Scientists have developed the first cells that can construct artificial polymers from building blocks that are not found in nature, by following instructions the researchers encoded in their genes. The study, led by scientists from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology, in Cambridge, UK, also found the synthetic genome made the bacteria entirely resistant to infection by viruses. The scientists say their research could lead to the development of new polymers - large molecules made of many repeating units, such as proteins, plastics, and many drugs including antibiotics - and make it easier to ...

Hydrogels are polymer materials made mostly from water. They can be used in a wide range of medical and other applications. However, previous incarnations of the materials suffered from repeated mechanical stress and would easily become deformed. A novel crystal that can reversibly form and deform, allows hydrogels to rapidly recover from mechanical stress. This opens up the use of such biocompatible materials in the field of artificial joints and ligaments. Many of us suffer the occasional sports injury or experience some kind of pain relating to joints and ligaments at some point in our lives. ...

Researchers from University of Toronto Engineering have developed an improved electrochemical system that raises the value of captured CO2 by converting more of it into valuable products than ever before. The International Energy Agency recently cited carbon capture and storage as one of the strategies that can help keep global emissions low enough to limit global warming to 1.5 C by 2050. But captured carbon currently has little economic value, reducing the incentive for companies to invest in this technology. A University of Toronto Engineering team led by Professor Ted Sargent is addressing this challenge by designing advanced electrolyzers that use electricity to convert captured CO2 into the petrochemical building blocks of common everyday materials, ...

An engineering researcher from the University of Sydney, in collaboration with a team at the University of Toronto, has developed an electrochemical system that coverts a greater amount of CO2 into valuable products. The International Energy Agency recently cited carbon capture and storage as a strategy that can help keep global emissions low enough to limit global warming to 1.5°C by 2050. However, captured carbon currently has little economic value, reducing the incentive for companies to invest in this technology. The team of researchers has addressed this challenge by designing advanced electrolysers - machines using electricity to convert captured CO2, plus water, into the building blocks of common everyday materials, ...

Astronomers have measured very-high-energy gamma rays coming from the aftermath of a gamma ray burst - an enormously energetic explosion of a star in another galaxy. The results shine light on these immensely powerful but little-understood cosmic events, and challenge standard models of how gamma ray bursts radiate light during their afterglow phases. As a dying massive star enters its final death throes, its core begins to collapse, and then explodes as a supernova. Some types of supernovae generate jets of particles moving at close to the speed of light; if the jet is pointed directly towards Earth it can be observed as a burst of gamma ray radiation that lasts several seconds. These gamma ray bursts are sometimes ...

The widespread non-pharmaceutical interventions implemented to mitigate the transmission of COVID-19 have led to drastic reductions in the annual circulation patterns of other endemic respiratory viruses, including influenza and the common cold. How this will affect future transmission patterns of these pathogens remains unknown. In a Perspective, Gabriela Gomez and colleagues discuss what could be expected concerning the epidemiology of common respiratory viruses once the COVID-19 pandemic subsides and argue that expanded genomic and clinical surveillance is needed to best understand the spread of respiratory viruses in a post-COVID-19 world. "Currently, the emergency response to COVID-19 is a global priority, but preparation for future threats ...

Nineteen million years ago, sharks nearly disappeared from Earth's oceans, according to a new study, which provides evidence for a previously unknown mass ocean extinction event. Sharks as a species never recovered from this, the study's authors say; their diversity today represents only a fraction of what it once was, the data suggest. Much of what is known about ancient ocean ecosystems is derived from rock and fossil records, which are generally limited to shallow-water deposits and provide only a small glimpse into the ocean-wide history of marine ...

By engineering the genetic code of a synthetic strain of E. coli to include several nonstandard amino acids, researchers rendered the synthetic bacterium virtually invincible to viral infection. Their work is some of the first to design proteins using not one but multiple non-canonical amino acids. "The ability to generate designer proteins using multiple non-natural building blocks will unlock countless applications, from the development of new classes of biotherapeutics to biomaterials with innovative properties," write Delila Jewel and Abhishek Chatterjee in a related Perspective. In nature, biological systems use 64 codons - a unique triplet of nucleotides - to encode ...

Small-scale mixed-use agriculture that avoids synthetic fertilizers in favor of manure could eliminate agricultural greenhouse gas emissions if established across the United States' 100 million hectares of lush high quality cropland, according to a study by Gidon Eshel, publishing 3rd June 2021 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology. The minor catch: beef consumption would need to decrease, but by only 20%. Beef is the most resource-intensive food item that we regularly put into our shopping carts -- for every gram of protein, beef uses 7 times more cropland and 20 times as much water and emits 11 times the greenhouse gases. At the same time, cattle manure is a valuable source of natural fertilizer. Nitrogen-sparing agriculture avoids external inputs of nitrogen, such as synthetic ...

A collection of genetic variants influences the expression of obesity-associated genes in both the brain and fat tissue, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Chicago. The research team found that changes in the expression of the obesity-associated genes correlated with both metabolic and behavioral changes, suggesting that these variants produce combinatorial effects that increase the risk of obesity. The results, which scientists hope will lead to better understanding of the mechanisms that make some people more susceptible to obesity, were published June 4 in END ...

The immune system is the brain's best frenemy. It protects the brain from infection and helps injured tissues heal, but it also causes autoimmune diseases and creates inflammation that drives neurodegeneration. Two new studies in mice suggest that the double-edged nature of the relationship between the immune system and the brain may come down to the origins of the immune cells that patrol the meninges, the tissues that surround the brain and spinal cord. In complementary studies published June 3 in the journal Science, two teams of researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis unexpectedly found that many of the immune cells in the meninges come from bone marrow in the skull and migrate to the brain through special channels without passing through ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. - A study of two methods for reconstructing ancient temperatures has given climate researchers a better understanding of just how cold it was in Antarctica during the last ice age around 20,000 years ago. Antarctica, the coldest place on Earth today, was even colder during the last ice age. For decades, the leading science suggested ice age temperatures in Antarctica were on average about 9 degrees Celsius cooler than at present. An international team of scientists, led by Oregon State University's Christo Buizert, has found that while parts of Antarctica were as cold as 10 degrees below current temperatures, temperatures over central East Antarctica were only 4 to 5 degrees ...

The experimental drug TEMPOL may be a promising oral antiviral treatment for COVID-19, suggests a study of cell cultures by researchers at the National Institutes of Health. TEMPOL can limit SARS-CoV-2 infection by impairing the activity of a viral enzyme called RNA replicase. The work was led by researchers at NIH's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). The study appears in Science. "We urgently need additional effective, accessible treatments for COVID-19," said Diana W. Bianchi, M.D., NICHD Director. "An oral drug that prevents SARS-CoV-2 from replicating would be an important tool for reducing the severity of the disease." The ...

A new method to monitor epidemics like COVID-19 gives an accurate real-time estimate of the growth rate of an epidemic by carefully evaluating the relationship between the amount of viruses in infected people's bodies, called the viral load, and how fast the number of cases is increasing or decreasing. "This new method, which effectively links what we know about how the virus grows within the body to the dynamics of how the virus spreads across a population, provides a brand new metric that public health officials, policy makers, and epidemiologists will be able to use to get up-to-date real-time information on the epidemic," said Michael Mina, assistant professor of epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health ...

HAMILTON, ON (June 3, 2021) - A novel longitudinal study on heavy drinking in young adults and the psychological impacts of COVID-19 has revealed some unexpected findings that challenge preconceived notions regarding pandemic-related alcohol use. In a sample of nearly 500 young adults ranging in age from 18 to 25, researchers saw a reduction in problematic drinking and alcohol consequences during the initial phase of the pandemic for both men and women. This is in contrast to many anecdotal reports of increased drinking and increased household spending on alcohol during that time period. More startling, however, were the additional findings that showed increased rates of depression and anxiety symptoms among young women - increases that ...

PORTLAND, OR - Patients with high-risk melanoma who had a course of pembrolizumab after their surgery had a longer time before their disease recurred than patients who got either ipilimumab or high-dose interferon after surgery. These findings of a large SWOG Cancer Research Network clinical trial, S1404, will be presented at the ASCO annual meeting June 6, 2021. Researchers also measured overall survival and found no statistically significant difference in overall survival rates between the two groups of patients three and one-half years after the last patient enrolled to the trial. They did find, however, that patients taking pembrolizumab had fewer serious side effects than those treated with either high-dose interferon or ipilimumab. The S1404 trial ...

One of the world's most endangered whale species could have added protection from threats posed by human marine activity, through technology developed by the University of East Anglia (UEA). In partnership with the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) and the marine survey company Gardline Geosurvey Limited, UEA researchers have developed machine learning techniques that can be used to detect the presence of North Atlantic right whales by listening for the sounds they make underwater. Detecting the animals' presence before they reach close proximity ...

When saber-toothed tigers, woolly mammoths and giant sloths roamed North America during the last Ice Age about 18,000 to 80,000 years ago, the Gulf Coast's climate was only slightly cooler, more similar to regions to the north like Missouri and North Carolina's climate today. As sea level dropped and exposed more land on the continental shelf, bald cypress trees became established in swamps in what is now the northern Gulf of Mexico. An event occurred and suddenly killed and buried the bald cypress forests along the Gulf Coast. The buried swamp trees were preserved by sediment for thousands of years. About 18,000 years ago, sea level rose. As the ocean waters moved inland, the buried trees were preserved in their ...

HOUSTON - (June 3, 2021) - Postpartum women in bad romantic relationships are not only more likely to suffer symptoms of depression, they are also at greater long-term risk of illness or death, according to new research from Rice University, Ohio State University and the University of California, Irvine. "Longitudinal changes in HRV across pregnancy and postpartum: Effect of negative partner relationship qualities" will appear in the July 2021 edition of Psychoneuroendocrinology. The researchers examined how relationships and partner behavior are linked to depression and heart rate variability (HRV) in women between the third trimester of pregnancy and one year postpartum. "The quality ...

While early detection of breast cancer is critical, early prediction of how well the neoadjuvant chemotherapy treatment before surgery is working also may provide a window of opportunity when treatment could be altered and have a big impact on the patient's quality of life. An interdisciplinary team of researchers at Washington University in St. Louis has found that combining data from tumor biomarkers, ultrasound, and ultrasound-guided diffuse optical tomography (DOT) after a patient's first cycle of pre-surgical neoadjuvant chemotherapy provided a highly accurate prediction of how the tumor was responding to the treatment. The results from a clinical trial at Washington University School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish ...

RESEARCHERS at the University of Huddersfield have warned there is an urgent need for the country's mental health interventions to create strategies optimising the use of antidepressants after conducting a study which has highlighted an alarming rise in relation to usage and costs. The open-access study, published by the international DARU Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, is entitled 'Surging trends in prescriptions and costs of antidepressants in England amid COVID-19' and has investigated the trends in prescriptions and costs of various antidepressants in England during the COVID-19 pandemic. The researchers discovered that the total number of antidepressant prescriptions drugs dispensed during ...

When bringing technologies into the workplace, it pays to be realistic. Often, for instance, bringing new digital technology into an organization does not radically improve a firm's operations. Despite high-level planning, a more frequent result is the messy process of frontline employees figuring out how they can get tech tools to help them to some degree. That task can easily fall on overburdened workers who have to grapple with getting things done, but don't always have much voice in an organization. So isn't there a way to think systematically about implementing digital technology in the workplace? MIT Professor Kate Kellogg thinks there is, and calls it "experimentalist governance of digital technology": Let different parts of an organization experiment with the technology -- ...

A new study by ecologist André de Roos* shows that differences between juveniles and adults of the same species are crucial for the stability of complex ecological communities. The research, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, represents a major advance in ecological modeling at a time when biodiversity is declining and species around the world are rapidly going extinct. Up to now, ecological models have focused exclusively on the interactions between species, ignoring the variations within them. The dragonflies, frogs, trout, and phytoplankton in a freshwater pond, for example, would be represented as nodes in a network, connected by edges that ...

LAWRENCE -- A strange thing sometimes happens when we listen to a spoken phrase again and again: It begins to sound like a song. This phenomenon, called the "speech-to-song illusion," can offer a window into how the mind operates and give insight into conditions that affect people's ability to communicate, like aphasia and aging people's decreased ability to recall words. Now, researchers from the University of Kansas have published a study in PLOS ONE examining if the speech-to-song illusion happens in adults who are 55 or older as powerfully as it does with younger ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) - An international team of researchers, led by END ...