BOSTON - Almost immediately after the first mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines were authorized for emergency use and were administered to individuals outside of clinical trials, reports of anaphylaxis--a life-threatening whole-body allergic reaction--raised widespread concerns among experts and the public. Now, real world data on vaccinations among employees at Mass General Brigham provide reassurances of the rarity of such serious reactions, and the ability to recover from them. The findings are published in the END ...

Past studies on whether incarcerated people with mental illness are more likely to be placed in solitary confinement have yielded mixed results. A new study examined the issue in one state's prisons, taking into account factors related to incarcerated men and the facilities where they were imprisoned. It found that having a mental illness was associated with a significant increase in the likelihood of being placed in extended solitary confinement. The study, by researchers at Florida State University (FSU), appears in Justice Quarterly, a publication of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. "Our findings provide new information on how mental illness shapes experiences for incarcerated men, and more broadly, on how the criminal justice ...

A research team at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in Germany has developed a completely new, environmentally-friendly electrochemical procedure for producing sulfonamides rapidly and inexpensively. Sulfonamides are used in many drugs including antibiotics and Viagra as well as in agrochemicals and dyes, which makes them an important class of molecules for the pharmaceutical and chemical industries. While to date it has been necessary to use corrosive chemicals, high temperatures, and expensive metal catalysts to produce sulfonamides, the new method requires ...

The mountain forests of Tanzania are more than 9,300 miles away from Salt Lake City, Utah. But, as in eastern Africa, the wild places of Utah depend on a diversity of birds to spread seeds, eat pests and clean up carrion. Birds keep ecosystems healthy. So if birds in Tanzania are in trouble in a warming climate, as found in a recent study by University of Utah researchers, people in Utah as well as in the African tropics should pay attention. In a new study published in Global Change Biology, doctoral student Monte Neate-Clegg and colleagues tracked the demographics of 21 bird species over 30 years of observations from a mountain forest in Tanzania. For at least six of the species, their population declined over ...

A new study led by the University of Portsmouth has identified that one of the major factors of age-related brain deterioration is the loss of a substance called myelin. Myelin acts like the protective and insulating plastic casing around the electrical wires of the brain - called axons. Myelin is essential for superfast communication between nerve cells that lie behind the supercomputer power of the human brain. The loss of myelin results in cognitive decline and is central to several neurodegenerative diseases, such as Multiple Sclerosis and Alzheimer's disease. This new study found that the cells that drive myelin repair become less efficient as we age and identified a key gene that is most affected by ageing, which reduces the ...

The recent synthesis of one-dimensional van der Waals heterostructures, a type of heterostructure made by layering two-dimensional materials that are one atom thick, may lead to new, miniaturized electronics that are currently not possible, according to a team of Penn State and University of Tokyo researchers. Engineers commonly produce heterostructures to achieve new device properties that are not available in a single material. A van der Waals heterostructure is one made of 2D materials that are stacked directly on top of each other like Lego-blocks or a sandwich. The van der Waals force, which is an attractive force between uncharged molecules or atoms, holds the materials together. According to Slava V. Rotkin, Penn State Frontier ...

Intervention research focusing on patients with multiple, simultaneous chronic illnesses is a priority for health organizations such as the National Institutes of Health and Canadian Institutes of Health Research. This is important as physicians seek to better understand how one disease may influence the course of another coexisting one, and how to best care for patients who are battling multiple health issues. Researchers conducted a controlled trial in patients 18 to 80 years with three or more chronic conditions. They collected quantitative data and conducted in-depth interviews with patients, family members and health care providers, then measured the ...

Cooperation is generally a good thing -- working together to reach a goal. But in the case of cancer, it can be detrimental. University of Cincinnati researchers have discovered that cooperation between two key genes drive cancer growth, spread and treatment resistance in one particularly aggressive type of breast cancer. The good news is, though, with this knowledge, they can continue to aim their targeted treatments at these genes, singularly and together, to stop breast cancer in its tracks. This study is published in the March 9 online edition of the journal Cell Reports. "According to the American Cancer Society's estimate, over 280,000 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed in women in 2021," explains Xiaoting Zhang, PhD, professor and Thomas Boat Endowed Chair ...

Some of Princeton's leading cancer researchers were startled to discover that what they thought was a straightforward investigation into how cancer spreads through the body -- metastasis -- turned up evidence of liquid-liquid phase separations: the new field of biology research that investigates how liquid blobs of living materials merge into each other, similar to the movements seen in a lava lamp or in liquid mercury. "We believe this is the first time that phase separation has been implicated in cancer metastasis," said Yibin Kang, the Warner-Lambert/Parke-Davis Professor of Molecular Biology. He is the ...

Broad political, economic, and social factors influence disciplinary punishment. In particular, over the last half century, such considerations have shaped jurisdictions' use of the death penalty, which has declined considerably since the 1990s. A new study examined the factors associated with use of the death penalty at the county level to provide a fuller picture of what issues influence court outcomes. The study concludes that partisan politics, religious fundamentalism, and economic threat influenced local decisions about the death penalty. The study also found that the size of the African American population, which ...

CHAPEL HILL, NC -- In a viewpoint perspective published in JAMA on March 9, 2021, a University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center researcher and two other experts endorsed the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services' (CMS) requirement for a patient and their doctor to engage in a shared discussion of benefits and harms before proceeding with a low-dose spiral computed tomography (LDCT) scan as a method for preventing lung cancer death. An accompanying evidence report detailed the benefits and harms from screening, suggesting that shared decision-making between a patient ...

URBANA, Ill. - If you haven't been the parent or caregiver of an infant in recent years, you'd be forgiven for missing the human milk oligosaccharide trend in infant formulas. These complex carbohydrate supplements mimic human breast milk and act like prebiotics, boosting beneficial microbes in babies' guts. Milk oligosaccharides aren't just for humans, though; all mammals make them. And new University of Illinois research suggests milk oligosaccharides may be beneficial for cats and dogs when added to pet diets. But before testing the compounds, scientists had to find them. "When we first looked into this, there had only been one study on milk oligosaccharides in dogs, and none in domestic cats. The closest were really small studies on a single lion and a single ...

In a new study in PNAS, an international team of researchers including scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology has shown that Arabidopsis thaliana plants produce beta-cyclocitral when attacked by herbivores and that this volatile signal inhibits the methylerythritol 4-phosphate (MEP) pathway. The MEP pathway is instrumental in plant growth processes, such as the production of pigments for photosynthesis. In addition to down-regulating the MEP pathway, beta-cyclocitral also increases plant defenses against herbivores. Since the MEP pathway is only found in plants and microorganisms, but not animals, knowledge of a signal molecule like beta-cyclocitral opens up new possibilities for the development ...

Brazilian researchers who study a native venomous fish have confirmed a route to drug development for the treatment of chronic inflammatory diseases such as multiple sclerosis and asthma. The venomous toadfish Thalassophryne nattereri contains a peptide (TnP) with anti-inflammatory and anti-allergic potential. Confirmation of this potential has now come via the zebrafish Danio rerio, a popular aquarium species native to South Asia that shares 70% of its genome with humans and is widely used as a model for in vivo trials in drug development. The researchers tested TnP in D. rerio to measure its toxicity. In a little over a year, their research showed that the peptide is safe. It did not cause cardiac dysfunction or neurological problems in the toxicity tests ...

Health care systems could save lives and minimize losses by optimizing resource allocation and implementing mitigation strategies, according to two new studies. Colorado State University researchers explored how our health care systems might perform under multiple disasters and multiple waves of COVID-19, and how we can keep them functioning when we need them most. In the first study, published in Nature Communications, Civil and Environmental Engineering Ph.D. student Emad Hassan and Associate Professor Hussam Mahmoud investigated the compound effects of pandemics and natural disasters on health care systems. They combined wildfire ...

DALLAS (March 9, 2021) - Better brain health and performance for humankind is one step closer to reality with the successful trial of the groundbreaking BrainHealth Project. A cross-disciplinary team with the Center for BrainHealth® at The University of Texas at Dallas unveiled an easy-to-use online platform that delivers a novel, science-backed approach to measuring, improving and tracking one's own brain fitness. A key innovation of the Project centers on the BrainHealth Index™ (BHI), which is based on a multidimensional definition of brain health and its upward potential. The BHI is a composite derived from a series of best-in-class assessments that explore ...

Farmers in the Midwest may be able to bypass the warming climate not by getting more water for their crops, but instead by adapting to climate change through soil management says a new study from Michigan State University. "The Midwest supplies 30% of the world's corn and soybeans," said Bruno Basso, an ecosystems scientist and MSU Foundation Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences within the College of Natural Science. "These crops are sensitive to temperature and water changes." Previous studies have suggested that by 2050, the Midwest will need about 35% more water to sustain its current levels of corn and soybean yields. But research done by Basso and colleagues found that the data does not support this idea. The Midwest is in a unique location that ...

If past natural disasters have taught us anything about their effects on pregnant women and developing babies, it is to pay close attention, for the added stress will surely have an impact on them. Amanda Venta, associate professor of psychology at the University of Houston, is sounding that alarm as it relates to the COVID-19 pandemic in a newly released study published in Child Psychiatry & Human Development. "There is strong evidence to suggest that the coronavirus pandemic will affect mothers and infants through immune pathways that, in previous research, have been shown to link stress and social isolation during the pre- and post-natal periods with deficits in maternal mental health and infant well-being and development across developmental stages," reports Venta. Research ...

The relationship between the Hawaiian bobtail squid and the bioluminescent bacteria living in its light organ has been studied for decades as a model of symbiosis. Now researchers have used a powerful chemical analysis tool to identify a small molecule produced by the bacteria that appears to play an important role in their colonization of the light organ. The study, published March 9 in the journal mBio, adds a new wrinkle to scientists' understanding of the chemical signaling involved in this iconic symbiotic relationship. "It's exciting that there are still new things to discover, even in such a well-studied system," said corresponding author Laura Sanchez, associate professor ...

A new systematic review of evidence recommends the use of behavioral self-management treatments for common urinary issues experienced by upwards of 70 percent of older men. Common symptoms include trouble urinating, increased frequency and incontinence. These symptoms can have a substantial negative impact on sleep, social functioning and quality of life. Several guidelines recommend self-management techniques like health education, advice on fluid intake, and bladder retraining; however, in practice, self-management is often excluded from the menu of treatment options that include medication and surgery. Researchers at Bond University's Institute for Evidence-Based Healthcare found that self-management interventions reduced the severity of lower urinary tract symptoms. The ...

Wormholes play a key role in many science fiction films - often as a shortcut between two distant points in space. In physics, however, these tunnels in spacetime have remained purely hypothetical. An international team led by Dr. Jose Luis Blázquez-Salcedo of the University of Oldenburg has now presented a new theoretical model in the science journal Physical Review Letters that makes microscopic wormholes seem less far-fetched than in previous theories. Wormholes, like black holes, appear in the equations of Albert Einstein's general theory ...

A mobile app designed to help women manage urinary incontinence was as effective as usual, in-person treatment of incontinence in primary care, according to new research from the Netherlands. The study included 262 women with frequent stress incontinence, overactive bladder or a mix of symptoms. Participants were randomly assigned to use a standalone mobile app called URinControl, which offered pelvic floor muscle and bladder training exercises. Those in a control group received standard care and were referred to their own primary care doctors who were broadly advised to follow the Dutch guidelines for primary care. After four months, ...

Since the early 2010s, ultrafast probing of materials at atomic-level resolution has been enabled by terahertz scanning tunneling microscopes (THz-STM). But these devices can't detect the dissipation of energy that happens during events such as when photons are emitted via recombination process of an electron-hole pair in a light emitting diode (LED). However, a new technique allows the tracking of just such energy dynamics alongside THz-STM, opening up new avenues of investigation for nanoscale science and technology. Researchers in Japan have developed a microscopy technique that combines the ability to manipulate the motion of electrons on a femtosecond timescale ...

According to two national surveys by researchers at the University of Michigan Medical School, US teens and young adults are engaged in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic with most being knowledgeable about the disease, concerned about its impacts on others, and practicing social distancing. On March 6, 2020, 70 percent reported knowledge of the pandemic, with 46 percent noting they got information from news sources. By March 20, 2020, nearly all respondents, 95 percent, reported impact. Worry about the pandemic increased from 25 to 51 percent. For some young people who weren't worried early on about the pandemic, staying at home and engaging in other preventive public health guidelines made them feel safer. Between the two surveys, pandemic preparation seemed to shift. ...

Evidence published in the Cochrane Library today will reassure people who want to stop smoking that quitting for at least 6 weeks may improve their mental wellbeing, by reducing anxiety, depression, and stress. People's social relationships are unlikely to suffer if they stop smoking. Smoking is the world's leading cause of preventable illness and death. One in every two people who smoke will die of a smoking-related disease unless they quit. Some people believe that smoking helps reduce stress and other mental health symptoms, and that quitting smoking might make their mental health problems worse. People who smoke may also worry that stopping smoking will have a negative impact on their social lives and friendships. The review found that people who stopped smoking for at least 6 weeks ...