Determining safe yet effective drug dosages for children is an ongoing challenge for pharmaceutical companies and medical doctors alike. A new drug is usually first tested on adults, and results from these trials are used to select doses for pediatric trials. The underlying assumption is typically that children are like adults, just smaller, which often holds true, but may also overlook differences that arise from the fact that children's organs are still developing. Compounding the problem, pediatric trials don't always shed light on other differences that can affect recommendations for drug doses. There are many factors that limit children's participation in drug trials - for instance, some diseases simply ...

AURORA, Colo. (May 6, 2021) - Scientists examining the remains of 36 bubonic plague victims from a 16th century mass grave in Germany have found the first evidence that evolutionary adaptive processes, driven by the disease, may have conferred immunity on later generations of people from the region. "We found that innate immune markers increased in frequency in modern people from the town compared to plague victims," said the study's joint-senior author Paul Norman, PhD, associate professor in the Division of Personalized Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. "This suggests these markers might have evolved to resist the plague." The study, done in conjunction with the Max Planck Institute in Germany, was published online Thursday in the journal Molecular ...

Ultrasound is an indispensable tool for the life sciences and various industrial applications due to its non-destructive, high contrast, and high resolution qualities. A persistent challenge over the years has been how to increase the resolution of an acoustic endoscope without drastically increasing the footprint of the probe, or risking the robustness of the ultrasonic transducer. In recent years, a host of all-optical ultrasonic imaging techniques have emerged - which generally utilise pulsed lasers and optical cavities to excite and detect ultrasound waves - without sacrificing device footprint, sensitivity, or the integrity of the transducer. Thus far these powerful techniques have achieved imaging resolutions on microscopic-mesoscopic length ...

Researchers at the University of Eastern Finland have discovered previously unknown non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) involved in regulating the gene expression of vascular endothelial growth factors (VEGF), the master regulators of angiogenesis. The study, conducted by the research groups of Associate Professor Minna Kaikkonen-Määttä and Academy Professor Seppo Ylä-Herttuala, provides a better understanding of the complex interplay of ncRNAs with gene regulation, which might open up novel therapeutic approaches in the future. The results were published in the Molecular and Cellular Biology Journal. Over the past years, the development of next generation ...

Researchers at Chinese Academy of Science and Osaka University show that, unlike the crystalline close packing of spheres, random close packing or jamming of spheres in a container can take place in a broad range of densities and anisotropies. Furthermore, they show that such diverse jammed states are all just marginally stable and exhibit common universal critical properties. Osaka, Japan - Scientists at the theoretical institutes, Chinese Academy of Science and Cybermedia Center at Osaka University performed extensive computer simulations to generate and examine random packing of spheres. They show that the "jamming" ...

A KAIST research team has developed a new technology that enables to process a large-scale graph algorithm without storing the graph in the main memory or on disks. Named as T-GPS (Trillion-scale Graph Processing Simulation) by the developer Professor Min-Soo Kim from the School of Computing at KAIST, it can process a graph with one trillion edges using a single computer. Graphs are widely used to represent and analyze real-world objects in many domains such as social networks, business intelligence, biology, and neuroscience. As the number of graph applications increases rapidly, developing and testing new graph algorithms is becoming more important than ever before. Nowadays, many industrial ...

Trust, safety and security are the most important factors affecting passengers' attitudes towards self-driving cars. Younger people felt their personal security to be significantly better than older people. The findings are from a Finnish study into passengers' attitudes towards, and experiences of, self-driving cars. The study is also the first in the world to examine passengers' experiences of self-driving cars in winter conditions. The findings were published in Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour. The study was carried out in collaboration between the University of Eastern Finland and Tampere University. Self-driving cars face huge expectations in Europe and the United States, which is why passengers' ...

A new study has shown that most patients discharged from hospital after experiencing severe COVID-19 infection appear to return to full health, although up to a third do still have evidence of effects upon the lungs one year on. COVID-19 has infected millions of people worldwide. People are most commonly hospitalised for COVID-19 infection when it affects the lungs - termed COVID-19 pneumonia. Whilst significant progress has been made in understanding and treating acute COVID-19 pneumonia, very little is understood about how long it takes for patients to fully recover and whether changes within the lungs persist. In this new study, published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, researchers from the University of Southampton worked with collaborators ...

Children born in December are almost twice as likely to be diagnosed with a learning disorder as those born in January. ADHD was found not to affect the association between month of birth and the likelihood of a learning disability diagnosis. The new, register based study included children born in Finland between 1996 and 2002. Of nearly 400,000 children, 3,000 were diagnosed with a specific learning disorder, for example, in reading, writing or math by the age of ten. "We were familiar with the effects of the relative age to the general school performance, but there were no previous studies on the association between clinically diagnosed specific learning disorders and relative age, which is why we wanted to study it," says Doctoral Candidate, MD Bianca ...

Research led by the University of Liverpool, in partnership with Johnson Matthey PLC and Loughborough University is making significant progress in the development of stable and practical electrolytes for lithium-oxygen batteries. The lithium-oxygen (Li-O2) battery (or lithium-air battery), consisting of Li-metal and a porous conductive framework as its electrode's releases energy from the reaction of oxygen from the air and lithium. The technology is in its infancy, but in theory could provide much greater energy storage than the conventional lithium-ion battery. In a paper published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials, Professor Laurence Hardwick from the University of Liverpool's Stephenson ...

Half of the Danish population have overweight, while 17 percent live with obesity. Worldwide, almost 40 procent have overweight and 13 procent live with obesity. The condition is associated with increased risk for early death, as well as sequelae such as Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and infertility. Weight regain after an initial successful weight loss in people with obesity, constitutes an important and unsolved problem. Until now, no well-documented study on which treatment method is best for maintaining a healthy weight loss has been available. Researchers at University of Copenhagen and Hvidovre Hospital have completed ...

Oxygen is essential for the development of higher life. However, it was hardly present in the oceans of the young Earth. It was not until the evolution of photosynthetic bacteria that the oceans saw a significant increase in oxygen levels. By measuring tungsten isotope composition, an international research team with the participation of scientists from the University of Cologne's Institute of Geology and Mineralogy has now laid the foundation for a more precise determination of the development of oxygen levels in the early oceans over time. Prospectively, they expect more precise insights into the evolution of life. In cooperation with scientists from ETH Zurich, the Universities of Bern and Tübingen, and the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research ...

Research conducted by the University of Birmingham shows in order to have an effective Covid-19 vaccination rollout it has to be widely accepted by the entire population. The study, conducted in collaboration with the NIHR Clinical Research Network West Midlands and The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust was published in the journal Trials involved an anonymous cross-sectional online survey across the UK involving 4884 participants of which 9.44% were Black Asian Minority Ethnic (BAME). Overall, 2020 (41.4%) respondents were interested in participating in vaccine trials, while 27.6% of the respondents were not interested and 31.1% were unsure. The most interested groups were male, graduates the 40-49 and 50-59 age groups ...

a Photocatalytic biomass conversion is an ideal way of generating syngas (H2 and CO) via C-C bond cleavage, which is initiated by hydrogen abstraction of O/C-H bond. However, the lack of efficient electron-proton transfer limits its efficiency. Conversional gasification of biomass into syngas needs to be operated at high temperature (400-700 °C). Recently, a group led by Prof. WANG Feng from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), in collaboration with Prof. WANG Min from Dalian University of Technology, proposed a new method to realize photocatalytic conversion of biopolyols to syngas at room temperature with high efficiency. This study was published in Journal of the American Chemical ...

The Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology (KICT) has announced the development of a fully-automated peak-picking method for cable monitoring. The developed method will improve reliability of the method. Such as Incheon Bridge in South Korea, Cable-stayed bridges have received significant attention as efficient structural systems worldwide. In this regard, newly developed cable monitoring systems have become an essential and efficient maintenance approach for cable-stayed bridges. As structural integrity for stay-cables, tension force and damping ratio have been widely utilized as efficient metrics. A research team in KICT, led by Dr. Seung-Seop Jin, has developed a fully-automated peak-picking ...

Moderate alcohol intake--defined as no more than one alcoholic drink for women and two for men per day--has been associated with a lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease when compared with individuals who abstain from drinking or partake in excessive drinking, according to a new study being presented at the American College of Cardiology's 70th Annual Scientific Session. It's also the first study to show that drinking moderate amounts of alcohol may be heart protective, in part, by reducing stress-related brain signals based on a subset of patients who underwent brain imaging. "We found that stress-related activity in the brain was higher in non-drinkers ...

Nearly 1 in 5 adults with high blood pressure, a leading risk factor for heart disease and stroke, also take a medicine that could be elevating their blood pressure, according to new research presented at the American College of Cardiology's 70th Annual Scientific Session. The results underscore the need for patients to routinely review all of the medications they take with their care team, including those available over the counter, to make sure none could be interfering with blood pressure lowering efforts. Which are the most likely culprits? Based on the study findings, the three most common classes of medications were antidepressants; nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) that include ibuprofen and naproxen; and oral ...

Among younger adults visiting the emergency department for chest pain, women may be getting the short end of the stick. Compared with men of similar age, women were triaged less urgently, waited longer to be seen, and were less likely to undergo basic tests or be hospitalized or admitted for observation to diagnose a heart attack, according to new research being presented at the American College of Cardiology's 70th Annual Scientific Session. The study is the first to examine emergency room management of chest pain specifically among younger adults (age 18-55 years). Heart disease is the leading cause of death in women and is becoming more common in younger adults. About one-third of women who were hospitalized ...

Young and middle-aged adults who reported severe psychological distress--such as depression or anxiety--after suffering a heart attack were more than twice as likely to suffer a second cardiac event within five years compared with those experiencing only mild distress, according to a study presented at the American College of Cardiology's 70th Annual Scientific Session. The study is the first to comprehensively assess how mental health influences the outlook for younger heart attack survivors, according to the researchers. The researchers also tracked ...

Social factors such as education, financial stability, food security and the neighborhood where someone resides were strongly correlated with whether or not individuals with heart disease adopted measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19, including wearing masks and working from home, according to a study presented at the American College of Cardiology's 70th Annual Scientific Session. The researchers say the findings draw attention to longstanding challenges related to social determinants of health. "Unless we look at COVID-19 through the lens of social determinants of health, we may not optimize our yield from interventions, and we might not be reaching ...

Middle Triassic ichthyosaurs are rare, and mostly small in size. The new Besanosaurus specimens described in the peer-reviewed journal PeerJ - the Journal of Life and Environmental Sciences - by Italian, Swiss, Dutch and Polish paleontologists provide new information on the anatomy of this fish-like ancient reptile, revealing its diet and exceptionally large adult size: up to 8 meters, a real record among all marine predators of this geological epoch. In fact, Besanosaurus is the earliest large-sized marine diapsid - the group to which lizards, snakes, crocodiles, and their extinct cousins belong to - with a long and narrow snout. Besanosaurus leptorhynchus was originally discovered near Besano (Italy) three decades ago, during systematic excavations led by the Natural ...

LUGANO, 6 May, 2021- Researchers have discovered a novel biomarker to identify male COVID-19 patients most at risk for ICU admission. The findings presented today at EADV's 2021 Spring Symposium, suggest that men with genetic characteristics (phenotypes) sensitive to the male sex hormone androgen, are more likely to experience severe COVID-19 disease. Researchers were driven to study the association between the androgen receptor (AR) gene and COVID-19, after observing the disproportionate number of men hospitalised with COVID-19 presenting with androgenetic alopecia (a common form of hair-loss) compared to the expected number in a similar age-matched population (79% vs. 31-53%). Androgenetic alopecia is known to be controlled by variations ...

LUGANO, 6 May, 2021- New research investigating for the first time the effects of modified intermittent fasting (MIF) on the skin of people with psoriasis has yielded promising results. Preliminary study findings presented today at the EADV Spring Symposium, show a significant reduction in scaling and thickness in patients with mild psoriasis after following a MIF 5:2 diet (eating normally for 5 days and restricting calorie intake on 2 non-consecutive days). Psoriasis is a chronic, systemic immune-mediated inflammatory disease that causes raised plaques and ...

A premature start in life can cause problems even into teenage years. A study by the University of Basel and the University Children's Hospital Basel (UKBB) indicates that training motor skills in these children helps even when they are older. Children that are born before the 37th week of pregnancy remain under close medical supervision while they are young. Any cognitive limitations often disappear after a few years. However, children who come into the world even before the 32nd week of gestation still exhibit differences even into their teenage years. In a new study, researchers led by Dr. Sebastian Ludyga ...

(MAY 6, 2021) New York, NY - With around 30 percent of the U.S. population now fully vaccinated, the rate of daily vaccinations has started to slow, raising concerns that greater efforts and investments may be needed to reach higher coverage levels. A study published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases on May 6 shows the lives, hospitalizations, and costs that can be saved by even relatively small increases in vaccination coverage and reaching higher vaccination coverage levels sooner (e.g., by the end of the summer versus fall/winter). The study was led by researchers from PHICOR (Public Health Informatics, Computational, and Operations Research) at CUNY Graduate School of Public ...