Wildfire smoke can trigger a host of respiratory and cardiovascular symptoms, ranging from runny nose and cough to a potentially life-threatening heart attack or stroke. A new study suggests that the dangers posed by wildfire smoke may also extend to the largest organ in the human body, and our first line of defense against outside threat: the skin. During the two weeks in November 2018 when wildfire smoke from the Camp Fire choked the San Francisco Bay Area, health clinics in San Francisco saw an uptick in the number of patients visiting with concerns of eczema, also known as atopic dermatitis, and general itch, compared to the same time of the year ...

A mechanistic understanding of brain development requires a systematic survey of neural progenitor cell types, their lineage specification and maturation of postmitotic neurons. Cumulative evidences based on single-cell transcriptomic analysis have revealed the heterogeneity of cortical neural progenitors, their temporal patterning and the developmental trajectories of excitatory and inhibitory neurons in the developing neocortex. Nevertheless, the developmental hierarchy of the hypothalamus, which contains an astounding diversity of neurons that regulate endocrine, autonomic and behavioral functions, has not been well understood. Recently, however, Prof. WU Qingfeng's ...

WHO Peter Libby, MD, cardiovascular medicine specialist at Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Mallinckrodt Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School; author of a new review paper published in Nature. WHAT Atherosclerosis -- hardening of the arteries -- is now involved in the majority of deaths worldwide, and advances in our understanding of the biology of the disease are changing traditional views and opening up new avenues for treatment. The picture of who may be at risk for a heart attack has evolved considerably in recent decades. At one time, a heart attack might have conjured up the image of a middle-aged white man with high cholesterol and high blood pressure who smoked cigarettes. Today, traditional concepts of what contributes to risk have changed. These ...

In 2016, an inflatable arch wreaked havoc at the Tour de France bicycle race when it deflated and collapsed on a cyclist, throwing him from his bike and delaying the race while officials scrambled to clear the debris from the road. Officials blamed a passing spectator's wayward belt buckle for the arch's collapse, but the real culprit was physics. Today's inflatable structures, used for everything from field hospitals to sporting complexes, are monostable, meaning they need a constant input of pressure in order to maintain their inflated state. Lose that pressure and the structure ...

What is the cost of 1 ton of a greenhouse gas? When a climate-warming gas such as carbon dioxide or methane is emitted into the atmosphere, its impacts may be felt years and even decades into the future - in the form of rising sea levels, changes in agricultural productivity, or more extreme weather events, such as droughts, floods, and heat waves. Those impacts are quantified in a metric called the "social cost of carbon," considered a vital tool for making sound and efficient climate policies. Now a new study by a team including researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) ...

Despite our efforts to sort and recycle, less than 9% of plastic gets recycled in the U.S., and most ends up in landfill or the environment. Biodegradable plastic bags and containers could help, but if they're not properly sorted, they can contaminate otherwise recyclable #1 and #2 plastics. What's worse, most biodegradable plastics take months to break down, and when they finally do, they form microplastics - tiny bits of plastic that can end up in our oceans, fish, and even our bodies. Now, as reported in the journal Nature, scientists at the Department ...

A study that appeared today on Current Biology sheds new light on the continental migrations which shaped the genetic background of all present Europeans. The research generates new ancient DNA evidence and direct dating from a fragmentary fossil mandible belonging to an individual who lived ~17,000 years ago in northeastern Italy (Riparo Tagliente, Verona). The results backdate by about 3,000 years the diffusion in Southern Europe of a genetic component linked to Eastern Europe/Western Asia previously believed to have spread westwards during later major warming shifts. "By looking into the past of this particular individual, ...

Astronomers using data from NASA and the ESA (European Space Agency) telescopes have released a new all-sky map of the outermost region of our galaxy. Known as the galactic halo, this area lies outside the swirling spiral arms that form the Milky Way's recognizable central disk and is sparsely populated with stars. Though the halo may appear mostly empty, it is also predicted to contain a massive reservoir of dark matter, a mysterious and invisible substance thought to make up the bulk of all the mass in the universe. The data for the new map comes from ESA's Gaia mission and NASA's Near Earth Object Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer, or NEOWISE, which operated from 2009 to 2013 under the moniker WISE. The study, led by astronomers at the Center for ...

Substantial cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions could be achieved by raising water levels in agricultural peatlands, according to a new study in the journal Nature. Peatlands occupy just three per cent of the world's land surface area but store a similar amount of carbon to all terrestrial vegetation, as well as supporting unique biodiversity. In their natural state, they can mitigate climate change by continuously removing CO2 from the atmosphere and storing it securely under waterlogged conditions for thousands of years. But many peatland areas have been substantially modified by human activity, including drainage for agriculture and forest plantations. This results in the ...

Scientists have found fragments of titanium blasting out of a famous supernova. This discovery, made with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, could be a major step in pinpointing exactly how some giant stars explode. This work is based on Chandra observations of the remains of a supernova called Cassiopeia A (Cas A), located in our galaxy about 11,000 light-years from Earth. This is one of the youngest known supernova remnants, with an age of about 350 years. For years, scientists have struggled to understand how massive stars - those with masses over about 10 times that of the Sun - explode when they run ...

The diagnosis of diseases like cancer almost always needs a biopsy - a procedure where a clinician removes a piece of suspect tissue from the body to examine it, typically under a microscope. Many areas of diagnostic medicine, especially cancer management, have seen huge advances in technology, with genetic sequencing, molecular biology and artificial intelligence all rapidly increasing doctors' ability to work out what's wrong with a patient. However the technology of medical needles hasn't changed dramatically in 150 years, and - in the context of cancer management - needles are struggling to provide adequate tissue samples for new diagnostic techniques. Now researchers have shown that modifying the biopsy needle to vibrate rapidly ...

PHILADELPHIA--Piperlongumine, a chemical compound found in the Indian Long Pepper plant (Piper longum), is known to kill cancerous cells in many tumor types, including brain tumors. Now an international team including researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has illuminated one way in which the piperlongumine works in animal models -- and has confirmed its strong activity against glioblastoma, one of the least treatable types of brain cancer. The researchers, whose findings were published this month in END ...

Scientists have spotted the largest flare ever recorded from the sun's nearest neighbor, the star Proxima Centauri. The research, which appears today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, was led by the University of Colorado Boulder and could help to shape the hunt for life beyond Earth's solar system. CU Boulder astrophysicist Meredith MacGregor explained that Proxima Centauri is a small but mighty star. It sits just four light-years or more than 20 trillion miles from our own sun and hosts at least two planets, one of which may look something like ...

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. -- With Army funding, scientists invented a way to make compostable plastics break down within a few weeks with just heat and water. This advance will potentially solve waste management challenges at forward operating bases and offer additional technological advances for American Soldiers. The new process, developed by researchers at University of California, Berkeley and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, involves embedding polyester-eating enzymes in the plastic as it's made. When exposed to heat and water, an enzyme shrugs off its polymer shroud and starts chomping the plastic polymer into its building blocks -- in the case of biodegradable plastics, which are made primarily of the polyester known as polylactic acid, or PLA, ...

Women at high risk of breast cancer face cost-associated barriers to care even when they have health insurance, a new study has found. The findings suggest the need for more transparency in pricing of health care and policies to eliminate financial obstacles to catching cancer early. The study led by researchers at The Ohio State University included in-depth interviews with 50 women - 30 white, 20 Black - deemed at high risk of breast cancer based on family history and other factors. It appears in the Journal of Genetic Counseling. The researchers considered it a given that women without any insurance would face serious barriers to preventive care including genetic counseling and testing, prophylactic mastectomy and ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. - An artificial intelligence-driven system that automatically combs through brain MRIs for abnormalities could speed care to those who need it most, according to a study published in Radiology: Artificial Intelligence. MRI produces detailed images of the brain that help radiologists diagnose various diseases and damage from events like a stroke or head injury. Its increasing use has led to an image overload that presents an urgent need for improved radiologic workflow. Automatic identification of abnormal findings in medical images offers a potential solution, enabling improved patient care and accelerated patient discharge. "There are an increasing number of MRIs that are performed, ...

Certain signalling proteins, which are responsible for the development of innate immune function in almost all animals are also required for the formation of the dorsal-ventral (back-belly) axis in insect embryos. A new study by researchers from the University of Cologne's Institute of Zoology suggests that the relevance of these signalling proteins for insect axis formation has increased independently several times during evolution. For example, the research team found similar evolutionary patterns in the Mediterranean field cricket as in the fruit fly Drosophila, although the two insects are only very distantly related and previous observations suggested different evolutionary ...

Metaplasia is defined as the replacement of a fully differentiated cell type by another. There are several classical examples of metaplasia, one of the most frequent is called Barrett's oesophagus. Barrett's oesophagus is characterized by the replacement of the keratinocytes by columnar cells in the lower oesophagus upon chronic acid reflux. This metaplasia is considered a precancerous lesion that increases by around 50 times the risk of this oesophageal adenocarcinoma. Nonetheless, the mechanisms involved in the development of metaplasia in the oesophagus are still partially unknown. In a new study published in Cell Stem Cell, researchers led by Mr. Benjamin Beck, ...

Drawing on epidemiological field studies and the FrenchCOVID hospital cohort coordinated by Inserm, teams from the Institut Pasteur, the CNRS and the Vaccine Research Institute (VRI, Inserm/University Paris-Est Créteil) studied the antibodies induced in individuals with asymptomatic or symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection. The scientists demonstrated that infection induces polyfunctional antibodies. Beyond neutralization, these antibodies can activate NK (natural killer) cells or the complement system, leading to the destruction of infected cells. Antibody levels are slightly lower in asymptomatic ...

Creativity--the "secret weapon" of Homo sapiens--constituted a major advantage over Neanderthals and played an important role in the survival of the human species. This is the finding of an international team of scientists, led by the University of Granada (UGR), which has identified for the first time a series of 267 genes linked to creativity that differentiate Homo sapiens from Neanderthals. This important scientific finding, published today in the prestigious journal Molecular Psychiatry (Nature), suggests that it was these genetic differences linked to creativity that enabled Homo sapiens to eventually replace Neanderthals. It was creativity that gave Homo sapiens the ...

Children with weakened immune systems have not shown a higher risk of developing severe COVID-19 infection despite commonly displaying symptoms, a new study suggests. During a 16-week period which covered the first wave of the pandemic, researchers from Southampton carried out an observational study of nearly 1500 immunocompromised children - defined as requiring annual influenza vaccinations due to underlying conditions or medication. The children, their parents or guardians completed weekly questionnaires to provide information about any symptoms they had experienced, COVID-19 test results and the impact of the pandemic on their daily life. The results, published in BMJ Open, showed that symptoms of COVID-19 infection were common in many of the children - with ...

The effects of the steadily increasing amount of plastic in the ocean are complex and not yet fully understood. Scientists at GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel have now shown for the first time that the uptake of microplastics by zooplankton can have significant effects on the marine ecosystem even at low concentrations. The study, published in the international journal Nature Communications, further indicates that the resulting changes may be responsible for a loss of oxygen in the ocean beyond that caused by global warming. Plastic debris in the ocean is a widely known problem for large marine mammals, fish and seabirds. These ...

The results, exceptional first time evidence of how early flocks of domesticated sheep fed and reproduced within the Iberian Peninsula, are currently the first example of the modification of sheep's seasonal reproductive rhythms with the aim of adapting them to human needs. The project includes technical approaches based on stable isotope analysis and dental microwear of animal remains from more than 7,500 years ago found in the Neolithic Chaves cave site in Huesca, in the central Pyrennean region of Spain. The research was coordinated from the Arqueozoology Laboratory of the UAB Department of Antiquity, with the participation of researchers from the University of Zaragoza, the Museum of Natural History of Paris, and the Catalan Institute of Human Palaeocology and Social Evolution (IPHES) ...

Most battery materials, novel catalysts, and storage materials for hydrogen have one thing in common: they have a structure comprised of tiny pores in the nanometer range. These pores provide space which can be occupied by guest atoms, ions, and molecules. As a consequence, the properties of the guest and the host can change dramatically. Understanding the processes inside the pores is crucial to develop innovative energy technologies. Observing the filling process So far, it has only been possible to characterise the pore structure of the substrate materials precisely. The exact structure of the adsorbate inside the pores has remained hidden. To probe this, a team from the HZB together with colleagues ...

The natural menopause occurs when the menstrual periods cease due to the naturally decreased ovary function. There is a significant interindividual variation in the age at natural menopause but, on average, women undergo it around the age of 51 in Western countries. Furthermore, the length of the preceding menopausal transition, characterized by irregular menstrual cycles and menopausal symptoms, is also known to vary between individuals. The study revealed that higher estradiol and follicle-stimulating hormone levels, irregular menstrual cycles, and menopausal symptoms are strong indicators of approaching menopause in middle-aged women. Additionally, information related ...