People with more empathy and cosmopolitan beliefs are more likely to support the international sharing of coronavirus vaccines, a new study shows.  During the COVID-19 pandemic, many residents of high-income countries were eligible for COVID-19 vaccine boosters, while many residents of lower-income countries had not yet received a first dose.   Researchers analysed the levels and predictors of international vaccine solidarity through a survey of around 2,000 German adults in the autumn of 2021. They measured their ...

Québec, July 13, 2023 – Professor Simona Stäger’s team has made a breakthrough in the study of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The researchers have identified the mechanism by which memory CD4+ T lymphocytes—cells that play a major role in our immune response—are predisposed to cell death in people living with HIV. The team’s findings have just been published in JCI Insight.   In this new study, Professor Stäger and her research team built on work done on mice infected with the Leishmania donovani parasite (published in Cell Reports in 2018), which described how a chronic inflammatory environment predisposes ...

RICHMOND, Va. (July 13, 2023) — A new study by a Virginia Commonwealth University researcher has found that aggression is not always the product of poor self-control but, instead, often can be the product of successful self-control in order to inflict greater retribution. The new paper, “Aggression As Successful Self-Control,” by corresponding author David Chester, Ph.D., an associate professor of social psychology in the Department of Psychology at VCU’s College of Humanities and Sciences, was published by the journal Social and Personality Psychology Compass and uses meta-analysis to summarize evidence from dozens of existing ...

A person’s ‘mindreading ability’ can predict how well they are able to cooperate, even with people they have never met before. Researchers at the University of Birmingham found that people with strong mind reading abilities – the ability to understand and take the perspective of another person’s feelings and intentions– are more successful in cooperating to complete tasks than people with weaker mind reading abilities.  These qualities, also called ‘theory of mind’, are not necessarily related to intelligence and could be improved through training programmes to foster improved cooperation, for example in ...

Use of low-dose atropine eyedrops (concentration 0.01%) was no better than placebo at slowing myopia (nearsightedness) progression and elongation of the eye among children treated for two years, according to a randomized controlled trial conducted by the Pediatric Eye Disease Investigator Group (PEDIG) and funded by the National Eye Institute (NEI). The trial aimed to identify an effective way to manage this leading and increasingly common cause of refractive error, which can cause serious uncorrectable vision loss later in life. Results from the trial were published in JAMA Ophthalmology. Importantly, the findings contradict results from recent trials, primarily in East Asia, which ...

About The Study: In this randomized clinical trial of school-age children in the U.S. with low to moderate myopia (nearsightedness), atropine, 0.01%, eye drops administered nightly when compared with placebo did not slow myopia progression or axial elongation. These results do not support use of atropine, 0.01%, eye drops to slow myopia progression or axial elongation in U.S. children. Authors: Michael X. Repka, M.D., M.B.A., of the Wilmer Eye Institute in Baltimore, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this ...

About The Study: This study provides evidence of the clinical effectiveness of mRNA-based vaccines against COVID-19 in patients with cancer. Longevity of immunity in preventing severe COVID-19 outcomes in actively treated patients with cancer, cancer survivors, and matched controls was observed at least five months after the third or fourth dose.  Authors: Raghav Sundar, M.B.B.S., Ph.D., of the National University Health System in Singapore, and Kelvin Bryan Tan, Ph.D., of the Ministry of Health in Singapore, are the corresponding authors.  To access the embargoed study: Visit our ...

About The Study: In this survey study, all types of objectively measured visual impairment were associated with a higher dementia prevalence. As most visual impairment is preventable, prioritizing vision health may be important for optimizing cognitive function. Authors: Joshua R. Ehrlich, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, 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/jamaophthalmol.2023.2854) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for ...

RESEARCH REVEALS HOW COVID-19 VIRUS INFECTS THE PLACENTA, AND HOW THIS CAN BE PREVENTED In a landmark study published in Nature Cell Biology, Australian researchers, led by Professor Jose Polo from Monash University and the University of Adelaide and University of Melbourne’s Professor Kanta Subbarao from the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity (Doherty Institute), have revealed how COVID-19 can infect the human placenta. Research has shown that COVID-19 infections during pregnancy ...

From Aristotle’s musings on the nature of time to Einstein’s theory of relativity, humanity has long pondered: how do we perceive and understand time? The theory of relativity posits that time can stretch and contract, a phenomenon known as time dilation. Just as the cosmos warps time, our neural circuits can stretch and compress our subjective experience of time. As Einstein famously quipped, “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute”. In new work ...

Two pathologies drive the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. Early on, amyloid beta plaques lead the way, but around the time cognitive symptoms arise, tau tangles take over as the driving force and cognition steadily declines. Tracking the course of the disease in individual patients has been challenging because there’s been no easy way to measure tau tangles in the brain. But now, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Lund University in Lund, Sweden, have identified a form of tau that could serve as a marker to track Alzheimer’s progression. The marker also could be used by Alzheimer’s drug developers to assess ...

Routing signals and isolating them against noise and back-reflections are essential in many practical situations in classical communication as well as in quantum processing. In a theory-experimental collaboration, a team led by Andreas Nunnenkamp from the University of Vienna and Ewold Verhagen based at the research institute AMOLF in Amsterdam has achieved unidirectional transport of signals in pairs of "one-way streets". This research published in Nature Physics opens up new possibilities for more flexible signaling devices. Devices that allow ...

Doctors in Seattle are reporting a history-making case in which a patient received two donor organs, a liver and a heart, to prevent the extreme likelihood that her body would reject a donor heart transplanted alone. In this innovative case, the organ recipient’s own healthy liver was transplanted, domino-like, into a second patient who had advanced liver disease. The dual-organ recipient, Adriana Rodriguez, 31, of Bellingham, Washington, has recovered well since the Jan. 14, 2023, procedures, said Dr. Shin Lin, a cardiologist ...

Researchers from Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) investigate a pharmacist-led intervention to optimize the oral antimicrobial prescriptions in dental setting Tokyo, Japan - The battle to stop the increase of superbugs in hospitals has been an ongoing struggle for healthcare professionals. Dentists are currently facing a medical challenge that determines the faith of antimicrobial resistance in healthcare settings. To choose the “red pill” means to embrace the painful truth that bacteria are acquiring resistance to many antimicrobials. Meanwhile, the “blue pill” creates ...

A team from the University of Tokyo has combined economic theory with biology to understand how natural systems respond to change. The researchers noticed a similarity between consumers’ shopping behavior and the behavior of metabolic systems, which convert food into energy in our bodies. The team focused on predicting how different metabolic systems might respond to environmental change by using an economic tool called the Slutsky equation. Their calculations indicated that very different metabolic ...

Manganese-rich NASICON-type materials have attracted widespread attention for developing advanced polyanionic cathodes, primarily driven by their abundant reserves, promising cycling performance, and potentially high operating voltage. Unfortunately, their charge/discharge profiles exhibit significant voltage hysteresis, which leads to a limited reversible capacity, thereby preventing their application. Now, however, the situation may be changing due to research by scientists at the Institute of Process Engineering (IPE) and the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. They recently identified ...

Clean energy plans, including the U.S. Infrastructure Investment Act’s “Clean Hydrogen Road Map,” are counting on hydrogen as a fuel of the future. But current hydrogen separation technology is still falling short of efficiency and sustainability goals. As part of ongoing efforts to develop materials that could enable alternative energy sources, researchers in Drexel University’s College of Engineering have produced a titanium oxide nanofilament material that can harness sunlight to unlock the ubiquitous molecule’s potential as a fuel source. The discovery offers an alternative ...

A Perspective published in Volume 3 of the journal Psychoradiology, researchers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University confronted these challenges and advocates for more clarity and transparency in causal analyses. The review distinguishes between traditional statistical analysis and causal inference, highlighting the need for specific causal assumptions, like the Stable Unit Treatment Value Assumption (SUTVA). Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are considered the gold standard for estimating causal effects. The authors stress the importance of imitating RCTs in observational studies through quasi-experimental techniques, ...

Gero, an AI-driven biotech focused on aging and longevity, has demonstrated the feasibility of applying quantum computing for drug design and generative chemistry, which now offers significant promise for the future of healthcare. The research, published in Scientific Reports, outlines how a hybrid quantum-classical machine-learning model was used to interface between classical and quantum computational devices with the goal of generating novel chemical structures for potential drugs — an industry first.   The research paper follows ...

A new study suggests eastern wild turkeys in five southern U.S. states are unlikely to make meaningful changes in the timing of when they begin nesting, even under significant future climate change. The findings suggest eastern wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris) could be vulnerable to shifts in climate, which could threaten the availability of their food sources, the amount of vegetation cover available to protect them from predators, and other factors. “There are implications here for turkey populations ...

Although wheat was among the first domesticated food crops, it remains a global dietary staple several millennia later. Grown on every continent except Antarctica, wheat is the second highest produced grain worldwide, with nearly 800,000 metric tons grown each year (Food and Agriculture Organization). However, a fungal pathogen named Fusarium graminearum causes the devastating disease Fusarium head blight (FHB) on wheat and contaminates grains with harmful toxins called trichothecenes. One such trichothecene, called deoxynivalenol (DON), is produced by most F. graminearum strains in the United States, and it is an essential virulence factor that increases the pathogen’s spread ...

Currently, there is no cure for amyloidosis, a life-threatening disease that can be present throughout the body, including the heart, kidneys, liver and brain. The most common localized form of amyloidosis, which is seen significantly more often, is in the brain. Cerebral amyloidosis, when symptomatic, usually manifests in one of two ways: in Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias and in brain bleeds, which have consequences such as a stroke. Because amyloidosis does not affect a specific organ, unraveling the underlying cause of amyloid fibril creation – a hallmark ...

SAN FRANCISCO—Schmidt Marine Technology Partners, a program of the Schmidt Family Foundation, has awarded $3.5 million in grants to ten organizations and universities in seven countries for the development of new tools and innovations that will improve the sustainability of global fisheries, the program announced today. “Tens of millions of jobs around the world depend on fisheries, and seafood is the primary protein source for 3 billion people,” said Wendy Schmidt, president and co-founder of the Schmidt Family Foundation. “The innovators chosen to receive these grants are ensuring that fishers and ...

A University of Minnesota Twin Cities team has, for the first time, synthesized a thin film of a unique topological semimetal material that has the potential to generate more computing power and memory storage while using significantly less energy. The researchers were also able to closely study the material, leading to some important findings about the physics behind its unique properties. The study is published in Nature Communications, a peer-reviewed scientific journal that covers the natural sciences and engineering. As evidenced by the United States’ recent CHIPS and Science Act, there is a growing need to increase semiconductor manufacturing ...

Researchers at University of Michigan developed a method to produce artificially grown miniature brains — called human brain organoids — free of animal cells that could greatly improve the way neurodegenerative conditions are studied and, eventually, treated. Over the last decade of researching neurologic diseases, scientists have explored the use of human brain organoids as an alternative to mouse models. These self-assembled, 3D tissues derived from embryonic or pluripotent stem cells ...