhee's classic essay proved inspirational to John Shaw, an assistant professor of geosciences who called it "a foundational text." Indeed, his latest work adds to the story. In a recent paper published in the American Geophysical Union's journal, Water ...

Everyone is familiar with tiny gas bubbles gently rising up in sparkling water. But the bubbles that were created by intense focused lasers in this experiment were ten times smaller and contained water vapour at a pressure around a hundred thousand times higher. Under these conditions, the bubble expands at supersonic speed and pushes a shockwave, consisting of a spherical shell of highly compressed water, ahead of itself. Now the research team led by the University of Göttingen, together with the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchroton (DESY) and the European X-Ray Free-Electron Laser (European XFEL), has created such an event and then, with an innovative ...

The analysis of very old plant fossils discovered in South Africa and dating from the Lower Devonian period documents the transition from barren continents to the green planet we know today. Cyrille Prestianni, a palaeobotanist at the EDDy Lab at the University of Liège (Belgium), participated in this study, the results of which have just been published in the journal Scientific Reports. The greening of continents - or terrestrialisation - is undoubtedly one of the most important processes that our planet has undergone. For most of the Earth's history, the continents were devoid of macroscopic ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--QurAlis Corporation, a biotech company developing breakthrough precision medicines for ALS and other genetically validated neurodegenerative diseases, today announced the publication of an article in Cell Reports titled Human Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Excitability Phenotype Screen: Target Discovery and Validation by QurAlis founders Kasper Roet, Ph.D., Clifford Woolf, M.D., Ph.D., and Kevin Eggan, Ph.D., who pioneered a high-content, live-cell imaging screen using ALS patient-derived motor neurons in combination with a compound library generated by Pfizer to identify drug targets to treat hyperexcitability induced neurodegeneration ...

A research team from the University of Massachusetts Amherst has created an electronic microsystem that can intelligently respond to information inputs without any external energy input, much like a self-autonomous living organism. The microsystem is constructed from a novel type of electronics that can process ultralow electronic signals and incorporates a device that can generate electricity "out of thin air" from the ambient environment. The groundbreaking research was published June 7 in the journal Nature Communications. Jun Yao, an assistant professor in the electrical and computer engineering (ECE) and an adjunct professor in biomedical engineering, ...