Researchers at SAHMRI and Flinders University have conducted the largest ever meta-analysis of wellbeing studies from around the world to answer the question, 'What's the best way to build personal wellbeing?'. The analysis included 400+ clinical trials involving more than 50,000 participants. Researchers divided people into three main groups, those in generally good health, those with physical illness and those with mental illness. They found it is possible to build the wellbeing of all individuals, but Mr Joep Van Agteren, Co-lead at the SAHMRI Wellbeing and Resilience Centre, says there's no one-size-fits-all solution. "During stressful and uncertain periods in our lives, pro-actively working on our mental health is crucial to help mitigate ...

Researchers and physicians from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and UC San Francisco have found that deaths of workers using methylene chloride paint strippers are on the rise. The solvent is widely used in paint strippers, cleaners, adhesives and sealants. The study is the first comprehensive review of fatalities linked to the deadly chemical in the United States and identified more deaths than previously reported. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has acknowledged 53 fatalities connected to the chemical from 1980 to 2018. The new study identified 85 deaths over the same period, most of them ...

Researchers used platinum and aluminum compounds to create a catalyst which enables certain chemical reactions to occur more efficiently than ever before. The catalyst could significantly reduce energy usage in various industrial and pharmaceutical processes. It also allows for a wider range of sustainable sources to feed the processes, which could reduce the demand for fossil fuels required by them. There are many chemicals used in a wide range of industries, including pharmaceuticals, that you probably don't notice in everyday life; for example, ...

Due to global warming, not only the temperatures in the atmosphere and in the ocean are rising, but also winds and ocean currents as well as the oxygen distribution in the ocean are changing. For example, the oxygen content in the ocean has decreased globally by about 2% in the last 60 years, particularly strong in the tropical oceans. However, these regions are characterized by a complex system of ocean currents. At the equator, one of the strongest currents, the Equatorial Undercurrent (EUC), transports water masses eastwards across the Atlantic. The water transport by the EUC is more than 60 ...

Abu Dhabi, UAE, April 19: The survival rate of cancer patients can drop to ten percent or less during metastasis, the spread of cancerous cells to create secondary tumors. Therefore, it is crucial that cancer is detected and treated before metastasis occurs, or at least at its early stages. To spread the cancer, messenger cells known as Circulating Tumor Cells, or CTCs, break off of the original tumor and flow through the bloodstream to create a secondary growth. A team of researchers led by Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering and Principal Investigator at the NYU Abu Dhabi ...

A new study investigates a genetic culprit behind abdominal aortic aneurysm, a serious condition that puts people at risk of their aorta rupturing - a potentially deadly event. Finding a viable genetic target for AAA could change the game, says senior author Katherine Gallagher, M.D., a vascular surgeon and an associate professor of surgery and microbiology and immunology at Michigan Medicine, the academic medical center of the University of Michigan. That's because there are no medications to directly treat the condition and prevent an aneurysm from growing. Current options include things like addressing blood pressure to lower the stress on the arteries and veins running through the body, and making lifestyle changes like quitting smoking. Most people monitor their aneurysm ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Someday, scientists believe, tiny DNA-based robots and other nanodevices will deliver medicine inside our bodies, detect the presence of deadly pathogens, and help manufacture increasingly smaller electronics. Researchers took a big step toward that future by developing a new tool that can design much more complex DNA robots and nanodevices than were ever possible before in a fraction of the time. In a paper published today (April 19, 2021) in the journal Nature Materials, researchers from The Ohio State University - led by former engineering doctoral student Chao-Min Huang - unveiled new software they call MagicDNA. The software helps researchers design ways to ...

BRAZZAVILLE, Republic of Congo (April 19, 2021) - A new study classifies different types of wildlife traffickers and sellers in two of Central Africa's growing urban centers, providing new insight into the poorly understood urban illegal wildlife trade. The findings can help conservation and law enforcement authorities prioritize their efforts on professional criminals, identify patterns among repeat offenders, and determine if wildlife offenders are engaging in other types of crime. Authors from the University of Maryland and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) describe their findings ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (National Academies) details the state of dementia care and research in America and provides guidance on future research to make sure both patients and their families are having their needs met by the care they receive. Sections of the report highlight the effectiveness of the collaborative care model as well as successful implementation, citing research from Regenstrief Institute, Eskenazi Health and the Indiana University School of Medicine. There are between 3.7 million and 5.8 million people living with dementia ...

Scientists have sequenced ancient DNA from soil for the first time and the advance will transform what is known about everything from evolution to climate change. The findings have been described as the 'moon landings' of genomics because researchers will no longer have to rely on finding and testing fossils to determine genetic ancestry, links and discoveries - and it is thanks to Stone Age black bears who defecated in a remote cave in Mexico 16,000 years ago. A team of scientists from The Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Centre, University of Copenhagen, led by Professor Eske Willerslev, director of the foundation and a Fellow of St John's College, University of Cambridge, recreated ...

April 19, 2021 - An estimated 50 million people undergo surgery each year in the United States, and a significant proportion of them have undiagnosed or untreated sleep disorders (SD) or sleep-disordered breathing (SDB). Issues at the intersection of anesthesiology and sleep medicine are the focus of the Society of Anesthesia and Sleep Medicine (SASM) whose 10th anniversary is commemorated in the special theme May issue of Anesthesia & Analgesia. The special issue looks back at a remarkable first decade of achievements in research and clinical practice by this young subspecialty society, while looking forward to further progress. A key ...

More blood thinners aren't automatically better, another study confirms. A new publication in JAMA Internal Medicine focuses on the minimal pros and the concerning cons of combining a daily aspirin with a drug from the newer class of anticoagulants that include apixaban, dabigatran, edoxaban and rivaroxaban. Patients were taking one of these direct oral anticoagulants known as DOACs to prevent strokes from non-valvular atrial fibrillation or for the treatment of venous thromboembolic disease (deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism). The included patients did not have another reason to take aspirin ...

PHILADELPHIA - A new gene therapy for one of the most common forms of congenital blindness was safe and improved patients' vision, according to initial data from a clinical trial led by researchers at the Scheie Eye Institute in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The therapy delivers working copies of GUCY2D to the eyes of patients who have severe vision impairments caused by mutations in the gene. Each of the first three treated patients experienced improvement in some aspects of vision, without serious side effects, according to the new study, published in the journal iScience. "We found sustained improvements in both day and night vision, even with a relatively low dose of the gene therapy," said study lead author Samuel G. Jacobson, MD, ...

A new study outlines the need for materials advances in the hardware that goes into making quantum computers if these futuristic devices are to surpass the abilities of the computers we use today. The study, published in the journal Science by an international team, surveyed the state of research on quantum computing hardware with the goal of illustrating the challenges and opportunities facing scientists and engineers. While conventional computers encode "bits" of information as ones and zeroes, quantum computers breeze past this binary arrangement by creating "qubits," which can be complex, continuous quantities. Storing and manipulating information ...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- In a new paper published in Nature Communications, Mayo Clinic researchers and collaborators report the protein-coding gene SERPINA5 may worsen tau protein tangles, which are characteristic of Alzheimer's disease, and advance disease. By combining clinical expertise, brain tissue samples, pathology expertise and artificial intelligence, the team clarified and validated the relevance of the gene to Alzheimer's disease. The researchers used tissue samples from 385 brains donated to the Mayo Clinic Brain Bank, which houses more than 9,000 brain tissue specimens for the study of neurodegenerative disorders. The samples were from people who were diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and lacked co-existing diseases found in ...

Hydrogen will be needed in large quantities as an energy carrier and raw material in the energy system of the future. To achieve this, however, hydrogen must be produced in a climate-neutral way, for example through so-called photoelectrolysis, by using sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. As photoelectrodes, semiconducting materials are needed that convert sunlight into electricity and remain stable in water. Metal oxides are among the best candidates for stable and inexpensive photoelectrodes. Some of these metal oxides also have catalytically active surfaces that accelerate the formation of hydrogen at the cathode or oxygen at the anode. Why is rust not much better? Research has long focused on haematite (α-Fe2O3), ...

MINNEAPOLIS - April 19, 2021 - Despite access to some of the best possible medical care in the world, Senators John McCain and Edward Kennedy both died within 18 months of their diagnosis of glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. While this deadly outcome typifies the nature of this disease, some glioblastoma patients see exceptional benefits from chemotherapy and survive beyond expectations. Why this happens has been revealed by researchers at the University of Minnesota in a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Deciphering the molecular underpinning of these exceptional ...

In March 2020, when the pandemic hit, everything slowed, including non-essential medical procedures such as elective surgeries, to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. Six weeks later, Mary Byrnes, Ph.D., an assistant research scientist in the Department of Surgery at Michigan Medicine, began calling University of Michigan Frankel Cardiovascular Center patients whose surgeries had been canceled or delayed. She wanted to hear about their experiences -- what undergoing surgery meant to them, how postponing their operations had affected them, whether the existence of the coronavirus complicated how they felt about their bodies and ...

Psoriasis is a common inflammatory skin condition. The underlying genetic factors have not yet been sufficiently researched. The skin inflammation is usually triggered by external factors such as infections or stress. A research team at the Institute of Cancer Research of the Medical University of Vienna has now managed to identify a new factor in signal transmission of the immune system that plays a major role in the development of a psoriatic episode. The scientists have shown that symptoms can be alleviated by inhibiting the "c-Jun" protein in signal transmission. The common clinical manifestation of psoriasis is a pinkish-grey thickening of the epidermis in distinct foci of infection, ...

It has been known for about a year that minks can become infected with SARS-CoV-2. The virus had been transmitted from humans to farmed mink and mutated in infected animals. Mutations were acquired in the spike protein, which is crucial for the entry of the virus into host cells and represents the central point of attack for antibodies. These SARS-CoV-2 variants from mink were transmitted back to humans, raising concerns that minks could be a continuing source of infection of humans with SARS-CoV-2 variants with altered biological properties. Researchers at the German Primate Center (DPZ) - Leibniz Institute for Primate Research in Göttingen, Germany, have now shown that an antibody used for COVID-19 ...

A simple dietary supplement reduces behavioral symptoms in mice with a genetic mutation that causes schizophrenia. After additional experiments, including visualizing the fluorescently stained dancing edge of immature brain cells, researchers concluded that the supplement likely protects proteins that build neurons' cellular skeletons. The supplement betaine was first isolated from sugar beets and is often associated with sweetness or umami flavor. Healthy levels of betaine come from both external food sources and internal synthesis in the body. Betaine ...

Up to 25 percent of global food production is lost annually due to insects, primarily beetles. For the past 500 million years, beetles have successfully spread and adapted to life around the globe and now account for one of every five animal species on Earth. Yet as far back as ancient Egypt, these tough little bugs have invaded granaries and vexed us humans by destroying our crops. As a result, food production and an abundant use of pesticides now go hand in hand. A large share of these pesticides damage biodiversity, the environment and human health. As various pesticides are phased out, new solutions are required to target and eradicate pests without harming humans or beneficial ...

Atlantic bluefin tuna have returned to UK waters and can once again be seen during the summer and autumn months. Their numbers appear to be increasing, following a long period of absence linked to population decline, according to research led by Cefas and the University of Exeter. Marine scientists in the UK and Ireland have analysed multiple datasets, spanning a 16-year period, to document the increase in bluefin, which arrive into the waters of the Celtic Seas and off South West England, the Scilly Isles, and North West Ireland to feed in late summer and autumn. The research is part of the Defra-funded "Thunnus UK" research project. ...

Stroke risk for patients with traumatic brain injuries is at its highest in the four months following injury and remains significant for up to five years post-injury, finds a new systematic review led by a team at the University of Birmingham. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a global health problem affecting over 60 million people a year worldwide. Incidences of TBI are rising due to a range of factors including increased falls in the elderly, military conflict, sports injuries and road traffic accidents. However, advances in critical care and imaging have led to a reduction in TBI-related mortality. Previous studies have associated TBI with a long-term risk of neurological diseases including dementia, ...

There are many variants of "goblet cells" in the intestines and they seem to have different functions, according to a new study from the University of Gothenburg. The study indicates that defects in goblet cells of a particular type may be a factor contributing to ulcerative colitis, an inflammatory bowel disease. The entire inside of our intestines is covered by a thin layer of mucus that protects the fragile mucous membrane (mucosa) from bacteria and other microorganisms. If the microorganisms repeatedly come into contact with the intestinal mucosa, inflammation and even cell changes may result. These increase the risk of intestinal cancer. In a healthy colon, the mucus layer is up to a millimeter ...