A new strategy for capturing the 3D shape of the human face draws on data from sibling pairs and leads to identification of novel links between facial shape traits and specific locations within the human genome. Hanne Hoskens of the Department of Human Genetics at Katholieke Universiteit in Leuven, Belgium, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS Genetics. The ability to capture the 3D shape of the human face--and how it varies between individuals with different genetics--can inform a variety of applications, including understanding human evolution, planning for surgery, and forensic sciences. ...

Mutations in two genetic regions in dogs explain over one third of the risk of developing an aggressive form of hematological cancer, according to a study led by Jacquelyn Evans and Elaine Ostrander at the National Human Genome Research Institute in Maryland, USA and colleagues. The study, which combined multiple sequencing techniques to investigate histiocytic sarcoma in retriever dogs, publishes May 13 in the open-access journal PLOS Genetics. Histiocytic sarcoma is an aggressive cancer of immune cells, and although extremely rare in humans, it affects around one-in-five flat-coated retrievers. Genome-wide association surveys of 177 affected and 132 unaffected flat-coated ...

A new whole genome sequence for the Yap hadal snailfish provides insights into how the unusual fish survives in some of the deepest parts of the ocean. Xinhua Chen of the Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University and Qiong Shi of the BGI Academy of Marine Sciences published their analysis of the new genome May 13th in the journal PLOS Genetics. Animals living in deep-sea environments face many challenges, including high pressures, low temperatures, little food and almost no light. Fish are the only animals with a backbone that live in the hadal zone--defined as depths below 6,000 meters--and hadal snailfishes live in at least five separate marine trenches. Chen, Shi and their colleagues constructed a high-quality whole genome sequence from the Yap ...

Artificial intelligence (AI) learning machines can be trained to solve problems and puzzles on their own instead of using rules that we made for them. But often, researchers do not know what rules the machines make for themselves. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Assistant Professor Peter Koo developed a new method that quizzes a machine-learning program to figure out what rules it learned on its own and if they are the right ones. Computer scientists "train" an AI machine to make predictions by presenting it with a set of data. The machine extracts a series of rules and operations--a model--based on information it encountered during its training. Koo says: "If you learn general ...

QUT air-quality expert Distinguished Professor Lidia Morawska is leading an international call for a "paradigm shift" in combating airborne pathogens such as COVID-19, demanding universal recognition that infections can be prevented by improving indoor ventilation systems. Professor Morawska led a group of almost 40 researchers from 14 countries in a call published in Science for a shift in standards in ventilation requirements equal in scale to the transformation in the 1800s when cities started organising clean water supplies and centralised sewage systems. The international group of air quality researchers called on the World ...

For decades, governments worldwide have invested great deals of legislation and resources in food safety, sanitation and drinking water quality for public health purposes. However, the same cannot be said for the air quality of indoor public spaces, wherein the spread of airborne pathogens - whether those that cause the common cold or COVID-19 - is generally considered to be an "inescapable part of daily life." In a Policy Forum, Lidia Morawska and colleagues argue for a profound shift in how policymakers and building engineers view and approach indoor air quality and health, to reduce the spread of respiratory infection. According to Morawska et al., similarly to how food and waterborne disease ...

A subpopulation of neurons in the brain's zona incerta, or "zone of uncertainty," drives investigatory and novelty-seeking behavior in mice, according to a new study. The findings reveal a previously unknown brain circuit underlying innate curiosity; its discovery may one day have implications as a therapeutic target in animals or people who exhibit novelty-seeking behaviors, authors of a related Perspective say. Although curiosity - the motivational drive to investigate the unknown - is widely considered to be as intrinsic as hunger and thirst, and an ...

Challenging the assumption that watershed streamflow always recovers from drought, a new study done seven years after the "Millennium Drought," the worst drought ever recorded in southeastern Australia, reports that more than a third of the region's affected watersheds had not yet recovered. Of these watersheds that were still dry seven years later, most showed no evidence of recovering soon, despite the rains' return. The new study's findings suggest that hydrological droughts can persist indefinitely after meteorological droughts, highlighting an amplification of climate change impacts that could present additional challenges to the sustainable use of already-threatened water ...

More investigation is needed to determine the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, say Jesse Bloom, Alina Chan, Ralph Baric, David Relman and colleagues in this Letter. "Theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover both remain viable," they say. "Knowing how COVID-19 emerged is critical for informing global strategies to mitigate the risk of future outbreaks." The authors highlight a joint China-World Health Organization (WHO) report into the origins of SARS-CoV-2, some results of which were released in November 2020. "WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus commented that the report's consideration of evidence supporting a laboratory ...

Humans in the 21st century spend most of their time indoors, but the air we breathe inside buildings is not regulated to the same degree as the food we eat and the water we drink. A group of 39 researchers from 14 countries, including two from the University of Colorado Boulder, say that needs to change to reduce disease transmission and prevent the next pandemic. In a Perspectives piece published in Science May 14, they call for a "paradigm shift" in combating airborne pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, demanding universal recognition that respiratory infections can be prevented by improving indoor ventilation systems. "Air can contain viruses just as water and surfaces do," said co-author Shelly Miller, professor of mechanical and ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- A plant cell wall's unique ability to expand without weakening or breaking--a quality required for plant growth--is due to the movement of its cellulose skeleton, according to new research that models the cell wall. The new model, created by Penn State researchers, reveals that chains of cellulose bundle together within the cell wall, providing strength, and slide against each other when the cell is stretched, providing extensibility. The new study, which appears online May 14 in the journal Science, presents a new concept of the plant cell wall, gives insights into plant cell growth, and could provide inspiration for the design of polymeric materials with new properties. "For a long time, the prevailing ...

Curiosity is the motivational drive for exploring and investigating the unknown and making new discoveries. It is as essential and intrinsic for survival as hunger. Until recently, the brain mechanisms underlying curiosity and novelty seeking behavior were unclear. However, researchers from the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience have now discovered a new brain circuit underlying curiosity and novelty seeking behavior. The results have been published in the scientific journal Science. Curiosity, hunger and appetitive aggression drive three different goal-directed behaviors: novelty seeking, food eating and hunting. In animals these behaviors are composed of similar actions. This similarity of actions has made it challenging ...

A group of the world's leading experts in the transmission of airborne pathogens is calling for a tightened regulatory system to control air quality in buildings - as a way of reducing the spread of covid-19 and other illnesses. Writing in the journal Science, the 40 scientists say: "A paradigm shift is needed on the scale that occurred when Chadwick's Sanitary Report in 1842 led the British government to encourage cities to organise clean water supplies and centralised sewage systems. "In the 21st century we need to establish the foundations to ensure that the air in our buildings is clean with a significantly reduced ...

Epidemic. Pandemic. These terms have become second nature to us, popping up in everyday conversation, and for good reason -- COVID-19 is the latest pandemic to pose a threat to humanity. But in recent months, far less attention has been paid to another widely spread problem that has been proliferating since the late 1970s: Lyme disease. Lyme disease is the most reported vector-borne disease in the country. Over the past 20 years, the United States has experienced a dramatic increase in both the number of reported cases and the geographic distribution of the disease. In Virginia, the disease is transmitted by blacklegged ticks, which are infected with the Lyme disease-causing bacterium Borrelia ...

Scientists reveal that the deterioration of modern concrete and asphalt structures is due to the presence of trace quantities of organic matter in these structures. Cement and asphalt are vital to modern construction materials; cement is used for the construction of various buildings and structures, while asphalt is primarily used for highways and runways. They have been widely used for these purposes since the 1800s. It has been observed modern concrete structures and asphalt structures tend to deteriorate much faster than historical structures, but the reason for this phenomenon was unknown. A team of scientists from six institutions, including Akihiro ...

One-third of the water catchments included in a Victorian study had not recovered from a severe drought nearly eight years later, Australian-first research from Monash University shows. Globally, science holds the common view that rivers and underground water supplies eventually replenish following periods of severe drought or flood. This study, led by Dr Tim Peterson from Monash University's Department of Civil Engineering and published today in the prestigious international journal Science, is the first in the world to challenge this widely held view. Researchers used statistical ...

A new approach to genomic species delineation could impact policy and lend clarity to legislation for designating a species as endangered or at risk. The coastal California gnatcatcher is an unassuming little gray songbird that's been at the epicenter of a legal brawl for nearly 28 years, ever since U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed it as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Found along the Baja California coast, from down south in El Rosario, Mexico to Long Beach, Calif., its natural habitat is the rapidly declining coastal sagebrush that occupies prime, pristine real estate along the West Coast. When this particular gnatcatcher, Polioptila californica, was granted protection, the region's real estate developers went to court to get it delisted. ...

Viruses require the resources of an infected cell to replicate and then infect further cells, and transfer to other individuals. One essential step in the viral life cycle is the production of new viral proteins based on the instructions in the viral RNA genome. Following these construction plans, the cell's own protein synthesis machine, called the ribosome, produces the viral proteins. In the absence of viral infection, the ribosome moves along the RNA in strictly defined steps, reading three letters of RNA at a time. This three-letter code defines the corresponding amino acid that is being attached to the growing protein. It almost never happens that the ribosome slips one or two RNA letters forward or backward instead of following the regular three-letter steps. When such a slip ...

Irvine, CA - May 13, 2021 - A new University of California, Irvine-led study finds low serum levels of the sugar N-acetylglucosamine (GlcNAc), is associated with progressive disability and neurodegeneration in multiple sclerosis (MS). The study, done in collaboration with researchers from Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany, and the University of Toronto, Canada, is titled, "Association of a Marker of N-Acetylglucosamine With Progressive Multiple Sclerosis and Neurodegeneration," The study was published this week in JAMA Neurology. The study suggests that GlcNAc, which has been previously shown to promote re-myelination and suppress neurodegeneration in animal models of MS, ...

First co-author, Junior Research Associate of the Rheological and Thermochemical Research Lab Richard Djimasbe, comments, "To obtain bitumen as a half-solid product from heavy oil, you have to extract light fractions, and the rest is non-oxidized bitumen. Because of the relatively low ratio of light fractions in heavy oil, it's a simple and cheap way of bitumen production. The method allows for rational use of both heavy oil and light oil." Lab Head Mikhail Varfolomeev adds, "One of the priorities of our World-Level Research Center in Liquid Hydrocarbons is the use of heavy oils, which constitute the majority of reserves both in Russia and in the world. One of the most important parts of this is extraction and refining of heavy ...

Laura Riesenberg was visiting a local amusement park with three of her children when she suffered a massive heart attack. "I was down for about 20 minutes and they defibrillated me twice on site, possibly three times," she says. "Obviously, I was unaware of it. I know from reading the reports what happened." "I was extremely fortunate that someone found me within seconds of collapsing," says Riesenberg. "Had it happened anywhere else I wouldn't be talking to you right now. If I had been in the basement doing laundry, I would have been in trouble." The 51-year-old Loveland, Ohio, resident ...

Pregnant Aussie mums are being denied access to medications which treat severe nausea and vomiting by pharmacists and medical practitioners because of misleading labels and a lack of awareness about clinical guidelines. A new study surveyed 249 Australian women who suffered from severe nausea and vomiting during pregnancy (NVP) or hyperemesis gravidarum (HG) and examined their experiences in accessing medications during pregnancy. One in four women reported being denied medications for NVP/ HG at some stage during pregnancy. This most commonly involved the over-the-counter medicine doxylamine and interactions ...

PHOENIX, Ariz. -- May 13, 2021 -- In the largest study of the associations between smoking and cardiovascular disease on cognitive function, researchers at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), an affiliate of City of Hope, found both impair the ability to learn and memorize; and that the effects of smoking are more pronounced among females, while males are more impaired by cardiovascular disease. The results appear today in the journal Scientific Reports. Previous attempts to quantify cognitive function among smokers and assess sex differences produced mixed results. The TGen researchers attribute this to the limited size of previous data sets. By ...

College Park, Md. - Companies have often considered app adoption among their customers to have a positive impact on customer spending. According to new research from marketing professor P.K. Kannan at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business, higher app adoption among hotel chains could be linked to lower spending among lower-level loyalty customers, who are more likely to use apps to get the best deals. Kannan worked with Xian Gu, an assistant professor of marketing at Indiana University, for the research, published as "The Dark Side of Mobile App Adoption: Examining the Impact on Customers' Multichannel ...

When a piece of conducting material is heated up at one of its ends, a voltage difference can build up across the sample, which in turn can be converted into a current. This is the so-called Seebeck effect, the cornerstone of thermoelectric effects. In particular, the effect provides a route to creating work out of a temperature difference. Such thermoelectric engines do not have any movable part and are therefore convenient power sources in various applications, including propelling NASA's Mars rover Perseverance. The Seebeck effect is interesting for fundamental physics, too, as the magnitude and sign of the induced thermoelectric current is characteristic of the material and indicates ...