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Long-term monitoring shows successful restoration of mining-polluted streams

Long-term monitoring shows successful restoration of mining-polluted streams
2021-05-05
Many miles of streams and rivers in the United States and elsewhere are polluted by toxic metals in acidic runoff draining from abandoned mining sites, and major investments have been made to clean up acid mine drainage at some sites. A new study based on long-term monitoring data from four sites in the western United States shows that cleanup efforts can allow affected streams to recover to near natural conditions within 10 to 15 years after the start of abatement work. The four mining-impacted watersheds--located in mountain mining regions of California, Colorado, Idaho, and Montana--were all designated as Superfund sites under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), which helps ...

Machine learning accelerates cosmological simulations

Machine learning accelerates cosmological simulations
2021-05-05
A universe evolves over billions upon billions of years, but researchers have developed a way to create a complex simulated universe in less than a day. The technique, published in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, brings together machine learning, high-performance computing and astrophysics and will help to usher in a new era of high-resolution cosmology simulations. Cosmological simulations are an essential part of teasing out the many mysteries of the universe, including those of dark matter and dark energy. But until now, researchers faced the common conundrum of not being ...

Without commuter traffic, pandemic-era drivers are speeding up, increasing noise pollution

Without commuter traffic, pandemic-era drivers are speeding up, increasing noise pollution
2021-05-05
As pandemic lockdowns went into effect in March 2020 and millions of Americans began working from home rather than commuting to offices, heavy traffic in America's most congested urban centers--like Boston--suddenly ceased to exist. Soon afterwards, the air was noticeably cleaner. But that wasn't the only effect. A team of Boston University biologists who study how human-related sounds impact natural environments seized the opportunity to learn how the reduced movement of people would impact local ecosystems. They found--surprisingly--that sound levels increased in some nature conservation areas, a result of cars driving faster on roads no longer choked by traffic. BU ecologist Richard Primack and Carina Terry, an undergraduate student working in Primack's ...

UMD team demonstrates swarm of photons that somersault in lockstep

UMD team demonstrates swarm of photons that somersault in lockstep
2021-05-05
Spinning or rotating objects are commonplace, from toy tops, fidget spinners, and figure skaters to water circling a drain, tornadoes, and hurricanes. In physics, there are two kinds of rotational motion: spin and orbital. Earth's motion in our solar system illustrates these; the daily 360-degree rotation of Earth around its own axis is spin rotation, while Earth's yearly trip around the sun is orbital rotation. The quantity in physics defined to describe such motion is angular momentum (AM). AM is a conserved quantity: given an initial amount of it, it can be broken up and redistributed among particles such as atoms and photons, ...

A trait of the rare few whose bodies naturally control HIV: "trained" immune cells

2021-05-05
BOSTON -- Immunity often calls to mind the adaptive immune response, made up of antibodies and T cells that learn to fight specific pathogens after infection or vaccination. But the immune system also has an innate immune response, which uses a set number of techniques to provide a swift, non-specialized response against pathogens or support the adaptive immune response. In the past few years, however, scientists have found that certain parts of the innate immune response can, in some instances, also be trained in response to infectious pathogens, such as HIV. Xu Yu, MD, a Core Member of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard, and colleagues ...

Being around children makes adults more generous

2021-05-05
Adults are more compassionate and are up to twice as likely to donate to charity when children are present, according to a new study from psychologists. The research, conducted by social psychologists at the University of Bath and Cardiff University and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), examined how the presence of children influences adults' compassionate motivations and behaviours. Across eight experiments and more than 2,000 participants, the researchers asked adults to describe what typical children are like. After focusing on children in this way, participants ...

A multipronged approach to addressing childhood adversity and promoting resilience

A multipronged approach to addressing childhood adversity and promoting resilience
2021-05-04
A hot topic symposia session during the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) 2021 Virtual Meeting will discuss a multipronged approach to addressing childhood adversity and promoting resilience - at the clinical, systems, community and educational levels. The effect of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) on health outcomes across the lifespan is well recognized among pediatric practitioners. Increasing the ability of healthcare providers to recognize and respond to ACEs can buffer the long-term negative physical and mental health impacts of adversity and increase patient-centered care. "In the era of COVID-19, ...

Muscle-fiber inspired pneumatic artificial muscles for multiple-mode actuations

Muscle-fiber inspired pneumatic artificial muscles for multiple-mode actuations
2021-05-04
Biological organisms (such as elephant trunks, octopus tentacles, and human tongues) show remarkable dexterity and self-adaptation in unstructured environments, relying on the multiple-mode actuations of the skeleton-free muscular hydrostats. In general, muscular hydrostats mainly consist of well-ranged active 3D muscle-fiber arrays bundled by passive connective tissues (Fig. 1A). By selectively actuating the active 3D muscle-fiber arrays, muscular hydrostats can generate elongation, bending, contraction and twisting. Producing such multiple-mode actuation of muscular hydrostats is an interesting but long-lasting challenge in the field of robotics. During past decades, many artificial muscles (such ...

A pediatric policy council plenary: The role of research in reducing gun violence

A pediatric policy council plenary: The role of research in reducing gun violence
2021-05-04
A Pediatric Policy Council state of the art plenary session during the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) 2021 Virtual Meeting explored the role of public health research in iterative policymaking to reduce gun violence in America. The toll of gun violence on young people represents one of the most significant public health challenges facing contemporary America. In recent years, firearm-related injury and death has made headlines routinely, including mass shootings at schools, public festivals, and places of worship, while daily occurrences of gun violence affect local communities. Gun ...

Observation of antichiral edge states in a circuit lattice

Observation of antichiral edge states in a circuit lattice
2021-05-04
Originally formulated in the context of condensed matter physics, the Haldane model is an influential model of a two-dimensional topological insulator. It has also been realized in classical-wave metamaterial analogues of topological insulator, such as photonic crystals, acoustic crystals, and electric LC circuits. Recently, theorists have shown that a modification to the Haldane model exhibits the novel phenomenon of antichiral edge sates, according to E. Colomés and M. Franz, scholars at Department of Physics and Astronomy and Quantum Matter Institute, University of British Columbia. Unlike the chiral edge states associated with the standard Haldane model, antichiral edge states possess the same propagation direction on opposite edges of a sample; the current carried by the edge ...

Gene therapy in alzheimer's disease mouse model preserves learning and memory

2021-05-04
Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, with colleagues elsewhere, have used gene therapy to prevent learning and memory loss in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease (AD), a key step toward eventually testing the approach in humans with the neurodegenerative disease. The findings are published online in advance of the June 11, 2021 issue of Molecular Therapy-Methods & Clinical Development. AD is characterized by the accumulation of clumps of misfolded proteins called amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tau tangles, both of which impair cell signaling and promote neuronal death. Current AD treatments targeting plaques and tangles address ...

Polarization-sensitive photodetection using 2D/3D perovskite heterostructure crystal

Polarization-sensitive photodetection using 2D/3D perovskite heterostructure crystal
2021-05-04
Polarization-sensitive photodetectors, based on anisotropic semiconductors, have exhibited wide advantages in specialized applications, such as astronomy, remote sensing, and polarization-division multiplexing. For the active layer of polarization-sensitive photodetectors, recent researches focus on two-dimensional (2D) organic-inorganic hybrid perovskites, where inorganic slabs and organic spacers are alternatively arranged in parallel layered structures. Compared with inorganic 2D materials, importantly, the solution accessibility of hybrid perovskites makes it possible to obtain their large crystals at low cost, offering exciting opportunities to incorporate crystal out-of-plane anisotropy for polarization-sensitive photodetection. However, limited by ...

Examining the 'service cliff' for youth with autism and their family caregivers

2021-05-04
During the next 10 years, an estimated half-million individuals in the U.S. with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are expected to transition from adolescence to adulthood, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That means thousands of these young adults will likely fall into a widening and potentially devastating gap in a variety of services--because they're too old for high school, but may not qualify for Medicaid-funded services, social work researchers at Case Western Reserve University predict in a new study. The team of researchers from the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences interviewed 174 families from Northeast Ohio to examine the use of health, medical and social services for youth with autism--from 16 to 30 years old--and ...

Study explores how private equity acquisitions impact hospitals

2021-05-04
HOUSTON - (May 4, 2021) - Private equity investment in hospitals has grown substantially in the 21st century, and it accelerated in the years leading up the COVID-19 pandemic. Now a new study of short-term acute care hospitals acquired by private equity firms finds they not only have higher markups and profit margins, they're also slower to expand their staffs. In a study published in Health Affairs, a multi-institutional team of investigators led by Dr. Anaeze C. Offodile II, a nonresident scholar in the Center for Health and Biosciences at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, the Gilbert Omenn Fellow at the National Academy of Medicine and an assistant professor of plastic and reconstructive surgery at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, examined ...

Study finds potential therapeutic target for pediatric acute myeloid leukemia

2021-05-04
ORLANDO, Fla. (May 3, 2021) - Researchers have identified a gene expressed in children with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) that could serve as a new immunotherapy treatment target, according to a new study published today in Blood Advances, a journal of the American Society of Hematology. The study, co-authored by researchers with Nemours Children's Health System, outlines the process and potential path for new immunotherapy drugs that improve survival and reduce treatment-related toxicity in children with AML. Leukemia is the most common cancer in children and teens, and AML accounts for nearly one-fourth of those cases. AML is a fast-growing cancer that typically starts in immature bone marrow cells. "Using ...

UNC Charlotte researchers analyzed the host origins of SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses

UNC Charlotte researchers analyzed the host origins of SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses
2021-05-04
Coronavirus (CoVs) infection in animals and humans is not new. The earliest papers in the scientific literature of coronavirus infection date to 1966. However, prior to SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2, very little attention had been paid to coronaviruses. Suddenly, coronaviruses changed everything we know about personal and public health, and societal and economic well-being. The change led to rushed analyses to understand the origins of coronaviruses in humans. This rush has led to a thus far fruitless search for intermediate hosts (e.g., civet in SARS-CoV and pangolin in SARS-CoV-2) rather than focusing on the important work, which has always been surveillance of ...

With a zap of light, system switches objects' colors and patterns

With a zap of light, system switches objects colors and patterns
2021-05-04
When was the last time you repainted your car? Redesigned your coffee mug collection? Gave your shoes a colorful facelift? You likely answered: never, never, and never. You might consider these arduous tasks not worth the effort. But a new color-shifting "programmable matter" system could change that with a zap of light. MIT researchers have developed a way to rapidly update imagery on object surfaces. The system, dubbed "ChromoUpdate" pairs an ultraviolet (UV) light projector with items coated in light-activated dye. The projected light alters the reflective properties of the dye, creating colorful new images in just a few minutes. The advance could accelerate product development, enabling product designers to churn through ...

Citrus derivative makes transparent wood 100 percent renewable

Citrus derivative makes transparent wood 100 percent renewable
2021-05-04
Since it was first introduced in 2016, transparent wood has been developed by researchers at KTH Royal Institute of Technology as an innovative structural material for building construction. It lets natural light through and can even store thermal energy. The key to making wood into a transparent composite material is to strip out its lignin, the major light-absorbing component in wood. But the empty pores left behind by the absence of lignin need to be filled with something that restores the wood's strength and allows light to permeate. In earlier versions of the composite, researchers at KTH's Wallenberg Wood Science Centre used fossil-based polymers. Now, the researchers have successfully tested an eco-friendly alternative: limonene acrylate, a monomer made ...

Phase transition inside the nucleus provides oncogenic function to mutant p53 in cancer

Phase transition inside the nucleus provides oncogenic function to mutant p53 in cancer
2021-05-04
Cancer has been recently shown to be affected by protein clusters, particularly by the aggregation of mutant variants of the tumor suppressor protein p53, which are present in more than half of malignant tumors. However, how the aggregates are formed is not yet fully understood. The understanding of this process is expected to provide new therapeutic tools able to prevent proteins to clump and cancer progression. In Brazil, researchers at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro have identified a key mechanism behind the mutant p53 aggregation process, linked to cancer pathology, opening new paths for the development of novels ...

MDI Biological Laboratory scientist identifies process critical to kidney function

MDI Biological Laboratory scientist identifies process critical to kidney function
2021-05-04
BAR HARBOR, MAINE — Our kidneys are charged with the extraordinary task of filtering about 53 gallons of fluid a day, a process that depends on podocytes, tiny, highly specialized cells in the cluster of blood vessels in the kidney where waste is filtered that are highly vulnerable to damage. In research at the MDI Biological Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, a team led by Iain Drummond, Ph.D., director of the Kathryn W. Davis Center for Regenerative Biology and Aging, has identified the signaling mechanisms underlying podocyte formation, or morphogenesis. The discovery opens the door to ...

U of A researchers successfully use 3-D 'bioprinting' to create nose cartilage

2021-05-04
A team of University of Alberta researchers has discovered a way to use 3-D bioprinting technology to create custom-shaped cartilage for use in surgical procedures. The work aims to make it easier for surgeons to safely restore the features of skin cancer patients living with nasal cartilage defects after surgery. The researchers used a specially designed hydrogel--a material similar to Jell-O--that could be mixed with cells harvested from a patient and then printed in a specific shape captured through 3-D imaging. Over a matter of weeks, the material is cultured in a lab to become functional cartilage. "It takes a lifetime to make cartilage in an individual, while this method takes about four weeks. So you still expect ...

Emissive supramolecular metallacages via coordination-driven self-assembly

Emissive supramolecular metallacages via coordination-driven self-assembly
2021-05-04
Metallacages prepared via coordination-driven self-assembly have received extensive attention because of their three-dimensional layout and cavity-cored nature. The construction of light-emitting materials employing metallacages as a platform has also gained significant interest due to their good modularity in photophysical properties, which bring emerging applications in fields as diverse as sensing, biomedicine, and catalysis. However, the luminescence efficiency of conventional luminophores significantly decreases in the aggregate state because they encounter unfavorable aggregation-caused quenching (ACQ). Therefore, it was quite a challenge to fabricate light-emitting metallacages with high luminescence efficiency in various physical states. In 2001, Tang's group ...

Our immune systems blanket the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein with antibodies

Our immune systems blanket the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein with antibodies
2021-05-04
The most complete picture yet is coming into focus of how antibodies produced in people who effectively fight off SARS-CoV-2 work to neutralize the part of the virus responsible for causing infection. In the journal Science, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin describe the finding, which represents good news for designing the next generation of vaccines to protect against variants of the virus or future emerging coronaviruses. Previous research focused on one group of antibodies that target the most obvious part of the coronavirus's spike protein, called the receptor-binding domain (RBD). Because the RBD is the part of the spike that attaches directly to human cells and enables the virus to infect them, ...

Breakthrough study shows no-take marine reserves benefit overfished reefs

Breakthrough study shows no-take marine reserves benefit overfished reefs
2021-05-04
New York, NY (May 4, 2021) - A powerful, long-term study from WCS adds scientific backing for global calls for conserving 30 percent of the world's ocean. The studied no-take marine protected areas (MPAs) increased the growth of fish populations by 42 percent when fishing was unsustainable in surrounding areas, achieving the benefits of stable and high production of fish populations for fishers, while protecting threatened ecosystems. The study recorded fish catches for 24-years across a dozen fish landing sites within two counties in Kenya, which allowed scientists to evaluate the long-term impacts of two different fisheries management methods. While one county ...

Juvenile incarceration has mixed effects on future convictions

2021-05-04
Harsh prison sentences for juvenile crimes do not reduce the probability of conviction for violent crimes as an adult, and actually increase the propensity for conviction of drug-related crimes, finds a new study by economists at UC Riverside and the University of Louisiana. Harsh juvenile sentences do reduce the likelihood of conviction for property crimes as an adult. But the increase in drug-related crimes cancels out any benefit harsh sentences might offer, researchers found. "Juvenile incarceration is a double-edged sword which deters future property crimes but makes drug convictions more likely in adulthood. Thus, it's hard to make firm policy recommendations ...
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