Researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences have developed a robotic mechanism for mushroom picking and trimming and demonstrated its effectiveness for the automated harvesting of button mushrooms. In a new study, the prototype, which is designed to be integrated with a machine vision system, showed that it is capable of both picking and trimming mushrooms growing in a shelf system. The research is consequential, according to lead author Long He, assistant professor of agricultural and biological engineering, because the mushroom industry has been facing labor shortages and rising labor costs. Mechanical or robotic picking can help alleviate those problems. "The mushroom industry in Pennsylvania is producing about two-thirds of the mushrooms ...

Older adults with cognitive impairment are two to three times more likely to fall compared with those without cognitive impairment. What's more, the increasing use of pain medications for chronic pain by older adults adds to their falls risk. Risks associated with falls include minor bruising to more serious hip fractures, broken bones and even head injuries. With falls a leading cause of injury for people aged 65 and older, it is an important public health issue to study in order to allow these adults increased safety and independence as they age. Although elevated risk of falls due to use of pain medication by older adults has been widely studied, less ...

In a study of mice, researchers showed how the act of seeing light may trigger the formation of vision-harming tumors in young children who are born with neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) cancer predisposition syndrome. The research team, funded by the National Institutes of Health, focused on tumors that grow within the optic nerve, which relays visual signals from the eyes to brain. They discovered that the neural activity which underlies these signals can both ignite and feed the tumors. Tumor growth was prevented or slowed by raising young mice in the dark or treating them with an experimental cancer drug during a critical period of cancer development. "Brain cancers recruit the resources they need from the environment ...

Researchers world-wide are focused on clearing the toxic mutant Huntingtin protein that leads to neuronal cell death and systemic dysfunction in Huntington's disease (HD), a devastating, incurable, progressive neurodegenerative genetic disorder. Scientists in the Buck Institute's Ellerby lab have found that the targeting the protein called FK506-binding protein 51 or FKBP51 promotes the clearing of those toxic proteins via autophagy, a natural process whereby cells recycle damaged proteins and mitochondria and use them for nutrition. Publishing in Autophagy , researchers showed that FKBP51 promotes autophagy through a new mechanism that could avoid worrisome side ...

Despite a name straight from a Tarantino movie, natural killer (NK) cells are your allies when it comes to fighting infections and cancer. If T cells are like a team of specialist doctors in an emergency room, NK cells are the paramedics: They arrive first on the scene and perform damage control until reinforcements arrive. Part of our innate immune system, which dispatches these first responders, NK cells are primed from birth to recognize and respond to danger. Learning what fuels NK cells is an active area of research in immunology, with important clinical implications. "There's a lot of interest right now ...

Army scientists working as part of an international consortium have developed and tested an antibody-based therapy to treat Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus (CCHFV), which is carried by ticks and kills up to 60 percent of those infected. Their results are published online today in the journal Cell. Using blood samples donated by disease survivors, the study's authors characterized the human immune response to natural CCHFV infection. They were able to identify several potent neutralizing antibodies that target the viral glycoprotein--a component of the virus that plays a key role ...

AMES, Iowa - An unexpected discovery by an Iowa State University researcher suggests that the first humans may have arrived in North America more than 30,000 years ago - nearly 20,000 years earlier than originally thought. Andrew Somerville, an assistant professor of anthropology in world languages and cultures, says he and his colleagues made the discovery while studying the origins of agriculture in the Tehuacan Valley in Mexico. As part of that work, they wanted to establish a date for the earliest human occupation of the Coxcatlan Cave in the valley, so they obtained radiocarbon dates for several rabbit and deer bones that were collected from the cave in the 1960s as part of the Tehuacan Archaeological-Botanical Project. The dates for the bones suddenly ...

Key takeaways The surgical simulator can realistically simulate multiple trauma scenarios at once, compared with traditional simulators that can only simulate one or a limited number of conditions. Trauma team members who tested the simulator preferred it for its realism, physiologic responses, and feedback. The benefits of this innovative simulator may be able to extend to other surgical procedures and settings. CHICAGO (June 1, 2021): Simulators have long been used for training surgeons and surgical teams, but traditional simulator platforms typically have a built-in limitation: they often simulate one or a limited ...

University of South Florida researchers recently developed a novel approach to mitigating electromigration in nanoscale electronic interconnects that are ubiquitous in state-of-the-art integrated circuits. This was achieved by coating copper metal interconnects with hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), an atomically-thin insulating two-dimensional (2D) material that shares a similar structure as the "wonder material" graphene. Electromigration is the phenomenon in which an electrical current passing through a conductor causes the atomic-scale erosion of the material, eventually resulting in device failure. Conventional semiconductor technology addresses this challenge by using a barrier or liner material, but this takes up precious space on the wafer that could otherwise be used to pack in ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- In 1916 and 1917, a musician and book dealer named Giovanni Concina sold three ornately decorated seventeenth-century songbooks to a library in Venice, Italy. Now, more than 100 years later, a musicologist at Penn State has discovered that the manuscripts are fakes, meticulously crafted to appear old but actually fabricated just prior to their sale to the library. The manuscripts are rare among music forgeries in that the songs are authentic, but the books are counterfeit. Uncovering deception was not what Marica Tacconi, professor of musicology and associate ...

A new study carried out in pig cells suggests previous infection with swine influenza virus (SIV) can protect against the development of porcine respiratory coronavirus (PRCoV) if there is a zero- or three-day interval between infections. The findings, published in the peer-reviewed journal Virulence, may also be relevant to influenza and coronavirus infection in humans. Ju-Yi Peng of the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover and colleagues used air liquid interface cultures of cells taken from pigs' windpipes to investigate the interactions between the two viruses. They found that prior infection by swine influenza virus completely inhibited coronavirus infection when the cells were infected ...

Berkeley -- Global land-use changes -- including forest fragmentation, agricultural expansion and concentrated livestock production -- are creating "hot spots" favorable for bats that carry coronaviruses and where conditions are ripe for the diseases to jump from bats to humans, finds an analysis published this week by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, the Politecnico di Milano (Polytechnic University of Milan) and Massey University of New Zealand. While the exact origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus remain unclear, scientists believe that the disease likely emerged when a virus that infects horseshoe bats was able to jump to humans, either ...

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the most common cause of chronic liver disease worldwide. NAFLD patients are at higher risk of developing Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), which causes severe and chronic liver inflammation, fibrosis and liver damage. A patient with NASH is believed to be at high risk for developing a form of liver cancer called hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Apart from lifestyle interventions, there are currently no approved treatments for NASH. A liver transplant is sometimes the only remedy. While risk factors for NASH (obesity, type-2 diabetes and gene mutations like PNPLA3) and HCC ...

CHAPEL HILL, North Carolina--Researchers have discovered a gene, OTUD7A, that impacts the development of Ewing sarcoma, a bone cancer that occurs mainly in children. They have also identified a compound that shows potential to block OTUD7A protein activity. The finding, by scientists at the University of North Carolina and the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, appeared online June 1, 2021, in Advanced Science. About 250 children and young adults are diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma each year in the U.S. About half of those diagnosed will ultimately succumb to the disease, pointing to the need for better therapies. "Our primary research focus targeted the EWS-FLI1 fusion protein found in about 85 percent of Ewing sarcoma patients," said UNC Lineberger's ...

"SWOG always brings an impressive portfolio of work to the ASCO annual meeting," said SWOG Chair Charles D. Blanke, MD, "and this year I'm particularly excited about the research our investigators are presenting because it includes results that are likely to be practice-changing." Investigators will present 12 abstracts from SWOG-led or co-led studies and 11 abstracts from studies led by other groups within the National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN). Results from S1216 will be presented orally by study chair Neeraj Agarwal, MD, of the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah. S1216 compared androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) combined with TAK-700 to the standard ...

Quantum computing and quantum sensing have the potential to be vastly more powerful than their classical counterparts. Not only could a fully realized quantum computer take just seconds to solve equations that would take a classical computer thousands of years, but it could have incalculable impacts on areas ranging from biomedical imaging to autonomous driving. However, the technology isn't quite there yet. In fact, despite widespread theories about the far-reaching impact of quantum technologies, very few researchers have been able to demonstrate, using the technology available now, that quantum methods have an advantage over their classical counterparts. In a paper published on June 1 in the journal Physical Review X, University of Arizona researchers experimentally ...

Irvine, CA - June 1, 2021 - A new study analyzing the association between an individual's genetics (genotype) and their observable characteristics resulting from the interaction of genetics and the environment (phenotype), contributes new knowledge to the understanding of human complex traits and diseases. The study titled, "An atlas of alternative polyadenylation quantitative trait loci (3?aQTLs) contributing to complex trait and disease heritability," was recently published in Nature Genetics. Led by University of California, Irvine professor of ...

Over 50% of adults surveyed across six different countries report experiencing weight stigma, and those who engage in self-stigma and self-blame for their weight are more likely to avoid healthcare, obtain less frequent checkups, and perceive less respect from doctors, according to two new studies from the UConn Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. These studies, which compared experiences of adults in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the UK, and the US are the first multi-national studies to examine the link between weight stigma and negative ...

Plasmodium vivax malaria is a mosquito-borne illness that causes significant morbidity. However, the household and healthcare provider costs of the disease are unknown. A new study published in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine by Dr Angela Devine at Menzies School of Health Research in Australia, and colleagues estimate the global economic burden of P. vivax for the first time using country-level data. Researchers first estimated household and healthcare provider P. vivax costs, then collated and combined these data with national case estimates for 44 endemic countries in 2017. The resulting global cost estimate was US$359 million. The authors wanted to explore how these cost estimates might change with widespread access to radical cure. Radical ...

Observational studies have suggested that increased vitamin D levels may protect against COVID-19. However, these studies were inconclusive and possibly subject to confounding. A study published in PLOS Medicine by Guillaume Butler-Laporte and Tomoko Nakanishi at McGill University in Quebec, Canada, and colleagues suggests that genetic evidence does not support vitamin D as a protective measure against COVID-19. The ability of vitamin D to protect against severe COVID-19 illness is of great interest to public health experts, but has limited supporting evidence. To assess the relationship between vitamin D levels and COVID-19 susceptibility ...

A nationwide study in Sweden estimates the elevated risk of advanced or fatal prostate cancer among relatives of men with the disease, providing new data that could help refine guidelines for the age at which screening should begin. Mahdi Fallah and Elham Kharazmi of the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg, Germany, and colleagues present these new findings in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine. Clinical guidelines for the age to start prostate cancer screening aim to ensure that the benefits of identifying the disease early ...

The malaria parasite Plasmodium vivax may accumulate in the spleen soon after infection to a greater extent than its better-known relative P. falciparum, according to new research published by John Woodford of the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia and colleagues in the open access journal PLOS Medicine. Managing and treating P. vivax and P. falciparum infections calls for investigation of their different pathways of infection, and our limited understanding of disease pathology has generally relied on indirect and imprecise approaches. Woodford and colleagues studied 7 healthy participants who were infected under controlled conditions with either P. vivax or P. falciparum. They underwent a Positron Emission Tomography (PET) ...

Many organisms in need of conservation are still unknown or lumped in with similar species, which potentially interferes with conservation efforts. In a new study published June 1 in the Open Access journal PLOS Biology, Jane Melville of Museums Victoria, and her colleagues present a new "return-on-investment" approach to best direct efforts to identify new species before they are lost. Humans have had a profoundly destructive impact on global biodiversity. However, this loss of biodiversity may be even greater than scientists have realized, due to the unknown number of undocumented species. Before a species and its habitat can be preserved, though, it must first ...

Stigma and high care needs can present barriers to the provision of high-quality primary care for people with opioid use disorder (OUD) and those prescribed opioids for chronic pain. A study published in PLOS Medicine by Tara Gomes at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael's Hospital, Toronto, Canada and colleagues suggests that people treated for an opioid use disorder were less likely to find a new primary care provider (PCP) within one year of termination of enrolment with the previous physician. People with substance use disorders often have complex medical needs, requiring ...

A new analysis of adults aged 80 years and older shows that a healthier lifestyle is associated with a lower risk of cognitive impairment, and that this link does not depend on whether a person carries a particular form of the gene APOE. Xurui Jin of Duke Kunshan University in Jiangsu, China, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine. The APOE gene comes in several different forms, and people with a form known as APOE ε4 have an increased risk of cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease. Previous research has also linked cognitive function to lifestyle factors, such as smoking, ...