Key takeaways: A UCLA study shows that a the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, social interactions, both virtual and in person, declined significantly for married couples. The decline was found to be greater and more long-lasting for Black and Latino couples and lower-income couples than for white couples and wealthier couples. The researchers suggest exploring new ways of protecting public health during crises that also help more vulnerable populations sustain meaningful relationships. Following the lockdowns and restrictions on public gatherings in the early days of COVID-19, the social networks of white, ...

Predicting a protein’s location within a cell can help researchers unlock a plethora of biological information that’s critical for developing future scientific discoveries related to drug development and treating diseases like epilepsy. That’s because proteins are the body’s “workhorses,” largely responsible for most cellular functions. Recently, Dong Xu, Curators Distinguished Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Missouri, and colleagues updated their protein localization prediction model, MULocDeep, ...

Beneath and beyond the reddish, flaky lesions that form in the skin of those with psoriasis, mild and severe forms of the disease can be told apart by the activity of key cells and signaling pathways, a new study shows. Led by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, the study mapped hidden features of inflammation and how they compared in cases of increasing severity of psoriatic disease. The team’s findings may help explain how small areas of skin inflammation can have wide-ranging effects in other parts of the body. Up to one-fifth of those with the skin disease, the researchers note, ...

-With pictures- In a new study, bioscientists argue that strengthening the protection given to areas already protected under law or by local communities is as critical for safeguarding biodiversity as creating new protected areas. The research team, which included scientists from Durham University, National University of Singapore (NUS) and Princeton University, found that about 70 per cent of the roughly 5000 species analysed either have no apparent representation in protected areas, occur in protected areas that have been downgraded, downsized or degazetted, ...

Researchers have for the first time characterised a unique molecular mechanism of the early stages of programmed cell death or apoptosis, a process which plays a crucial role in prevention of cancer.   The study, which is published today (Friday 2nd June 2023) in Science Advances, was led by Dr Luke Clifton at the STFC ISIS Neutron and Muon Source (ISIS) in Oxfordshire, alongside co-lead Professor Gerhard Gröbner at the University of Umeå and partners at the European Spallation Source in Sweden.  It is ...

1. The National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) has developed an AI-based mass spectrometric technique capable of determining the monomeric sequence of a polymer. This technique may be useful in gaining a deeper understanding of basic polymeric structures, facilitating the development of new materials and helping solve plastic recycling problems.   2. A polymer is a very large molecule composed of a chain of many (ranging from hundreds to hundreds of thousands) small molecules called monomers that are bonded together. Many common polymers (e.g., plastics and resins) are copolymers, consisting of several different types of monomers. During the copolymerization process, the monomers ...

BATON ROUGE – A collaboration among Dr. Frank Greenway of Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Dr. Beverly Ogden of Woman’s Hospital in partnership with LSU, and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, was named as one of three award recipients at the Baton Rouge Health-Tech Catalyst Pitch Night. The team will investigate non-invasive treatment of uterine fibroids, or benign growths, such as leiomyomas or myomas, that development from the muscle tissue of the uterus. “Fibroids are non-cancerous tumors in the wall of the uterus that are common, and can cause bleeding, pain, and infertility,” ...

East Hanover, NJ – June 2, 2023 – In a sharp reversal, employment indicators rebounded for people with disabilities in May, according to today’s National Trends in Disability Employment – semi-monthly update (nTIDE), issued by Kessler Foundation and the University of New Hampshire’s Institute on Disability (UNH-IOD). Employment appears to be remaining strong despite the threats to the labor market posed by the debt ceiling crisis and ongoing efforts to control inflation. Month-to-Month nTIDE Numbers (comparing April 2023 to May 2023) Based ...

DETROIT – The American Tinnitus Association (ATA) has elected Jinsheng Zhang, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders in Wayne State University’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, as the new chair of its board of directors. With decades of experience in tinnitus research and work with the ATA, Zhang aims to assist with proactive recruitment of scientists to the field of tinnitus and engage more researchers in ATA grant opportunities that will spur progress toward more effective treatments and cures. Tinnitus ...

The American College of Cardiology will host the annual Care of the Athletic Heart course on June 8-10, 2023, in Washington, including poster abstracts and educational sessions. The course is designed for all clinicians who provide cardiovascular care for the professional, occupational, tactical or recreational athlete. As the athletic population expands to all demographic groups, it is critical that there is a larger contingent of clinicians who understand the latest care and practice management for athletes at every level. Dermot Phelan, BAO, MBBCh, PhD, FACC, and Megan Wasfy, ...

In a phase 2 clinical trial of the immune checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab, investigators found that 42 percent of patients with metastatic brain cancer benefited from the therapy, with seven patients in the trial surviving longer than two years. The authors caution that these benefits must be weighed against risk of toxicity, but, overall, the study shows promising results that warrant larger studies and efforts to identify patients most likely to benefit from this treatment. Their findings are published in Nature Medicine and presented simultaneously at the 2023 ASCO Annual Meeting on June 2. “There ...

The paper, published April 17 in The Lancet Regional Health – Americas, was co-authored by Dr. Gunisha Kaur, an associate professor of anesthesiology at Weill Cornell Medicine and medical director of the Weill Cornell Center for Human Rights; Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law practice at Cornell Law School; and Jin K. Park, a medical student at the Harvard School of Medicine and the first DACA recipient awarded a Rhodes Scholarship. “The erratic enforcement of the DACA program since its inception has led many immigrants and their families to disengage completely from the healthcare system to avoid risking deportation,” said ...

Researchers at the University of Louisville have received $5.8 million in two grants from the National Institutes of Health to expand their work to better understand and prevent immune system dysregulation responsible for acute respiratory distress, the condition responsible for serious illness and death in some COVID-19 patients. A separate $306,000 NIH Small Business Innovation Research grant supports early testing of a compound developed at UofL as a potential treatment. The three grants combined total $6.1 million. During the pandemic, health care providers worked tirelessly to treat patients ...

WASHINGTON --- Research conducted at Georgetown University’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Washington DC VA Medical Center on a database of veterans exposed to Agent Orange found an association for an increased risk of developing myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs), which are acquired stem cell disorders that can lead to overproduction of mature blood cells complicated by an increased risk of blood clots in arteries and veins. When MPNs progress, they can become deadly leukemias. The findings will be presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology 2023 annual meeting in Chicago in June. Agent Orange is an herbicide that was utilized by the United States military ...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) mandated folic acid fortification of all enriched cereal grains in 1996, and this regulation resulted in a reduction of neural tube defect (NTD)–affected pregnancies for the population in the United States. While this mandatory food fortification strategy is an example of a public health success, Hispanic women in the US continued to be twice as likely to give birth to a child affected by NTD compared to non-Hispanic women. It was not until the year 2016 that the FDA approved voluntary, but not mandatory, folic acid fortification for corn masa flour products in the US to focus on the Hispanic diet staples, such ...

Usually, the two characterizations of a material are mutually exclusive: something is either stiff, or it can absorb vibrations well – but rarely both. However, if we could make materials that are both stiff and good at absorbing vibrations, there would be a whole host of potential applications, from design at the nano-scale to aerospace engineering. Buckling does the trick A team of researchers from the University of Amsterdam has now found a way to create materials that are stiff, but still good at absorbing vibrations – and equally importantly, that can be kept very light-weight. David Dykstra, lead author of the ...

NEW YORK, N.Y. — June 2. Lupus Therapeutics announced the start of a collaboration to conduct three Phase 3 clinical trials testing an investigational therapeutic ianalumab for systemic lupus erythematosus and lupus nephritis.  Lupus Therapeutics, the clinical research affiliate of the Lupus Research Alliance, will help Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation (Novartis) conduct the trials through the Lupus Clinical Investigators Network (LuCIN) at top academic centers throughout North America. Lupus is a devastating heterogeneous autoimmune disease affecting millions worldwide with symptoms that can range from debilitating fatigue to ...

About The Study: In this randomized crossover trial of autistic children, using a sensory-adapted dental environment was safe and efficacious in decreasing physiological and behavioral distress during dental care. This is important because enhancing oral care is critical for autistic children; this intervention may also be beneficial for populations beyond autism.  Authors: Leah I. Stein Duker, Ph.D., O.T.R./L., of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, is the corresponding author.   To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website ...

About The Study: This qualitative study found that participants perceived widespread and increasing use of algorithms in health care and lack of oversight, potentially exacerbating racial and ethnic inequities. Increasing awareness for clinicians and patients and standardized, transparent approaches for algorithm development and implementation may be needed to address racial and ethnic biases related to algorithms.  Authors: Peter Treitler, M.S.W., of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, is the corresponding author. To ...

Contrary to expectations, the risk for relapses, overdoses and deaths related to substance use disorder didn’t increase after a large-scale prison release in New Jersey, according to a Rutgers study.   The study, published in JAMA Health Forum, examined whether post-release overdose deaths and drug-related hospital and emergency department visits increased after more than 2,000 individuals were released from prison in late 2020 as the result of a pandemic-era policy.   “Risk of relapse and adverse health events is high following prison release, with risk of fatal overdose ...

Our skin contains specialised long-lived killer cells that protect against intruders. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark have now identified how these cells are formed, and shown that high levels of memory killer cells in cancer tissue correlate with a better survival rate in people with melanoma. The study is published in the journal Immunity. Certain immune T cells called tissue-resident memory cells are formed locally in the skin and other tissue, and protect against infections that they have encountered before. Some of ...

To discover and thoroughly demonstrate the newly identified noncanonical cleavage mechanism, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) research team, led by Prof. Tuan Anh Nguyen, Assistant Professor of the Division of Life Science, used several sophisticated techniques, such as miRNA sequencing, pri-miRNA structure analysis, and high-throughput pri-miRNA cleavage assays for approximately 260,000 pri-miRNA sequences. In contrast to the canonical mechanism, the noncanonical mechanism does not rely on several essential protein and RNA elements ...

New research suggests that the immune system’s ability to respond to spinal cord injuries diminishes with age – and identifies potential avenues to improve that response and help patients heal. The new findings offer important insights into how the immune system responds to spinal-cord injuries, and why that response becomes blunted with the passing years. Further, it reveals an important role for the membranes surrounding the spinal cord in mounting the immune response to spinal-cord injury. With this information, doctors one day may be able to bolster the body’s natural immune response to improve patient outcomes, particularly among older adults. “Recently, ...

Researchers from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center have made a foundational discovery about chromosome biology through their work on the first-ever human pangenome reference. Published recently by the Human Pangenome Reference Consortium in the journal Nature, the draft pangenome uses complete genome assemblies to provide a diverse look at the genetic makeup of humans. Researchers in the UTHSC Department of Genetics, Genomics and Informatics created the technical tools to build the pangenome, and then used the tools to understand variation in parts of the genome that could not be seen before. The pangenome ...

New radio telescope images reveal hundreds of filaments along the galactic plane, each measuring 5 to 10 light-years in length These structures likely originated a few million years ago when outflow from our supermassive black hole interacted with surrounding materials Researcher: ‘I was actually stunned when I saw these’ EVANSTON, Ill. — An international team of astrophysicists has discovered something wholly new, hidden in the center of the Milky Way galaxy. In the early 1980s, Northwestern University’s Farhad Yusef-Zadeh discovered gigantic, one-dimensional filaments dangling vertically near Sagittarius A*, our ...