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Study explores how readers at partisan news sites respond to challenging news events

2021-06-23
Researchers from Bentley University have been exploring how readers at partisan news sites respond to news events that challenge their worldview. In a forthcoming paper in the journal ACM Transactions on Social Computing, they report results of a study that examines reader comments on stories surrounding the 2017 Roy Moore Alabama senate race at two partisan news sites: a left-leaning news site (Daily Kos) and a right-leaning news site (Breitbart). They consider the alleged sexual misconduct of Mr. Moore as a challenging news event for the right-leaning readers; and the subsequent nomination of Mr. Moore as the Republican candidate as a challenging news event for the left-leaning readers. Their analysis identifies the obstacles that readers face as they try to make sense ...

Scientists obtain real-time look at how cancers evolve

2021-06-23
NEW YORK CITY, June 23, 2021 -- From amoebas to zebras, all living things evolve. They change over time as pressures from the environment cause individuals with certain traits to become more common in a population while those with other traits become less common. Cancer is no different. Within a growing tumor, cancer cells with the best ability to compete for resources and withstand environmental stressors will come to dominate in frequency. It's "survival of the fittest" on a microscopic scale. But fitness -- how well suited any particular individual is to its environment -- isn't set in stone; it can change when the environment changes. The cancer cells that might do best in an environment saturated ...

Flipping a molecular switch for heart fibrosis

Flipping a molecular switch for heart fibrosis
2021-06-23
SAN FRANCISCO, CA--June 23, 2021--A healthy heart is a pliable, ever-moving organ. But under stress--from injury, cardiovascular disease, or aging--the heart thickens and stiffens in a process known as fibrosis, which involves diffuse scar-like tissue. Slowing or stopping fibrosis to treat and prevent heart failure has long been a goal of cardiologists. Now, researchers at Gladstone Institutes have discovered a master switch for fibrosis in the heart. When the heart is under stress, they found, the gene MEOX1 is turned on in cells called fibroblasts, spurring fibrosis. Their new study, published in the journal Nature, suggests that blocking ...

Drug doubles down on bone cancer, metastasis

Drug doubles down on bone cancer, metastasis
2021-06-23
HOUSTON - (June 23, 2021) - Bone cancer is hard to treat and prone to metastasis. Research teams at Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine have a new strategy to attack it. Chemist Han Xiao at Rice and biologist Xiang Zhang at Baylor and their labs have developed an antibody conjugate called BonTarg that delivers drugs to bone tumors and inhibits metastasis. Their open-access study, which appears in Science Advances, shows how Xiao's pClick technology can be used to link bone-targeting antibodies and therapeutic molecules. In experiments, they used pClick to couple a molecule used to treat osteoporosis, alendronate, with the HER2-targeting antibody trastuzumab used to treat breast cancer and found it significantly enhanced the concentration ...

Cancer survivors' tongues less sensitive to tastes than those of healthy peers

Cancer survivors tongues less sensitive to tastes than those of healthy peers
2021-06-23
Most survivors of squamous cell head and neck cancers report that their sense of taste is dulled, changed or lost during radiation treatment, causing them to lose interest in eating and diminishing their quality of life. In a study of taste and smell dysfunction with 40 cancer survivors, scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign found that the tips of these individuals' tongues were significantly less sensitive to bitter, salty or sweet tastes than peers in the control group who had never been diagnosed with cancer. In a paper published in the journal Chemical Senses, the U. of I. team said this diminished taste sensitivity suggested that the taste ...

Cold weather cost New England electric customers nearly $1.8 billion in one month; A new study suggests ways to mitigate fuel shortages

2021-06-23
In New England, constraints in the supply of natural gas have led to nearly a quarter of all unscheduled power plant outages. In a new study, researchers used data from power plant failures in the 2010s to develop a supply curve of the costs required for generators to mitigate fuel shortages in the region. The study found that storing both oil and gas on-site could reduce dependence by power plants on gas grids in geographic areas with few pipelines. The study was conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), The Pennsylvania State University, and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. It is published in The Electricity Journal. "Gas ...

You can have too much of a good thing, says study financial analysts' work-life balance

You can have too much of a good thing, says study financial analysts work-life balance
2021-06-23
Toronto - Last winter, Goldman Sachs reported it was working to make things better after a group of junior analysts revolted against 100-hour work weeks. That's a smart thing to do, suggests a new study from the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. Drawing from more than 6,000 employee reviews of their workplaces and data on their firms' forecasting accuracy, the research shows that making improvements to hardworking analysts' work-life balance produces dividends for the company and for the analysts' careers. "There is a lot of anecdotal evidence, but here we provide large-scale evidence that supports the recent push to grant these employees at least some reprieve from the extremes of their jobs," said Ole-Kristian Hope, who is the Deloitte Professor of Accounting ...

GSA's journal's add seven articles on COVID-19 and aging

2021-06-23
The Gerontological Society of America's highly cited, peer-reviewed journals are continuing to publish scientific articles on COVID-19. The following were published between May 4 and June 14; all are free to access: Cardiometabolic therapy and mortality in very old patients with diabetes hospitalized due to COVID-19: Research article in The Journals of Gerontology, Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences by Jose Manuel Ramos-Rincón, MD, PhD, Luis M. Pérez-Belmonte, MD, PhD, Francisco Javier Carrasco-Sánchez, MD, PhD, Sergio Jansen-Chaparro, MD, PhD, Mercedes De-Sousa-Baena, MD, José Bueno-Fonseca, MD, ...

Cat-borne parasite Toxoplasma induces fatally bold behavior in hyena cubs

Cat-borne parasite Toxoplasma induces fatally bold behavior in hyena cubs
2021-06-23
Best known for its presence in house cats and a tendency to infect and alter the behaviors of rodents and humans, the parasite Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) is also associated with bold behavior among wild hyena cubs and risk of death during interactions with lions, finds new research from the University of Colorado Boulder. The findings, published this week in Nature Communications, reinforce previous research which has found the parasite can prompt profound behavioral changes in its hosts, and potentially in the 2 billion people worldwide estimated to be infected by it. While T. gondii has been well studied in laboratory settings with humans and wild-caught ...

Nature article: Dieting and its effect on the gut microbiome

Nature article: Dieting and its effect on the gut microbiome
2021-06-23
Researchers from Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the University of California in San Francisco were able to show for the first time that a very low calorie diet significantly alters the composition of the microbiota present in the human gut. In a current Nature* publication, the researchers report that dieting results in an increase of specific bacteria - notably Clostridioides difficile, which is associated with antibiotic-induced diarrhea and colitis. These bacteria apparently affect the body's energy balance by exerting an influence on the absorption of nutrients ...

NIH scientists describe "Multi-Kingdom Dialogue" between internal, external microbiota

NIH scientists describe Multi-Kingdom Dialogue between internal, external microbiota
2021-06-23
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 ...

Melatonin in mice: there's more to this hormone than sleep

Melatonin in mice: theres more to this hormone than sleep
2021-06-23
Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Brain Science and the RIKEN BioResource Research Center in Japan, along with collaborators at the State University of New York at Buffalo, have created a mouse model that allows the study of naturally occurring melatonin. Published in the Journal of Pineal Research, these first experiments using the new mice showed that natural melatonin was linked to a pre-hibernation state that allows mice to slow down their metabolism and survive when food is scarce, or temperatures are cold. Melatonin is called "the hormone of darkness" because it's released by the brain in the dark, which usually means at night. It tells the body when it's dark outside so that the body can switch to 'night mode'. Although other hormones are easily studied in the laboratory, ...

Wild bees need deadwood in the forest

Wild bees need deadwood in the forest
2021-06-23
How many tree species are there in the forest? How are the trees scattered throughout? How high are the individual tree crowns? Are there fallen trees or hollowed-out tree trunks? Forest scientists characterize forests according to structural factors. "Structural richness is very important for biodiversity in forests. But forests used for forestry are generally poor in terms of structure," says Tristan Eckerter from the Chair of Nature Conservation and Landscape Ecology at the University of Freiburg. Therefore, together with research teams from the Chair of Silviculture and the Black Forest National Park, he investigated ...

A triple-system neural model of maladaptive consumption

2021-06-23
A new article published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research presents a neural model of maladaptive consumption. Consumption (of, for instance, substances, food, and online media) is driven mainly by expected rewards that stem from the ability of the consumption act to satisfy intrinsic (e.g., curiosity) and extrinsic (e.g., job performance) needs. In the article, "A Triple-System Neural Model of Maladaptive Consumption," the authors define maladaptive consumption as a state of compulsive seeking and consumption of rewarding products or experiences, which are sustained despite the negative consequences of such behaviors. "Understanding the neural basis of maladaptive ...

Milk protein could help boost blueberries' healthfulness

2021-06-23
Pairing blueberry pie with a scoop of ice cream is a nice summer treat. Aside from being tasty, this combination might also help people take up more of the "superfruit's" nutrients, such as anthocyanins. Researchers reporting in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry show that α-casein, a protein found in cow's milk, helped rats absorb more blueberry anthocyanins and their byproducts, boosting accessibility to these good-for-you nutrients. In studies, anthocyanins have been shown to have antioxidant properties, lower blood pressure and reduce the risk of developing some cancers. However, only small amounts of these nutrients are absorbed ...

Seeking a treatment for IBS pain in tarantula venom

2021-06-23
For patients who have inflammatory bowel syndrome (IBS), the condition is literally a pain in the gut. Chronic -- or long-term -- abdominal pain is common, and there are currently no effective treatment options for this debilitating symptom. In a new study in ACS Pharmacology & Translational Science, researchers identify a new potential source of relief: a molecule derived from spider venom. In experiments with mice, they found that one dose could stop symptoms associated with IBS pain. The sensation of pain originates in electrical signals carried from the body to the brain by cells called ...

Addressing inequity in air quality

2021-06-23
Air quality varies greatly within regions and cities around the world, and exposure to air pollution can have severe health impacts. In the U.S., people of color are disproportionately exposed to poor air quality. A cover story in Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, highlights how scientists and community activists are using new technologies to gather data that could help address this inequity. Despite the success of the U.S. Clean Air Act in improving ambient air quality over the past 50 years, discriminatory housing, loan ...

Roughness of retinal layers, a new Alzheimer's biomarker

2021-06-23
Over recent years, the retina has established its position as one of the most promising biomarkers for the early diagnosis of Alzheimer's. Moving on from the debate as to the retina becoming thinner or thicker, researchers from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Hospital Clínico San Carlos are focusing their attention on the roughness of the ten retinal layers. The study, published in Scientific Reports, "proves innovative" in three aspects according to José Manuel Ramírez, Director of the IIORC (Ramón Castroviejo Institute of Ophthalmologic Research) at the UCM. "This is the first study to propose studying the roughness of the retina and its ten constituent layers. They have devised a mathematical method to measure the degree of wrinkling, through the fractal ...

Study links sleep apnea in children to increased risk of high blood pressure in teen years

2021-06-23
Children with obstructive sleep apnea are nearly three times more likely to develop high blood pressure when they become teenagers than children who never experience sleep apnea, according to a new study funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the National Institutes of Health. However, children whose sleep apnea improves as they grow into adolescence do not show an increased chance of having high blood pressure, which is a major risk factor for heart disease. The long-term study, one of the largest of its kind in the pediatric population, underscores the seriousness of sleep apnea in children and the importance of early treatment, the researchers said. Their findings appear online in the journal JAMA Cardiology. Obstructive sleep apnea, ...

Black patients with cirrhosis more likely to die, less likely to get liver transplant

2021-06-23
Previous research was falsely reassuring; captured only 2% of cirrhosis patients Findings underscore lack of access to health care for Black patients Cirrhosis is leading cause of death and affects more than 600,000 people in U.S. CHICAGO --- Black patients with cirrhosis - late-stage liver disease - are about 25% more likely to die compared to non-Hispanic white patients and four times less likely to receive a liver transplant, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study. Estimates of racial disparity in cirrhosis have been limited by a lack of large-scale longitudinal data, which track patients from diagnosis to death and/or transplant. The paper is one of the first to link all seven large liver centers in Chicago with the death registry and transplant registry to examine ...

Researchers outline specific patterns in reading in Russian

Researchers outline specific patterns in reading in Russian
2021-06-23
Psycholinguists from the HSE Center for Language and Brain, in collaboration with researchers from the City University of New York and the University of Stuttgart, investigated how reading in Russian varies among different groups of readers. The authors used a novel method in bilingualism research -comparison of the eye-movement sequences (scanpaths) in adult native speakers of Russian, Russian-speaking children, and adult bilinguals with different levels of Russian proficiency. The results of the study were published in Reading Research Quarterly. A total of 120 readers took part in the study, with 30 participants in each group. Participants included adult ...

These sea anemones have a diverse diet. And they eat ants

These sea anemones have a diverse diet. And they eat ants
2021-06-23
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The giant plumose anemone is an animal, but it looks a bit like an underwater cauliflower. Its body consists of a stalk-like column that attaches to rocks and other surfaces on one end, and to a crown of tentacles on the other. The anemones use these feelers to collect and shove food into their mouths, and a new study provides an in-depth look into the rich diversity of prey the anemones are catching. This includes a surprising menu item: ants, specifically the pale-legged field ant, Lasius pallitarsis. And the occasional spider. The research was published on June 15 in the journal Environmental DNA. The study focused on giant plumose ...

Viruses as communication molecules

Viruses as communication molecules
2021-06-23
How long do virus-laden particles persist in an elevator after a person infected with COVID-19 leaves? And is there a way to detect those particles? A group of electrical engineers and computer scientists at KAUST set out to answer these questions using mathematical fluid dynamics equations. "We found1 that virus-laden particles can still be detected several minutes after a short elevator trip by an infected person," says KAUST electrical engineer Osama Amin. The team's equations and breath simulations suggest that a biosensor's ability to detect a virus improves when placed on an elevator wall that can reflect particles. Also, to protect future occupants, the amount of particles in the air can be reduced by making the other three walls absorptive. Amin ...

Spirituality can promote the health of breast cancer survivors

Spirituality can promote the health of breast cancer survivors
2021-06-23
COLUMBIA, Mo. - Throughout her 20-year career as a nurse practitioner, Jennifer Hulett noticed survivors of breast cancer would often express gratitude for being alive and mention God or a divine acknowledgement that had improved their health and well-being. Now an assistant professor at the University of Missouri Sinclair School of Nursing, Hulett is researching the benefits of spirituality on improving immune health and reducing stress, as well as the chances of cancer reoccurrence, among breast cancer survivors. In a recent study, Hulett collected and froze samples of saliva from 41 breast cancer survivors at MU's Ellis Fischel Cancer Center. ...

Tiny ancient bird from China shares skull features with Tyrannosaurus rex

Tiny ancient bird from China shares skull features with <i>Tyrannosaurus rex</i>
2021-06-23
Researchers from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have discovered a 120-million-year-old partial fossil skeleton of a tiny extinct bird that fits in the palm of the hand and preserves a unique skull with a mix of dinosaurian and bird features. The two-centimeter-long (0.75 inch) skull of the fossil shares many structural and functional features with the gigantic Tyrannosaurus rex, indicating that early birds kept many features of their dinosaurian ancestors and their skulls functioned much like those of dinosaurs rather than living ...
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