Antibiotics on the cocoon protect the offspring of beewolves, a group of digger wasps, from detrimental fungi. These protective substances are produced by symbiotic bacteria of the genus Streptomyces, which live in these insects. In a new study in PNAS, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology and the University of Mainz, together with an international team, showed that these beneficial bacteria are losing genetic material that is no longer needed. The genome of these bacteria is of great interest for understanding the process of genome erosion and elucidating how the cooperation and the mutual benefit between bacteria and their host insects have evolved over long periods of time (PNAS, doi: 10.1073/pnas.2023047118, ...

Police violence against Black Americans is shamefully common in the United States and devastates communities. For incidents that get widespread media exposure, a collective trauma is felt across the nation, especially for Black individuals. Research supports that experiencing racism even vicariously can harm the mental and physical health of others of the same racial group, yet its effect on a population level is unclear. A new study analyzed how highly publicized acts of racial violence impacted the mental health of Black Americans in the U.S. The authors identified 49 incidents that occurred between 2013 and 2017, including police killings of Black individuals, hate-crime murders and decisions not to indict or convict the officers involved. The researchers measured ...

What keeps some plants squatting close to the soil while others - even those closely related - reach high for the skies? New research addressing the architecture and growth habit of plants has provided an answer to this question and may assist in the development of better performing crops. The way plants grow must sometimes satisfy contradictory needs. Growing close to the ground, decreases the chances of being grazed, but this presents the need to rise rapidly to allow seeds to disperse. This can be observed in dandelions and in Arabidopsis, a model species commonly used to study plant development. Agriculture has taken advantage of the diversification of growth habit so that ...

Like superheroes capable of seeing through obstacles, environmental regulators may soon wield the power of all-seeing eyes that can identify violators anywhere at any time, according to a new Stanford University-led study. The paper, published the week of April 19 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), demonstrates how artificial intelligence combined with satellite imagery can provide a low-cost, scalable method for locating and monitoring otherwise hard-to-regulate industries. (WATCH VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHvRgKmJOK8) "Brick kilns have proliferated across Bangladesh to supply the growing economy with construction materials, which makes it really hard for regulators to keep up with new kilns that are constructed," ...

A new type of collective behaviour in ants has been revealed by an international team of scientists, headed by biologist Professor Iain Couzin, co-director of the Cluster of Excellence "Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour" at the University of Konstanz and director at the co-located Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, and Matthew Lutz, a postdoctoral researcher in Couzin's lab. Their research shows how ants use self-organized architectural structures called "scaffolds" to ensure traffic flow on sloped surfaces. Scaffold formation results from individual sensing and decision-making, ...

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and collaborators at other institutions have discovered that POT1, a gene known to be associated with risk of glioma, the most common type of malignant brain tumor, mediates its effects in a sex-specific manner. Researchers found that female mice with glioma that lacked the gene survived less than males. This led them to investigate human glioma cells, where they found that low POT1 expression correlated with reduced survival in females. Published in the journal Cancer Research, the study also shows that, compared to males', female tumors had reduced expression of immune signatures and increased expression of cell replication markers, suggesting that the immune response and tumor cell proliferation seemed to be ...

Scientists at VCU Massey Cancer Center have identified a protein that operates in tandem with a specific genetic mutation to spur lung cancer growth and could serve as a therapeutic target to treat the disease. Mutations in the p53 gene are found in more than half of all cancers, but it remains difficult to effectively target the gene with drugs even decades after its discovery. Though previous research has shown that p53 acts as a tumor suppressor and initiates cancer cell death in its natural state, a new study led by Sumitra Deb, Ph.D., suggests that gain-of-function (GOF) mutations -- a type of mutation where the changed gene has an added function ...

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., April 19, 2021--A new machine-learning program accurately identifies COVID-19-related conspiracy theories on social media and models how they evolved over time--a tool that could someday help public health officials combat misinformation online. "A lot of machine-learning studies related to misinformation on social media focus on identifying different kinds of conspiracy theories," said Courtney Shelley, a postdoctoral researcher in the Information Systems and Modeling Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory and co-author of the study that was published last week in the Journal of ...

PHILADELPHIA-- A retrospective study led by researchers from Penn Medicine found that with MitraClip for treatment of secondary mitral regurgitation (MR), a heart disease associated with problems in the left ventricle, there was no negative effect of having a slightly smaller mitral valve opening as long as there was good reduction of the mitral regurgitation. The study is published today in JACC: Cardiovascular Interventions. "This data is very reassuring for physicians who place MitraClips in patients with secondary mitral regurgitation. It demonstrates that the benefits of MR reduction in patients with heart failure were maintained even when mild-to-moderate mitral stenosis, which can be caused by a narrowing of the ...

While cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains the leading cause of death globally, new research led by NYU Grossman School of Medicine and Moi University School of Medicine (Kenya) found that addressing and incorporating social determinants of health (such as poverty and social isolation) in the clinical management of blood pressure in Kenya can improve outcomes for patients with diabetes or hypertension. The study -- recently published online in The Journal of the American College of Cardiology - found that after one year, patients who received a multi-component intervention that combined community microfinance groups with group medical visits (where patients with similar medical conditions met together with a clinician and community health worker) ...

A first-of-its-kind study led by The University of Texas at Austin has found that rock weathering and water storage appear to follow a similar pattern across undulating landscapes where hills rise and fall for miles. The findings are important because they suggest that these patterns could improve predictions of wildfire and landslide risk and how droughts will affect the landscape, since weathering and water storage influence how water and nutrients flow throughout landscapes. "There's a lot of momentum to do this work right now," said study co-author Daniella Rempe, an assistant professor at the UT Jackson School of Geosciences Department of Geological Sciences. "This kind of data, across large scales, is what is needed to inform next-generation models of land-surface processes." The ...

The fact that the human body is made up of cells is a basic, well-understood concept. Yet amazingly, scientists are still trying to determine the various types of cells that make up our organs and contribute to our health. A relatively recent technique called single-cell sequencing is enabling researchers to recognize and categorize cell types by characteristics such as which genes they express. But this type of research generates enormous amounts of data, with datasets of hundreds of thousands to millions of cells. A new algorithm developed by Joshua Welch, Ph.D., of the Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics, Ph.D. candidate Chao Gao and their team uses online learning, greatly speeding up this process and providing a way for researchers ...

A lot about the human brain and its intricacies continue to remain a mystery. With the advancement of neurobiology, the pathogenesis of several neurodegenerative diseases (ND) has been uncovered to a certain extent along with molecular targets around which current therapies revolve. However, while the current treatments offer temporary symptomatic relief and slow down the course of the disease, they do not completely cure the condition and are often accompanied by a myriad of side effects that can impair normal daily functions of the patient. Light stimulation has been proposed as a promising therapeutic alternative for treating various ND like ...

The brain's auditory system tracks the speed and location of moving sounds in the same way the visual system tracks moving objects. The study recently published in eNeuro lays the groundwork for more detailed research on how humans hear in dynamic environments. People who use hearing aids have trouble discriminating sounds in busy environments. Understanding if and how the auditory system tracks moving sounds is vital to improving hearing aid technology. Prior research utilizing eye movements to gauge whether the brain is following the trajectory of a moving sound indicates it cannot. A new study from García-Uceda Calvo et al. instead used head movements, a more accurate measure of sound tracking. The team analyzed head movements of hearing ...

April 19, 2021--(BRONX, NY)--Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine have developed a topical drug that regenerates and restores the function of erectile nerves damaged by radical prostatectomy, the most common treatment for localized prostate cancer. The drug was tested in rats, and the findings were published online today in JCI Insight. "Erectile dysfunction (ED) after radical prostatectomy has a major impact on the lives of many patients and their partners," said study co-leader David J. Sharp, Ph.D., professor of physiology & biophysics and of ophthalmology and visual sciences and professor in the Dominick P. Purpura Department of Neuroscience at Einstein. "Since rats are reliable animal models in urologic research, our drug offers real hope of normal sexual ...

DALLAS - April 19, 2021 - Treating people with Type 2 diabetes with a new once-a-week injectable insulin therapy proved to be safe and as effective as daily insulin injections, according to the results of two international clinical trials published online today in Diabetes Care. The studies suggest that the once-weekly treatment could provide a convenient alternative to the burden of daily insulin shots for diabetes patients. Starting and maintaining insulin treatment remain a challenge for millions of patients worldwide with Type 2 diabetes. Fear of injections and the inconvenience and burden of injectable therapy contribute to the barriers against insulin therapy initiation and adherence. The effectiveness and safety of ongoing insulin treatment are also highly dependent ...

Data from a GPS network in Colombia have revealed a shallow and fully locked part on the Caribbean subduction zone in the country that suggests a possible large earthquake and tsunami risk for the northwest region. The locked patch south of Cartagena city is capable of generating a magnitude 8.0 earthquake every 600 years, said Sindy Lizarazo of Nagoya University in Japan, who presented the study at the Seismological Society of America (SSA)'s 2021 Annual Meeting. Colombia lies in the middle of a complex tectonic zone, where the Caribbean, Nazca and South American tectonic plates and other smaller tectonic blocks converge. The Caribbean plate ...

Boston College seismologist John Ebel and his colleagues have noted a pattern for some large California earthquakes: magnitude 4 or larger earthquakes occur at a higher rate along a fault in the two decades or more prior to a magnitude 6.7 or larger earthquake on the fault. The findings prompted Ebel in 2017 to suggest a prospective test. He looked for the California faults that had magnitude 4 or larger earthquakes occurring at a rate higher than 0.5 earthquakes per year from 1997 to 2016. If the pattern holds, the next magnitude 6.7 earthquakes in California are most likely to ...

Eighteen minutes might be all it takes to ensure a full recovery for stroke patients in rural South Carolina. By changing EMS workflows and incorporating telemedicine techniques, physicians at MUSC Health have partnered with Georgetown Memorial Hospital and Hampton Regional Medical Center to significantly shorten the time between a patient's stroke symptom onset and their treatment, as recently reported in the Journal of Stroke and Cerebrovascular Diseases. Through MUSC Health's Telestroke Network, emergency medical technicians (EMTs) can video chat with stroke specialists to begin a patient's consult before they even arrive at the hospital. ...

A new study finds a naturally occurring "earthquake gate" that decides which earthquakes are allowed to grow into magnitude 8 or greater. Sometimes, the "gate" stops earthquakes in the magnitude 7 range, while ones that pass through the gate grow to magnitude 8 or greater, releasing over 32 times as much energy as a magnitude 7. "An earthquake gate is like someone directing traffic at a one-lane construction zone. Sometimes you pull up and get a green 'go' sign, other times you have a red 'stop' sign until conditions change," said UC Riverside geologist Nicolas Barth. Researchers learned about this gate while studying New Zealand's Alpine ...

April 19, 2021 - At the current rate of change, it will take more than 200 years for the proportion of women in orthopaedic surgery to reach parity with the overall medical profession, according to a study in Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research® (CORR®), a publication of The Association of Bone and Joint Surgeons®. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer. "Substantive changes must be made across all levels of orthopaedic education and leadership to steepen the current curve," concludes the report by Atul F. Kamath, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and colleagues. "Our findings support the need for changes in medical schools, orthopaedic residency ...

Inside your body, cell movement plays a crucial role in many significant biological processes, including wound healing, immune responses and the potential spread of cancer. "Most people don't die from having a primary tumor," said Kolade Adebowale, a graduate student in chemical engineering, and a member of the Chemical Biology Interface (CBI) graduate program in Chemistry, Engineering & Medicine for Human Health (ChEM-H) at Stanford University. "The problem is when cancer cells from the tumor acquire the ability to metastasize or move to different parts ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- A survey of U.S. multiple sclerosis, or MS, specialist clinicians reveals the COVID-19 pandemic has created major changes in how they deliver care. "Since the pandemic began, more than 95% of our survey respondents reported using telehealth platforms to provide care for their patients," said Dr. Elizabeth Morrison-Banks, a health sciences clinical professor of neurology in the School of Medicine at the University of California, Riverside, who led the survey reported in the journal Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders. "Approximately one half of the respondents were MS specialist neurologists, four out of five of whom indicated that COVID-19 had changed ...

Airbnb hosts in college towns increase their listing prices much more than hotels when there are home football games against rival teams. Hosts experience a 78 percent reduction in rental income by listing prices too high, according to a new study by the University of California San Diego’s Rady School of Management. The paper, to be published in Real Estate Economics, investigates whether households set listing prices to maximize rental income. “Airbnb hosts in college towns are individuals, not corporations and are more susceptible to biases that lead to sub-optimal pricing,” said co-author Joseph Engelberg, professor of finance and accounting at the Rady School. “In ...

BOSTON - At the end of 2020, experts led by allergists at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) examined all information related to possible allergic reactions to COVID-19 vaccinations. Now the team has published updated insights based on their experience overseeing more than 65,000 employees who have become fully vaccinated since that time. The group's latest findings are published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice. "Our main goal is to enable as many individuals as possible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine safely and avoid unnecessary vaccine hesitancy due to a lack of knowledge around allergic reactions to vaccines," says lead author Aleena Banerji, MD, clinical director of the Allergy and Clinical Immunology Unit at MGH. In addition to updated guidance ...