Tokyo, Japan – Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have identified key factors in the mechanism behind DNA repair in our bodies. For the first time, they showed that the “proofreading” portion of the DNA replicating enzyme polymerase epsilon ensured safe termination of replication at damaged portions of the DNA strand, ultimately saving DNA from severe damage. This new knowledge arms scientists with ways to make anti-cancer drugs more effective, and new diagnostic methods. Our DNA is under attack. Every day, around 55,000 single-strand breaks (SSBs) appear in the strands making up DNA helices ...

MSU has a satellite uplink/LTN TV studio and Comrex line for radio interviews upon request.  There is a general understanding that pets have a positive impact on one’s well-being. A new study by Michigan State University found that although pet owners reported pets improving their lives, there was not a reliable association between pet ownership and well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic.  The study, published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, assessed 767 people over three times in May 2020. The researchers took a mixed-method ...

MSU has a satellite uplink/LTN TV studio and Comrex line for radio interviews upon request. A new study, conducted in collaboration between researchers at Michigan State University and Central Michigan University, found that public spending on social safety net programs and on education spending each independently impact high school graduation rates, which are a key predictor of health and well-being later in life. The study, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, tested whether public financing for education and social safety net programs that aim to help ...

MSU has a satellite uplink/LTN TV studio and Comrex line for radio interviews upon request.  Video and Images  Michigan State University researchers have solved the mystery of a poorly understood sperm structure called the cytoplasmic droplet, or CD. The CD is an expanded cytoplasm — watery, gel-like cell contents enclosed by cell membrane — found close to the head, at the neck of the sperm, in all mammals, including humans. This new genetic model is the first of its kind.  Despite ...

With Amazon aiming to make 10,000 deliveries with drones in Europe this year and Walmart planning to expand its drone delivery services to an additional 60,000 homes this year in the states, companies are investing more research and development funding into drone delivery, But are consumers ready to accept this change as the new normal? Northwestern University’s Mobility and Behavior Lab, led by Amanda Stathopoulos, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, wanted to know if consumers were ready for robots to replace delivery drivers, in the form ...

Minneapolis, Minn. – In a recently released study, researchers at Hennepin Healthcare and other Minnesota health systems describe how a COVID-19 collaboration across Minnesota health systems was adapted to monitor near-real-time trends in substance use–related hospital and emergency department (ED) visits. The Minnesota Electronic Health Record Consortium (MNEHRC), developed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, repurposed its surveillance methods to identify health disparities and inform equity-driven approaches to the overdose epidemic. MNEHRC’s study, "Minnesota Data Sharing May Be Model for Near-Real-Time Tracking of Drug Overdose Hospital ...

Rochester Institute of Technology’s Lucia Carichino, assistant professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics, has received a Launching Early-Career Academic Pathways in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences (LEAPS-MPS) award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The award funds Carichino’s research in computational modeling of the interaction between the eye and a contact lens. Specifically, Carichino is focusing on orthokeratology (ortho-k) lenses that help reduce myopic progression in kids and young adults. She aims to develop a mathematical model that will ...

LA JOLLA, CA—Scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) are investigating a talented type of T cell. Most T cells only work in the person who made them. Your T cells fight threats by responding to molecular fragments that belong to a pathogen—but only when these molecules are bound with markers that come from your own tissues. Your influenza-fighting T cells can't help your neighbor, and vice versa. "However, we all have T cells that do not obey these rules," says LJI Professor and President Emeritus Mitchell Kronenberg, Ph.D. "One of these cell types is mucosal-associated invariant ...

There is no longer any question of how to prevent high-intensity, often catastrophic, wildfires that have become increasingly frequent across the Western U.S., according to a new study by researchers at Stanford and Columbia universities. The analysis, published Nov. 10 in Science Advances, reveals that low-intensity burning, such as controlled or prescribed fires, managed wildfires, and tribal cultural burning, can dramatically reduce the risk of devastating fires for years at a time. The findings – some of the first to rigorously quantify the value of low-intensity fire – come while Congress is reassessing the U.S. Forest Service’s ...

Deep within every piece of magnetic material, electrons dance to the invisible tune of quantum mechanics. Their spins, akin to tiny atomic tops, dictate the magnetic behavior of the material they inhabit. This microscopic ballet is the cornerstone of magnetic phenomena, and it's these spins that a team of JILA researchers—headed by JILA Fellows and University of Colorado Boulder professors Margaret Murnane and Henry Kapteyn—has learned to control with remarkable precision, potentially redefining the future of electronics and data storage. In a new Science Advances ...

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (11/10/2023) — Researchers from the University of Minnesota Medical School examining the cause of cardiomyopathy discovered one out of every six patients with coronary artery disease had non-ischemic or dual cardiomyopathy.  The findings of this study were published this week in the peer-reviewed journal Circulation, the flagship journal of the American Heart Association.  Cardiomyopathies are diseases of the heart muscle. Patients with coronary artery disease can have cardiomyopathy from heart muscle ...

Student engineers from the University of Bath are on top of the world after winning an international competition to design an artificial heart. Team Bath Heart took top prize at the grand final of the first-ever Heart Hackathon, which was held in Texas at the end of October. Six members of the team presented their device to global experts in artificial heart technologies, competing against teams from Australia, the United States, Sweden, New Zealand, Romania and Egypt. The ‘total artificial heart’ ...

New research from Cleveland Clinic has identified a link between sleep apnea and the development of atrial fibrillation, a common heart rhythm disorder.   Published in JAHA, the study of over 42,000 patients found that sleep-related hypoxia - or low oxygen levels during sleep - is associated with a higher risk of developing atrial fibrillation over time. The study found this risk persisted even after accounting for lung function, suggesting sleep-related hypoxia independently increases atrial fibrillation risk separate from any underlying lung disease.  Atrial fibrillation causes an irregular ...

Preclinical research published in the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer points to a promising new treatment option for people with pancreatic cancer. Researchers from VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center and the VCU Institute of Molecular Medicine (VIMM) suggest that when used in a form that can be delivered directly into the tumor cell, polyinosine–polycytidylic acid (pIC) suppresses tumor growth, induces cancer cell death and enhances survival in animal models with the most common form of pancreatic cancer.   Researchers also concluded that when used alone ...

A five-year, $5 million grant has been awarded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to the UTHealth Houston Institute for Implementation Science to support research and training in implementation science, with a focus on improving cancer control efforts in Mexico and Latin America. The grant brings together researchers from UTHealth Houston, the Mexican National Institute of Public Health (INSP), the Mexican National Cancer Institute (INCan), and the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). The grant will fund a new center, LISTOS for Cancer Control – Leveraging Implementation ...

Cave divers collected 78 water samples throughout the complex web of underwater caves Researchers found the cave system’s microbiome is distinct from the nearby sea Microbial communities vary between cave systems forming distinct “neighborhoods” EVANSTON, Ill. — With help from an experienced underwater cave-diving team, Northwestern University researchers have constructed the most complete map to date of the microbial communities living in the submerged labyrinths beneath Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. Although previous researchers have collected water and microbial samples from the ...

Most of us understand that electrical engineering and mechanical engineering play a key role in running our washing machines or  our computers. But did you know that more than 80 percent of the products we use every day, such as fertilizers, cosmetics, fragrances, rubber and more, require some sort of chemical catalyst while being manufactured? Catalysts are like turbochargers for chemical reactions. Until now, the process of designing a catalyst for chemical reactions has been mostly trial ...

ATLANTA — New research at ACR Convergence 2023, the American College of Rheumatology’s (ACR) annual meeting, found that rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients in sustained remission who stopped TNF inhibitors (TNFi) had significantly more flares and lower Boolean 2.0 remission rates compared with those who continued treatment. Boolean 2.0 is a revised definition for evaluating disease activity in RA that classifies more patients as achieving remission than Boolean 1.0. It is endorsed by the American College of Rheumatology and the European Alliance for Associations in Rheumatology (EULAR) (Abstract #L07). As more RA patients ...

ATLANTA — New research at ACR Convergence 2023, the American College of Rheumatology’s (ACR) annual meeting, shows that patients with refractory juvenile systemic sclerosis improved significantly on nearly all measures for two years following autologous stem cell transplant (Abstract #L06). Juvenile-onset systemic sclerosis (jSSc), also called scleroderma, is a disfiguring autoimmune disorder marked by hardening of the skin and internal organs, including the digestive tract, lungs, musculoskeletal system, kidneys and heart. The psychological and physical effects of the disease persist into adulthood, and many patients have a shortened lifespan. Effective ...

Using data from over 900 participants in a large, diverse, and national sample of Canadian adolescents and young adults from the Canadian Study of Adolescent Health Behaviors, a new study published in the journal Sexual Health researchers found significant associations between sex work and muscle dysmorphia.  Sex work, in its various forms, is highly stigmatized in Canadian society, and sex workers are often victims of harmful stereotypes. It is estimated that roughly 4% of Canadian adolescents engage in selling sex, and research has shown that those involved in sex work are more at risk to experience substance use ...

Neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s can be associated to depression and anxiety. Dr. Sabine Krabbe, a neuroscientist at DZNE’s Bonn site, is receiving 1.2 million US dollars from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to understand the mechanisms involved in the onset of these syndromes. To this end, she aims to examine the function of the brain’s “emotion center” using new methodologies to examine the function of single cells in experimental mouse models. The study will run for four ...

About The Study: Black women who reported experiences of interpersonal racism in situations involving employment, housing, and interactions with police appeared to have an increased risk of stroke, even after accounting for demographic and vascular risk factors, according to the results of this study including 48,000 Black women. These findings suggest that the high burden of racism experienced by Black U.S. women may contribute to racial disparities in stroke incidence.  Authors: Shanshan Sheehy, Sc.D., of Boston University, is the corresponding author.  To ...

About The Study: Maternal mRNA vaccination was associated with a lower risk of Omicron SARS-CoV-2 infection among infants up to six months of age only if the vaccine was given during the antenatal period in this study of 7,292 infants in Singapore. These findings suggest that mRNA vaccination during pregnancy may be needed for lower risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection among newborns.  Authors: Orlanda Goh, M.B., B.S., M.P.H., of Singapore General Hospital in Singapore, and Chee Fu Yung, M.B.Ch.B., of KK Women’s and Children’s ...

What can we expect in the worst-case scenario? In regions with a high risk of flooding, this is an important question: what extreme events should the protective measures be designed for? Often this is answered simply by looking at history: The worst flood events of the past decades or centuries are regarded as a realistic upper limit for what can be expected in the future. However, this can be misleading, as so-called "mega-floods" have shown in recent years. Time and again, extreme flood events occur, extraordinary outliers that were not considered possible on the basis of local data. However, a major research project carried out under the leadership ...

“The world isn’t doing terribly well in averting global ecological collapse,” says Dr Florian Rabitz, a researcher at Kaunas University of Technology (KTU), Lithuania, the author of a new monograph Transformative Novel Technologies and Global Environmental Governance recently published by Cambridge University Press. Greenhouse gas emissions, species extinction, ecosystem degradation, chemical pollution, and more are threatening the Earth’s future. Despite decades of international agreements and countless high-level ...