A new global review has found that receiving Opioid Agonist Therapy (OAT) is associated with lower risk of multiple causes of death among people with opioid dependence. The review found that people with opioid dependence were less likely to experience overdose-related, suicide, alcohol-related, cancer, and cardiovascular-related mortality while receiving OAT. Researchers from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) at UNSW Sydney, University of Bristol and several other global institutions reviewed the relationship between OAT and mortality across type of drug, setting and participant groups from over 700,000 participants, which is six times the number of any other previous review. The review found that mortality risk ...

Spiders avoid building webs near European fire ants, their natural predators, by sensing the chemicals they give off in the environment, Simon Fraser University researchers have found. The findings, published recently in Royal Society Open Science, give us a peek inside the enduring struggle between spiders and ants, and could lead to the development of natural repellents for homeowners worried about unwanted eight-legged guests. Many ants prey on spiders, suggesting that web-building spiders may avoid locations near ant colonies or frequented by foraging ...

The future of electronic displays will be thin, flexible and durable. One barrier to this, however, is that one of the most widely used transparent conductors for electronic displays--indium tin oxide (ITO)--doesn't perform as well on larger areas and can crack and break down with wear. Indium is also a rare earth mineral, which is relatively scarce, and the process to create ITO requires high energy consumption and expensive equipment. One emerging alternative is metal "microgrid" conductors. These microgrids can be customized to their application by varying the microgrid width, pitch and thickness, and they can be made with a variety of metals. New research from the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering ...

Researchers have demonstrated "giant flexoelectricity" in soft elastomers that could improve robot movement range and make self-powered pacemakers a real possibility. In a paper published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists from the University of Houston and Air Force Research Laboratory explain how to engineer ostensibly ordinary substances like silicone rubber into an electric powerhouse. What do the following have in common: a self-powered implanted medical device, a soft human-like robot and how we hear sound? The answer as to why these two disparate technologies and biological phenomena ...

SMU Office of Research & Tech Transfer - Whether they are in the technology or oil sector, selling shoes or healthcare products, for many companies, green is the new black. While maximising profit might have been the sole priority for most businesses a decade ago, these days it is common for mission-oriented companies to pursue the 'triple bottom line' of people, planet and profit, particularly through corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts. While such efforts are commendable, some investors remain primarily concerned about whether firms can do well by doing good; in other words, whether CSR actually can increase a company's value. For instance, CSR activities could enhance brand image and improve customer loyalty, or even make it easier to attract and retain talent, leading to ...

ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. - A new formula from Army scientists is leading to new insights on how to build an energy-efficient legged teammate for dismounted warfighters. In a recent peer-reviewed PLOS One paper, the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, known as DEVCOM, Army Research Laboratory's Drs. Alexander Kott, Sean Gart and Jason Pusey offer new insights on building autonomous military robotic legged platforms to operate as efficiently as any other ground mobile systems. Its use could lead to potentially important changes to Army vehicle development. Scientists said they may not know exactly why legged, wheeled and tracked ...

BROOKLYN, New York, Wednesday, June 2, 2021 - Perovskite solar cells have progressed in recent years with rapid increases in power conversion efficiency (from 3% in 2006 to 25.5% today), making them more competitive with silicon-based photovoltaic cells. However, a number of challenges remain before they can become a competitive commercial technology. Now a team at the END ...

The organization of the human genome relies on physics of different states of matter - such as liquid and solid - a team of scientists has discovered. The findings, which reveal how the physical nature of the genome changes as cells transform to serve specific functions, point to new ways to potentially better understand disease and to create improved therapies for cancer and genetic disorders. The genome is the library of genetic information essential for life. Each cell contains the entire library, yet it uses only part of this information. Special types of cells, such ...

SMU Office of Research & Tech Transfer - Short selling often gets a bad rap because it is a type of trade that bets against the success of a firm. In essence, short selling allows investors to borrow stock from a broker to sell into the market with the hope of buying the stock back at a cheaper price, thus, profiting on the difference between the sell and buy prices. Because of this practice, short selling is sometimes seen as a controversial tactic. Furthermore, speculative short selling attacks are concerning as it can put downward pressure on ...

The quantum Hall effect traditionally only plays a role in two-dimensional electron systems. Recently, however, a three-dimensional version of the quantum Hall effect was described in the Dirac semimetal ZrTe5. It has been suggested that this version results from a magnetic field-induced Fermi surface instability that transforms the original three-dimensional electron system into a stack of two-dimensional electron systems. Now scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids in Dresden, at the Technical University of Dresden, at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, at the Helmholtz Center Dresden-Rossendorf, the Max Planck Institute ...

Boulder, Colo., USA: GSA's dynamic online journal, Geosphere, posts articles online regularly. Locations and topics studied this month include the Moine thrust zone in northwestern Scotland; the Eastern California shear zone; implementation of "OpenTopography"; the finite evolution of "mole tracks"; the southern central Andes; the work of International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Expedition 351; and the Fairweather fault, Alaska, USA. You can find these articles at https://geosphere.geoscienceworld.org/content/early/recent. Detrital-zircon analyses, provenance, and ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- As its name suggests, dark matter -- material which makes up about 85% of the mass in the universe -- emits no light, eluding easy detection. Its properties, too, remain fairly obscure. Now, a theoretical particle physicist at the University of California, Riverside, and colleagues have published a research paper in the Journal of High Energy Physics that shows how theories positing the existence a new type of force could help explain dark matter's properties. "We live in an ocean of dark matter, yet we know very little about what it could be," said Flip Tanedo, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy and the paper's senior author. "It is one of the most vexing known unknowns in nature. ...

It's long been known that people living with HIV experience a loss of white matter in their brains. As opposed to "gray matter," which is composed of the cell bodies of neurons, white matter is made up of a fatty substance called myelin that coats neurons, offering protection and helping them transmit signals quickly and efficiently. A reduction in white matter is associated with motor and cognitive impairment. Earlier work by a team from the University of Pennsylvania and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) found that antiretroviral therapy (ART)--the lifesaving suite ...

There is a long-held belief that having your pet sleep on the bed is a bad idea. Aside from taking up space, noisy scratching, or triggering allergies, the most common assertion averred that your furry companion would disrupt your sleep. A new study published in the journal Sleep Health tells a different story. Researchers at Concordia's Pediatric Public Health Psychology Lab (PPHP) found that the sleep quality of the surprisingly high number of children who share a bed with their pets is indistinguishable from those who sleep alone. "Sleeping with your pet does not appear to be disruptive," ...

Do firms respond to tougher competition by searching for completely new technological solutions (exploration), or do they work to defend their position by improving current technologies (exploitation)? Competition from increased import penetration generally results in tight profit margins, low prices, and strong efficiency pressures, immediately affecting firms' bottom lines in the form of reduced profits and increased bankruptcy risk. A firm's R&D strategy is one of the fundamental determinants of success or failure when responding to competitive threats. To ensure both short-term performance and long-term survival, firms have two basic R&D options: explore new knowledge or exploit existing knowledge bases. ...

A new study by a team of University of Rochester psychologists and other researchers in the Collaborative Initiative on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (CIFASD) finds that partners of mothers-to-be can directly influence a pregnant woman's likelihood of drinking alcohol and feeling depressed, which affects their babies' development. The study, which appeared in Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, highlights the importance of engaging partners in intervention and prevention efforts to help pregnant women avoid drinking alcohol. A baby's prenatal alcohol ...

Nano-sized particles have been engineered in a new way to improve detection of tumors within the body and in biopsy tissue, a research team in Sweden reports. The advance could enable identifying early stage tumors with lower doses of radiation. In order to enhance visual contrast of living tissues, state-of-the-art imaging relies on agents such as fluorescent dyes and biomolecules. Advances in nanoparticle research have expanded the array of promising contrast agents for more targeted diagnostics, and now a research team from KTH Royal Institute of Technology has raised the bar further yet. They are combining optical and X-ray fluorescence contrast agents into a single enhancer for both modes. Muhammet ...

Researchers from Sinai Health have published a study providing an ultra-detailed look at the organization of a living human cell, providing a new tool that can help scientists around the world better understand what happens during disease. The new study, out today in the journal END ...

In the universe's earliest moments, particles existed in an unimaginably hot plasma, whose behaviour was governed by deeply complex webs of interaction between individual particles. Today, researchers can recreate these exotic conditions through high-energy collisions between heavy ions, whose products can tell us much about how hot, strongly-interacting matter behaves. Yet without extensive, highly coordinated collaborations between researchers across many different backgrounds, studies like this simply wouldn't be possible. This Topical Issue of EPJ A draws together a large collection of papers inspired by the theory of hot matter and relativistic heavy-ion collisions (THOR) European Cooperation ...

The myriad processes occurring in biological cells may seem unbelievably complex at first glance. And yet, in principle, they are merely a logical succession of events, and could even be used to form digital circuits. Researchers have now developed a molecular switching circuit made of DNA, which can be used to mechanically alter gels, depending on the pH. DNA-based switching circuits could have applications in soft robotics, say the researchers in their article in Angewandte Chemie. DNA is a long molecule that can be folded and twisted in various ways. It has a backbone and bases that stick out from the backbone and pair up with counterparts in other DNA strands. When a series of these matching pairs comes ...

It's strawberry season in many parts of the U.S, and supermarkets are teeming with these fresh heart-shaped treats. Although the bright red, juicy fruit can grow almost anywhere with lots of sunlight, production in some hot, dry regions is a challenge. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Journal of Agricultural Food and Chemistry have identified five cultivars that are best suited for this climate, which could help farmers and consumers get the most fragrant, sweetest berries. Most strawberries commercially grown in the U.S. come from California and Florida. With the expansion of local farmer's markets and people's excitement ...

Aging published "Cdkn1a transcript variant 2 is a marker of aging and cellular senescence" which reported that cellular senescence is a cell fate response characterized by a permanent cell cycle arrest driven primarily the by cell cycle inhibitor and tumor suppressor proteins p16Ink4a and p21Cip1/Waf1. In mice, the p21Cip1/Waf1 encoding locus, Cdkn1a, is known to generate two transcripts that produce identical proteins, but one of these transcript variants is poorly characterized. The authors show that the Cdkn1a transcript variant 2, but not the better-studied variant 1, is selectively elevated during natural aging across multiple mouse tissues. Importantly, mouse cells induced ...

Oncotarget published "A high-content AlphaScreen™ identifies E6-specific small molecule inhibitors as potential therapeutics for HPV+ head and neck squamous cell carcinomas" which reported that the incidence of human papillomavirus-positive head and neck squamous cell carcinoma has increased dramatically over the past decades due to an increase in infection of the oral mucosa by HPV. The etiology of HPV -HNSCC is linked to expression of the HPV oncoprotein, E6, which influences tumor formation, growth and survival. E6 effects this oncogenic phenotype in part through inhibitory ...

Oncotarget published "Molecular characterization of lung squamous cell carcinoma tumors reveals therapeutically relevant alterations" which reported that unlike lung adenocarcinoma patients, there is no FDA-approved targeted-therapy likely to benefit lung squamous cell carcinoma patients. The authors performed survival analyses of lung squamous cell carcinoma patients harboring therapeutically relevant alterations identified by whole exome sequencing and mass spectrometry-based validation across 430 lung squamous tumors. They report a mean of 11.6 mutations/Mb with a characteristic smoking signature along with mutations in TP53, CDKN2A, NFE2L2, FAT1, KMT2C, LRP1B, FGFR1, PTEN and PREX2 among lung squamous cell carcinoma patients of Indian descent. In overall, the data suggests 13.5% ...

When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in North America in March 2020, health care facilities stopped providing all but "essential" care, to reduce infection risks and preserve protective gear known as PPE. That included changes at many centers that provide ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) for severe depression and other conditions, a new survey shows. Because ECT involves anesthesia, so that patients are unconscious when carefully controlled pulses of electricity are delivered to key areas of the brain, it is considered an 'aerosol generating' procedure. That means it poses special risks when a respiratory ...