One-quarter of people who take the drug methotrexate for common immune system disorders -- from rheumatoid arthritis to multiple sclerosis -- mount a weaker immune response to a COVID-19 vaccine, a new study shows. Published (online May 25) recently in Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, the study addressed disorders that result when the immune system, meant to fight disease and drive healing, is triggered abnormally. This in turn causes inflammation, the pain and swelling that come as immune cells rush into damaged or infected tissue, but often in the wrong amount or context. Called immune-mediated inflammatory disorders, they are typically treated ...

The pollution of the world's oceans with plastic waste is one of the major environmental problems of our time. However, very little is known about how much plastic is distributed globally in the ocean. Models based on ocean currents have so far suggested that the plastic mainly collects in large ocean gyres. Now, researchers at the University of Bern have calculated the distribution of plastic waste on a global scale while taking into account the fact that plastic can get beached. In their study, which has just been published in the "Environmental Research Letters" scientific journal, ...

Zebrafish exposed to the leading cannabinoids found in cannabis in the earliest stages of development suffer a significant drop in neural activity later in life, according to a University of Alberta study that has implications for prenatal development in humans. Richard Kanyo, the lead author on the study and post-doctoral fellow in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry, said despite the popular narrative that the health benefits of cannabis are many, it turns out there is a surprisingly large knowledge gap. "Once the legalization happened, people got really excited about it and there's a lot of bias in the media about positive ...

The number of specialty behavioral health establishments, their workforce and their wages have increased steadily between 2011 and 2019, according to a new study by Indiana University and University of Michigan researchers. The largest increases were found in the number of outpatient establishments and the size of their workforce, as well as an increase in the average wage at residential health establishments. Researchers say while these increases are important in closing the gaps in needed treatment, more work needs to be done to increase behavioral health workforce deficits, especially in areas with an elevated drug overdose mortality rate. At ...

By Karina Toledo  |  Agência FAPESP - The novel coronavirus is transmitted mainly via inhalation of saliva droplets or respiratory secretions suspended in air, so that face covering and social distancing are the most effective ways to prevent COVID-19 until enough vaccines are available for all. In Brazil, fabric masks are among the most widely used because they are cheap, reusable and available in several colors or designs. However, this type of face covering's capacity to filter aerosol particles of a size equivalent to the novel coronavirus can vary between 15% and 70%, according to a study conducted in Brazil by the University of São Paulo (USP). The study was supported by FAPESP, and the principal investigator was Paulo Artaxo, a professor in the university's ...

(10 a.m. EDT, June 2, 2021--Denver) - New research published in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology (JTO) suggests the method used to calculate how obesity is measured may affect whether it is considered a risk factor for lung cancer. The JTO is an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer. Although the association between measures of obesity and both cancer incidence and outcome are clear in some solid tumor types such as breast, esophageal, and colon cancer, the relationship between obesity and lung cancer is more nuanced. Now, a group of researchers led by Sai Yendamuri, M,D, from Rosewell Comprehensive ...

Fluorinated compounds are an important group of compounds that are widely used in pharmaceuticals, agricultural chemicals, functional resins, and organic electronic materials. In particular, perfluorinated compounds with multiple carbon-fluorine bonds are attracting attention because of their high thermal and chemical stability and various excellent properties such as water and oil repellency and chemical resistance. "C-F bonds are extremely strong; hence, their transformation under mild conditions is difficult, and the selective activation of a specific C-F bond from among multiple C-F bonds in perfluorinated compounds has not been achieved," explains Prof. Makoto Yasuda, corresponding author of the study. The research team led by Prof. Makoto Yasuda has discovered ...

What makes cheetah the fastest land mammal? Why aren't other animals, such as horses, as fast? While we haven't yet figured out why, we have some idea about how--cheetahs, as it turns out, make use of a "galloping" gait at their fastest speeds, involving two different types of "flight": one with the forelimbs and hind limbs beneath their body following a forelimb liftoff, called "gathered flight," while another with the forelimbs and hind limbs stretched out after a hind limb liftoff, called "extended flight" (see Figure 1). Of these, the extended flight is what enables cheetahs to accelerate to high ...

Developing vaccines against bacteria is in many cases much more difficult than vaccines against viruses. Like virtually all pathogens, bacteria are able to sidestep a vaccine's effectiveness by modifying their genes. For many pathogens, such genetic adaptations under selective pressure from vaccination will cause their virulence or fitness to decrease. This lets the pathogens escape the effects of vaccination, but at the price of becoming less transmissible or causing less damage. Some pathogens, however, including many bacteria, are extremely good at changing in ways that allow them to escape the effects of vaccination while remaining highly ...

The white-tailed sea eagle is known for reacting sensitively to human disturbances. Forestry and agricultural activities are therefore restricted in the immediate vicinity of the nests. However, these seasonal protection periods are too short in the German federal States of Brandenburg (until August 31) and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (until July 31), as a new scientific analysis by a team of scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) suggests. Using detailed movement data of 24 juvenile white-tailed sea eagles with GPS transmitters, they were able to track when they fledge and when they leave the parental territory: on average, a good 10 and ...

Materials have a variety of properties that can be used to solve computational problems, according to studies in substrate-based computing. BZ computers, slime mould computers, plant computers, and collision-based liquid marbles computers are just a few examples of prototypes produced for future and emergent computing devices. Modelling the computational processes that exist in such systems, however, is a difficult task in general, and determining which part of the embodied system is doing the computation is still somewhat ill-defined. Claiming that fungi are the most intelligent living organisms in the world sounds like an exaggeration. However, a recent study by Mohammad Mahdi Dehshibi, a UOC researcher who is contributing to a growing body of knowledge on the use of fungal materials, ...

Eating at least two serves of fruit daily has been linked with 36 percent lower odds of developing type 2 diabetes, a new Edith Cowan University (ECU) study has found. The study, published today in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, revealed that people who ate at least two serves of fruit per day had higher measures of insulin sensitivity than those who ate less than half a serve. Type 2 diabetes is a growing public health concern with an estimated 451 million people worldwide living with the condition. A further 374 million people are at increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes. The study's lead author, Dr Nicola ...

Researchers at Linköping University in Sweden have developed an app to help women achieve a healthy weight gain and lifestyle during a pregnancy. The results from an evaluation of the app have now been published in two scientific articles. Using the app contributed to a better diet. Pregnant women with overweight or obesity who received the app also gained less weight during pregnancy. "Pregnancy is a phase in life when many people try to do what is best for themselves and their baby. We think it's important to be able to offer a tool that has ...

Good acoustics in the workspace improve work efficiency and productivity, which is one of the reasons why acoustic materials matter. The acoustic insulation market is already expected to hit 15 billion USD by 2022 as construction firms and industry pay more attention to sound environments. Researchers at Aalto University, in collaboration with Finnish acoustics company Lumir, have now studied how these common elements around us could become more eco-friendly, with the help of cellulose fibres. 'Models for acoustic absorption are based on tests done with synthetic fibres, and ...

An international research team determined that ancestors of modern domestic horses and the Przewalski horse moved from the territory of Eurasia (Russian Urals, Siberia, Chukotka, and eastern China) to North America (Yukon, Alaska, continental USA) from one continent on another at least twice. It happened during the Late Pleistocene (2.5 million years ago - 11.7 thousand years ago). The analysis results are published in the journal. The findings and description of horse genomes are published in the journal Molecular Ecology. "We found out that the Beringian Land Bridge, or the area known as Beringia, influenced genetic ...

All the cells of an organism share the same DNA sequence, but their functions, shapes or even lifespans vary greatly. This happens because each cell "reads" different chapters of the genome, thus producing alternative sets of proteins and embarking on different paths. Epigenetic regulation--DNA methylation is one of the most common mechanisms--is responsible for the activation or inactivation of a given gene in a specific cell, defining a secondary cell-specific genetic code. Researchers led by Dr. Modesto Orozco, head of the Molecular Modelling and Bioinformatics lab at IRB Barcelona, have described how methylation has a protein-independent regulatory role by increasing the stiffness of DNA, which affects the 3D structure ...

Autistic people's ability to accurately identify facial expressions is affected by the speed at which the expression is produced and its intensity, according to new research at the University of Birmingham. In particular, autistic people tend to be less able to accurately identify anger from facial expressions produced at a normal 'real world' speed. The researchers also found that for people with a related disorder, alexithymia, all expressions appeared more intensely emotional. The question of how people with autism recognise and relate to emotional expression has been debated by scientists for more than three decades and it's only in the past 10 years ...

The gut and the brain communicate with each other in order to adapt satiety and blood sugar levels during food consumption. The vagus nerve is an important communicator between these two organs. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Metabolism Research in Cologne, the Cluster of Excellence for Ageing Research CECAD at the University of Cologne and the University Hospital Cologne now took a closer look at the functions of the different nerve cells in the control centre of the vagus nerve, and discovered something very surprising: although the nerve cells are located in the same control center, they innervate different regions of the gut and also differentially control satiety and blood sugar levels. This discovery could play an important role in the development of future ...

In the journal Nature Communications, an interdisciplinary team from the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces presents for the first time a laser-driven technology that enables them to create nanoparticles such as copper, cobalt and nickel oxides. At the usual printing speed, photoelectrodes are produced in this way, for example, for a wide range of applications such as the generation of green hydrogen. Previous methods produce such nanomaterials only with high energy input in classical reaction vessels and in many hours. With the laser-driven technology developed at the institute, the scientists can deposit small amounts of material on a surface and simultaneously perform chemical synthesis in a very short time using high temperatures from the laser. 'When I discovered ...

A facial expression or the sound of a voice can say a lot about a person's emotional state; and how much they reveal depends on the intensity of the feeling. But is it really true that the stronger an emotion, the more intelligible it is? An international research team comprised of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, New York University, and the Max Planck NYU Center for Language, Music, and Emotion (CLaME) has now discovered a paradoxical relationship between the intensity of emotional expressions and how they are perceived. Emotions ...

Researchers from Bochum and Osnabrück have gained new insights into the structure of the Ras protein, which acts as a molecular switch for cell growth and is involved in the development of cancer. With the help of fluorescence markings, they have demonstrated that the protein is deposited in a pair at the cell membrane, and with the very structure that they predicted in theory back in 2012. The team from the Bochum Center for Protein Diagnostics (PRODI) hopes that these findings will open up a new approach for the development of cancer medications. The researchers from Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) and Osnabrück University ...

Prenuptial agreements, or "prenups," can be difficult to talk about. But a recent study offers insights into how people can discuss this often taboo subject. One approach? Use metaphors. "Many people view prenups as being negative, and argue that they indicate a lack of faith in the marriage from the outset," says Lynsey Romo, corresponding author of the study and an associate professor of communication at North Carolina State University. "By the same token, we know from other research that open communication about financial issues contributes to successful relationships. "And yet there is virtually no academic research on prenups. So how do people talk about prenups? How do they make sense of them? That's what we wanted ...

SAN ANTONIO (June 2, 2021) -- Scientists from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio have discovered a mechanism by which SARS-CoV-2 exploits changes in metal ion concentrations to disguise itself in the body. Varying concentrations of metal ions -- positively charged atoms such as magnesium, manganese and calcium -- are observed in hospitalized COVID-19 patients. "This is a newly described metal-dependent mechanism by which these ions help the virus to evade immune surveillance," said END ...

RUDN University chemists proposed a new way to synthesize catalysts for the conversion of ethyl alcohol. The obtained materials are promising catalysts for the selective conversion of ethanol, which is an important stage in the development of an alternative technology for obtaining valuable chemical synthesis products based on plant raw materials. The results of the study are published in Catalysis Today. Ethanol fuel is ethyl alcohol, it is produced from plant material by fermentation of industrial or agricultural waste biomass. It is used as a more environmentally ...

In collaborative international effort, laser physicists at LMU have built the first hybrid plasma accelerator. Particle accelerators have made crucial contributions to some of the most spectacular scientific discoveries of modern times, and greatly augmented our knowledge of the structure of matter. Now a team of laser physicists led by Prof. Stefan Karsch at the Ludwig-Maximilian University (LMU) in Munich and the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics, in cooperation with scientists based at the Helmholtz Centre in Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), the Laboratoire d'Optique Appliquée in Paris (LOA), Strathclyde University in Glasgow and the DESY Electron Synchrotron in Hamburg, have now achieved a significant ...