Fungi which normally decay wood can effectively break down low density polyethylene (LDPE) plastic instead - and do so best in the absence of wood ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0288133 Article Title: Wood decay fungi show enhanced biodeterioration of low-density polyethylene in the absence of wood in culture media Author Countries: Sri Lanka Funding: 1. RNA: TWAS research grant 18-020 RG/BIO/AS_I The world academy of science https://twas.org/ 2. RNA, PW, HH: ICGEB research grant CRP/LKA18-03 https://www.icgeb.org/ International Center for genetic engineering and biotechnology 3. RNA, HH: t(NSF/RG/2019/BT/03). http://www.nsf.ac.lk/ ...

What happens inside the carnivorous plant Venus Flytrap when it catches an insect? New technology has led to discoveries about the electrical signalling that causes the trap to snap shut. Bioelectronic technology enables advanced research into how plants react to their surroundings, and to stress. Most people know that the nervous system in humans and other animals sends electric impulses. But do plants also have electrical signals even though they lack a nervous system? Yes, plants have electrical signals that are generated in response to touch and stress factors, such as wounds caused by herbivores and attacks on their roots. As opposed to animals, who can move out of the ...

Many gardeners will tell you that aphids are the bane of their existence. According to a new study from the University of Florida, these tiny pests also pose problems for the iconic monarch butterfly. The study found that when oleander aphids infested tropical milkweed — a nonnative milkweed species commonly used across southern portions of the U.S. stretching from California to Florida — the butterflies laid fewer eggs on the plants, and caterpillars developing on those plants were slower to mature. Monarch butterflies depend on milkweed and its close relatives to complete their life ...

All plants and lichens listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act are sensitive to climate change but there are few plans in place to address this threat directly, according to a new study by Amy Casandra Wrobleski of Pennsylvania State University and colleagues, published July 26, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS Climate. Climate change is expected to have a major impact on species around the world, especially endangered species, which are already rare. A majority of the organisms listed under the Endangered Species Act are ...

More often, people are turning to consumer wearable devices, such as smartwatches, to monitor their health and physical activity. Using these wearable devices, a study led by Michigan Medicine and the University of Missouri with Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute finds that taking more daily steps is associated improved health, including fewer symptoms and physical limitations, for people with heart failure. The results are published in JACC: Heart Failure. Clinicians are increasingly presented with their patients’ wearable device data, ...

BENTLEY UNIVERSITY A new study from Bentley University’s Center for Integration of Science and Industry demonstrates that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) spent $950 million on basic or applied research associated with patents that provided manufacturers with market exclusivity. This amount represents <1% (0.59%) of the $164 billion in total NIH funding for research contributing to the approval of these products.   The article in PLOS ONE titled “NIH funding for patents that contribute ...

People with heart failure who increase their daily step count also saw improvements in their health status over a 12-week period, according to a study published today in JACC: Heart Failure. The study suggests that physical data from wearable devices, such as step count, can be clinically significant and has the potential to inform future clinical trials and clinical care. Consumer wearable devices to track health status and progress are commonly used and part of a growing trend of mobile health technology. However, how to interpret data from wearable devices, including step count, is at times ...

Who lived at Machu Picchu at its height? A new study, published today in Science Advances, used ancient DNA to find out for the first time where workers buried more than 500 years ago came from within the lost Inca Empire. Researchers, including Jason Nesbitt, associate professor of archaeology at Tulane University School of Liberal Arts, performed genetic testing on individuals buried at Machu Picchu in order to learn more about the people who lived and worked there. Machu Picchu is a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in the Cusco ...

Programmed cell death, a fundamental biological process that facilitates the elimination of old, damaged, infected, and non-functional cells, plays a crucial role in maintaining the balance between health and disease in the human body. Research by the team of Dr Alessandro Annibaldi from the Center for Molecular Medicine Cologne (CMMC) at the University of Cologne has uncovered a novel mechanism of cell death regulation, shedding light on its significance during conditions such as SARS-CoV infection and skin injury. The study ‘Cleavage ...

New Haven, Conn. — A genetic analysis suggests that the servants and retainers who lived, worked, and died at Machu Picchu, the renowned 15th century Inca palace in southern Peru, were a diverse community representing many different ethnic groups from across the Inca empire. The genomic data, described in a new study in Science Advances, is the first investigation of the genomic diversity of individuals buried at Machu Picchu and adjacent places around Cusco, the Inca capital. It builds upon previous archeological and bio-archaeological research, including a 2021 Yale-led study which found that Machu Picchu (AD 1420-1530) is older than was previously believed. “The ...

A new study led by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center discovered loss of metabolic fitness in chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) natural killer (NK) cells is a critical mechanism of resistance, with infused cells gradually losing the ability to compete with tumor cells for nutrients, leading to tumor relapse. The study, published today in Science Advances, demonstrates that engineering CAR NK cells to express interleukin-15 (IL-15) enhances the cells’ metabolic fitness and provides a longer-lasting ...

A new study from UCLA Health researchers finds that the typical ways health systems store and track data on children receiving emergency care miss a sizable portion of those who are having self-injurious thoughts or behaviors. The researchers also found that several machine learning models they designed were significantly better at identifying those children at risk of self-harm.  Amid a nationwide youth mental health crisis, mental health providers are trying to improve their understanding of which children are at-risk of suicide or self-harm so providers can intervene earlier. However, health systems often ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced $33 million to support 14 clean-energy research projects as part of a program to ensure the Department’s research funding is reaching pockets of the country that traditionally have received disproportionally low amounts of Federal scientific funding. The projects will cover a range of topics—including grid integration, renewable solar and wind energy, and advanced manufacturing. Today’s funding will help ensure all regions of the country share in the ownership of priority research that advances science and addresses energy ...

“We created datasets for predicting whether or not a compound extends the lifespan of C. elegans [...]” BUFFALO, NY- July 26, 2023 – A new research paper was published in Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 15, Issue 13, entitled, “Predicting lifespan-extending chemical compounds for C. elegans with machine learning and biologically interpretable features.” Recently, there has been a growing interest in the development of pharmacological interventions targeting ...

“We believe that KIAA0930 would be a novel cachexia therapeutic target.” BUFFALO, NY- July 26, 2023 – A new research paper was published in Oncotarget's Volume 14 on July 20, 2023, entitled, “The uncharacterized transcript KIAA0930 confers a cachexic phenotype on cancer cells.” Patients with cancer cachexia have a poor prognosis and impaired quality of life. Numerous studies using preclinical models have shown that inflammatory cytokines play an important role in the development of cancer cachexia; however, no clinical trial targeting cytokines has been successful. Therefore, ...

The lifespan of a small roundworm that has been used as a key model organism in ageing research is limited by how it self-sacrifices to feed its young, finds a new study led by UCL researchers. The authors of the new Nature Communications paper say their findings raise questions about how well insights from the Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) worm can be translated to human ageing advances. C. elegans is widely used as a laboratory animal, and has been central to ageing research for 40 years thanks to discoveries of genes that can be supressed to produce up to a tenfold increase in ...

China has set itself the goal of reaching its peak of carbon dioxide emissions in 2030 and thereafter to reduce emissions to reach carbon neutrality by 2060. To achieve this, it needs to increase photovoltaic (PV) and wind power to 10-15 petawatt hours (PWh) by 2060. However, according to historical installation rates and a recent high-resolution energy-system-model and forecasts based on China's 14th Five-Year Energy Development Programme (CFEDP), the capacity of China for producing non-fossil-fuel energy will reach a maximum of only 9.5 PWh per year by 2060. Now, an international study with the participation ...

Viruses, like movie villains, operate in one of two ways: chill or kill. They can lay low, quietly infiltrating the body’s defenses, or go on the attack, exploding out of hiding and firing in all directions. Viral attacks are almost always suicide missions, ripping apart the cell that the virus has been depending on. The attack can only succeed if enough other healthy cells are around to infect. If the barrage of viral particles hits nothing, the virus cannot sustain itself. It doesn’t die, since viruses aren’t technically alive, but it ceases to function. So for a virus, the key challenge is deciding when to flip from chill mode into kill mode. Four years ago, Princeton ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Scientists have unraveled the step-by-step activation process of a protein with a deep evolutionary history in all domains of life, opening the door to harnessing its functions for use as a biotechnology tool. The protein belongs to the “superfamily” of Argonaute proteins, which previous research has suggested to be involved in gene silencing, a fundamental process known as RNA interference. These proteins are well-characterized in eukaryotes – the plants, fungi, animals, humans and other life forms with cells that have a defined ...

URBANA, Ill. — As the global population grows under a changing climate, the urgency to find sustainable protein sources is greater than ever. Plant-based “meat” and “dairy” products may be popular, but they’re not the only environmentally friendly meat alternatives.  A new study in mice from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign suggests replacing traditional protein sources with mealworms in high-fat diets could slow weight gain, improve immune response, reduce inflammation, enhance energy metabolism, and ...

Exposure to microplastics and nanoplastics — particles smaller than 5 millimeters and 1 micrometer across, respectively — have been linked to adverse health outcomes. Although some of their sources are well known, others haven’t been thoroughly vetted yet. Below are recent papers published in ACS journals that report new insights into the origins of some microscopic plastic pieces: laser-cut acrylic sheets, orthodontic rubber bands and children’s food containers. Reporters can request free access to these papers by emailing newsroom@acs.org. “Characterization ...

An Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai study sheds light on the intricate interplay between mammary adipose (fat) tissue and breast health, and offers exciting possibilities for understanding breast development, lactation, cancer, and obesity and related metabolic disorders. The study was published today in Nature. The research team was led by Prashant Rajbhandari, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine (Endocrinology, Diabetes and Bone Disease), and a member of the Diabetes, Obesity, and Metabolism Institute at Icahn Mount Sinai. The ...

CLEVELAND - Pancreatic cancer is one of the most difficult cancers to treat, being highly resistant to chemotherapy. However, there are no effective alternative therapies to chemotherapy, so chemo remains the best available treatment. Although there are fewer than roughly 60,000 new cases of pancreatic cancer diagnosed annually in the U.S., about 95 percent of people with it die from it, mainly because it often goes undetected in early stages. Approved multi-agent chemotherapy regimens offer a marginal advance over single-agent ...

Some of the world’s most distinct and ancient animal species, which play crucial roles in our planet’s ecosystems, are exploited for the wildlife trade across large parts of the world, according to new research from the University of Sheffield.   The study, led by researchers from the University’s School of Biosciences, has found that in large areas of the world, a wide range of functionally and evolutionarily distinct species are targeted for the wildlife trade, which has the potential to cause major losses of evolutionary history and alter key ecological processes.   Published in Nature, the ...

The very first rule for people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes is to eat a healthy nutritious diet. Attention to ingested calories, as well as nutrients contained in various foods, become integral parts of a diabetic person's life. However, this might not be enough: an important role in determining the future health status of people with this condition could be played by the degree of processing of foods that end up on the dish. These products are described as "ultra-processed" and are associated with adverse health outcomes, as reported in general population studies. A study conducted by the Department of Epidemiology and Prevention at the I.R.C.C.S. Neuromed in Pozzilli, ...