An international and multidisciplinary team led by researchers at the University of Oxford, University of Glasgow, and University of Heidelberg, has uncovered the interactions that SARS-CoV-2 RNA establishes with the host cell, many of which are fundamental for infection. These discoveries pave the way for the development of new therapeutic strategies for COVID-19 with broad-range antiviral potential. The genetic information of SARS-CoV-2 is encoded in an RNA molecule instead DNA. This RNA must be multiplied, translated, and packaged into new viral particles to produce the viral progeny. Despite the complexity of these processes, SARS-CoV-2 only encodes a handful ...

Swedish and Danish journalists describe their role as monitorial to a greater extent than journalists from other Nordic countries. Journalists from Norway and Iceland state they have the least experience of political influence and thus differ from Finnish journalists. This is shown by a new comparative study published by Nordicom at the University of Gothenburg. In a new study, researchers examine the similarities and differences in Nordic journalists' perceptions of the role of journalists and different kinds of influence on journalistic work. They also compare the Nordic perceptions with journalists in the rest of Europe. The study is ...

With a global impetus toward utilizing more renewable energy sources, wind presents a promising, increasingly tapped resource. Despite the many technological advancements made in upgrading wind-powered systems, a systematic and reliable way to assess competing technologies has been a challenge. In a new case study, researchers at Texas A&M University, in collaboration with international energy industry partners, have used advanced data science methods and ideas from the social sciences to compare the performance of different wind turbine designs. "Currently, there is no method to validate if a newly created technology will increase wind energy production and efficiency by a certain amount," said Dr. Yu Ding, ...

Over a year after the novel coronavirus cemented its grip on the world, much of the conversation surrounding the disease remains simple: how many people died and how many survived? But researchers at Michigan Medicine say a devastating side effect lurks, underreported, between those extremes - the loss of ability caused by the virus. In a study published in the journal PM&R, investigators found that 45% of patients hospitalized for COVID-19 experienced significant functional decline after being discharged. "Rehabilitation needs were really, really common for these patients," says lead author Alecia K. Daunter, M.D., a pediatric physiatrist at Michigan Medicine. "They survived, but these people left the hospital in worse physical condition than they started. If they ...

WASHINGTON, May 25, 2021 -- Cosmic rays are high-energy atomic particles continually bombarding Earth's surface at nearly the speed of light. Our planet's magnetic field shields the surface from most of the radiation generated by these particles. Still, cosmic rays can cause electronic malfunctions and are the leading concern in planning for space missions. Researchers know cosmic rays originate from the multitude of stars in the Milky Way, including our sun, and other galaxies. The difficulty is tracing the particles to specific sources, because the turbulence of interstellar gas, plasma, and dust causes them to scatter and rescatter in different directions. In AIP Advances, by AIP Publishing, University of Notre Dame researchers developed a simulation model ...

Fusarium Head Blight (FHB), also known as scab, is a significant disease of small grain cereals, such as wheat and barley, that impacts farmers around the world. The disease has been reducing acreage and increasing the price of wheat production in the United States since the early 1990s, which in turn increases costs for downstream producers, such as millers and brewers. The disease is caused by a fungus that produces heat-stable trichothecene mycotoxins, which help the disease spread. To stop the spread, plant breeders are working to develop cultivars with improved resistance to FHB. A team of plant pathologists primarily based at Rutgers University recently generated ...

What started as the preliminary analysis of routine laboratory data has since evolved into the largest-ever study of viral load levels in patients with SARS-CoV-2. A team of researchers from Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin have now analyzed the PCR samples of more than 25,000 persons with COVID-19. Working under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Christian Drosten, the team determined the viral loads of each individual sample and used their results to estimate levels of infectiousness. The research, which has been published in Science*, provides a clear idea of the infectiousness of the disease in different age groups and at different levels of disease severity. It also provides new insights into the ...

LA JOLLA--(May 25, 2021) One of the many effects of aging is loss of muscle mass, which contributes to disability in older people. To counter this loss, scientists at the Salk Institute are studying ways to accelerate the regeneration of muscle tissue, using a combination of molecular compounds that are commonly used in stem-cell research. In a study published on May 25, 2021, in Nature Communications, the investigators showed that using these compounds increased the regeneration of muscle cells in mice by activating the precursors of muscle cells, called myogenic progenitors. Although more work is needed before this approach can be applied in humans, the ...

Childhood abuse and trauma are linked to many health issues in adulthood. New research from the University of Georgia suggests that a history of childhood mistreatment could have negative ramifications for the children of people who experienced abuse or neglect in childhood. Teaching your children how to manage their emotions is an integral part of parenting. For people who experienced childhood abuse, that can become a difficult task. People who were frequently mistreated as children may find it hard to identify their emotions and implement strategies to regulate them. This difficulty, in turn, can harm their kids' emotional development. The study, published ...

Recently, the eROSITA (extended Roentgen Survey with an Imaging Telescope Array) x-ray telescope, an instrument developed by a team of scientists at Max-Planck-Institut für Extraterrestrische Physik (MPE), has gained attention among astronomers. The instrument performs an all-sky survey in the x-ray energy band of 0.2-8 kilo electron volts aboard the Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) satellite that was launched in 2019 from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. "The eROSITA has been designed to study the large-scale structure of the universe and test cosmological models, including dark energy, by detecting galaxy clusters with redshifts greater than 1, corresponding to a cosmological expansion ...

Plants contain several types of specialized light-sensitive proteins that measure light by changing shape upon light absorption. Chief among these are the phytochromes. Phytochromes help plants detect light direction, intensity and duration; the time of day; whether it is the beginning, middle or end of a season; and even the color of light, which is important for avoiding shade from other plants. Remarkably, phytochromes also help plants detect temperature. New research from Washington University in St. Louis helps explain how the handful of phytochromes found in every plant respond differently to light intensity and temperature, thus ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- When the worsening COVID-19 pandemic prompted colleges to shutter their campuses and shift to remote learning in spring 2020, concerns arose that many underrepresented students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines would be demotivated and drop out in even greater numbers. However, a study of 182 undergraduate students in a biology course at one university found little evidence to support that belief. Instead, across all demographic groups, the impact varied: Some students were more motivated, some were less so, and some saw no changes ...

(10 a.m. EDT May 25, 2021 Denver)-- Adding sintilimab to a regimen of gemcitabine and platinum demonstrates clinical benefit over gemcitabine and platinum alone as first-line therapy in patients with locally advanced or metastatic squamous cell non-small cell lung cancer, according to a study published in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology, the official journal of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer. The standard chemotherapy for squamous NSCLC (sqNSCLC), includes platinum plus gemcitabine. sintilimab, an anti-PD-1 antibody, plus platinum/gemcitabine, has shown encouraging efficacy as first-line therapy for sqNSCLC in the phase III study ECOG 1594. Platinum/gemcitabine is another standard regimen of chemotherapy for sqNSCLC and is commonly used in ...

China has made remarkable gains in reducing the number of women who die during childbirth and boosting child survival rates over the past 70 years, according to new review. The Lancet report brought together China's health research institutions alongside its international colleagues from Australia, the UK and the US to review the country's progress in maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health and nutrition since 1949. Murdoch Children's Research Institute (MCRI) Professor George Patton, one of the international researchers, said over the past 70 years China had made a remarkable transition from where the survival of women and children was the priority to one where children ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- A new combination of optical coherence tomography (OCT), adaptive optics and deep neural networks should enable better diagnosis and monitoring for neuron-damaging eye and brain diseases like glaucoma. Biomedical engineers at Duke University led a multi-institution consortium to develop the process, which easily and precisely tracks changes in the number and shape of retinal ganglion cells in the eye. This work appears in a paper published on May 3 in the journal Optica. The retina of the eye is an extension of the central nervous system. Ganglion cells are one of the primary neurons in the eye that process and send visual information to the brain. In many neurodegenerative ...

Popular television shows and movies can bolster teenagers' mental health and help them cope with bullying, sexual assault, suicidal thoughts, substance abuse and depression when these issues are depicted with empathy and appropriate resources are provided, a report published by UCLA's Center for Scholars and Storytellers shows. And the need is great. Recent research has shown that children between the ages of 11 and 17 are more likely than any other age group to report moderate to severe anxiety and depression, said Yalda Uhls, founder and executive director of the center and an adjunct assistant professor of psychology. Even before the pandemic, teen suicide rates were rising, along with reported symptoms of anxiety and depression, she noted. At the same time, nearly half ...

QUT researchers have used experimental x-ray techniques at the Australian Synchrotron to gain fundamental insights into how gypsum dehydrates under pressure and the processes that create earthquakes. In the study published in the Nature Research journal Communications Materials, QUT researchers Dr Christoph Schrank, Dr Oliver Gaede, from the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and Master of Science graduate Katherine Gioseffi teamed up with the Australian Synchrotron and colleagues from the University of New South Wales and the University of Warsaw to study how gypsum dehydrates much faster under pressure. "Dehydration is a process in which minerals shed the water bound in their crystal lattices due to heating," Dr Schrank ...

Tsukuba, Japan - Carbonic anhydrases are essential enzymes that are present in virtually all living things; all eight classes of carbonic anhydrases that have been identified to date need a metal ion to function. But now, researchers from Japan have discovered that metal is not crucial for all carbonic anhydrases. In a study published this month in BMC Biology, researchers from the Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Tsukuba have described two members of the COG4337 protein family that are the first known examples of carbonic anhydrase enzymes that do not require a metal ion to function. Carbonic anhydrases ...

Tokyo, Japan - Most people don't think much about the food scraps they throw away; however, investigators from the Institute of Industrial Science at The University of Tokyo have developed a new method to reduce food waste by recycling discarded fruit and vegetable scraps into robust construction materials. Worldwide industrial and household food waste amounts to hundreds of billions of pounds per year, a large proportion of which comprises edible scraps, like fruit and vegetable peels. This unsustainable practice is both costly and environmentally unfriendly, so researchers have been searching for new ways to recycle these organic ...

Researchers have flipped traditional 3D printing to create some of the most intricate biomedical structures yet, advancing the development of new technologies for regrowing bones and tissue. The emerging field of tissue engineering aims to harness the human body's natural ability to heal itself, to rebuild bone and muscle lost to tumours or injuries. A key focus for biomedical engineers has been the design and development of 3D printed scaffolds that can be implanted in the body to support cell regrowth. But making these structures small and complex enough for cells to thrive remains a significant challenge. Enter a RMIT University-led research team, collaborating with clinicians at St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne, Australia, who have overturned ...

A new study has shown that effective opioid-sparing anaesthesia with dexmedetomidine can be guided with NOL pain monitoring technology (Medasense, Israel). The study showed that the NOL monitor is able to detect the effect of dexmedetomidine on the patient's pain response and enable administration of less intraoperative opioids. Patients undergoing anaesthesia for surgical procedures are traditionally treated with opioids (e.g., remifentanil) to manage intraoperative pain. But clinicians are progressively seeking to reduce opioid use by introducing multimodal analgesia, a technique that involves a combination of medications that often includes a central ...

Professor UEYAMA Takehiko (Biosignal Research Center, Kobe University) and the inner ear research group (Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine) have identified the cell types in the inner ear cochlea (*1) responsible for the production of superoxide (Nox3*2-expressing cells). They achieved this by using genetically modified mice that they developed. The researchers discovered that these superoxide-producing cells increase in number in response to aging, noise damage, and ototoxic drugs, thus causing age-related, noise-induced and drug-induced hearing loss. In addition, they were able to suppress the onset of these three types of ...

HERSHEY, Pa. -- Screening and testing for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) decreased by 63% for men and 59% for women during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study led by Penn State and Quest Diagnostics researchers. The researchers said this may be the result of restrictions placed on direct patient care and shifts to telehealth and could lead to a possible future surge in STI cases. This is the first national study to explore the impact of the pandemic on STIs since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ...

Computational tools are indispensable in almost all scientific disciplines. Especially in cases where large amounts of research data are generated and need to be quickly processed, reliable, carefully developed software is crucial for analyzing and correctly interpreting such data. Nevertheless, scientific software can have quality quality deficiencies. To evaluate software quality in an automated way, computer scientists at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS) have designed the SoftWipe tool. "Adherence to coding standards is rarely considered in scientific software, although it can even lead to incorrect scientific results," says ...

BOSTON - Physical activity that conforms to medical and health association guidelines is associated with a lower risk of atrial fibrillation (Afib) and stroke, according to a study by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), who analyzed nearly 100,000 individuals equipped with wrist-worn accelerometers to measure their movement. The researchers' findings suggest that data from wearables, including a new generation of devices with sensors that allow for Afib detection, could provide an opportunity for the public health community to promote moderate physical activity as an effective way to improve health outcomes. The study ...