The citric acid cycle is an important metabolic pathway that enables living organisms to generate energy by degrading organic compounds into carbon dioxide (CO?). The first step in the cycle is usually performed by the enzyme citrate synthase, which builds citrate. But, in the absence of oxygen (under anaerobic conditions), some bacteria can perform the reverse cycle: They can build up biomass from CO?. In this so-called reversed citric acid cycle, citrate synthase is replaced by ATP-citrate lyase, which consumes cells' universal energy carrier ATP (adenosine triphosphate) to cleave citrate instead of forming it. However, a few years ago, a research team led by Ivan Berg (University of Münster) and Wolfgang Eisenreich (Technical University of Munich) discovered that instead of ...

A new study from the University of Surrey has found that among people aged 55 to 75 more frequent use of the internet was beneficial for mental health and quality of life under lockdown. Those who used the internet more, particularly for staying in touch with friends and family, were at lower risk of depression and reported a higher quality of life. Loneliness and social isolation have been major problems for many under lockdown, and for older people in particular. Loneliness raises risk of depression and other negative health outcomes. In a paper published in the journal Healthcare, researchers from Surrey investigated ...

Australia's unique and highly endemic flora and fauna are threatened by rapid losses in biodiversity and ecosystem health, caused by human influence and environmental challenges. To monitor and respond to these trends, scientists and policy-makers need reliable data. Biodiversity researchers and managers often don't have the necessary information, or access to it, to tackle some of the greatest environmental challenges facing society, such as biodiversity loss or climate change. Data can be a powerful tool for the development of science and decision-making, which is where the END ...

Rain is a common phenomenon on Earth. There is a similar phenomenon on the Sun, called coronal rain. It is related to the coronal heating and magnetic field, and plays a fundamental role in the mass cycle between the hot, tenuous corona and the cool, dense chromosphere. Coronal rain usually takes place in post-flare loops and the non-flaring active region coronal loops. It is generally classified into two categories: flare-driven and quiescent coronal rain, depending on its relation to the flare. Both kinds of coronal rain form along structures that are magnetically ...

Understanding whether Mars was once able to support life has been a major driving force for Mars research over the past 50 years. To decipher the planet's ancient climate and habitability, researchers look to the rock record - a physical record of ancient surface processes which reflect the environment and the prevailing climate at the time the rocks were deposited. In a new paper published in JGR: Planets, researchers on the NASA-JPL Mars Science Laboratory mission used the Curiosity rover to add another piece to the puzzle of Mars' ancient past by investigating a unit of rocks within Gale crater. They found evidence of an ancient dune field preserved as a layer of rocks in Gale crater, which overlies rock layers that were deposited in a large lake. The rock ...

Thursday, 22 April 2021 - New research has found that childhood adversity, such as parental conflict, death of a close family member or serious injury, before the age of nine was associated with mental health problems in late adolescence. However, the research also shows that improving the relationship between parents and children could prevent subsequent mental health problems, even in children who have experienced severe adversities. The research also indicated that improving a child's self-esteem and increasing their levels of physical activity can help to reduce the risk of developing mental health problems. The study, led by researchers from RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, is recently published in END ...

NUST MISIS scientists together with Indian colleagues from Jain University and Sri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara College presented innovative membranes for the complete removal of heavy metals from industrial wastewater. The special nanostructure of zinc-modified aluminum oxide made it possible to remove arsenic and lead from water with an efficiency of 87% and 98%, respectively. The results of the work were published in the Chemosphere journal. Industrialization is the main cause of water pollution due to the ingress of industrial waste. In particular, heavy metals -- arsenic, lead and cadmium -- can cause metabolic disorders and multiple critical effects to the body, ...

Two-dimensional (2D) materials with a single-layer thickness retaining magnetic order in atomically thin limit began to increase their scientific and technological significance after the successful synthesis of graphene and later investigations of van der Waals materials. CrBr3 has been known since the 60s as a van der Waals ferromagnet. Hansen, Tsubokawa, and Dillon have pioneered the work on magnetism in this compound. However, it has only recently been established that CrBr3 exhibits ferromagnetism when exfoliating to several layers and monolayers while ...

The design, interpretation, and enforcement of county and municipal laws significantly affect local public health. But accessing those laws can be difficult. A study by Indiana University researchers found that unlike Indiana state laws, which are collected, catalogued by topic, and kept regularly updated in centralized, publicly available electronic databases, laws in about half of all Indiana counties were not online, or if they were online, they weren't necessarily up to date. This means that in Indiana, there is no comprehensive, up-to-date central source that can be used to study how different local governments respond to similar health-related ...

A small proportion of women who receive anti-estrogen treatment after breast cancer surgery have worse outcomes. This is associated with mutations in the estrogen receptor gene, according to a study from Lund University now published in JNCI Cancer Spectrum. "If our results are confirmed in further studies, it would be relevant to screen for these resistance mutations already at diagnosis, and then consider other treatment options that could work better for patients with mutated tumors," says Lao Saal, who led the study, the largest of its kind on resistance mutations in the estrogen receptor in primary breast cancer. Breast cancer is the most common ...

Inspired by nature, the researchers developing a new load-bearing material Engineers have developed a new material that mimics human cartilage - the body's shock absorbing and lubrication system, and it could herald the development of a new generation of lightweight bearings. Cartilage is a soft fibrous tissue found around joints which provides protection from the compressive loading generated by walking, running or lifting. It also provides a protective, lubricating layer allowing bones to pass over one another in a frictionless way. For years, scientists have been trying to create a synthetic material with the properties of cartilage. ...

Several weeks following the publication of the large real-world Covid-19 vaccine effectiveness study by the Clalit Research Institute in Collaboration with Harvard University in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), additional results focusing on vaccine effectiveness in specific sub-populations have now been published. While the original publication demonstrated the effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine in the general population, outstanding questions remained regarding vaccine effectiveness in specific sub-populations of interest, including the elderly, multi-morbid ...

An international team led by a Skoltech researcher has developed a method of fabrication for biodegradable polymer microcapsules, made more efficient by turning to an unusual source of inspiration - traditional Russian dumpling, or pelmeni, making. The two papers were published in Materials and Design and ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces. Micro-sized capsules, which can be tailored to a variety of purposes, have proven very useful in targeted delivery of drugs and other bioactive compounds. To ensure optimal functioning, these have to be designed and manufactured with precision and in particular shapes, as non-spherical capsules turned out to be more efficient and effective than spherical ones. "Non-spherical capsules could have side directed release ...

Students who have been exposed to interpersonal trauma —  physical assault, sexual assault or unwanted sexual experiences — prior to college are more likely to engage in risky alcohol use. But romantic relationships mitigate these effects of trauma on a student’s drinking behavior, according to a new study led by Virginia Commonwealth University researchers. The study investigates whether romantic relationships might play a role in mitigating or exacerbating the effects of trauma exposure on alcohol use among college students. It found that students who experienced interpersonal trauma during college consumed more alcohol than those without interpersonal trauma exposure, and that their drinking was more pronounced for those in a relationship with a partner with ...

A good night's sleep is essential for a healthy body and mind, for when we sleep is when the body resets, repairs, and refreshes itself. A lot of people, however, have trouble falling or staying asleep, a condition known as insomnia that affects up to 30% of the population. It is usually caused by an underlying psychiatric or clinical condition and is associated with a poorer quality of life. Recent genome wide analyses have revealed that a gene MEIS1 is linked with insomnia. Interestingly, this gene has also been implicated in restless leg syndrome and iron-deficiency anemia (IDA), the latter ...

For corn, using dairy manure and legume cover crops in crop rotations can reduce the need for inorganic nitrogen fertilizer and protect water quality, but these practices also can contribute to emissions of nitrous oxide -- a potent greenhouse gas. That is the conclusion of Penn State researchers, who measured nitrous oxide emissions from the corn phases of two crop rotations -- a corn-soybean rotation and a dairy forage rotation -- under three different management regimens. The results of the study offer clues about how dairy farmers might reduce the amount of nitrogen fertilizer they apply to corn crops, saving money and contributing less to climate change. The results are important because although nitrous ...

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--April 21, 2021--Not all cancer cells within a tumor are created equal; nor do all immune cells (or all liver or brain cells) in your body have the same job. Much of their function depends on their location. Now, researchers at Gladstone Institutes, UC San Francisco (UCSF), and UC Berkeley have developed a more efficient method than ever before to simultaneously map the specialized diversity and spatial location of individual cells within a tissue or a tumor. The technique, called XYZeq, was described online this week in the journal Science Advances. It involves segmenting a tissue into a microscopic grid before analyzing RNA from intact cells in each square of the grid, in order to gain a clear understanding of how each particular cell is functioning within ...

In rare cases, people who have been fully vaccinated against COVID and are immune to the virus can nevertheless develop the disease. New findings from The Rockefeller University now suggest that these so-called breakthrough cases may be driven by rapid evolution of the virus, and that ongoing testing of immunized individuals will be important to help mitigate future outbreaks. The research, published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, reports results from ongoing monitoring within the Rockefeller University community where two fully vaccinated individuals tested positive for the coronavirus. Both had received two doses of either the Moderna or the Pfizer vaccine, with the second dose occurring more than two weeks before the positive test. One person was initially ...

Fast reactions to future events are crucial. A boxer, for example, needs to respond to her opponent in fractions of a second in order to anticipate and block the next attack. Such rapid responses are based on estimates of whether and when events will occur. Now, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA) and New York University (NYU) have identified the cognitive computations underlying this complex predictive behavior. How does the brain know when to pay attention? Every future event carries two distinct kinds of uncertainty: ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - In the continuing search for dark matter in our universe, scientists believe they have found a unique and powerful detector: exoplanets. In a new paper, two astrophysicists suggest dark matter could be detected by measuring the effect it has on the temperature of exoplanets, which are planets outside our solar system. This could provide new insights into dark matter, the mysterious substance that can't be directly observed, but which makes up roughly 80% of the mass of the universe. "We believe there should be about 300 billion exoplanets that are waiting to be discovered," said Juri Smirnov, a fellow at The Ohio ...

In the arms race "mankind against bacteria", bacteria are currently ahead of us. Our former miracle weapons, antibiotics, are failing more and more frequently when germs use tricky maneuvers to protect themselves from the effects of these drugs. Some species even retreat into the inside of human cells, where they remain "invisible" to the immune system. These particularly dreaded pathogens include multi-resistant staphylococci (MRSA), which can cause life-threatening diseases such as sepsis or pneumonia. In order to track down the germs in their hidouts and eliminate them, a team of researchers from Empa and ETH Zurich is now developing nanoparticles that use a completely different mode ...

BOSTON - For many patients with localized lung cancer (non-small-cell lung carcinoma and small cell lung carcinoma), high-dose radiation with concurrent chemotherapy is a potential cure. Yet this treatment can cause severe, acute inflammation of the esophagus (esophagitis) in about one in five patients, requiring hospitalization and placement of a feeding tube. A team of radiation oncologists at Mass General Cancer Center demonstrate in an early clinical trial that the radiation beam can be carefully "sculpted" to deliver the majority of a radiation dose directly to the tumor while effectively sparing tissues in the side of the ...

Ann Arbor, April 22, 2021 - Using nearly a year of anonymous geolocation data from 15-17 million cell phone users in 3,037 United States counties, investigators have found that individuals with lower income per capita or greater Republican orientation were associated with significantly reduced social distancing throughout the study period from March 2020 through January 2021. Their findings are reported in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, published by Elsevier. The associations persisted after adjusting for a variety of county-level demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. Other county-level characteristics, such as the share of Black and Hispanic residents, were also associated ...

Topological photonics has attracted a lot of attention recently. The application of topological band theory to photonics not only opens the door to novel devices, but also stimulates the exploration of new topological phases. In the photonic regime, symmetries that are unique to electromagnetic (EM) waves can intrinsically protect the band degeneracies in the momentum space. Topological systems realized using such symmetries are uniquely "photonic", having no counterparts in electronic or phononic systems. Among various topological features in momentum space, nodal chain is a special ...

Guilt and social pressure lead people to underreport COVID-19 protocol violations, according to study of experimental data across 12 countries. Article Title: A guilt-free strategy increases self-reported non-compliance with COVID-19 preventive measures: Experimental evidence from 12 countries Funding: J.-F. Daoust acknowledges the financial support from SSPS Open Access (University of Edinburgh). M. Foucault and S. Brouard acknowledge the financial support from ANR - REPEAT grant (Special COVID-19), CNRS, Fondation de l'innovation politique, as well as regions Nouvelle-Aquitaine and Occitanie. Richard Nadeau and Éric Bélanger acknowledge the financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC/CRSH). M. Becher gratefully acknowledges ...