The results of the first clinical trial of a new vaccine for a neglected tropical disease have demonstrated that it is safe and induces immune responses in patients with the infection. There are currently no vaccines to prevent leishmaniasis which is spread by the bite of sand flies and existing drugs have many side effects and are difficult to administer. The potential new vaccine was developed by researchers at the Hull York Medical School, which is the joint medical school of the Universities of Hull and York. Professor Paul Kaye from the Hull York Medical School was the principal investigator on the Wellcome Trust Translation Award that funded the development of the vaccine. Professor Kaye said: ...

Philadelphia, April 15, 2021--Researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have identified a key target that may be responsible for treatment failure in about 30% of patients with hemophilia A. The target, known as B cell activating factor (BAFF), appears to promote antibodies against and inhibitors of the missing blood clotting factor that is given to these patients to control their bleeding episodes. The findings, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, raise the possibility of using anti-BAFF therapies, potentially in combination with immune tolerance therapies, to tame the immune response in some patients with severe hemophilia A. Hemophilia A is the most common inherited bleeding disorder, affecting ...

Philadelphia, April 15, 2021 - Early and accurate diagnosis leads to optimal recovery from concussion. Over the past year across a series of studies, the Minds Matter Concussion Program research team at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) has systematically evaluated the use of the visio-vestibular examination (VVE) and its ability to enhance concussion diagnosis and management. The latest of these studies published online today in the Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine. The VVE involves a series of brief eye movement and balance tests intended to identify deficits in brain function involving the visual and vestibular systems. Researchers found that the VVE presents several advantages over current clinical measures, moving beyond subjective symptoms ...

April 15, 2021 - Decades after their days on the gridiron, middle-aged men who played football in high school are not experiencing greater problems with concentration, memory, or depression compared to men who did not play football, reports a study in Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer. "Men who played high-school football did not report worse brain health compared with those who played other contact sports, noncontact sports, or did not participate in sports during high school," according to the new research, led by Grant L. Iverson, PhD, of Harvard Medical School. The study offers reassurance that playing high-school football is not, in itself, a risk factor for cognitive or mood ...

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive type of breast cancer with a high fatality rate. Currently, chemotherapy is the major treatment option, but the clinical result is unsatisfactory. A research team led by biologists at City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has identified and characterised a set of specific super-enhancers that stimulate the activity of the related critical cancer genes. The research has also discovered that the deletion of certain specific super-enhancers can reduce tumour cell growth. The latest findings may help discover new effective drug targets for TNBC patients to improve their survival chance. Traditionally, cancer research ...

A key portion of MIT's campus overlaps with Kendall Square, the bustling area in East Cambridge where students, residents, and tech employees scurry around in between classes, meetings, and meals. Where are they all going? Is there a way to make sense of this daily flurry of foot traffic? In fact, there is: MIT Associate Professor Andres Sevtsuk has made Kendall Square the basis of a newly published model of pedestrian movement that could help planners and developers better grasp the flow of foot traffic in all cities. Sevtsuk's work emphasizes the functionality of a neighborhood's elements, above and beyond its physical form, making the model one that could be ...

A new scientific discovery in Australia by Flinders University has recorded for the first time how ghost currents and sediments can 'undo' the force of gravity. The new theory, just published in the Journal of Marine Systems, helps explain obscure events in which suspended sediment particles mysteriously move upward, not downward, on the slope of submarine canyons of the deep sea. While this activity seems to contradict the laws of gravity, Flinders University physical oceanographer Associate Professor Jochen Kaempf has found an answer, devising the first scientific explanation of the observed upslope sediment transport. "To put it simply, the vehicle of this transport are currents that, while carrying ...

Many long for a return to a post-pandemic "normal," which, for some, may entail concerts, travel, and large gatherings. But how to keep safe amid these potential public health risks? One possibility, according to a new study, is dogs. A proof-of-concept investigation published today in the journal PLOS ONE suggests that specially trained detection dogs can sniff out COVID-19-positive samples with 96% accuracy. "This is not a simple thing we're asking the dogs to do," says Cynthia Otto, senior author on the work and director of the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine Working Dog Center. "Dogs have to ...

Do freshwater snails make good tennis players? One of them certainly has the name for it. Enter Travunijana djokovici, a new species of aquatic snail named after famous Serbian ten­nis player Novak Djokovic. Slovak biospeleologist Jozef Grego and Montenegrin zoologist Vladimir Pesic of the University of Montenegro discovered the new snail in a karstic spring near Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro, during a field trip in April 2019. Their scientific article, published in the open-access, peer-reviewed journal Subterranean Biology, says they named it after Djokovic "to acknowledge his inspiring enthusiasm and energy." "To discover some of the world's rarest animals that inhabit the unique underground habitats of the Dinaric karst, to reach inaccessible cave and spring habitats ...

WASHINGTON (April 15, 2021) -- Clusters of a virus known to cause stomach flu are resistant to detergent and ultraviolet disinfection, according to new research co-led by END ...

Since the 1970s, the Standard Model of Physics has served as the basis from which particle physics are investigated. Both experimentalists and theoretical physicists have tested the Standard Model's accuracy, and it has remained the law of the land when it comes to understanding how the subatomic world behaves. This week, cracks formed in that foundational set of assumptions. Researchers of the "Muon g-2" collaboration from the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL) in the United States published further experimental findings that show that muons--heavy subatomic relatives of electrons--may have a larger "magnetic moment" than earlier Standard Model estimates had predicted, indicating that an unknown particle or force might be influencing ...

The DNA molecule is not naked in the nucleus. Instead, it is folded in a very organized way by the help of different proteins to establish a unique spatial organization of the genetic information. This 3D spatial genome organization is fundamental for the regulation of our genes and has to be established de novo by each individual during early embryogenesis. Researchers at the MPI of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg in collaboration with colleagues from the Friedrich Mischer Institute in Basel now reveal a yet unknown and critical role of the protein HP1a in the 3D genome re-organization after fertilisation. The study published in the scientific journal Nature identifies HP1a as an epigenetic regulator that is involved in establishing ...

Leesburg, VA, April 15, 2021--A Scientific E-Poster to be presented at the 2021 ARRS Virtual Annual Meeting found that as the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step 1 transitions from a numerical score to pass or fail--as early as January 2022--radiology residency program directors will likely rely on USMLE Step 2 Clinical Knowledge (CK) scores as an objective and standardized metric to screen applicants. "However," wrote lead investigator Rebecca Zhang of the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, "program directors remain unsure whether they will ...

Leesburg, VA, April 15, 2021--A Scientific E-Poster to be presented at the 2021 ARRS Virtual Annual Meeting found that in the setting of a high pretest probability of COVID-19 infection or with a quick turnaround of the rapid real-time reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) COVID-19 test, a chest x-ray (CXR) scoring system may be used prospectively to predict patient outcomes. "We developed an accurate and reliable tool for classifying COVID-19 severity, which can be used both at the attending chest radiologist and junior resident level. This study identifies the laboratory, clinical and radiographic data that predict important patient outcomes such as death, intubation, and the need for chronic renal replacement ...

Scientists of Tomsk Polytechnic University has conducted research on the 35ClO2 isotope and developed a mathematical model and software, which allow predicting characteristics by 10 folds more accurate than already known results. The research work was conducted by a research team of Russian, German and Swiss scientists. The research findings are published in the Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics (IF: 3,4; Q1) academic journal and listed as one of the best articles. The ClO2 molecule is extremely important for medicine and biophysics, as well as for the Earth atmosphere. It is used in medicine for disinfection and ...

A study published this week in The Lancet Public Health examines how we can use our income assistance systems to address drug use and drug-related harm. The study, led by University of British Columbia (UBC) medical sociologist Dr. Lindsey Richardson and conducted at the British Columbia Centre on Substance Use (BCCSU), tests whether varying the timing and frequency of income assistance payments can mitigate drug-related harms linked to the existing once-monthly payment schedule that is common across North America and Europe. Monthly synchronized income assistance payments have long been linked to considerable and costly increases in drug use and resulting harm, including overdose, hospital admission, treatment interruption and emergency service calls. The study finds that varying when ...

Tokyo, Japan - A team of scientists led by the Institute of Biomaterials and Bioengineering at Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) have created novel molecules that prevent human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) particles from attacking immune cells. This is accomplished by injecting compounds mimicking the protein the virus usually uses to enter the cells. This work may lead to new treatments for HIV that may be more effective at stopping the proliferation of the virus with fewer side effects. HIV is a very dangerous pathogen because it attacks the very immune cells, including T helper cells, that are needed for the body to fight back. An HIV particle first ...

Researchers from Kumamoto University (Japan) have found that the anti-diabetic drug metformin significantly prolongs the survival of mice in a model that simulates the pathology of non-diabetic chronic kidney disease (ND-CKD) by ameliorating pathological conditions like reduced kidney function, glomerular damage, inflammation and fibrosis. Metformin's mechanism is different from existing therapeutics which only treat symptoms, such as the blood pressure drug losartan, so the researchers believe that a combination of these medications at low dose will be highly beneficial. CKD (chronic kidney disease) ...

It is often said that before air travel our skies were bluer yet how, in the 21st century, could we ever know what light and colors were like one hundred years ago? Recently, a group of researchers from EPFL's Audiovisual Communications Laboratory, in the School of Computer and Communication Sciences (IC), had a unique opportunity to try to find out. Normally hidden treasures locked away in the vaults of a handful of museums, the researchers were offered access to some of the original photographic plates and images of the scientist and inventor Gabriel Lippmann, who won the 1908 Nobel Prize in physics for his method of reproducing colors in photography. In a paper just published in the Proceedings of the National ...

Research led by the University of Kent's Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE) has found that the personification of animals in recent wildlife documentaries leads to significant misinformation and creates problems for public understanding of wider conservation. In a research paper published by People and Nature, Professor Keith Somerville (DICE), Dr Amy Dickman, Dr Paul Johnson (both from the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, University of Oxford), and Professor Adam Hart (University of Gloucestershire) argue that the portrayal of charismatic animals in nature films, while ...

"This enables us to contrast the subjective perception of stress with an objective measurement method and compare the two," explains Nina Minkley. Contrary to expectations, it turned out that the effort invested in the task does not increase with its difficulty, nor does the stress level. The study was featured in the journal Frontiers in Education on 12. April 2021. Simple questionnaire surveys criticised To date, the stress experience of students has mostly been surveyed with questionnaires. But this approach has been criticised, because many factors have an effect on one's own perception that have nothing to do with the task. "For example, women often report higher stress levels ...

Almost half a century ago the creators of Star Wars imagined a life-sustaining planet, Tatooine, orbiting a pair of stars. Now, 44 years later, scientists have found new evidence that that five known systems with multiple stars, Kepler-34, -35, -38, -64 and -413, are possible candidates for supporting life. A newly developed mathematical framework allowed researchers at New York University Abu Dhabi and the University of Washington to show that those systems -- between 2764 and 5933 light years from Earth, in the constellations Lyra and Cygnus -- support a permanent "Habitable Zone", a region around stars in which liquid water could ...

Honey is humankind's oldest sweetener - and for thousands of years it was also the only one. Indirect clues about the significance of bees and bee products are provided by prehistoric petroglyphs on various continents, created between 8,000 and 40,000 years ago. Ancient Egyptian reliefs indicate the practice of beekeeping as early as 2600 year BCE. But for sub-Saharan Africa, direct archaeological evidence has been lacking until now. The analysis of the chemical residues of food in potsherds has fundamentally altered the picture. Archaeologists at Goethe University in cooperation with chemists at the University ...

The advent and increased availability of 3D printing is leading to more customizable parts at lower costs across a spectrum of applications, from wearable smart devices to autonomous vehicles. Now, a research team based at Tohoku University has 3D printed the first proton exchange membrane, a critical component of batteries, electrochemical capacitors and fuel cells. The achievement also brings the possibility of custom solid-state energy devices closer to reality, according to the researchers. The results were published on March 29 in ACS Applied Energy Materials, a journal of the American Chemical Society. "Energy storage devices whose shapes can be tailored enable entirely new possibilities for applications related, for example, to smart wearable, electronic medical ...

Researchers in the Department of Neurology at Tohoku University, which is led by professor Masashi Aoki, have developed a classification scheme for neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder, a rare autoimmune disease that until recently was thought to be a type of multiple sclerosis (MS). The new taxonomy for the disease replaces one borrowed from MS but which was inappropriate for what is in fact a distinct condition. An autoimmune disease, neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder (NMOSD), was for a long time thought to be a type of multiple sclerosis (MS), but it has recently been identified as an entirely different illness. As a result of this confusion, ...