In material physics understanding how systems interact across the interfaces separating them is of central interest. But can physical models clarify similar concepts in living systems, such as cells? Physicists at the University of Geneva (UNIGE), in collaboration with the University of Zurich (UZH), used the framework of disordered elastic systems to study the process of wound healing - the proliferation of cell fronts which eventually join to close a lesion. Their study identified the scales of the dominant interactions between cells which determine this process. The results, published in the journal Scientific Reports, will allow better analysis of cell front behaviour, in terms of both wound healing and tumour development. In the future, this approach may offer personalised diagnostics ...

Scientists are warning that drinking water supplies in parts of rural West Africa are being contaminated by lead-containing materials used in small community water systems such as boreholes with handpumps and public taps. They analysed scrapings taken from the plumbing of 61 community water supply systems in Ghana, Mali and Niger. Eighty percent of the tested systems had at least one component that contained lead in excess of international guidance. Lead is released into the water when the components corrode. The study, by a research team from the University of Leeds, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Boston University, also took samples of the water from those 61 water distribution systems, ...

Migratory waterbirds are particularly exposed to the effects of climate change at their breeding areas in the High Arctic and in Africa, according to a new study published in Bird Conservation International. The research team came to this conclusion after modelling climatic and hydrological conditions under current and future climate scenarios (in 2050) and comparing the impact on the distribution of 197 of the 255 waterbird species listed under the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA). The international team was led by Wetlands International, BirdLife International, and the British Trust for Ornithology, involved researchers from various universities, including McGill. The results suggest that investing more in habitat conservation in the wider ...

A team of researchers led by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has developed a device that offers a quicker and less invasive way to seal tears and holes in blood vessels, using an electrically-activated glue patch applied via a minimally invasive balloon catheter. This device could eventually replace the need for open or keyhole surgery to patch up or stitch together internal blood vessel defects. After inserting the catheter into an appropriate blood vessel, the glue patch - nicknamed 'Voltaglue' - can be guided through the body to where the tear is located and then activated using retractable electrodes to glue it shut in ...

Symptoms of health anxiety are common already during childhood and adolescence - and if the children do not receive the correct help, the anxiety can become a permanent problem with serious personal and socio-economic consequences. This is shown by a new research result from Aarhus University and the University of Copenhagen. Ida is 11 years old. Six months ago, her grandmother died of cancer after a long illness and since then Ida has become more and more anxious that she too will get cancer and die. The anxiety can be triggered when she passes by a hospital or sees people who look ill. ...

What would it be like to produce fertilizer in your own basement? Leguminous plants, like peas, beans, and various species of clover, obtain the organic nitrogen they need for their growth from symbiotic soil bacteria via specialized structures in their roots. A team led by the cell biologist Prof. Dr. Thomas Ott from the University of Freiburg's Faculty of Biology has now detected a factor in the root cells that the plants need for the initial contact with these so-called root-associated bacteria, which live in the soil. They discovered a protein found only in legumes called symbiotic formin 1 (SYFO1) and demonstrated the essential role it plays in symbiosis. Together with the molecular biologist Prof. Dr. Robert Grosse University of Freiburg's Faculty of Medicine and the evolutionary ...

In a number of biological processes, iron-sulfur clusters play a vital role, where they act as cofactors to enzymes. Research published in Angewandte Chemie now shows that cubic clusters can support unusual bonding states. This study shows that the cluster copes well with a multiple bond between iron and nitrogen--a structural motif that may be involved in biological nitrogen fixation. Clusters made of iron and sulfur atoms are essential cofactors for a number of enzymes, especially in biological processes involving electron transfer. As an example, nitrogen-fixing bacteria use iron-sulfur clusters to convert ...

An international team of scientists from 20 countries identified 47 problems that hinder the successful prevention and elimination of the consequences of the tsunami. Based on the carried out analysis, the world's leading experts on natural hazards have outlined directions for further scientific research. The research group's review is published in a special issue of the "Frontiers in Earth Science". The main problems identified in the review are related to the large gaps and uncertainties in knowledge about tsunami, the lack of well-documented observations, and imperfect methods of processing available information. One of the reasons is the lack of coordination of the efforts of those countries for which the study and prediction of tsunamis, forecasting the corresponding risks, and preparation ...

Berlin, 3 May - In a new report, ALLEA, the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities, examines the potential of technical and policy measures to tackle science disinformation and calls for improved European exchange and coordination in this field. While disinformation strategies are intoxicating public discourses in many fields, science disinformation is particularly dangerous to democratic governance and society at large. As highlighted by the ongoing pandemic, an undermining of trust in science poses a fundamental threat to political and individual decisions based on evidence and scientific knowledge. Over ...

Impaired bone health is among the most significant long-term consequences of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), a common therapy for patients with malignant and non-malignant haematological diseases. To address this serious problem, the International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) expert Working Group on Cancer and Bone Disease has published a new Executive Summary of its authoritative state-of-the-art review. The review outlined the major factors affecting bone health in HSCT patients, and provided expert guidance for the monitoring, evaluation and treatment of bone loss in these patients. ...

Globally, tuberculosis is the most common bacterial infectious disease leading to death. The pathogen causing tuberculosis, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, has a number of peculiarities. One is that it is growing very slowly. While other typical pathogens, such as pneumococcal and pseudomonads, can already be identified by their growth in the microbiological laboratory in the first 72 hours, several weeks usually pass before tuberculosis bacteria grow in the lab. Thus it often takes one to two months before the efficacy of individual medicines can be tested. However, these efficacy tests are essential for the effective treatment of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), which is becoming increasingly common. In these cases, the pathogen has become ...

If not before, then certainly since the first messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines to combat the SARS CoV2 virus were approved in Germany, mRNA has become a recognized term even outside scientific circles. What is less well known is that mRNA can be used to produce much more than just vaccines. Around 50 different procedures for the treatment of diseases including cancer are already being studied in clinical trials. Scientists from the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, with the support of neutron researchers from Forschungszentrum Jülich, have now discovered how the subcutaneous administration of mRNA can be improved. The goal is for chronically ill ...

Scientists from the National Centre for radio Astrophysics of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (NCRA-TIFR) Pune used the upgraded Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (uGMRT) to determine that AT 2018 cow, the first of a newly discovered class of cosmic explosions, has an extremely patchy environment. Sources like AT 2018cow release an enormous amount of energy, nonetheless fade extremely rapidly. This along with their extremely blue color has led to them being called FBOTs for Fast Blue Optical Transient. This is the first observational evidence of inhomogeneous emission from an FBOT. The origins of FBOTs are still under debate, but proposed models include explosion of a massive star, collision of an accreting neutron star and ...

"Image" is everything in the $20 billion market for AR/VR glasses. Consumers are looking for glasses that are compact and easy to wear, delivering high-quality imagery with socially acceptable optics that don't look like "bug eyes." University of Rochester researchers at the Institute of Optics have come up with a novel technology to deliver those attributes with maximum effect. In a paper in Science Advances, they describe imprinting freeform optics with a nanophotonic optical element called "a metasurface." The metasurface is a veritable forest of tiny, silver, nanoscale structures on a thin metallic film that conforms, in this advance, to the freeform shape of ...

According to Michael Twidale, professor in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, bad usability can be an irritation for everyone but "especially awful" for the underprivileged. In "Everyone Everywhere: A Distributed and Embedded Paradigm for Usability," which was recently published in the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIST), Twidale and coauthors David M. Nichols (University of Waikato, New Zealand) and Christopher P. Lueg (Bern University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland) present a new paradigm to address the persistence of difficulties that people have ...

(New York, NY) - May 3, 2021 - In advance of a wildfire season projected to be among the worst, the American Thoracic Society has released a report that calls for a unified federal response to wildfires that includes investment in research on smoke exposure and forecasting, health impacts of smoke, evaluation of interventions, and a clear and coordinated communication strategy to protect public health. The report, Respiratory Impacts of Wildland Fire Smoke: Future Challenges and Policy Opportunities, was published online ahead of print in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society on May 3, 2021. The report comes at a time when the U.S. is experiencing an increasing frequency of very large destructive wildfires, due to years ...

Over 400 common disinfectants currently in use could be made safer for people and the environment and could better fight the COVID-19 virus with the simple application of UVC light, a new study from the University of Waterloo shows. Benzalkonium chloride (BAK) is the most common active ingredient in many disinfectants regularly used in hospitals, households, and food processing plants to protect against a wide range of viruses and bacteria - including all strains of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 - but its toxicity means that it can't be used in high concentrations. It also means that products containing BAK are harmful to humans ...

LUGANO, Switzerland, 3 May 2021 - As breast cancer becomes a largely curable disease, with more than 70% of women surviving at least 10 years after diagnosis across most of Europe thanks to early detection and treatment, (1) the quality of life after cancer has become an important aspect of the patient journey - one that may be inadequately addressed with current standards of follow-up. A study presented at the ESMO Breast Cancer 2021 Virtual Congress (2) has shown that breast cancer survivors differ widely in the burden of symptoms they experience after the end of treatment and thereby revealed an unmet need for tailored approaches to follow-up care. (3) Lead author Kelly de Ligt ...

TORONTO - Scientists at the Krembil Brain Institute, part of University Health Network (UHN), in collaboration with colleagues at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), have used precious and rare access to live human cortical tissue to identify functionally important features that make human neurons unique. This experimental work is among the first of its kind on live human neurons and one of the largest studies of the diversity of human cortical pyramidal cells to date. "The goal of this study was to understand what makes human brain cells 'human,' and how human neuron circuitry functions as it does," says Dr. Taufik Valiante, neurosurgeon, scientist at the Krembil Brain Institute at UHN and co-senior author on the paper. "In our study, we wanted ...

Customised medicines could one day be manufactured to patients' individual needs, with University of East Anglia (UEA) researchers investigating technology to 3D 'print' pills. The team, including Dr Andy Gleadall and Prof Richard Bibb at Loughborough University, identified a new additive manufacturing method to allow the 3D printing of medicine in highly porous structures, which can be used to regulate the rate of drug release from the medicine to the body when taken orally. Dr Sheng Qi, a Reader in Pharmaceutics at UEA's School of Pharmacy, led the research. The project findings, 'Effects of porosity on drug release kinetics of swellable and erodible porous pharmaceutical solid dosage forms ...

A research team from the Institut de Neurociències at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (INc-UAB) has showed that inhibition through a drug of the Tac2 neuronal circuit, involved in the formation of the memory of fear, has opposite effects on the ability to remember aversive events in mice according to sex: it is reduced in male mice and increased in female mice. Is the first time that a drug has been shown to produce this opposite effect on the memory of male and female mice. The study also evidences that opposing molecular mechanisms and behaviours can occur ...

Diatoms are tiny unicellular plants -- no bigger than half a millimeter -- which inhabit the surface water of the world's oceans where sunlight penetration is plenty. Despite their modest size, they are one of the world's most powerful resources for removing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. They currently remove, or "fix," 10-20 billion metric tons of CO2 every year by the process of photosynthesis. But not much is known about which biological mechanisms diatoms use, and whether these processes might become less effective with rising ocean acidity, temperatures, and, in particular, CO2 concentrations. A new study in Frontiers in Plant Science shows that diatoms predominantly ...

New research shows that planned cesarean deliveries on maternal request are safe for low-risk pregnancies and may be associated with a lower risk of adverse delivery outcomes than planned vaginal deliveries. The study is published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). The study used province-wide data from the Better Outcomes Registry & Network (BORN), Ontario's provincial birth registry. The authors analyzed data on 422,210 low-risk pregnancies over 6 years (2012 to 2018). There were 46,533 cesarean deliveries, of which 1827 (3.9%) were planned at the request of the mother; this proportion was unchanged during the years of study. Mothers who requested cesarean delivery ...

The legacy of systemic racism in the U.S impacts psychosis risk at the individual and neighborhood level, according to a definitive review published online today. Researchers examined U.S. based evidence connecting social and environmental factors with outcomes relating to psychotic experiences, including schizophrenia. The review examined potential risk factors and influence of structural racism within three key areas. These included disparities in neighborhoods; trauma and stress experienced at both collective and individual levels; and complications experienced around pregnancy. Disparities in U.S. neighborhoods perpetuate disadvantage for racially minoritized ...

Candidates often give in to temptation to attack opponents in electoral campaigns through negative ads (more than 55% of the ads aired by the Clinton and Trump campaigns in 2016 were negative), even if evidence of this tactic effectiveness is, at least, mixed. A study by Bocconi University professors Vincenzo Galasso, Tommaso Nannicini and Salvatore Nunnari, just published in the American Journal of Political Science, reveals the backlash of electoral smearing and shows that, in a three-candidate race, it's the "idle candidate" (the one neither attacking nor being attacked) to have the upper hand. During a three-candidate mayoral race in a mid-sized Italian town in 2015, the authors ...