Long thought of as “brain glue,” the star-shaped cells called astrocytes—members of a family of cells found in the central nervous system called glial that help regulate blood flow, synaptic activity, keep neurons healthy, and play an important role in breathing. Despite this growing appreciation for astrocytes, much remains unknown about the role these cells play in helping neurons and the brain process information. “We believe astrocytes can add a new dimension to our understanding of how external and internal information is merged in the ...

On Friday March 31st, 2023 at a ceremony in Paris, the Institut Pasteur President, Professor Stewart Cole, and the University of São Paulo (USP) Rector, Carlos Gilberto Carlotti Junior, signed articles of association for the Institut Pasteur in São Paulo, a private non-profit organization under Brazilian law. The mission of the institute, an associate member of the Pasteur Network, is to conduct research in the field of biology that contributes to the development of human health, and to promote outreach, education, innovation and knowledge transfer activities and public health measures. The Institut Pasteur ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — In the early 2000s, scientists observed lightning discharge producing X-rays comprising high energy photons — the same type used for medical imaging. Researchers could recreate this phenomenon in the lab, but they could not fully explain how and why lightning produced X-rays. Now, two decades later, a Penn State-led team has discovered a new physical mechanism explaining naturally occurring X-rays associated with lightning activity in the Earth’s atmosphere.  They published their ...

East Hanover, NJ – March 31, 2023 – Since the pandemic, gains in the labor market have been slower to materialize for black/African American people with disabilities compared to their white counterparts, according to experts speaking last Friday during the nTIDE Deeper Dive Lunch & Learn Webinar. They discussed potential factors underlying why the disability employment gap is wider among members of the black/African American population when compared to the white population and how to integrate measures to effect change. Using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for persons ages 16-64, the monthly employment-to-population ratio averaged ...

Antibiotic resistance is a global health threat. In 2019 alone, an estimated 1.3 million deaths were attributed to antibiotic resistant bacterial infections worldwide. Looking to contribute a solution to this growing problem, researchers at Baylor College of Medicine have been studying the process that drives antibiotic resistance at the molecular level. They report in the journal Molecular Cell crucial and surprising first steps that promote resistance to ciprofloxacin, or cipro for short, one of the most commonly prescribed antibiotics. The findings point at potential ...

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. – A new study led by Marshall University researchers focuses on a novel mechanism of the body’s regulation of salt balance. The kidney plays a central role in the body’s ability to maintain an appropriate sodium balance, which is critical for the determination of blood pressure. Disorders of sodium balance contribute to the development and progression of many common diseases, including hypertension, heart disease and stroke.  Na/K-ATPase (NKA) is the enzymatic machinery that drives absorption of sodium along the renal proximal tubule. As ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Just as a tight core is a component of good physical fitness for humans, helping to stabilize our bodies, mutations that tightened the core of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in new variants may have increased the virus’s fitness. New research led by Penn State reveals that the stem region of the spike protein became progressively tighter over time, and the team thinks this likely improved the virus’s ability to transmit through nasal droplets and infect host cells once in the body. The team said the stem region of the protein that emerged in the most recent Omicron variants is as rigid as it can get, which could ...

A rare and nevertheless formidable event in the landscape of epilepsies, New-Onset Refractory Status Epilepticus (NORSE) is a form of prolonged seizure in which the neurons of the epileptic focus endure a continuous discharge of neurotransmitters. It is a medical emergency requiring intensive care management. Indeed, it can cause significant long-term neurological sequelae and is associated with an average mortality rate of 12% in children and 16 to 27% in adults. NORSE can occur in response to an infection or tumor development. However, its origin remains unknown in half of the affected patients despite extensive clinical and biological ...

The human body contains more than 30 trillion cells. Until recently, the sheer number of cells in the organism meant that approaches to understanding human diseases and developmental processes based on the analysis of single cells were a futuristic vision. The development of new sequencing methods is currently revolutionising our understanding of cellular heterogeneity. These technologies can detect rare or even new cell types by extracting and sequencing the genetic information from the cells based on ribonucleic acid chains. In cooperation ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- LOINC®, an international data standard maintained at Regenstrief Institute, hosted an educational release webinar for version 2.74. More than 1,200 participants signed up, representing 78 countries. The hour and a half webinar served as an opportunity for the LOINC team to introduce and explain the new concepts from the 2.74 release update. Participants were presented with opportunities to learn more about each new concept and ask questions. LOINC, short for Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes, is a global standard for health terminology. Created and maintained at Regenstrief, LOINC enables the identification, exchange and collection of data across ...

Combined long-term survival results from nonrandomized phase II trial NRG Oncology RTOG 0630 and the ancillary analysis of the combined NRG-RTOG 0630/9514 trials indicate that pathologic complete response (pCR) is associated with improved survival outcomes for patients with localized soft tissue sarcoma (STS) who receive preoperative chemoradiotherapy or radiotherapy. This data suggests that pCR can be used as a prognostic factor for clinical outcomes in future STS research. These results were recently published in the JAMA Oncology. NRG-RTOG 0630 and 9514 both evaluated STS patients who were receiving either preoperative image-guided radiotherapy (IGRT; 0630) or neoadjuvant ...

Back in December, we announced that Pensoft joined 27 other publishers in sharing prices and services via the Journal Comparison Service developed by cOAlition S, in order to boost transparency in scholarly publishing. Now, we are up to another challenge: we have joined the Advisory Panel appointed by cOAlition S to help further the improvement and development of this important service. The Advisory Panel consists of twelve members (six publishers and six end-users) representing different stakeholders in the scholarly communication ecosystem. Journal Comparison Service (JSC) is an initiative by cOAlition S aimed to improve ...

Some species of mussels can see. Scallops, for example, have up to 200 eyes that help them detect predators such as an approaching starfish. However, the eyes of scallops differ significantly from the human eye. While in our eyes the combination of cornea and lens creates an image on the retina, in scallop eyes light is focused by a hemispherical mirror. Optical imaging with lenses or mirrors Creating images with mirrors instead of lenses is especially common in astronomical telescopes, in order to capture as much light as possible from planets, stars and galaxies. In the Schmidt telescope developed in the 1930s by Bernhard Schmidt (1879-1935) and still in use in many observatories today, ...

Lehigh Engineering researcher Arup SenGupta has developed a novel way to capture carbon dioxide from the air and store it in the “infinite sink” of the ocean. The approach uses an innovative copper-containing polymeric filter and essentially converts CO2 into sodium bicarbonate (aka baking soda) that can be released harmlessly into the ocean. This new hybrid material, or filter, is called DeCarbonHIX (i.e., decarbonization through hybrid ion exchange material), and is described in a paper recently published in the journal Science Advances.  The research, which demonstrated a 300 percent increase in the amount of carbon captured ...

About The Study: In this updated systematic review and meta-analysis of 107 studies involving more than 4.8 million participants, daily low or moderate alcohol intake was not significantly associated with all-cause mortality risk, while increased risk was evident at higher consumption levels, starting at lower levels for women than men.  Authors: Jinhui Zhao, Ph.D., of the University of Victoria in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, 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/jamanetworkopen.2023.6185) Editor’s ...

About The Study: While the decline in employer-sponsored insurance in 2020 was offset by an increase in Medicaid coverage among newly unemployed white working-age adults, there was no such rise among newly unemployed Black and Hispanic workers.  Authors: Peter J. Huckfeldt, Ph.D., of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health in Minneapolis, 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/jamahealthforum.2023.0168) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including ...

A groundbreaking technique developed by researchers affiliated with the USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience presents a new way of gathering and organizing highly detailed information about organic tissues in record time. The methods could someday be used to rapidly process tissue biopsies in cancer care or detecting bacteria in food processing plants. Tissues emit signals, or intrinsic fields, that while detectable are very weak and hard to differentiate. The technique, detailed in a pair of papers published in Nature Methods ...

New University of British Columbia research is challenging a longstanding assumption that a baby’s gut microbiome is primarily shaped by their mother’s vaginal microbiome, while shedding new light on the factors that do influence its development. When babies are born, their gut is a nearly sterile environment. But that quickly changes as the infant’s digestive tract becomes home to trillions of microbial cells throughout their early development. This gut microbiome is an important part of overall health and alterations early in life have been associated with negative health outcomes later on, including asthma and obesity. It has ...

About Book: Green tech refers to materials and technology that are used to reduce adverse human impact on Earth. It encompasses a wide area of scientific research, including energy, atmospheric science, agriculture, material science, and hydrology. Using sustainable resources to produce energy for a better greener tomorrow has been at the epicentre of man’s thought since 1987, in the United Nations  Brundtland Report was published, which defined sustainable development as “needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. It has real-world examples some ...

Researchers at the Department of Instrumentation and Applied Physics (IAP), Indian Institute of Science (IISc), have designed a novel ultramicro supercapacitor, a tiny device capable of storing an enormous amount of electric charge. It is also much smaller and more compact than existing supercapacitors and can potentially be used in many devices ranging from streetlights to consumer electronics, electric cars and medical devices.   Most of these devices are currently powered by batteries. However, over time, these batteries lose their ability to store charge and therefore have a limited shelf-life. Capacitors, on the other hand, can store electric charge for much ...

Ishikawa, Japan -- In the past few years, “AI” has become a major buzzword in technology. The prospect of a computer being able to do tasks which only a human could perform is a captivating thought indeed! AIs can be created using multiple different methods, but one of the most popular ones right now involves the use of deep neural networks (DNNs). These structures try to mimic the neural connections and function of the brain and are generally trained on a dataset before they are deployed in the real world. By training them on a dataset beforehand, ...

The poisonous birds inhabit one of Earth’s most pristine rainforests, a place as exotic as no other in the world. Hearing the words poisonous and bird coupled will be an eye-opener for most. But poisonous birds actually exist. And now, more species have been discovered in New Guinea’s jungles. "We managed to identify two new species of poisonous birds on our most recent trip. These birds contain a neurotoxin that they can both tolerate and store in their feathers," says Knud Jønsson of the Natural History Museum of Denmark. Jønsson and fellow UCPH researcher, Kasun ...

Antarctic sea ice is an important component of the climate system, and may act as an early indicator of climate change. Under global warming, significant changes in Antarctic sea ice have been observed. Specifically, it experienced a slow increase during 1979–2014, but a rapid decline thereafter. Despite a modest recovery after the record minimum in 2017, the sea ice area during austral summer 2022 (December 2021 to February 2022) again hit a new record minimum, at 3.07 million km2, which is approximately a 25% reduction compared with its long-term mean during 1981–2010. The largest decline occurred in two regions: the central-eastern Ross Sea ...

Manganese oxides are natural reactive minerals and widely spread in aquatic and terrestrial environments, affecting the fate of metals (such as As3+ and Cd2+) and organic pollutants (such as phenols and diclofenac) through adsorption and oxidation in sewage treatment. Usually, the manganese (III/IV) oxides in the environment are thought to be formed by the oxidation of dissolved Mn(II) through abiotic or biotic processes. Oxidation of aqueous Mn(II) by dissolved oxygen is thermodynamically favored, but the kinetic is slow due to the high energy barrier of the reaction from dissolved ...

End-of-dry-season CO2 pulses recur each year in the atmosphere above the Australian continent, a discovery made by an international research team led by environmental physicist Prof. Dr André Butz of Heidelberg University. To investigate the carbon fluxes over Australia, the researchers studied atmospheric CO2 measurements. Their analyses show that CO2 emissions spike when heavy rain falls on dried-out soil, thus activating microorganisms in that soil. The findings suggest that dry regions have a greater influence on the variations in the global carbon cycle than previously thought. The Australian continent is dominated by dry ecosystems and widely varying precipitation patterns. ...