A new discovery about the structure of melanin has brought scientists one step closer to developing a new, potentially ultra-protective sunscreen derived from a biological substance found in nearly all organisms. Researchers from McGill’s Department of Chemistry, in collaboration with The Ohio State University and the University of Girona, have announced a major advance in understanding the fundamental structure of melanin and one of its components that turns light into heat, protecting the body from sun damage. Melanin, the pigment that gives humans their skin, eye, and hair colour, is the body’s first and best natural defense against the sun’s ...

Siblings can "pave the way" when they have a similar "Big Five" personality - with introverted siblings being more likely to leave home once their similarly introverted brother or sister has done so ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0284808 Article Title: Do birds of a feather leave the nest together? The role of sibling personality similarity in the transition to adulthood Author Countries: Belgium. Funding: This research has been made possible through the grant Nr. G017519N ...

Households whose "heads" score highly for openness and conscientiousness are more likely to make higher charitable donations, according to Chinese study incorporating "Big Five" personality traits ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0284798 Article Title: A study on the influence of personality characteristics on household charitable donation behavior in China Author Countries: China Funding: Funding was provided by Shenzhen Key Research ...

In areas of Colombia once controlled by guerillas, conflicts over land continue and deforestation has risen considerably. But it’s in these same areas that researchers have found that farmers implementing sustainable land use systems, like agroforestry driven by cocoa (one of the key ingredients of chocolate), has contributed to reducing conflicts.  Deforestation and Conflict In 2016, the government of Colombia signed a peace treaty with the guerilla group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC, for its initials in Spanish) and in the following years, forested areas formerly controlled by the FARC saw an influx of other illegal actors, contributing ...

Australian nanomedicine researchers have come up with a new approach to solving a decades-old clinical problem: getting treatment drugs to act selectively on cancer cells in the body. Published this week in the high-impact journal Science Translational Medicine, the research paves the way to safer and more effective treatment options for children with aggressive blood cancers, and potentially other types of cancer as well. Chemotherapy is the mainstay of treatment for leukaemia, the most common blood cancer in children. However, while chemotherapy can be very effective for certain types of leukaemia, ...

Scales, spines, feathers and hair are examples of vertebrate skin appendages, which constitute a remarkably diverse group of micro-organs. Despite their natural multitude of forms, these appendages share early developmental processes at the embryonic stage. Two researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) have discovered how to permanently transform the scales that normally cover the feet of chickens into feathers, by specificially modifying the expression of certain genes. These results, published in the journal Science Advances, open new perspectives for studying mechanisms that have enabled radical evolutionary ...

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have found further evidence for how the Epstein-Barr virus can trigger multiple sclerosis or drive disease progression. A study published in Science Advances shows that some individuals have antibodies against the virus that mistakenly attack a protein in the brain and spinal cord. The Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infects most people early in life and then remains in the body, usually without causing symptoms. The link between EBV and the neurological disease multiple sclerosis (MS) was discovered many years ago and has puzzled ...

Organisms rely on a biological clock known as the ‘circadian’ clock to regulate their activity according to the time of day. A central clock, constituted by a group of brain cells — the suprachiasmatic nuclei, or SCN — synchronises the circadian clocks present in all body’s organs, called ‘peripheral’ clocks. Until now, synchronisation of the circadian cycle in mammals was thought to be a one-way mechanism in which the suprachiasmatic nuclei alone synchronized the peripheral ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Decades of research show that experiencing traumatic things as a child -- such as having an alcoholic parent or growing up in a tumultuous home -- puts you at risk for poorer health and survival later in life. But mounting evidence suggests that forging strong social relationships can help mitigate these effects. And not just for people, but for our primate cousins, too. Drawing on 36 years of data, a new study of nearly 200 baboons in southern Kenya finds that adversity early in life can take years off their lifespan, but strong social bonds with other baboons in adulthood can help ...

Heart transplant recipients receiving organs from active COVID-19 positive donors may have an increased risk of death at six months and one year when compared to those receiving organs from recently recovered COVID-19 patients and COVID-19 negative patients, according to a study published today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. “These early trends should be concerning enough such that heart transplantation centers need to thoroughly evaluate and continue to weigh the risks/benefits of using hearts from active COVID-19 donors,” said Shivank Madan, MD, MHA, lead author of the study and a cardiologist ...

University of Queensland-led research has revealed liver cells influence the body’s internal circadian clock, which was previously believed to be solely controlled by the brain. Associate Professor Frédéric Gachon from UQ’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience and Dr Serge Luquet from Université Paris Cité/CNRS in France and their collaborators have demonstrated that mice with transplanted human liver cells had modified circadian rhythms. Dr Gachon said the ...

Researchers in the Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI) at the University of Colorado School of Medicine have reached a major milestone in developing standards and tools for creating phenopackets that may foster more innovation and advancement in the medical field by allowing health professionals to more easily collect and share data. A newly-released paper highlights the latest suite of coordinated standards and tools used to collect data related to rare diseases. The phenopackets, ...

The ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group (ECOG-ACRIN) announces the following cancer researchers as the recipients of the organization’s annual scientific leadership and mentorship awards. Through its Mentoring Program, ECOG-ACRIN formally recognizes outstanding scientific leadership through events and awards that identify, encourage, and recognize investigators in the early years of their careers. The program is expanding in 2023 with the addition of the Remarkable Mentor to Women in Oncology Award. Young Investigator of the Year Patrick M. Forde, MBBCh, is the 2023 recipient of the Young Investigator Award, a professional honor to recognize ...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Yogesh Vohra, Ph.D., is the principal investigator of a five-year, $8 million grant from the United States Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration Stewardship Science Academic Alliances program that supports fundamental research in materials under extreme conditions and in advanced manufacturing. Vohra, a professor university scholar in the University of Alabama at Birmingham Department of Physics and associate dean in the UAB College of Arts and Sciences, says the grant will leverage the expertise of nine faculty members across five disciplines at UAB and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, ...

Contacts: David Hosansky, NCAR/UCAR Manager of Media Relations hosansky@ucar.edu 720-470-2073 Ali Branscombe, NCAR/UCAR Communications Specialist abran@ucar.edu 651-764-9643 A new computer modeling technique developed by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) offers the potential to generate months-ahead summertime drought forecasts across the Western United States with the capability of differentiating between dry conditions at locations just a couple of miles apart. The technique uses statistical methods and machine learning to analyze key drought indicators during the winter and spring and correlate them with the likelihood of dryness throughout the ...

In everyday life we experience light in one of its simplest forms – optical rays or beams. However, light can exist in much more exotic forms. Thus, even beams can be shaped to take the form of spirals; so-called vortex beams, endowed with unusual properties. Such beams can make dust particles to spin, just like they indeed move along some intangible spirals.    Light modes with such added structure are called “structured,” and even more exotic forms of structured light can be attained in artificial optical materials – metamaterials, where ...

Surviving a stroke can bring many long-term effects – including a much higher risk of dementia. But a study suggests that blood sugar may play a key role in that risk. Loss of general thinking ability happened much faster in stroke survivors who had high blood glucose in the years after their health crisis, even after accounting for other things that might affect their brainpower, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open. Those whose blood pressures or cholesterol were high after their stroke did not lose points on tests of thinking ability, ...

WASHINGTON – Researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center, in collaboration with George Washington University, leveraged their understanding of auditory speech processing in the brain to enable volunteers to perceive speech through the sense of touch. This may aid in the design of novel sensory substitution devices -- swapping sound for touch, for example -- for hearing-impaired people. The findings appear in the Journal of Neuroscience on May 17, 2023. “In the past few years, our understanding of how the brain processes information from different senses has expanded greatly as we are starting to understand how brain networks are connected across different ...

DETROIT (May 17, 2023) – Researchers at Henry Ford Health — one of the nation’s leading integrated academic medical institutions — in collaboration with Ephemeral Tattoo, have conducted a study on the safety and efficacy of made-to-fade tattoos for medical markings. Fifty to 60 percent of cancer patients receive radiation therapy during their course of treatment. Patients have traditionally been required to receive small, permanent tattoos on their skin to ensure therapy is delivered accurately to the same place each time while minimizing healthy tissue exposure to radiation. On the heels of this study, Ephemeral will offer its innovative made-to-fade ...

In testing the genetic material of current populations in Africa and comparing against existing fossil evidence of early Homo sapiens populations there, researchers have uncovered a new model of human evolution — overturning previous beliefs that a single African population gave rise to all humans. The new research was published today, May 17, in the journal Nature. Although it is widely understood that Homo sapiens originated in Africa, uncertainty surrounds how branches of human evolution diverged and how people migrated ...

There is broad agreement that Homo sapiens originated in Africa. But there remain many uncertainties and competing theories about where, when, and how. In a paper published today in Nature, an international research team led by McGill University and the University of California-Davis suggest that, based on contemporary genomic evidence from across the continent, there were humans living in different regions of Africa, migrating from one region to another and mixing with one another over a period of hundreds of thousands of years. This view runs counter to some of the dominant theories about human origins in ...

A retrospective study of temperatures in the province of Barcelona reveals that low temperatures increase the risk of going on a period of sick leave, due in particular to infectious and respiratory diseases. The study, carried out by researchers from  Center for Research in Occupational Health (CISAL) and the Department of Medicine and Life Sciences at UPF (MELIS); the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), an institution supported by the "la Caixa" Foundation and CIBER of Epidemiology and Public Health (CIBERESP), shows that the sectors of the population most affected are women, young people and ...

In a study tracking climate-induced changes in the distribution of animals and their effects on ecosystem functions, North Carolina State University researchers show that resident species can continue managing some important ecological processes despite the arrival of newcomers that are similar to them, but resident species’ role in ecosystem functioning changes when the newcomers are more different.  The findings could lead to predictive tools for understanding what might happen as climate change forces new species into communities, such as the movement of species from lower to higher latitudes or elevations. “Species ...

Abu Dhabi, UAE: – A team of scientists led by researchers at the University of Montreal has recently discovered an Earth-sized exoplanet, a world beyond our solar system, that may be carpeted with volcanoes and potentially hospitable to life. Called LP 791-18 d, the planet could undergo volcanic outbursts as often as Jupiter’s moon Io, the most volcanically active body in our solar system. The team includes Mohamad Ali-Dib, a research scientist at the NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) Center for Astro, Particle, and Planetary Physics. The planet was found and studied using data ...

CHICAGO—May 17, 2023—Automated insulating window shades can cut energy consumption by approximately one-quarter and may recoup the cost of installation within three to five years, according to a landmark study conducted by Illinois Institute of Technology researchers at Willis Tower. The study, funded by ComEd, showcases a promising path for sustainability and energy efficiency in architectural design. Temperature regulation typically accounts for 30–40 percent of the energy used by buildings in climates similar to Chicago. The research team, led by Assistant Professor of Architectural Engineering Mohammad ...