Researchers at AMBER, the SFI Centre for Advanced Materials and BioEngineering Research, and from Trinity's School of Physics, have developed next-generation, graphene-based sensing technology using their innovative G-Putty material. The team's printed sensors are 50 times more sensitive than the industry standard and outperform other comparable nano-enabled sensors in an important metric seen as a game-changer in the industry: flexibility. Maximising sensitivity and flexibility without reducing performance makes the teams' technology an ideal candidate for the emerging areas ...

A hot topic symposia session during the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) 2021 Virtual Meeting will address the persistent controversies and questions in preterm infant nutrition. After six years of interdisciplinary expert discussion and critical evidence review, the 2014 vision to develop evidence-informed guidance for the nutritional care of preterm infants has come to fruition. The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND) initiated this multiphase process involving expert physician, dietitian, and pharmacology scientists. The first phase, Pre-B, addressed the existing evidence and research ...

WASHINGTON, May 4, 2021 -- How body clocks work could lead to science that can turn an early bird into a night owl or vice versa as well as other advances, like helping crops grow all year long. In Applied Physics Reviews, by AIP Publishing, scientists at Penn State report on their work advancing knowledge about circadian rhythms, the natural process that governs sleep and waking patterns in humans, animals, and plants. Researchers have identified a set of genes, called clock genes, that control these rhythms. But a more complicated network of genes than previously known appears related to circadian rhythms. More fully ...

WASHINGTON, May 4, 2021 -- If a respiratory droplet from a person infected with COVID-19 lands on a surface, it becomes a possible source of disease spread. This is known as the fomite route of disease spread, in which the aqueous phase of the respiratory droplet serves as a medium for virus survival. The lifespan of the respiratory droplet dictates how likely a surface is to spread a virus. While 99.9% of the droplet's liquid content evaporates within a few minutes, a residual thin film that allows the virus to survive can be left behind. This begs ...

What The Study Did: This survey study estimated change in the percentage of adolescents in the United States who reported at least one diagnosed concussion during their lifetime. Authors: Phil Veliz, Ph.D., of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2021.1538) Editor's Note: The article includes funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, ...

During our waking hours, the brain is receiving a near-constant influx of sensory signals of various strengths. For decades, scientists have wondered why some signals rise to the light of conscious awareness while other signals of a similar strength remain in the dark shadows of unconsciousness. What controls the gate that separates the shadows and the light? In a new study from the Department of Anesthesiology and Center for Consciousness Science at Michigan Medicine, researchers identify a key area in the cortex that appears to be the gate of conscious awareness. "Information processing in the brain ...

WASHINGTON, May 4, 2021 -- Spinal fusion is frequently performed to restore spinal stability in patients with spinal diseases, such as spinal stenosis, vertebral fractures, progressive deformities, and instability. In the past two decades, there has been marked increase in the number of people over 65 years in age who have needed spinal fusion surgery. While autogenous bone grafts have long been considered the reference standard for spinal fusion, painful pseudoarthrosis remains a leading cause of poor clinical outcomes. Many researchers have consequently focused on ...

WASHINGTON, May 4, 2021 -- Scientists from Texas A&M have developed an extension to an ordinary cellphone that turns it into an instrument capable of detecting chemicals, drugs, biological molecules, and pathogens. The advance is reported in Reviews of Scientific Instruments, by AIP Publishing. Modern cellphones include high-quality cameras capable of detecting low levels of light and eliminating digital noise through software processing of the captured images. Recent work has taken advantage of this sensitivity to produce cellphone cameras that ...

SAN ANTONIO (May 4, 2021) - Risk-reducing mastectomy saves lives of women who, because of hereditary or other risk factors, may have a very high lifetime risk of developing breast cancer, according to two new journal articles written to guide physicians and patients. All of these women should also discuss with their physicians nonsurgical options such as screening and medications to reach the best, customized treatment strategy, the essays mention. Both articles, published May 4 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), are by END ...

WHO Benjamin Rome, MD, Instructor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and researcher in the Program On Regulation, Therapeutics, And Law (PORTAL) in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics, Brigham and Women's Hospital; corresponding author of a paper published in JAMA Network Open. WHAT When drug manufacturers raise the list price for brand-name prescription drugs, do patients' out-of-pocket costs rise too? A new study published in JAMA Network Open by Dr. Benjamin Rome and colleagues in the Brigham's Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics finds that more than half of patients may experience increases in out-of-pocket spending when drug ...

BOSTON - Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) appear to have solved the 120-year-old mystery surrounding the failing health of famed Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton over the course of his daring expeditions to Antarctica in the early part of the twentieth century. In a paper published online in the END ...

Researchers have found that people who live beyond 105 years tend to have a unique genetic background that makes their bodies more efficient at repairing DNA, according to a study published today in eLife. This is the first time that people with 'extreme longevity' have had their genomes decoded in such detail, providing clues as to why they live so long and manage to avoid age-related diseases. "Aging is a common risk factor for several chronic diseases and conditions," explains Paolo Garagnani, Associate Professor at the Department of Experimental, Diagnostic ...

Studying protein changes in the kidneys as we age, as well as the transcription of genes into proteins, helps provide a full picture of the age-related processes that take place in these organs, says a study in mice published today in eLife. Aging causes many changes in the body and in essential organs such as the kidneys, which function less efficiently later in life. Age-related changes in the kidneys have mostly been reported by looking at the transcription of genes - the process by which a segment of DNA is copied into RNA. The current study suggests that this approach, combined with studying changes in proteins, gives us a better understanding of age-related changes in the kidney and may point to new approaches for treating ...

TAMPA, Fla. (May 4, 2021) -- Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, or rTMS, was FDA approved in 2008 as a safe and effective noninvasive treatment for severe depression resistant to antidepressant medications. A small coil positioned near the scalp generates repetitive, pulsed magnetic waves that pass through the skull and stimulate brain cells to relieve symptoms of depression. The procedure has few side effects and is typically prescribed as an alternative or supplemental therapy when multiple antidepressant medications and/or psychotherapy do not work. Despite increased use ...

LONDON, ON - New findings from Ontario have shown that children born in Sarnia have a higher risk of developing asthma compared to neighbouring cities. A research team from Lawson Health Research Institute and Western University, using provincial data from ICES, found that higher air pollution exposure in the first year of life very likely contributed to this higher risk. Their results are published today in CMAJ Open. Summary of study results: -Children born in Sarnia in the 1990s and early 2000s were disproportionally at a higher risk of developing asthma in the first few years of life, compared to neighbouring cities. -Air pollution exposure ...

Agência FAPESP – White-sand savannas are expanding in the heart of the Amazon as a result of recurring forest fires, according to a study published in the journal Ecosystems. The study was supported by FAPESP, and conducted by Bernardo Monteiro Flores, currently a postdoctoral fellow in ecology at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) in Brazil, and Milena Holmgren, a professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. “The edges of the Amazon Rainforest have long been considered the ...

FINDINGS A new study by researchers at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center has identified a novel combination therapy to potentially help overcome resistance to immunotherapy in people diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. The combination approach uses immune checkpoint inhibitors with ATRA, a safe medication that is widely used to treat leukemia. The team found the combination therapy led to eradication of over 70% of tumors when tested in mice with LKB1-deficient lung cancer. It also generated durable tumor-specific immunity. BACKGROUND Immune checkpoint inhibitors have substantially ...

As nurseries and garden centers fill up with spring landscaping plants, home gardeners owe a lot to a technique called micropropagation, which has proven beneficial to many plants - perhaps soon to include cannabis, thanks to work by UConn researchers in the College of Agriculture, Health, and Natural Resources. Micropropagation is a technique used for growing large quantities of new plants from fewer "parent" plants, yielding clones with the same, predictable qualities. The cannabis (Cannabis sativa) industry, however, has been largely left out of this beneficial technique, because this species of plant is extremely difficult to micropropagate. Researchers from UConn - including Associate Professor Jessica Lubell-Brand, Ph.D. student Lauren Kurtz, and Professor Mark ...

May 4, 2021 - From the very beginning of the AIDS epidemic in 1981, nurses have been at the forefront of patient care, advocacy, and research. But even in the age of antiretroviral therapy and pre-exposure prophylaxis, many challenges remain in reducing the impact of HIV and AIDS, according to the special May/June issue of END ...

Relatives of the giant crocodile might have been kings of the waterways during the Cretaceous period, eating anything--including dinosaurs--that got a little too close to the water's edge, but the largest of these apex predators still started off small. Figuring out how these little crocs grew up in a world surrounded by giants is no small task. Now crocs fossils from Texas are shedding light on how these animals changed their diets as they grew, helping them find a place of their own in environments alongside their bigger, badder relatives. According to the study, published by Cambridge University Press, the crocodiless in question are members of the Deltasuchus motherali and lived along the coastline of Texas 96 million years ...

Scientists have shed light on why some people who have a stroke do not also have abnormal heart rhythms, even though their hearts contain similar scar tissue. Their results, published today in eLife, could help identify the best treatments for people who might be at risk of recurrent stroke, new heart disorders, or both. Strokes are often caused by abnormal blood flow resulting from rapid, irregular beating in the upper chamber of the heart. This is also called atrial fibrillation (AFib). But some people have strokes that appear to have been caused by the heart, ...

Aachen, Germany and Hennigsdorf/Berlin, Germany, May 4, 2021 - German University Hospital Uniklinik RWTH Aachen ("Uniklinik RWTH Aachen") and diagnostics company SphingoTec GmbH ("SphingoTec") today announced that the endothelial function biomarker bio-ADM aids in the early risk stratification and management of patients suffering from severe COVID-19, in need for escalated intensive care treatment (1). A team lead by the clinical researchers at Uniklinik RWTH Aachen has shown that high bio-ADM levels indicate the severity of the acute respiratory distress ...

Tokyo, Japan - Researchers at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology (TUAT) modeled the dynamic instability--the so-called "power hop"--that can cause uncontrollable bouncing and damage tractors when they plow dry ground. The team found that self-excited oscillations can arise when the tractor pushes against the ground. Plowing a field on a tractor may seem like a serene occupation, but sudden vibrations can grow unexpectedly and threaten to topple you under certain conditions. The problem is that in nonlinear systems with coupled components, as with a mechanical tractor, ...

A synthetic approach that improves absorber layers in perovskite solar cells could help them achieve their full potential and draw closer to the performance of leading gallium arsenide devices. Solar cells that rely on perovskite thin films to capture sunlight are the fastest growing photovoltaic technology. Cheaper and easier to manufacture and incorporate into devices than conventional semiconductors, lead halide perovskites also effectively absorb visible light and display long charge carrier diffusion lengths -- an indicator of their ability to maintain light-induced electrons and holes separation and facilitate charge transport. Performance ...

A new Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) study has identified for the first time how the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR), an environmental chemical receptor, drives immunosuppression in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC)--and that its removal from malignant cells can result in tumor rejection. Published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study findings provide new insight into the biology of cancer immunosuppression, and identify a new target for cancer immunotherapy treatment. Immune checkpoint inhibitors (immunotherapy drugs) are some of the most important treatments that have emerged for treating many cancers, including OSCC. Targeting immune checkpoint molecules such as PD-1, ...