A study of data from about 500,000 people in the UK Biobank has uncovered small but statistically significant associations between signs of systemic inflammation and later risk of dementia. Dr. Krisztina Mekli of The University of Manchester, UK, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on July 19, 2023. Millions of people around the world have Alzheimer’s disease or other types of dementia, and researchers are working to tease out the complex mechanisms behind these conditions. Prior research has suggested that inflammation—activation of the body’s innate immune system—may ...

Women working as STEM instructors are more likely than men in the same profession to disclose to their undergraduate students identities which could carry stigma, such as depression or growing up in a low-income household. In the new study, published July 19, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, Carly Busch of Arizona State University, USA, and colleagues suggest that these decisions to disclose may be in order to act as role models for students. Concealable stigmatized identities (CSIs) are identities that ...

Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0283134 Article Title: Gradient-mixing LEGO robots for purifying DNA origami nanostructures of multiple components by rate-zonal centrifugation Author Countries: USA Funding: The research in Hariadi lab was supported by the National Institutes of Health Director’s New Innovator Award (1DP2AI144247), National Science Foundation SemiSynBio II (2027215), and Arizona Biomedical Research Consortium (ADHS17-00007401). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. END ...

Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0287719 Article Title: A double-pointed wooden throwing stick from Schöningen, Germany: Results and new insights from a multianalytical study Author Countries: UK, Germany Funding: T.T. and this project are funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – project number 447423357. https://www.dfg.de/. The project is further funded by the Lower Saxony Ministry for Science and Culture, with funds from the Future Lower Saxony Programme of the Volkswagen Foundation – project ...

Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0285372 Article Title: Ear health and quality of life in pet rabbits of differing ear conformations: A UK survey of owner-reported signalment risk factors and effects on rabbit welfare and behaviour Author Countries: UK Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. M.R.D.K included some of this questionnaire in part-fulfilment of her Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine at Royal Veterinary College. ...

Philadelphia, July 19, 2023—Why do nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) exacerbate gastrointestinal infections by Clostridioides difficile, the leading cause of antibiotic-associated diarrhea worldwide? In a new paperpublished in Science Advances, researchers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have begun to answer that question, showing that NSAIDs disrupt the mitochondria of cells lining the colon, sensitizing them to damage by pathogenic toxins.  Clostridioides ...

A 300,000-year-old hunting weapon has shone a new light on early humans as woodworking masters, according to a new study. State-of-the-art analysis of a double-pointed wooden throwing stick, found in Schöningen in Germany three decades ago, shows it was scraped, seasoned and sanded before being used to kill animals. The research indicates early humans’ woodworking techniques were more developed and sophisticated than previously understood. The findings, published today (Wednesday, 19 July) in PLOS ONE, also suggest the ...

·  Contacts between lysosomes and mitochondria are broken due to Parkinson’s mutation ·  Lysosomes cannot ‘feed’ mitochondria with essential metabolites  CHICAGO --- Northwestern Medicine scientists have uncovered a new mechanism by which mutations in a gene parkin contribute to familial forms of Parkinson's disease. The discovery opens a new avenue for Parkinson’s therapeutics, scientists report in a new study.  The Northwestern scientists discovered that mutations in parkin result in a breakdown ...

A research group in Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute is creating the next generation of explorers — robots. The Autonomous Exploration Research Team has developed a suite of robotic systems and planners enabling robots to explore more quickly, probe the darkest corners of unknown environments, and create more accurate and detailed maps. The systems allow robots to do all this autonomously, finding their way and creating a map without human intervention. "You can set it in any environment, like a department store or a residential building after a disaster, and off it goes," ...

What determines whether we become overweight? Aside from lifestyle, predisposition plays a role, but genes cannot fully explain the inherited propensity to accumulate excess weight. A new study by Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin in Science Translational Medicine* shows that a kind of formatting of the DNA code in one gene that is associated with satiety is implicated in a slightly elevated risk of excess body weight – at least in women. This “epigenetic marking” is established early on during the embryonic stage. People who are overweight, especially those who ...

“Don’t eat me!” That’s how one might translate the signal that the cancer cells in a glioblastoma send to the macrophages (white blood cells specialized in removing dead and dying cellular matter) in the brain. Immunotherapy attempts to enable these cells to eradicate the abnormal cells, but so far, it has met with little success when it comes to glioblastomas. Researchers led by Professor Gregor Hutter from the Department of Biomedicine at the University and University Hospital Basel have recently used patient data, experiments with mice, and samples from human tumors to study one of these “don’t eat me!” signals and its inhibitory ...

The research, funded by the British Heart Foundation and published in the journal Circulation, opens the prospect of treating the condition at the earliest stages. Being able to detect HCM earlier than ever before will also assist trials investigating gene therapies and drug treatments aimed at stopping the disease developing in those at risk. HCM is an inherited condition that affects around 1 in 500 people in the UK. It causes the muscular walls of the heart to become thicker than normal, affecting how well the heart can pump blood around the body. It is ...

When it comes to disaster response and recovery operations, it is crucial that workers are prepared before there is an emergency, according to Rutgers researchers. Their study, published in New Solutions: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy, outlines the importance of the Worker Training Program to United States emergency and disaster-response infrastructure. "It is essential to identify and deliver core disaster training to responders and workers on a routine basis prior to an [emergency] event," said Mitchel Rosen, an associate professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health. “The failure ...

HOUSTON ― The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Research Highlights showcases the latest breakthroughs in cancer care, research and prevention. These advances are made possible through seamless collaboration between MD Anderson’s world-leading clinicians and scientists, bringing discoveries from the lab to the clinic and back. Recent developments include promising results from combining immunotherapy with radiation for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), a novel combination therapy for secondary and treatment-resistant ...

A good battery needs two things: high energy density to power devices, and stability, so it can be safely and reliably recharged thousands of times. For the past three decades, lithium-ion batteries have reigned supreme — proving their performance in smartphones, laptops, and electric vehicles. But battery researchers have begun to approach the limits of lithium-ion. As next-generation long-range vehicles and electric aircraft start to arrive on the market, the search for safer, cheaper, and more powerful ...

The longest nerve in the human body starts in the brain and meanders its way down the neck and into the chest, where it splits into separate branches, winding its twisting tendrils to touch each internal organ. Known as the “information superhighway” and aptly named from the Latin word meaning “wanders,” the vagus nerve is a bundle of fibers responsible for the parasympathetic nervous system: digestion, heart rate, breathing.  Sending electrical impulses down this tenth cranial nerve has proven effective in treating conditions like depression and epilepsy, ...

The formation of the country’s first emergency department for the over 80s led to a significant decrease in time spent in A&E – according to research from the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital (NNUH) and University of East Anglia (UEA). The first Older People’s Emergency Department in England was opened at NNUH in December 2017 to bring specialists in older people’s medicine to the front doors of the hospital and provide earlier assessment and treatment for patients. A new study evaluates the outcomes for patients who received treatment in the main emergency department at NNUH and a similar ...

Have you ever wondered why some people never became sick from COVID-19? A study published today in Nature shows that common genetic variation among people is responsible for mediating SARS-CoV-2 asymptomatic infection. The results indicate that individuals having this variant never feel sick once infected. This exciting discovery was a result of a U.S.-Australia collaborative work led by Danillo Augusto, Ph.D., assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte; Jill Hollenbach, Ph.D., professor ...

Nearly a century ago, physicists Max Born and J. Robert Oppenheimer developed an assumption regarding how quantum mechanics plays out in molecules, which are comprised of intricate systems of nuclei and electrons. The Born-Oppenheimer approximation assumes that the motion of nuclei and electrons in a molecule are independent of each other and can be treated separately. This model works the vast majority of the time, but scientists are testing its limits. Recently, a team of scientists demonstrated the breakdown ...

Women with Lyme disease take longer to get diagnosed, have more severe symptoms and experience higher rates of disability when compared to men. They may also be more likely to develop persistent Lyme disease. Those are among the findings of a recent study that analyzed information from the MyLymeData patient registry. The results have been published in the International Journal of General Medicine. The present study, which was conducted by LymeDisease.org, a research and advocacy organization, assessed sex-based differences in Lyme disease patients who remained ill for six months or more after antibiotic treatment. In ...

Ranches across the Show-Me State manage approximately two million cattle — a significant number of which are Angus, a top-tier breed that has unrivaled success in the commercial beef market. In a new study, University of Missouri researcher Jared Decker and Thompson Research Farm tested a group of commercial Angus cows using a commercial genomic prediction tool called Zoetis GeneMax Advantage to investigate the ability of the test to predict their calves’ performance and profitability. This project demonstrates ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Immune system changes in the pregnant body that protect the fetus appear to extend to the brain, where a decrease in immune cells late in gestation may factor into the onset of maternal behavior, new research in rats suggests. In adult female rats that had never given birth – which typically don’t like being around babies – depletion of these cells sped up their care for rat newborns that were placed in their cage. The loss of these cells, called microglia, and the related uptick in motherly attentiveness were also associated with changes to neuron activity in several regions of the rat brain, suggesting ...

Early in pregnancy, something strange happens in the uterus: Cells from the fetal side of the developing placenta invade the uterine endometrium and work with the mother’s immune system to remodel the arteries.   “When I first read about it, I thought, ‘This is so bizarre,’” said Stanford Medicine pathologist Michael Angelo, MD, PhD.   Humans’ immune systems usually attack unfamiliar cells, which would theoretically pose a problem for a developing pregnancy. But on the mother’s side of the growing placenta, the arteries incorporate cells that genetically match the embryo, just one of ...

When you think about your ideal neighborhood, perhaps you think of tree-lined streets or a close-knit community of people who help each other. You probably don’t think about your digestive system. But maybe you should. According to a team of scientists led by researchers at Stanford Medicine, there are indeed “neighborhoods” of different cell types cooperating to digest your food and protect you from infection, among other things — and a new, ultra-high-resolution map of these neighborhoods proves your intestine is both functionally impressive and visually striking. Just like human neighborhoods, ...

The incidences of teen suicidality including self-harm, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts increased nationally between 2016 and 2021; were at seasonal high peaks in April and October; and were at their lowest when schools were shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to research at UTHealth Houston.  The study was published this month in JAMA Network Open. It was authored by Youngran Kim, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Management, Policy, and Community Health at UTHealth Houston School of Public Health; Scott D. Lane, PhD, professor and vice chair for research in the Louis A. Faillace, MD, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral ...