BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - A bout with flu virus can be hard, but when Streptococcus pneumonia enters the mix, it can turn deadly. Now researchers have found a further reason for the severity of this dual infection by identifying a new virulence mechanism for a surface protein on the pneumonia-causing bacteria S. pneumoniae. This insight comes more than three decades after discovery of that surface protein, called pneumococcal surface protein A, or PspA. This new mechanism had been missed in the past because it facilitates bacterial adherence only to dead or dying lung epithelial cells, not to living cells. Heretofore, researchers typically used healthy lung ...

Ultrasound can overcome some of the detrimental effects of ageing and dementia without the need to cross the blood-brain barrier, Queensland Brain Institute researchers have found. Professor Jürgen Götz led a multidisciplinary team at QBI's Clem Jones Centre for Ageing Dementia Research who showed low-intensity ultrasound effectively restored cognition without opening the barrier in mice models. The findings provide a potential new avenue for the non-invasive technology and will help clinicians tailor medical treatments that consider an individual's disease progression and cognitive decline. "Historically, ...

Are the traditional practices tied to endangered species at risk of being lost? The answer is yes, according to the authors of an ethnographic study published in the University of Guam peer-reviewed journal Pacific Asia Inquiry. But the authors also say a recovery plan can protect both the species as well as the traditional CHamoru practice of consuming them. Else Demeulenaere, lead author of the study and associate director of the UOG Center for Island Sustainability, presented on their findings during the Marianas Terrestrial Conservation Conference on June 8. Strong ...

In the recent decade, scientists have paid more attention to studying light harvest for producing novel bionic materials or integrating naturally biological components into synthetic systems. Inspiration is the imitation of natural photosynthesis in green plants, algae, and cyanobacteria to convert light energy into chemical energy. Photosystem II (PSII) is a light-intervened protein complex responsible for the light harvest and water splitting to release O2, protons, and electrons. The development of PSII-based biomimetic assembly in vitro is favorable for the investigation of photocatalysis, biological solar cells, and bionic photosynthesis, further help us reveal more secret of photosynthesis. The combination of PSII and artificially synthetic structures is successful for ...

Ishikawa, Japan - Nanostructured metal surface has novel physical and chemical properties, which have sparked scientific interest for heterogeneous catalysis, biosensors, and electrocatalysis. The fabrication process can influence the shapes and sizes of metal nanostructures. Among various fabrication processes, the electrochemical deposition technique is widely used for clean metal nanostructures. Applying the technique, a team of researchers led by Dr. Yuki Nagao, Associate Professor at Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST) and Md. Mahmudul Hasan, a PhD student at JAIST, succeeded to construct Pd-based catalysts having unique morphology. In this study, the team has successfully synthesized Christmas-tree-shaped palladium nanostructures on the GCE ...

Toxoplasma gondii, the parasite responsible for toxoplasmosis, is capable of infecting almost all cell types. It is estimated that up to 30% of the world's population is chronically infected, the vast majority asymptomatically. However, infection during pregnancy can result in severe developmental pathology in the unborn child. Like the other members of the large phylum of Apicomplexa, Toxoplasma gondii is an obligate intracellular parasite which, to survive, must absolutely penetrate its host's cells and hijack their functions to its own advantage. Understanding how the parasite manages to enter host cells offers new opportunities to develop more effective prevention and control strategies than those currently available. A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), in collaboration ...

An international study led by Helmholtz Zentrum München has revealed the structure of a membrane-remodeling protein that builds and maintains photosynthetic membranes. These fundamental insights lay the groundwork for bioengineering efforts to strengthen plants against environmental stress, helping to sustaining human food supply and fight against climate change. Plants, algae, and cyanobacteria perform photosynthesis, using the energy of sunlight to produce the oxygen and biochemical energy that power most life on Earth. They also adsorb carbon dioxide (CO?) from the atmosphere, counteracting the accumulation of this greenhouse gas. However, climate change ...

Men - more often than women - need passion to succeed at things. At the same time, boys are diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum four times as often as girls. Both statistics may be related to dopamine, one of our body's neurotransmitters. "This is interesting. Research shows a more active dopamine system in most men" than in women, says Hermundur Sigmundsson, a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's (NTNU)Department of Psychology. He is behind a new study that addresses gender differences in key motivating factors for what it takes to become good at something. The study uses men's and women's differing activity in the dopamine system as an explanatory model. "We looked at gender differences around passion, self-discipline ...

Researchers from Skoltech and their colleagues have shown that adaptation to similar environments hardly involves similar genomic positions when species are distantly related. The team investigated recurrent adaptations of wildlife birds' mitochondria to high altitude, migration, diving, wintering, and flight. Repeatable substitutions are rather a coincidence than adaptation, which confirms the scientific opinion that distant species "choose" different ways of similar trait evolution. The paper was published in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution. If an organism wants to survive in unusual conditions, such as oxygen starvation typical for high altitudes or elevation of metabolism rate due to extreme temperatures, it has to adapt. If different species meet similar environment ...

Osaka, Japan - Scientists from the Department of Physics and the Research Center for Nuclear Physics (RCNP) at Osaka University, in collaboration with Kyoto University, used alpha particle inelastic scattering to show that the theorized "5α condensed state" does exist in neon-20. This work may help us obtain a better understanding the low-density nucleon many-body systems. All elements besides hydrogen and helium must have been fused inside the nuclear furnace of a star. The yield during these reactions of carbon-12, which has six protons and six neutrons, is increased by an ...

Early in the pandemic, it was expected that satellite imagery around the world would show cleaner air as a result of COVID-19 lockdowns. But not all pollutants were taken out of circulation. For tiny airborne-particle pollution, known as PM 2.5, researchers using NASA data found that variability from meteorology obscured the lockdown signals when observed from space. "Intuitively you would think if there is a major lockdown situation, that we would see dramatic changes, but we didn't," said Melanie Hammer, a visiting research associate at Washington University in St. Louis who led the study. "It was kind of a surprise ...

Tooth loss is often accepted as a natural part of aging, but what if there was a way to better identify those most susceptible without the need for a dental exam? New research led by investigators at Harvard School of Dental Medicine suggests that machine learning tools can help identify those at greatest risk for tooth loss and refer them for further dental assessment in an effort to ensure early interventions to avert or delay the condition. The study, published June 18 in PLOS ONE, compared five algorithms using a different combination of variables to screen for risk. The results showed those that factored medical characteristics and socioeconomic variables, such as race, education, arthritis, and diabetes, outperformed algorithms that relied on dental clinical indicators alone. "Our ...

A new resource developed at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research and The Kinghorn Cancer Centre for oncologists could help make targeted cancer therapies more accessible for Australian patients. The TOPOGRAPH (Therapy-Oriented Precision Oncology Guidelines for Recommending Anti-cancer Pharmaceuticals) database is an online tool that catalogues oncology research to streamline the process of recommending therapeutic treatments in precision cancer medicine. Garvan Senior Research Officer Dr Frank Lin led the development of the platform reported this week in the journal npj Precision Oncology. "TOPOGRAPH is uniquely useful in the Australian context because it combines ...

Wastewater treatment facilities clean the water that goes down our sinks and flushes our toilets, but they do not remove everything. A recent study by Portland State researchers detected low levels of pharmaceuticals and personal care product chemicals in oysters the team deployed at various distances from wastewater effluent pipes along the Oregon and Washington coast. Elise Granek, professor of environmental science and management at Portland State University, and Amy Ehrhart, a recent graduate of PSU's Earth, Environment, and Society doctoral program, conducted the study. To explore how aquatic pollution varies based on proximity to wastewater facilities, Ehrhart and Granek placed one-week-old ...

Researchers at Harvard University and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have created a first detailed atlas of a critical region of the developing mouse brain, applying multiple advanced genomic technologies to the part of the cerebral cortex that is responsible for processing sensation from the body. By measuring how gene activity and regulation change over time, researchers now have a better understanding of how the cerebral cortex is built, as well as a brand new set of tools to explore how the cortex is affected in neurodevelopmental disease. The study is published in the journal Nature. "We have had a long-standing interest in understanding the development of the mammalian cerebral cortex, as it is ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Using an unusually well-preserved subfossil jawbone, a team of researchers -- led by Penn State and with a multi-national team of collaborators including scientists from the Université d'Antananarivo in Madagascar -- has sequenced for the first time the nuclear genome of the koala lemur (Megaladapis edwardsi), one of the largest of the 17 or so giant lemur species that went extinct on the island of Madagascar between about 500 and 2,000 years ago. The findings reveal new information about this animal's position on the primate family tree and how it interacted with its environment, which could help in understanding the impacts of past lemur extinctions on Madagascar's ecosystems. "More than 100 species of lemurs live on Madagascar today, ...

To better understand the role of bacteria in health and disease, National Institutes of Health researchers fed fruit flies antibiotics and monitored the lifetime activity of hundreds of genes that scientists have traditionally thought control aging. To their surprise, the antibiotics not only extended the lives of the flies but also dramatically changed the activity of many of these genes. Their results suggested that only about 30% of the genes traditionally associated with aging set an animal's internal clock while the rest reflect the body's response to bacteria. "For ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - When the summer sun blazes on a hot city street, our first reaction is to flee to a shady spot protected by a building or tree. A new study is the first to calculate exactly how much these shaded areas help lower the temperature and reduce the "urban heat island" effect. Researchers created an intricate 3D digital model of a section of Columbus and determined what effect the shade of the buildings and trees in the area had on land surface temperatures over the course of one hour on one summer day. "We can use the information from our model to formulate guidelines for community greening and tree planting efforts, and even where to locate buildings to maximize shading on other buildings and roadways," said Jean-Michel Guldmann, co-author of the study and ...

A new tool to help conserve one of the UK's most threatened mammals has been released today, with the publication of the first high-quality reference genome for the European water vole. The genome was generated by scientists at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, in collaboration with animal conservation charity the Wildwood Trust, as part of the Darwin Tree of Life Project. The genome, published today (24 June 2021) through Wellcome Open Research, is openly available as a reference for researchers seeking to assess water vole population genetics, better understand how the species has evolved and to manage reintroduction efforts. The European water vole (Arvicola ...

A team from Japan and the United States has identified the design principles for creating large "ideal" proteins from scratch, paving the way for the design of proteins with new biochemical functions. Their results appear June 24, 2021, in Nature Communications. The team had previously developed principles to design small versions of what they call "ideal proteins," which are structures without internal energetic frustration. Such proteins are typically designed with a molecular feature called beta strands, which serve a key structural role for the molecules. In ...

Our planet's strongest ocean current, which circulates around Antarctica, plays a major role in determining the transport of heat, salt and nutrients in the ocean. An international research team led by the Alfred Wegener Institute has now evaluated sediment samples from the Drake Passage. Their findings: during the last interglacial period, the water flowed more rapidly than it does today. This could be a blueprint for the future and have global consequences. For example, the Southern Ocean's capacity to absorb CO2 could decrease, which would in turn intensify climate change. The study has now been published in the journal Nature Communications. The Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) is the world's strongest ocean ...

Indonesia's volcanoes are among the world's most dangerous. Why? Through chemical analyses of tiny minerals in lava from Bali and Java, researchers from Uppsala University and elsewhere have found new clues. They now understand better how the Earth's mantle is composed in that particular region and how the magma changes before an eruption. The study is published in Nature Communications. Frances Deegan, the study's first author and a researcher at Uppsala University's Department of Earth Sciences, summarises the findings. "Magma is formed in the mantle, and the composition of the mantle under Indonesia used to be only partly known. ...

In many situations, heart muscle cells do not respond to external stresses in the same ways that skeletal muscle cells do. But under some conditions, heart and skeletal muscles can both waste away at fatally rapid rates, according to a new study led by experts at Cincinnati Children's. The new findings, based on studies of mouse models, represent an important milestone in a long effort to prevent or even reverse cardiac atrophy, which can lead to fatal heart failure when the body loses large amounts of weight or experiences extended periods of weightlessness in space. Detailed findings were published online June 24, 2021, in Nature Communications. "NASA is very interested in cardiac atrophy," says Jeffery Molkentin, PhD, Co-Director ...

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO TORONTO, ON - A new study from researchers at the University of Toronto found that 63% of Canadians with migraine headaches are able to flourish, despite the painful condition. "This research provides a very hopeful message for individuals struggling with migraines, their families and health professionals," says lead author Esme Fuller-Thomson, who spent the last decade publishing on negative mental health outcomes associated with migraines, including suicide attempts, anxiety disorders and depression. "The findings of our study have contributed to a major paradigm shift for me. There are important lessons to be learned from those who are flourishing." A migraine headache, which afflicts ...

A recent study finds states that exhibit higher levels of systemic racism also have pronounced racial disparities regarding access to health care. In short, the more racist a state was, the better access white people had - and the worse access Black people had. "This study highlights the extent to which health care inequities are intertwined with other social inequities, such as employment and education," says Vanessa Volpe, corresponding author of the study and an assistant professor of psychology at North Carolina State University. "This helps explain why health inequities are so intractable. Tackling health care inequities will require us to address broader social systems that significantly benefit white people ...