Limerick, Ireland, 26 March 2020: Researchers at Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software and University of Limerick (UL), have found video gamers can significantly improve their esport skills by training for just 10 minutes a day. The research team at Lero's Esports Science Research Lab (ESRL) at UL also found novice gamers benefited most when they wore a custom headset delivering transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) for 20 minutes before training sessions. Dr Mark Campbell, director of Lero's Esports Science Research Lab (ESRL) and senior lecturer in sports psychology at UL, said their work showed that neurostimulation could accelerate motor performance improvements specifically in novice esports ...

Patients with lupus are more likely to have metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance - both factors linked to heart disease - if they have lower vitamin D levels, a new study reveals. Researchers believe that boosting vitamin D levels may improve control of these cardiovascular risk factors, as well as improving long-term outcomes for patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Given that photosensitivity is a key feature of SLE, the scientists say that a combination of avoiding the sun, using high-factor sunblock and living in more northerly ...

What The Study Did: Insurance claims were used to assess patterns of telehealth use across surgical specialties before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Authors: Grace F.Chao, M.D., M.Sc., of the National Clinician Scholars Program at the University of Michigan and Veterans Affairs Ann Arbor in Michigan, 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/jamasurg.2021.0979) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions ...

What The Study Did: This article discusses possible pathogenic mechanisms of brain dysfunction in patients with COVID-19. Authors: Maura Boldrini, M.D., Ph.D., of the New York State Psychiatric Institute, Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York, 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/jamapsychiatry.2021.0500) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial ...

Bariatric surgery can significantly reduce the risk of cancer--and especially obesity-related cancers--by as much as half in certain individuals, according to a study by researchers at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School's Center for Liver Diseases and Liver Masses. The research, published in the journal Gastroenterology, is the first to show bariatric surgery significantly decreases the risk of cancer in individuals with severe obesity and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). The risk reduction is even more pronounced in individuals with NAFLD-cirrhosis, the researchers say. "We knew that obesity leads to certain problems, including cancer, but no one ...

The alarm bells began ringing when dozens of eagles were found dead near an Arkansas lake. Their deaths--and, later, the deaths of other waterfowl, amphibians and fish--were the result of a neurological disease that caused holes to form in the white matter of their brains. Field and laboratory research over nearly three decades has established the primary clues needed to solve this wildlife mystery: Eagle and waterfowl deaths occur in late fall and winter within reservoirs with excess invasive aquatic weeds, and birds can die within five days after arrival. But until recently, the toxin that caused the disease, vacuolar myelinopathy, was unknown. Now, after years spent identifying a new toxic blue-green algal (cyanobacteria) species and isolating ...

PITTSBURGH, March 26, 2021 - As evidence mounts supporting the use of monoclonal antibody treatment to reduce hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19, UPMC and University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine physician-scientists are sharing the health system's experience administering the life-saving medication. In a report published today in the scientific journal Open Forum Infectious Diseases, the UPMC/Pitt team shares how it quickly established the largest and most equitable distribution network for COVID-19 monoclonal antibody infusions across Pennsylvania. The team today also reported preliminary results confirming the treatment reduced likelihood of hospitalization ...

EL PASO, Texas - Sreenath Chalil Madathil, Ph.D., assistant professor in industrial manufacturing and systems engineering (IMSE) at The University of Texas at El Paso, is working to streamline the process and ease the patient experience at COVID-19 vaccination clinics in the United States to ensure faster vaccine distribution. Madathil led a team of UTEP faculty, staff and students who observed several of El Paso's drive-though and walk-in clinics in early 2021. The team identified areas that likely created bottlenecks, which produce delays and other issues. They used the information ...

A University of Florida study of middle-aged and older adults finds those who unknowingly carry methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, on their skin are twice as likely to die within the next decade as people who do not have the bacteria. "Very few people who carry MRSA know they have it, yet we have found a distinct link between people with undetected MRSA and premature death," said the study's lead author Arch G. Mainous III, Ph.D., a professor in the department of health services research, management and policy at the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions, part of UF Health, the university's academic health center. The findings suggest that routine screening for undetected ...

The warmer temperature and blooming flowers signal the arrival of spring. However, worries about respiratory diseases are also on the rise due to fine dust and viruses. The lung, which is vital to breathing, is rather challenging to create artificially for experimental use due to its complex structure and thinness. Recently, a POSTECH research team has succeeded in producing an artificial lung model using 3D printing. Professor Sungjune Jung of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and Professor Joo-Yeon Yoo and Ph.D. candidate Dayoon Kang of the Department of Life Sciences at POSTECH have together succeeded in creating ...

Key takeaways Surgery is an underused treatment for certain pancreatic cancer patients. Patients with pancreatic cancer who underwent surgery after chemotherapy lived nearly twice as long as those treated with only chemotherapy. Findings confirms current recommendations for stage II pancreatic cancer: survival improves when patients receive multimodality therapy, chemotherapy before and/or after surgery. All analyses of the data delivered the same findings. CHICAGO (March 26, 2021, 9:00 am CDT): Patients with stage II pancreatic cancer who are treated with chemotherapy followed by resection (an operation that removes the cancerous part of the organ, structure or tissue) live nearly twice as long as patients who receive only chemotherapy, according ...

In recent years, with the rapid development of flexible electronic skins, high-performance flexible tactile sensors have received more attention and have been used in many fields such as artificial intelligence, health monitoring, human-computer interaction, and wearable devices. Among various sensors, flexible capacitive tactile sensors have the advantages of high sensitivity, low energy consumption, fast response, and simple structure. Sensitivity is an important parameter of the sensor. A common way to improve sensitivity is to introduce microstructures and use ionic dielectric materials at the interface ...

A new catalyst for the conversion of carbon dioxide (CO2) into chemicals or fuels has been developed by researchers at Ruhr-Universität Bochum and the University of Duisburg-Essen. They optimized already available copper catalysts to improve their selectivity and long-term stability. The results are described by the team led by Dr. Yanfang Song and Professor Wolfgang Schuhmann of the Bochum Center for Electrochemistry with the team led by Professor Corina Andronescu of the Duisburg-Essen Technical Chemistry III group in the journal Angewandte Chemie, published online on 9 February 2021. Boron makes copper catalyst stable The ...

Current approaches to a common and debilitating knee injury that occurs more frequently for women than men have focused for too long on biology at the expense of understanding social factors, say the authors of a new paper in the British Journal of Sports Medicine (BJSM). Girls and women are said to be between three to six times more likely to suffer an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury, where one of the key ligaments that helps to stabilise the knee joint is damaged. The devastating injury, which in extreme cases can be career ending for professional sportspeople, commonly occurs during sports that involve sudden changes in direction (e.g. basketball, football ...

When the brain suffers injury or infection, glial cells surrounding the affected site act to preserve the brain's sensitive nerve cells and prevent excessive damage. A team of researchers from Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin have been able to demonstrate the important role played by the reorganization of the structural and membrane elements of glial cells. The researchers' findings, which have been published in Nature Communications*, shed light on a new neuroprotective mechanism which the brain could use to actively control damage following neurological injury or disease. The nervous system lacks the ability to regenerate nerve cells and is therefore particularly vulnerable to injury. Following brain injury or infection, various cells ...

An elusive whale species in the Southern Ocean could be resilient to near-future ecosystem changes, according to a new study by the universities of Exeter and Copenhagen. Gray's beaked whales living in the deep oceans of the Southern Hemisphere are rarely seen alive and their ecology has remained a mystery to scientists until now. The study used genome sequencing of 22 whales washed up on beaches in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand to investigate the history of the population over the past 1.1 million years. Author of the study Dr Kirsten Thompson, of the University of Exeter, said: "The population approximately doubled about 250 thousand years ago, coinciding with a period of increased Southern Ocean productivity, sea surface temperature and a potential ...

Nanowires are vital components for future nanoelectronics, sensors, and nanomedicine. To achieve the required complexity, it is necessary to control the position and growth of the metal chains on an atomic level. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, a research team has introduced a novel approach that generates precisely controlled, helical, palladium-DNA systems that mimic the organization of natural base pairs in a double-stranded DNA molecule. A team from Europe and the USA led by Miguel A. Galindo has now developed an elegant method for producing individual, continuous chains of palladium ions. The process is based on self-organized assembly of a special palladium complex ...

A new study analyzes the larval dispersal of nine fish species in the western Mediterranean and identifies three large areas in which there is barely fish exchange, so fish would remain in the same area all their life. The study, published in the journal Progress in Oceanography, is led by experts of the Faculty of Biology of the University of Barcelona and the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio) of the UB, the Blanes Center for Advanced Studies (CEAB-CSIC), the Balearic Islands Coastal Observing and Forecasting System (ICTS - SOCIB), and the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies (IMEDEA, CSIC-UIB). The three identified areas are the Balearic Sea, the West Algerian Basin, and ...

A new method makes it much easier to follow the progression of multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer. With a single drop of blood, it is possible to very accurately show whether the number of cancerous cells in the bone marrow is increasing in a patient. In time, this blood test could potentially replace the current bone marrow puncture. Researchers at Radboud university medical center, in collaboration with Erasmus MC, have taken an important step towards implementing this new diagnostic, with a study published in Clinical Chemistry. Multiple myeloma is a severe form ...

Perovskites, a class of materials first reported in the early 19th century, were "re-discovered" in 2009 as a possible candidate for power generation via their use in solar cells. Since then, they have taken the photovoltaic (PV) research community by storm, reaching new record efficiencies at an unprecedented pace. This improvement has been so rapid that by 2021, barely more than a decade of research later, they are already achieving performance similar to conventional silicon devices. What makes perovskites especially promising is the manner in which they can be created. Where silicon-based devices are heavy and require high temperatures for fabrication, perovskite devices can be lightweight and formed with minimal energy investiture. It is this combination - high performance ...

New study led by the University of Helsinki supports the recognition of new species of South American owls, two of them, Xingu Screech Owl and Alagoas Screech Owl, described for the first time. In early 2021 two new species of screech owls are being described in a single publication as new to science. A multinational team involving researchers from the University of Helsinki, Brazil, and the USA published a detailed study focusing on the morphological, vocal, and genetic variation in a group of screech owls from the Amazon and Atlantic Forest regions of South America, called the Black-capped / Tawny- bellied Screech Owl complex (Megascops atricapilla - M. watsonii). The term "complex" describes ...

Every year, 10 million hectares of forest are lost. Among efforts to revive degraded or deforested land is the Bonn Challenge, with a global goal to bring into restoration 350 million hectares by 2030. Yet such efforts neglect the nuanced but critical factor of bringing genetic diversity into restoration efforts for long-term success, which urgently needs to be addressed. Integrating genetic diversity involves planting tree species with different genetic makeups and varied species adapted to local environments. If species are the same, they will not be able to reproduce or grow new seedlings. Christopher Kettle, an ecologist and geneticist at the Alliance of Bioversity International and the ...

As COVID-19 vaccines slowly roll out across the world, government officials in densely populated countries must still manage vulnerable communities at highest risk of an outbreak. In a new study published in the Journal Risk Analysis, researchers in India propose a COVID Risk Assessment and Mapping (CRAM) framework that results in a zoned map that officials can use to place more targeted restrictions on high-risk communities. Successfully used by officials in Jaipur at the peak of the pandemic last spring, their framework could help other vulnerable countries avoid a shutdown of their regional economies. Led by Shruti Kanga, associate professor in the Centre for Climate Change and Water Research at Suresh ...

An estimated 6 million Americans may suffer from peanut allergies. Tiny amounts of peanut protein can lead to hives, itching, tingling in the mouth, shortness of breath or nausea within minutes. For individuals with severe peanut allergies, food-induced anaphylaxis can occur. It's a life-threatening emergency that requires treatment with an injection of epinephrine and a trip to the emergency room. Food labels offer warnings such as "may contain peanuts" or "was processed in a facility that may process nuts." The warnings allow individuals with severe reactions to steer clear, but for consumers who may be able to tolerate a minimal amount of peanut protein without major incident the labels aren't very useful, says Lynne Haber, PhD, ...

Women who suffer from vision, hearing or dual sensory loss are more than twice as likely to report depression and anxiety as men who experience the same issues, according to a new study by Anglia Ruskin University (ARU). The research, which has been published in the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, looked at survey data from more than 23,000 adults, where participants had self-reported whether they had suffered depression or anxiety, and also whether they experienced vision, hearing, or dual (both vision and hearing) sensory impairment. Across the whole sample, the prevalence of depression ...