A simple plastic water bottle isn't so simple when it comes to the traditional manufacturing process. To appear in its final form, it has to go through a multi-step journey of synthetic procedure, casting, and molding. But what if materials scientists could tap into the same biological mechanisms that create the ridges on our fingertips or the spots on a cheetah in order to manufacture something like a water bottle? A research paper titled END ...

Preclinical research from VCU Massey Cancer Center published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that the combination of two existing drugs can exploit the metabolic "hunger" of a particularly aggressive type of neuroblastoma to kill cancer cells without inflicting too much collateral damage to healthy tissue. Neuroblastoma - a type of cancer that strikes the nervous system of very young children - is one of the deadliest pediatric cancers. And children whose neuroblastoma overexpresses the gene MYCN tend to have the worst prognosis. While medical advancements have led to high cure ...

LOWELL, Mass. - Too often, contends UMass Lowell faculty researcher Brenna Morse, children with complex chronic medical conditions spend days in the hospital undergoing tests for what could be a simple diagnosis. The challenges include, she says, some children with medical complexities, such as severe neurological conditions and functional impairments, cannot easily signal that they are in pain or point where in their body it is located. Where children not facing such a challenge might be able to have a medical issue resolved with a simple visit to their primary care doctor, others end up hospitalized and going through days of costly testing to arrive at similar diagnoses. Morse, a UMass Lowell ...

Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon cover, voted the greatest classical rock album of all time, intended to portray the prism and dispersion of light into a rainbow as a certain metaphorical symbolism and a light show that was never celebrated. However, they really were not aware of the fact that this image would be used by many to help illustrate the concept of refractive index and how light changes speed and direction when it encounters a different medium. Although conceptually the drawing was not accurate, it conveyed the message that light changes its speed when it moves into another medium, and that the different speeds of different colors causes white light to disperse ...

Sausalito, Calif. (March 30, 2021) - After more than three decades of research, scientists have proven that the cancer affecting up to one in four adult California sea lions necrospied at The Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, CA, is caused by a sexually transmitted herpesvirus. The cancer, known as sea lion urogenital carcinoma, has clear parallels to cervical cancer in humans and provides a helpful model for human cancer study. Scientists have long suspected this cancer was associated with a virus, but this is the first study to prove this theory. The study, which was published in Animals, an open-access, peer-reviewed journal, concluded that genital herpesvirus is ...

WASHINGTON, March 30, 2021 -- Emerging technologies can screen for cervical cancer better than Pap smears and, if widely used, could save lives both in developing nations and parts of countries, like the United States, where access to health care may be limited. In Biophysics Reviews, by AIP Publishing, scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital write advances in nanotechnology and computer learning are among the technologies helping develop HPV screening that take the guesswork out of the precancer tests. That could mean better screening in places that lack highly trained doctors and advanced laboratories. Cervical cancer is the world's fourth-most common cancer, with more than ...

WASHINGTON, March 30, 2021 -- As ethanol, biodiesel, and other biofuels continue to present challenges, such as competing with food security or lacking the technology for more efficient and low-cost production, microalgae are gaining momentum as a biofuel energy crop. In their paper, published in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, by AIP Publishing, Yangzhou University researchers in China show how a combination of monochromatic red and blue LED illumination on one type of microalga can enhance its growth and increase the biosynthesis of critical components, such ...

New observations with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT) indicate that the rogue comet 2I/Borisov, which is only the second and most recently detected interstellar visitor to our Solar System, is one of the most pristine ever observed. Astronomers suspect that the comet most likely never passed close to a star, making it an undisturbed relic of the cloud of gas and dust it formed from. 2I/Borisov was discovered by amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov in August 2019 and was confirmed to have come from beyond the Solar System a few weeks ...

WASHINGTON, March 30, 2021 -- Scientists are developing tools to observe the biological machinery in in vivo animal models to be able to understand and better treat severe brain diseases like Alzheimer's disease and many other conditions. Holographic endoscopes attracted researchers' interest because of their potential to conduct minimally invasive observations inside the human body. These tools can shed light on the biological processes occurring at the macromolecular and subcellular levels, which usually remain hidden from sight as most tissue is opaque to visible radiation. In APL Photonics, by AIP Publishing, researchers from the Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology in Germany created a particularly narrow ...

It makes evolutionary sense for long-lived animals to have complex social relationships - such as friends and enemies - researchers say. Some species and individuals focus their energy on reproduction (live fast, die young), while "slow-living" animals prioritise survival and tend to live longer lives. In the new paper, University of Exeter scientists argue that natural selection favours complex social structures among slow-living animals - meaning that knowing their friends and enemies is easier for animals with longer lifespans, and helps them live even longer. Meanwhile, fast-lived species should only bother with such social relationships if it increases ...

What The Study Did: Researchers investigated COVID-19 vaccine intentions among racially and ethnically diverse samples of health workers and the general population in the San Francisco Bay area. Authors: Kevin Grumbach, M.D., of the San Francisco General Hospital and University of California, San Francisco, 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/jamainternmed.2021.1445) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional ...

ARLINGTON, Va., March 30, 2021 -- Doctors who oversee cancer clinics say that new patients are arriving for treatment with more advanced disease than before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new survey from the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). The national survey of radiation therapy practice leaders fielded this winter also indicates that treatment postponements and deferrals that were common a year ago have largely subsided and that clinics continue to use a variety of enhanced safety measures to protect their patients and staff. "One year into the COVID-19 pandemic, we already see the consequences of pandemic-driven drops in cancer screening and diagnostics," said Thomas J. Eichler, MD, FASTRO, ...

Boston - For decades, the power of the placebo effect was thought to lie in patients' belief that they were -- or at least, could be -- receiving a pharmacologically active treatment. A new study by physician-researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) suggests that patients don't need to be deceived to receive benefit from treatment with placebo. In a randomized clinical trial published in the journal PAIN, researchers found participants with moderate to severe irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) who were knowingly treated with a pharmacologically inactive pill -- referred to as an honest or open-label placebo -- reported clinically meaningful improvements in their IBS symptoms. People who received the open-label placebo experienced improvements ...

LAWRENCE -- Recent incidents of racial discrimination and violence against Asians and Asian-Americans in the United States have prompted critical discussions about how to talk about such biases with younger age groups. New research from the University of Kansas shows using critical race media literacy, or examining how race and gender are addressed in popular culture, can be an effective way to discuss those topics and engage students. KU researchers published a study in which they observed an American teacher using critical race media literacy to discuss racism and sexism in superhero movies in English as a foreign language classes in a South Korean high school. They argued that successful implementation ...

Through his role on the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, UVA Health's Li Li, MD, PhD, MPH, has helped develop new lung cancer screening guidelines that expand screenings to more high-risk patients. The new guidelines are focused on Americans at higher risk because of their history of smoking, which is the leading cause of lung cancer. There are two significant changes in the new guidelines. For those who are still smoking or quit less than 15 years ago, a yearly screening using a low-dose computed tomography (CT) scan is now recommended: beginning at age 50, instead of age 55. for anyone who has smoked 20 pack-years in their lifetime, instead of 30 pack-years. A pack-year equals smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for a year. The ...

Physicists from the University of Sussex have developed an extremely thin, large-area semiconductor surface source of terahertz, composed of just a few atomic layers and compatible with existing electronic platforms. Terahertz sources emit brief light pulses oscillating at 'trillion of times per second'. At this scale, they are too fast to be handled by standard electronics, and, until recently, too slow to be handled by optical technologies. This has great significance for the evolution of ultra-fast communication devices above the 300GHz limit - such as that required for 6G mobile phone technology - something that is still fundamentally beyond the limit of current electronics. Researchers ...

People are adept at discerning most of the different emotions that underlie screams, such as anger, frustration, pain, surprise or fear, finds a new study by psychologists at Emory University. Screams of happiness, however, are more often interpreted as fear when heard without any additional context, the results show. PeerJ published the research, the first in-depth look at the human ability to decode the range of emotions tied to the acoustic cues of screams. "To a large extent, the study participants were quite good at judging the original context of a scream, simply by listening to it through headphones without any visual cues," says Harold Gouzoules, Emory professor of psychology and senior author of the study. ...

WHAT: When variants of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) emerged in late 2020, concern arose that they might elude protective immune responses generated by prior infection or vaccination, potentially making re-infection more likely or vaccination less effective. To investigate this possibility, researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, and colleagues analyzed blood cell samples from 30 people who had contracted and recovered from COVID-19 prior to the emergence of virus variants. They found that one key player in the immune response to SARS-CoV-2--the CD8+ T cell--remained active against the virus. The research team was led by NIAID's Andrew Redd, Ph.D., and included ...

Indigenous traditions often place land at the centre of their cultures. However, with more than half of Canada's Indigenous population now living in urban areas and Indigenous communities struggling to overcome legacies of colonialism defined by assimilation and land theft, that connection is getting frayed. Elizabeth Fast, an associate professor of applied human sciences in the Faculty of Arts and Science, wanted to help Indigenous youth reconnect with their cultures in safe and accessible ways. Along with a youth advisory group composed of Indigenous youth (some of whom are also students), she has been organizing a series of land-based learning retreats ...

BOSTON - (March 25, 2021) - A mechanism has been identified that explains how physical exercise in pregnancy confers metabolic health benefits in offspring. According to researchers, the key lies with a protein called SOD3, vitamin D and adequate exercise, with the outcomes possibly forming the first steps to designing rational diet and exercise programs to use during pregnancy and particularly when mothers may also be overweight or obese. The study, which was led by authors from the Joslin Diabetes Center at the Harvard Medical School and colleagues from Japan, the US, Canada and Denmark, has been published online by Cell Metabolism. "We've known for a while that risks for obesity and type 2 diabetes can originate in the critical ...

In a new study published in Conservation Science and Practice, researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) partnered with Indonesian experts to explore the motivations and challenges of women pursuing a career in conservation sciences in Indonesia. Given that Indonesia is one of the most biodiverse countries on the planet but is simultaneously experiencing extreme rates of deforestation, it is an important target country for the conservation of global biodiversity. Conservation work remains male-dominated in Indonesia, especially fieldwork, so gaining a better understanding of the cultural norms and barriers in place for Indonesian women aspiring to a career in conservation represents an important step in supporting women ...

Researchers from Newcastle University, UK, working with colleagues at King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT) in Thailand and the Institute of Urban Environment of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, analysed samples of water and sediment taken from aquaculture ponds and nearby canals at five locations in central Thailand's coastal region. The research, which was part-funded by an institutional links grant awarded by the Newton Fund via the British Council, and which has been published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials, found that the highest prevalence of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) genes was in water ...

Gas hydrates are a solid compound of gases and water that have an ice-like structure at low temperatures and high pressures. Compounds of methane and water, so-called methane hydrates, are found especially at many ocean margins - also in the Black Sea. In addition to a possible use as an energy source, methane hydrate deposits are being investigated for their stability, as they can dissolve with changes in temperature and pressure. In addition to releases of methane, this can also have an impact on submarine slope stability. During a six-week expedition with the German research vessel METEOR in autumn 2017, a team from MARUM and GEOMAR investigated a methane hydrate deposit in the deep-sea fan of the Danube in the western Black Sea. During ...

Most businesses were ill-prepared to deal with the pandemic and muddled though the challenges stemming from it, according to a report published today. Resilience reimagined: a practical guide for organisations was produced by Cranfield University, in partnership with the National Preparedness Commission (NPC) and Deloitte. The report presents insights from business leaders from a range of sectors and makes seven recommendations for organisations on how to become more resilient, drawing on lessons from past 12 months. Cranfield University's Professor David Denyer and Mike Sutliff conducted in-depth interviews and four focus groups with more than 50 C-suite level people (boards, senior executives, policymakers, and resilience directors) from FTSE 100 companies, ...

As social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and others continue to grow in popularity, adolescents are spending more of their time online navigating a complex virtual world. New research suggests that these increased hours spent online may be associated with cyberbullying behaviors. According to a study by the University of Georgia, higher social media addiction scores, more hours spent online, and identifying as male significantly predicted cyberbullying perpetration in adolescents. "There are some people who engage in cyberbullying online because of the anonymity and the fact that there's no retaliation," said Amanda Giordano, principal investigator of the study and associate professor in the UGA Mary Frances Early College of Education. "You have these ...