PHILADELPHIA -- (April 1, 2021 -- Scientists at The Wistar Institute identified a new mechanism of transcriptional control of cellular senescence that drives the release of inflammatory molecules that influence tumor development through altering the surrounding microenvironment. The study, published in Nature Cell Biology, reports that methyltransferase-like 3 (METTL3) and 14 (METTL14) proteins moonlight as transcriptional regulators that allow for establishment of the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP). Cellular senescence is a stable state of growth arrest in which cells stop dividing but remain viable and produce an array of inflammatory and growth-promoting molecules collectively defined as SASP. These molecules account ...

The University of Maryland (UMD) has collaborated with Cornell University and Stanford University to quantify the man-made effects of climate change on global agricultural productivity growth for the first time. In a new study published in Nature Climate Change, researchers developed a robust model of weather effects on productivity, looking at productivity in both the presence and absence of climate change. Results indicate a 21% reduction in global agricultural productivity since 1961, which according to researchers is equivalent to completely losing the last 7 years ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - Despite important agricultural advancements to feed the world in the last 60 years, a Cornell-led study shows that global farming productivity is 21% lower than it could have been without climate change. This is the equivalent of losing about seven years of farm productivity increases since the 1960s. The future potential impacts of climate change on global crop production has been quantified in many scientific reports, but the historic influence of anthropogenic climate change on the agricultural sector had yet to be modeled. Now, a new study provides these insights: "Anthropogenic Climate Change Has Slowed Global Agricultural Productivity ...

Many wildlife species are threatened by shrinking habitat. But according to new research, the potential range of African elephants could be more than five times larger than its current extent. Due to 2,000 years of human pressure, African elephants have suffered dramatic population declines, and their range has shrunk to just 17% of what it could be, say researchers who led the new study, in Current Biology. The dramatic reduction in range is due to the killing of elephants for their ivory and the encroachment of humans into elephant habitat. Evidence for elephants being ...

Children hospitalized with breathing problems due to a common viral lung infection are likely to get sicker and remain hospitalized if they have high levels of defective copies of the virus, according to a new study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The findings, published April 1 in Nature Microbiology, could help doctors identify those patients at high risk of severe illness due to respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), the most common cause of pneumonia and bronchiolitis (inflammation of the small airways) in children under age 5. "Every ...

What The Study Did: This observational study examined death and hospital readmission rates of patients with COVID-19 pneumonia after being discharged to home or quarantine housing with supplemental home oxygen. Authors: Brad Spellberg, M.D., of the Los Angeles County + University of Southern California Medical Center in Los Angeles, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.3990) Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest ...

What The Study Did: Researchers assessed changes in the number of views of articles published in three leading medical journals since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Authors: Andrew J. Giustini, M.D., Ph.D., of the Stanford University School of Medicine in Stanford, California, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.6459) Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict ...

What The Study Did: Nationally representative data were used to look at whether systolic and diastolic blood pressure levels among children and adolescents in the United States have changed during the past 20 years. Authors: Shakia T. Hardy, Ph.D., of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.3917) Editor's Note: The article includes conflicts of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the ...

BOSTON - New research reveals that when breast cancer cells spread to the brain, they must boost production of fatty acids, the building blocks of fat, in order to survive there. The work, which is published in Nature Cancer and was led by investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Koch Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), points to a potential new treatment target for shrinking brain tumors that arise secondary to breast cancer. Therapies that target the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) have transformed treatment ...

PHILADELPHIA - A Penn Medicine patient with a genetic form of childhood blindness gained vision, which lasted more than a year, after receiving a single injection of an experimental RNA therapy into the eye. The clinical trial was conducted by researchers at the Scheie Eye Institute in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Results of the case, detailed in a paper published today in Nature Medicine, show that the treatment led to marked changes at the fovea, the most important locus of human central vision. The treatment was designed for patients diagnosed with Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA) -- an eye disorder that primarily affects the retina -- who have a CEP290 mutation, which is one of the more commonly implicated genes in patients with the ...

What The Article Says: This JAMA Insights Clinical Update from the CDC's COVID-19 Response Team discusses the association of changes in COVID-19 case rates and death rates with implementation of state-issued mask mandates and allowance of any on-premises restaurant dining. Authors: Gery P. Guy Jr, Ph.D., M.P.H., of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2021.5455) Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding ...

UConn researcher Paulo Verardi, associate professor of pathobiology and veterinary science in the College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources, has demonstrated the success of a vaccine against Zika virus and recently published his findings in END ...

DARIEN, IL - The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recently published an update on the use of telemedicine for the diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders to reflect lessons learned from the transition to telemedicine during the COVID-19 pandemic and the benefits of continuing to utilize remote care when appropriate. While the technology to remotely connect doctor and patient has been in place for years, its use was limited until the spread of COVID-19. In 2020, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) lifted restrictions on telemedicine reimbursement, and private insurance companies followed suit. Telemedicine ...

When we watch a mime seemingly pull rope, climb steps or try to escape that infernal box, we don't struggle to recognize the implied objects -- our minds automatically "see" them, a new study concludes. To explore how the mind processes the objects mimes seem to interact with, Johns Hopkins University cognitive scientists brought the art of miming into the lab, concluding that invisible, implied surfaces are represented rapidly and automatically. The work appears today in the journal Psychological Science. "Most of the time, we know which objects are ...

In the 1960s, a national focus on hunger was essential to address major problems of undernutrition after World War II. In the 1990s, the nation shifted away from hunger toward "food insecurity" to better capture and address the challenges of food access and affordability. Now, a END ...

Space scientists at the University of Bath in the UK have found a new way to probe the internal structure of neutron stars, giving nuclear physicists a novel tool for studying the structures that make up matter at an atomic level. Neutron stars are dead stars that have been compressed by gravity to the size of small cities. They contain the most extreme matter in the universe, meaning they are the densest objects in existence (for comparison, if Earth were compressed to the density of a neutron star, it would measure just a few hundred meters in diameter, and all humans would fit in a teaspoon). This makes neutron stars unique natural laboratories ...

Recent research from the University of Vaasa and the University of Jyväskyla shows that speculation and lottery-like behavior is a fundamental factor for the pricing of cryptocurrencies. Speculation could explain the enormous increase in the market capitalizations of cryptocurrencies. Nowadays more than 8000 cryptocurrencies have been launched. Unlike traditional assets like stocks, research has shown that investments in cryptocurrencies are associated with a considerably higher level of uncertainty. The price of Bitcoin, which is the first traded cryptocurrency, increased by from $7,200.17 to $29,374.15 in January 1, 2020 ...

A team of researchers at the University of Alberta has uncovered a long-sought link in the battle to control cholesterol and heart disease. The protein that interferes with low-density lipoprotein (LDL) receptors that clear "bad" cholesterol from the blood was identified in END ...

MADISON - Bipolar disorder affects millions of Americans, causing dramatic swings in mood and, in some people, additional effects such as memory problems. While bipolar disorder is linked to many genes, each one making small contributions to the disease, scientists don't know just how those genes ultimately give rise to the disorder's effects. However, in new research, scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found for the first time that disruptions to a particular protein called Akt can lead to the brain changes characteristic of bipolar disorder. The results offer a foundation for research into treating the often-overlooked cognitive impairments of bipolar disorder, ...

NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission is on the brink of discovering the extent of the mess it made on asteroid Bennu's surface during last fall's sample collection event. On Apr. 7, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will get one last close encounter with Bennu as it performs a final flyover to capture images of the asteroid's surface. While performing the flyover, the spacecraft will observe Bennu from a distance of about 2.3 miles (3.7 km) - the closest it's been since the Touch-and-Go Sample Collection event on Oct. 20, 2020. The OSIRIS-REx team decided to add this last flyover after Bennu's surface was significantly disturbed by the sample collection event. During touchdown, the spacecraft's ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University and Providence Veterans Affairs Medical Center] -- Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are an emerging assistive technology, enabling people with paralysis to type on computer screens or manipulate robotic prostheses just by thinking about moving their own bodies. For years, investigational BCIs used in clinical trials have required cables to connect the sensing array in the brain to computers that decode the signals and use them to drive external devices. Now, for the first time, BrainGate clinical trial participants with tetraplegia have demonstrated use of an intracortical wireless BCI with an external wireless transmitter. The system is capable of transmitting brain signals at single-neuron resolution and ...

Few compounds are as important to industry and medicine today as titanium dioxide. Despite the variety and popularity of its applications, many issues related to the surface structure of materials made of this compound and the processes taking place therein remain unclear. Some of these secrets have just been revealed to scientists from the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences. It was the first time they had used the SOLARIS synchrotron in their research. It is found in many chemical reactions as a catalyst, as a pigment in plastics, paints or cosmetics and in medical implants it ...

The team led by Professor DU Jiangfeng and Professor WANG Ya from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Key Laboratory of Microscale Magnetic Resonance of the University of Science and Technology of China put forward an innovative spin-to-charge conversion method to achieve high-fidelity readout of qubits, stepping closer towards fault-tolerant quantum computing. Quantum supremacy over classical computers has been fully exhibited in some specific problems, yet the next milestone, fault-tolerant quantum computing, still requires the accumulated logic gate error and the spin readout fidelity to exceed the fault-tolerant threshold. DU's team has resolved the first requirement in the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center system ...

Pollen from trees, grasses and weeds are causing seasonal allergies for approximately one fifth of the Swiss population every year. A study now found that due to climate change, the pollen season has shifted substantially over the past 30 years in onset, duration and intensity. "For at least four allergenic species, the tree pollen season now starts earlier than 30 years ago - sometimes even before January," said Marloes Eeftens, Principal Investigator and Group Leader at Swiss TPH. "The duration and intensity of the pollen season have also increased for several species, meaning that allergic people not only suffer for a longer period of time but also react stronger to these higher concentrations." The researchers analysed pollen data from 1990 ...

The risk is low that scientists could pass coronavirus to North American bats during winter research, according to a new study led by the U.S. Geological Survey. Scientists find the overall risk to be 1 in 1,000 if no protective measures are taken, and the risk falls lower, to 1 in 3,333 or less, with proper use of personal protective equipment or if scientists test negative for COVID-19 before beginning research. The research specifically looked at the potential transmission of SARS-CoV-2, which is the type of coronavirus that causes COVID-19, from people to bats. Scientists did not examine potential ...