Finding the hypothetical particle axion could mean finding out for the first time what happened in the Universe a second after the Big Bang, suggests a new study published in Physical Review D on June 7. How far back into the Universe's past can we look today? In the electromagnetic spectrum, observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background -- commonly referred to as the CMB -- allow us to see back almost 14 billion years to when the Universe cooled sufficiently for protons and electrons to combine and form neutral hydrogen. The CMB has taught us an inordinate amount about the evolution of the cosmos, but photons in the CMB were released 400,000 years after the Big Bang making it extremely challenging to learn about the history of ...

TAMPA, Fla. (June 4, 2021) — Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is an autoimmune disease in which a misdirected immune system gradually destroys healthy pancreatic islet β cells, resulting in a lack of insulin. The exact cause of T1D remains unknown. However, β cell-reactive autoantibodies can be detected in circulating blood months to years before diagnosis, raising the possibility of intervening to stop or delay T1D before children develop the disease. Monitoring the number, type, and concentration of autoantibodies appearing in the blood can help predict the long-term risk of progression from autoimmunity to symptomatic T1D. Now new findings suggest that measuring how patterns ...

A research team from the University of Copenhagen and University of Helsinki demonstrates it is possible to predict individual preferences based on how a person's brain responses match up to others. This could potentially be used to provide individually-tailored media content -- and perhaps even to enlighten us about ourselves. We have become accustomed to online algorithms trying to guess our preferences for everything from movies and music to news and shopping. This is based not only on what we have searched for, looked at, or listened to, but also on how these activities compare to others. Collaborative filtering, as the technique is called, uses hidden ...

A team of astronomers from the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA-TIFR) in Pune, and the Raman Research Institute (RRI), in Bangalore, has used the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) to measure the atomic hydrogen gas content of galaxies 9 billion years ago, in the young universe. This is the earliest epoch in the universe for which there is a measurement of the atomic hydrogen content of galaxies. The new result is a crucial confirmation of the group's earlier result, where they had measured the atomic hydrogen content of galaxies 8 billion years ago, and pushes our understanding of galaxies to even earlier in the universe. ...

Decades of research has revealed the remarkable morphological adaptations of sea snakes to aquatic life, which include paddle-shaped tails, salt-excreting glands, and the ability to breathe through their skin. In a new study published in Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, researchers at the University of Adelaide detail the enlarged touch receptors that evolved in male turtle-headed sea snakes (Emydocephalus annulatus), to help them locate and court females in aquatic environments. Lead author, Jenna Crowe-Riddell, PhD graduate at the University of Adelaide's School of Biological Sciences, says on land, snakes use tongue-flicking ...

Older people need digital skills training to learn to use digital technology more independently, but they also seek digital training opportunities because of the social benefits they offer, according to a recent study from the University of Eastern Finland. Published in International Journal of Lifelong Education, the study examined perceived benefits of digital skills training among older adult learners, their teachers and peer tutors. Data for the study were collected in liberal adult education organisations, such as community colleges, as well as in peer tutoring sessions organised by third sector actors. New skills and friendships The coronavirus pandemic has, for its part, highlighted inequalities in the availability and ...

The Amami, Okinawa region of Japan may be designated a World Heritage Site in July of 2021 based on the recent recommendation from the IUCN. The Iriomote wild cat is a symbolic species of the region, having evolved independently on the island. The area is home to many other highly endemic and unique evolutionary species. A research group comprised mostly of former students of Professor Koji Tojo's Faculty of Science lab of Shinshu University focused on the study of dragonflies, continuing from their previous study of their comparative embryogenesis. About 5,000 species of insects belonging to 26 families of the order Dragonfly are known ...

A long-standing basic question in biology relates to how life satisfies the fundamental constraints put on it by physics and chemistry. Darwin's warm pond hypothesis for the origin of primordial cells is a familiar one. Advances have been made in mapping out the organic molecules that likely existed on the early Earth, and recently candidate prototypic pathways in early cells have been formulated. But how did these candidates' early biochemistry actually function as a system, on which subsequent cellular life is based? A team of bioengineers at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability, DTU, has now defined ten overarching classes of constraints on early metabolic ...

A minimally-invasive procedure that targets the nerves near the kidney has been found to significantly reduce blood pressure in hypertension patients, according to the results of a global multicentre clinical trial led in the UK by researchers at Queen Mary University of London and Barts Health NHS Trust. The study, published in The Lancet and presented at the American College of Cardiology meeting, suggests that the procedure could offer hope to patients with high blood pressure who do not respond to recommended treatments (resistant hypertension), and are at greatly increased risk of cardiovascular diseases, including stroke and heart attack. The international clinical trial tested a one-hour procedure called 'renal denervation', which uses ultrasound energy to ...

The fluorescence dyes were dominant species of the near-infrared (NIR) dyes, but the energy gap of the NIR dyes between S1 state and S0 state is generally small to induce the ultrafast internal conversion dynamics to quench the NIR emission of the fluorescence dyes. Therefore, the quantum yield of the fluorescence NIR dyes is usually low. On the other hand, the organic dyes with room-temperature phosphorescence (RTP) in the NIR region could prevent the ultrafast internal conversion dynamics quenching because of the T1 state and S0 state the organic molecules are spin forbidden. Recently, scientists in China reported a new assumption to construct ...

The Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) has presented this week at the headquarters of the National Science and Technology Museum in Madrid the main results of the 10th Social Perception of Science Survey carried out in 2020. The presentation was attended by Pedro Duque, Minister of Science and Innovation, Josep Lobera, Professor of Sociology at the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM) and scientific co-director of the Survey and the subsequent study, and Rosa Capeáns, Director of the Scientific Culture and Innovation Department of FECYT. Pampa García, Editor-in-Chief of the SINC Agency, moderated a debate in which the results were presented in six blocks: Interest in ...

In the present study, Dr. Hidetoshi Hayashi (Professor, Nagoya City University) and collaborators screened small-molecule compounds that suppress UPR, using Myanmar wild plant extracts library. The screening system to track X-box binding protein 1 (XBP1) splicing activity revealed that the ethanol extract of the Periploca calophylla stem inhibited the inositol-requiring enzyme 1 (IRE1)-XBP1 pathway. They isolated and identified periplocin as a potent inhibitor of the IRE1-XBP1 axis. Periplocin also suppressed other UPR axes, protein kinase R-like endoplasmic reticulum kinase (PERK), and activating transcription ...

Researchers from the Hubrecht Institute in Utrecht (The Netherlands) and the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in Münster (Germany) used computer simulations to reveal in atomic detail how a short piece of DNA opens while it is tightly wrapped around the proteins that package our genome. These simulations provide unprecedented insights into the mechanisms that regulate gene expression. The results were published in PLOS Computational Biology on the 3rd of June, 2021. Every cell in the body contains two meters of DNA. In order to fit all the DNA ...

Health has always been affected by climate and weather, but is increasingly clear that the change in climate is a significant threat to human health. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 24% of global deaths are linked to environmental factors [1]. Climate change and pollution can lead to undernutrition, mental disorders, and noncommunicable diseases including chronic kidney disease and acute kidney injury [2]. The burden of addressing the death and disability associated with climate change falls to nephrologists and other healthcare professionals. At the same time, the healthcare sector makes a major ...

SGLT2 inhibitors (gliflozins) were developed as oral antidiabetics. They enhance urinary glucose excretion by inhibiting SGLT-2 (sodium-dependent glucose co-transporter-2) in the renal tubuli. The discovery of kidney benefits beyond the lowering of blood sugar has been made by Professor Christoph Wanner from Germany: The EMPA-REG OUTCOME study [2] initially showed that the rate of cardiovascular events in type 2 diabetic pa-tients is significantly reduced if the SGLT2 inhibitor empagliflozin is administered. Kidney function in diabetics who already had diabetic nephropathy was also found to benefit sig-nificantly from the treatment ...

HOUSTON - (June 7, 2021) - If identical versions of 20 people lived out their lives in dozens of different worlds, would the same people be popular in each world? If you substitute "fruit flies" for "people" in that question, you have a fair description of a Rice University study showing that the evolution of social structures and the positions of individuals within those structures are based partly on genetics. Cloned fruit flies played a starring role in the study that researchers jokingly likened to "The Truman Show," with video cameras observing how the flies behaved in a controlled environment. In the study published online this week in Nature Communications, Rice bioscientists Eric Wice and Julia Saltz ...

The kidneys are a target organ of COVID-19 and are affected very early in the course. However, this is precisely where there is strong prognostic potential: As early as last spring, COVID-19-associated nephritis was identified as an early warning signal for severe courses of the infectious disease and studies to that effect were published [1]. In that regard, the research group led by Professor Oliver Gross, Department of Nephrology and Rheumatology at Göttingen University Medical Center (UMG), screened 223 patients in a study and included 145 of them as a predictive cohort. Study endpoints were ICU admission or mortality. As a result, early urinary changes ...

It was clear at a relatively early stage of the pandemic that SARS-CoV-2 causes a wide range of symptoms; in addition to typical respiratory symptoms, patients also had neurological symptoms (starting with anosmia), gastrointestinal symptoms, elevated liver values, and renal, urinary or hematological changes, for example. The fact that such findings occurred not only in severely ill patients with general organ dysfunction suggested that the virus may potentially cause disorders in various organs directly, i.e. that it causes a multi-system disease. In spring 2020, at the very beginning of the pandemic, the authorities in Hamburg ordered autopsies be performed on all patients who had died with COVID-19. This resulted in one of the ...

Various viruses and bacteria have long been known to cause autoimmune diseases where there is such a predisposition. This phenomenon also seems to play a major role in SARS-CoV-2, especially in severe courses. The body's own immune cells are activated, with the formation of autoantibodies that attack the body's own healthy cell structures (proteins, autoantigens); deposits of immune complexes can then trigger severe inflammatory processes and cell destruction in the body. Some nephrological diseases are likewise of autoimmunological etiology, one example being systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), a chronic, mostly relapsing-remitting inflammatory disease with life-threatening ...

Terpenoids are omnipresent in almost all living organisms. Prenylated indoles are prominent representatives that usually display potent medicinal properties (e.g. tryprostatin B). Therefore, significant efforts have been devoted to indole prenylation over the past decades. The known protocols often require a multi-step procedure and rely on the use of stoichiometric promoters. From the viewpoint of step- and atom-economy, developing a direct catalytic C2 prenylation of indoles is highly desirable yet challenging, because the nucleophilicity of C2 site is weaker than that of other two positions ...

Consuming large amounts of daily caffeine may increase the risk of glaucoma more than three-fold for those with a genetic predisposition to higher eye pressure according to an international, multi-center study. The research led by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is the first to demonstrate a dietary - genetic interaction in glaucoma. The study results published in the June print issue of Ophthalmology may suggest patients with a strong family history of glaucoma should cut down on caffeine intake. The study is important because glaucoma is the leading cause of blindness in the United States. It looks at the impact of caffeine intake on glaucoma, ...

Research Highlights: Rates of Kawasaki disease - a condition that creates inflammation in blood vessels in the heart and is more common in children of Asian/Pacific Island descent - have substantially decreased in South Korea during the COVID-19 pandemic. The decrease could be due to mask-wearing, hand-washing, school closures and physical distancing, suggesting Kawasaki disease may be prompted by infectious agents. The cause of Kawasaki disease is unknown, though it may be an immune response to acute infectious illness. DALLAS, June 7, 2021 -- The rate of Kawasaki disease in South Korea has substantially decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic, possibly due to pandemic prevention efforts, such as mask-wearing, ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- MIT engineers have discovered a new way of generating electricity using tiny carbon particles that can create a current simply by interacting with liquid surrounding them. The liquid, an organic solvent, draws electrons out of the particles, generating a current that could be used to drive chemical reactions or to power micro- or nanoscale robots, the researchers say. "This mechanism is new, and this way of generating energy is completely new," says Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT. "This technology is intriguing because all you have to do is flow a solvent through a bed of these particles. ...

Many modern fitness trackers and smartwatches feature integrated LEDs. The green light emitted, whether continuous or pulsed, penetrates the skin and can be used to measure the wearer's heart rate during physical activity or while at rest. These watches have become extremely popular. A team of ETH researchers now wants to capitalise on that popularity by using the LEDs to control genes and change the behaviour of cells through the skin. The team is led by Martin Fussenegger from the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering in Basel. He explains the challenge to this undertaking: "No naturally occurring molecular ...

Levels of a protein called neurofilament light chain (NfL) in the blood can identify those who might have neurodegenerative diseases such as Down's syndrome dementia, motor neuron disease (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia, when clinical symptoms are not definitive. Published in Nature Communications and part-funded by the NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre, the research determined a set of age-related cut-off levels of NfL which could inform its potential use in primary care settings through a simple blood test. Joint Senior Author on the study, Dr Abdul Hye from the NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre at King's College London and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust said: 'For the first time we have shown ...