The findings published in eLife show that men with this unstable subtype of the Y chromosome have a significantly increased risk of genomic rearrangements. These rearrangements affect the sperm production process (spermatogenesis) and consequently, these men can be up to nine times more likely to have fertility issues. Molecular diagnostics of this genetic variant could help identify those at higher risk in their early adulthood, giving them the chance to make decisions about future family planning early on. Currently, the exact cause of infertility ...

Infants born by cesarean section have a relatively meager array of bacteria in the gut. But by the age of three to five years they are broadly in line with their peers. This is shown by a study that also shows that it takes a remarkably long time for the mature intestinal microbiota to get established. Fredrik Bäckhed, Professor of Molecular Medicine at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, has been heading this research. The study, conducted in collaboration with Halland County Hospital in Halmstad, is now published in the journal Cell Host & Microbe. Professor Bäckhed and his group have previously demonstrated that the composition of children's intestinal microbiota is affected by their mode of delivery and ...

The current method of manufacturing carbon nanotubes--in essence rolled up sheets of graphene--is unable to allow complete control over their diameter, length and type. This problem has recently been solved for two of the three different types of nanotubes, but the third type, known as 'zigzag' nanotubes, had remained out of reach. Researchers with Japan's National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) have now figured out how to synthesize the zigzag variety. Their method is described in the journal Nature Chemistry, published on January 25. Thanks to carbon's unique capacity to combine ...

Although beef is one of the most consumed foods around the world, eating it when it's past its prime is not only unsavory, but also poses some serious health risks. Unfortunately, available methods to check for beef freshness have various disadvantages that keep them from being useful to the public. For example, chemical analysis or microbial population evaluations take too much time and require the skills of a professional. On the other hand, non-destructive approaches based on near-infrared spectroscopy require expensive and sophisticated equipment. Could artificial intelligence be the key to a more cost-effective way to assess the freshness of beef? At Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), Korea, a team of scientists led by Associate Processors Kyoobin Lee and ...

A study by KAIST researchers revealed that an ionized gas jet blowing onto water, also known as a 'plasma jet', produces a more stable interaction with the water's surface compared to a neutral gas jet. This finding reported in the April 1 issue of Nature will help improve the scientific understanding of plasma-liquid interactions and their practical applications in a wide range of industrial fields in which fluid control technology is used, including biomedical engineering, chemical production, and agriculture and food engineering. Gas jets can create dimple-like depressions in liquid surfaces, and this phenomenon is familiar to anyone who has seen the cavity produced by blowing air through a straw ...

How do our facial expressions in response to seeing others in pain influence how we see and feel their pain? There are many situations where it may be helpful to suppress our emotional responses to the pain of others. For example, doctors are trained to regulate their emotional responses to the pain of their patients, which may help them to avoid exhausting their own cognitive and emotional resources. Understanding whether suppressing our own facial expressions in response to other's pain reduces our ability to empathize with them has important implications for a variety ...

Mount Sinai Researchers Find "Removal of AKAP11 Protein by Autophagy as a key to Fuel Mitochondrial Metabolism and Tumor Cell Growth through activating protein kinase A (PKA) (Patent pending)" Corresponding Author: Zhenyu Yue, PhD, Professor of Neurology, Aidekman Family Professorship, Director of Basic and Translational Research in Movement Disorders, Friedman Brain Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Bottom Line: We uncovered a mechanism that tumor cells exploit selective autophagy for metabolic reprogramming that benefits tumor cell growth and offers resistance to glucose deprivation. Our study suggests that AKAP220-mediated autophagy as a novel therapeutic target for specific cancer treatment. Results: Autophagy is a lysosome degradation pathway that is cytoprotective ...

How plants will fare as carbon dioxide levels continue to rise is a tricky problem and, researchers say, especially vexing in the tropics. Some aspects of plants' survival may get easier, some parts will get harder, and there will be species winners and losers. The resulting shifts in vegetation will help determine the future direction of climate change. To explore the question, a study led by the University of Washington looked at how tropical forests, which absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide, might adjust as CO2 continues to climb. Their results show ...

Chestnut Hill, MA (4/1/2021) - A gender gap in negotiation emerges as early as age eight, a finding that sheds new light on the wage gap women face in the workforce, according to new research from Boston College's Cooperation Lab, lead by Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience Katherine McAuliffe. The study of 240 boys and girls between ages four and nine, published recently in the journal Psychological Science, found the gap appears when girls who participated in the study were asked to negotiate with a male evaluator, a finding that mirrors the dynamics of the negotiation gap that persists between ...

Statement Highlights: Two-thirds of people with heart disease are ages 60 and older. People who have had a heart attack or stroke are 20 times more likely to have additional cardiac events compared to people without heart disease. Lifestyle modifications and medication adherence are key strategies to address heart disease. Mobile health technology, which incorporates apps, devices, texting and phone calls, can inform and monitor older adults to support lifestyle modifications. DALLAS, April 1, 2021 -- Mobile health technology can be beneficial in encouraging lifestyle behavior changes and medication adherence among adults ages 60 and older with existing heart disease, yet more research is needed to determine what methods are the most effective, according to a new scientific statement ...

New research, led by scientists at the University of Nottingham, suggests that the environment in which men live may affect their reproductive health. The research, published in Scientific Reports, looked at the effects of geographical location on polluting chemicals found in dog testes, some of which are known to affect reproductive health. The unique research focused on dogs because, as a popular pet, they share the same environment as people and are effectively exposed to the same household chemicals as their owners. The team also looked for signs of abnormalities ...

It is well known that climate-induced sea level rise is a major threat. New research has found that previous ice loss events could have caused sea-level rise at rates of around 3.6 metres per century, offering vital clues as to what lies ahead should climate change continue unabated. A team of scientists, led by researchers from Durham University, used geological records of past sea levels to shed light on the ice sheets responsible for a rapid pulse of sea-level rise in Earth's recent past. Geological records tell us that, at the end of the last ice age around 14,600 years ago, sea levels rose at ten times the current rate due to Meltwater Pulse 1A (MWP-1A); a 500 year, ~18 metre sea-level rise event. Until now, the scientific community has not ...

Genome sequencing of thousands of SARS-CoV-2 samples shows that surges of COVID-19 cases are driven by the appearance of new coronavirus variants, according to new research from the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California, Davis published April 1 in Scientific Reports. "As variants emerge, you're going to get new outbreaks," said Bart Weimer, professor of population health and reproduction at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. The merger of classical epidemiology with genomics provides a tool public health authorities could use to predict the course of pandemics, whether of coronavirus, influenza or some new pathogen. Although it has just 15 genes, SARS-CoV-2 is constantly mutating. Most of these changes make very little ...

Hamilton, ON (April 1, 2021) - People living with the often-debilitating effects of Crohn's disease may finally gain some relief, thanks to ground-breaking research led by McMaster University. McMaster investigator Brian Coombes said his team identified a strain of adherent-invasive E-coli (AIEC) that is strongly implicated in the condition and is often found in the intestines of people with Crohn's disease. "If you examine the gut lining of patients with Crohn's disease, you will find that around 70 to 80 per cent of them test positive for AIEC bacteria, but one of the things we don't understand is why," said Coombes, professor and chair of the Department of Biochemistry and ...

Ishikawa, Japan - Any high-performance computing should be able to handle a vast amount of data in a short amount of time -- an important aspect on which entire fields (data science, Big Data) are based. Usually, the first step to managing a large amount of data is to either classify it based on well-defined attributes or--as is typical in machine learning--"cluster" them into groups such that data points in the same group are more similar to one another than to those in another group. However, for an extremely large dataset, which can have trillions of sample points, it is tedious to even group data points into a single cluster without huge memory requirements. "The problem can be formulated as follows: Suppose we have a clustering tool that ...

The kangaskhan, Australia's only species of endemic Pokemon in Pokemon Go, is commonly poached within its natural habitat by Pokemon trainers for use in fighting contests Researchers used several species distribution modeling algorithms to predict how climate change, on top of the already existing human-induced pressures, would impact the distribution of the kangaskhan in the future In addition to this, they found a way to measure how biased commonly used species distribution models are, and found that some models are so biased that their results weren't influenced by the data at all The ...

Obesity rates have increased dramatically in developed countries over the past 40 years -- and many people have assumed that food marketing is at least in part to blame. But are people with obesity really more susceptible to food marketing? And if they are, is that a permanent predisposition, or can it change over time? According to a new study by UBC Sauder School of Business Assistant Professor Dr. Yann Cornil (he/him/his) and French researchers, people with obesity do tend to be more responsive to food marketing -- but when their weight drops significantly, so does their responsiveness to marketing. For the study, which was published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, the researchers followed three groups: patients with severe ...

Oak Brook, IL - The April edition of SLAS Discovery is a special issue on advances in protein degradation curated by guest editors M. Paola Castaldi, Ph.D., and Stewart L. Fisher, Ph.D. Targeted protein degradation has generated interest within the drug discovery arena due to the inhibition of one particular function of a protein not often delivering the successful results that comes from whole-protein depletion. The pharmacology of PROTACs present challenges, however, namely for the development of orally bioavailable drugs. In the article "Target Validation Using PROTACs: Applying the Four Pillars Framework" authors Rados?aw P. Nowak, Ph.D., and Lyn H. Jones, Ph.D., describe the application of a translational pharmacology framework (the four pillars) ...

Oak Brook, IL - The April edition of SLAS Technology features the cover article "Therapeutic Potential of Reactive Oxygen Species: State of the Art and Recent Advances" by Valeria Graceffa, Ph.D. (Institute of Technology Sligo, Sligo, Ireland). The cover article explores the therapeutic potential of reactive oxygen species (ROS) including applications ranging from wound healing and hair growth enhancement, to cancer treatment, stem cell differentiation and tissue engineering. At low concentrations, ROS can be utilized as inexpensive and convenient inducers of tissue regeneration, triggering stem cell differentiation and enhancing collagen synthesis. Recent cancer studies have represented ROS as the 'Achilles Heels' of cancers given their high basal levels, leaving ...

(APRIL 1, 2021) -The pandemic has exacerbated risk factors for gender-based violence, such as unemployment and financial strain, substance use, isolation, depression anxiety, and general stress, according to the American Psychological Association. That's inspired The University of Texas at San Antonio criminology and criminal justice professor Kellie Lynch, along with professor TK Logan from the University of Kentucky, to work with the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence on a national survey to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the dynamics of gender-based violence and the experiences of those serving victims of gender-based violence. "The consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic are far-reaching and we still have much to learn about ...

The public could lose trust in science if scientific and medical researchers choose to bypass the traditional high standards of peer-reviewed medical journals in the rush to get research data released, particularly during crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. That's the warning from three leading medical communications organizations, that have published a joint statement in the peer-reviewed journal Current Medical Research and Opinion - asserting that the integrity of published scientific and medical research must be protected. Out today, the joint statement from the American Medical ...

Review of 40 published studies from 17 countries offers first global assessment of the collateral impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on pregnancy outcomes. Findings reveal overall increase in the chances of stillbirth and maternal death during the pandemic, but chances of pre-term birth decreased in high-income countries. Women requiring surgery for ectopic pregnancies increased almost six-fold during the pandemic across all studies, after accounting for the size of included studies (surgery rate for ectopic pregnancies during pandemic 27/37 vs pre-pandemic 73/272), and symptoms of maternal depression were also increased. Study reveals disproportionate impact ...

The pandemic is affecting every country, but not every country has equal access to the lifesaving COVID-19 vaccines. Recent estimates show that high-income countries -- which have just one-fifth of the global adult population -- have purchased more than half of the world's total vaccine doses, resulting in disparities for low- and middle-income countries. A new study by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University investigates a key question: Will the U.S. population support donating part of its COVID-19 vaccine stockpile to less prosperous countries? "COVID-19 is a true global pandemic that has touched every nation ...

Houston Methodist has been a leader in successfully treating high-risk patients with monoclonal antibodies (mAB) for mild to moderate Covid-19 infection. Among the nation's largest providers of mAB therapy, Houston Methodist has infused nearly 4,000 patients since the FDA's Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) was issued. The hospital system was able to quickly ramp up its program once the EUA was granted by leveraging a number of resources through interdisciplinary collaboration. As more hospitals begin to ramp up for treating Covid-19 with mAB therapy, Houston Methodist's example serves as a valuable model for other medical systems to establish or expand mAB treatment programs and improve patient access to this critical therapy. A commentary outlining the challenges, ...

A team of University of Colorado School of Medicine researchers recently published a paper offering new insight into the role that oxygen deprivation, or hypoxia, plays in cancer development. CU Cancer Center member Joaquin Espinosa, PhD, is the senior researcher on the paper, which he hopes will help lead to more targeted treatments for cancer.  For their paper published this month in the journal Nature Communications, Espinosa and the rest of the team -- Zdenek Andrysik, PhD; Heather Bender, PhD; and Matthew Galbraith, PhD -- used state-of-the-art genomics technologies to map the response of cancer cells to hypoxia with unprecedented detail, ...