Phosphatases of regenerating liver (PRLs) are a family of enigmatic proteins involved in cell growth and metabolism present in various species. From humans to fruit flies, they play a unique role in the growth of cancerous tumours and the spread of cancer throughout the body. New research emerging from McGill University is contributing to what is known about PRLs, which could potentially become an important tool in the development of cancer-fighting treatments.   Led by Kalle Gehring, a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and founding director of the McGill Centre for Structural Biology, the researchers focused on unravelling the mystery around PRLs. “It's ...

Athletes from less affluent countries need more education on health to prevent injuries during hard training. But, paradoxically, more knowledge can also increase the risk of injury if there is no access to medically trained expertise. This is the conclusion of researchers at Linköping University, Sweden, in a new study on inequality in athletics. “There were astronomical differences in support resources between juniors from different parts of the world. European competitors had entire medical teams and computer-based analysis programs ...

The National Virtual Climate Laboratory (NVCL), a comprehensive web portal for climate science projects funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science’s Biological and Environmental Research (BER) program, is now available. The NVCL is a portal for those who have a stake in the climate crisis, such as researchers, students, faculty, and other interested organizations. Portal users will be able to find a wide range of national laboratory experts, programs, projects, activities, ...

LEBANON, NH— Advanced or metastatic estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) breast cancer is commonly treated with drugs that block the estrogen receptor. However, estrogens that stimulate the receptor can also be effective.  Building on their previous studies, researchers at Dartmouth Cancer Center recently concluded a Phase II clinical trial aimed to test the efficacy of alternating between estrogen stimulation and estrogen deprivation in patients with metastatic ER+ breast cancer, and to identify tumor characteristics that predict who might benefit from this strategy. The results, newly published ahead of print in Clinical ...

Oxytocin, the so-called “love hormone,” plays a key role in the process of how a young zebra finch learns to sing by imitating its elders, suggests a new study by neuroscientists at Emory University. Scientific Reports published the findings, which add to the understanding of the neurochemistry of social learning. “We found that the oxytocin system is involved from an early age in male zebra finches learning song,” says Natalie Pilgeram, first author of the study and an Emory PhD candidate in psychology. “It’s basic science that may lead to insights into the ...

Resistance to antibiotics is a problem that alarms the medical and scientific community. Bacteria resistant to three different classes of antibiotics, known as multi-drug resistant (MDR) bacteria, are far from rare. Some are even resistant to all currently available treatments and are known as pan-drug resistant (PDR). They are associated with dangerous infections and listed by the World Health Organization (WHO) as priority pathogens for drug development with maximum urgency. An article published in a special issue of the journal Antibiotics highlights a compound with antibacterial activity that presented promising ...

Post-secondary education (PSE) has a potential for improving the IQ of adults with mild intellectual disability (ID), according to a new Bar-Ilan University study.  The study examined the impact of PSE on students with mild ID who study in a university-based program, known as the Empowerment Project, at the Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Education.  The study sample included 24 participants, divided into 12 students with ID who participate in the Empowerment Project and 12 adults with ID with the same background, who did not participate. The results were published in the European Journal of Special Needs Education. The findings revealed significant IQ improvement ...

New synthetic metabolic pathways for fixation of carbon dioxide could not only help to reduce the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere, but also replace conventional chemical manufacturing processes for pharmaceuticals and active ingredients with carbon-neutral, biological processes. A new study demonstrates a process that can turn carbon dioxide into a valuable material for the biochemical industry via formic acid. In view of rising greenhouse gas emissions, carbon capture, the sequestration of carbon dioxide from large emission sources, is an ...

Astronomers have described the first radiation belt observed outside our solar system, using a coordinated array of 39 radio dishes from Hawaii to Germany to obtain high-resolution images. The images of persistent, intense radio emissions from an ultracool dwarf reveal the presence of a cloud of high-energy electrons trapped in the object’s powerful magnetic field, forming a double-lobed structure analogous to radio images of Jupiter’s radiation belts. “We are actually imaging the magnetosphere of our target by observing the radio-emitting ...

Recently published in PeerJ Life and Environment, researchers successfully use aircraft surveys with novel instrumentation to capture airborne nucleic acids and probe biodiversity in the atmosphere, uncovering surprising findings. [Clemson, May 2023] - A groundbreaking research article titled "Aircraft Surveys for Air eDNA: Probing Biodiversity in the Sky" unveils a revolutionary approach to studying genetic material in the atmosphere. Scientists have developed a durable and sterilizable probe and supporting system to capture air environmental nucleic acids (eDNA) with full-flow filtration and a high-integrity chamber. Using this innovative probe, ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – A Cornell University-led experiment in which two people play a modified version of Tetris revealed that players who get fewer turns perceived the other player as less likable, regardless of whether a person or an algorithm allocated the turns. Most studies on algorithmic fairness focus on the algorithm or the decision itself, but researchers sought to explore the relationships among the people affected by the decisions. “We are starting to see a lot of situations in which AI makes decisions on how resources should be distributed among people,” ...

The cerebellum, a major part of the hindbrain in all vertebrates, is important for motor coordination, language acquisition, and regulating social and emotional behaviors. A study led by Dr. Roy Sillitoe, professor of Pathology and Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine and investigator at the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute (Duncan NRI) at Texas Children’s Hospital, shows two distinct types of cerebellar neurons differentially regulate motor and non-motor behaviors during development and in adulthood. The study, published in Nature Communications, provides the first in ...

No one will ever be able to see a purely mathematical construct such as a perfect sphere. But now, scientists using supercomputer simulations and atomic resolution microscopes have imaged the signatures of electron orbitals, which are defined by mathematical equations of quantum mechanics and predict where an atom’s electron is most likely to be.  Scientists at UT Austin, Princeton University, and ExxonMobil have directly observed the signatures of electron orbitals in two different transition-metal atoms, iron (Fe) and cobalt ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Investors in commercial real estate are rethinking the values of coastal properties exposed to flood risk — even in northern U.S. locales that haven’t suffered flood damage, according to researchers. This shift in perspective has implications for investors and developers alike as they determine the value of coastal properties amid a changing climate.   Eva Steiner, associate professor of real estate and King Family Early Career Professor in Real Estate in the Penn State Smeal College of Business, and her co-authors published these findings recently in Real Estate Economics.  Steiner and ...

Chao Luo, Assistant Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry, is set to receive funding from the National Science Foundation for the project: "Collaborative Research: Catholyte Molecular Design For Non-Aqueous Mg-Organic Hybrid Redox Flow Batteries." Luo is proposing a new organic molecule structure design concept for redox flow batteries, which are promising for grid-scale energy storage. The research outcomes will afford low-cost, abundant, sustainable, and high-performance organic catholyte materials for non-aqueous Mg-organic hybrid redox flow batteries.   His goal is to design, synthesize, and characterize core-shell ...

Samuel Clowes Huneke, Assistant Professor, History and Art History, has been awarded a Sharon Abramson Research Grant from the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University. The award will enable him to complete research for his forthcoming book on lesbians in Nazi Germany.  For many decades after the end of World War II, the fates of queer women were ignored. Because female homosexuality had not been criminalized explicitly, historians long argued that lesbians were not persecuted by the Nazi regime.   In contrast, Huneke’s book, which is under advanced contract with Aevo-University of Toronto Press, argues that queer women under Nazism faced ...

Researchers from Stockholm University have developed porous crystals made from pomegranate extract to capture and degrade pharmaceutical molecules found in local municipal wastewater. The research is published in the scientific journal Nature Water. Pharmaceutical compounds affect the human body to improve our health, but they can also have unintentional adverse effects for the wellbeing of wildlife. Hence wastewater treatment plants are facing the challenge of removing emerging organic contaminants (EOCs) such as active pharmaceutical ingredients, and therefore ...

About 100 million years ago, a group of trendsetting moths started flying during the day rather than at night, taking advantage of nectar-rich flowers that had co-evolved with bees. This single event led to the evolution of all butterflies. Scientists have known the precise timing of this event since 2019, when a large-scale analysis of DNA discounted an earlier hypothesis that pressure from bats prompted the evolution of butterflies after the extinction of dinosaurs. Now, scientists have discovered where the first butterflies originated ...

Because serotonin is one of the primary chemicals the brain uses to influence mood and behavior, it is also the most common target of psychiatric drugs. To improve those drugs and to invent better ones, scientists need to know much more about how the molecule affects brain cells and circuits both in health and amid disease. In a new study, researchers at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT working in a simple animal model present a comprehensive accounting of how serotonin affects behavior from the scale of individual molecules all the way to the animal’s whole brain. “There have been major challenges ...

About The Study: This analysis of U.S. Census Bureau survey data found that rising inflation has become a significant source of stress, especially among women and those who were socioeconomically more vulnerable.  Authors: Cary Wu, Ph.D., of York University in Toronto, is the corresponding author.  To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/  (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.13431) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, ...

About The Study: In this national population-based cohort study of multiple sclerosis (MS) prevalence, researchers found that the distribution of MS in the United States has become more racially and ethnically diverse. White individuals continued to have the highest prevalence of MS followed by Black individuals, individuals from other races, and Hispanic individuals. Authors: Mitchell T. Wallin, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Washington, D.C., is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamaneurol.2023.1135) Editor’s ...

About The Study: This study of 340,000 service members found that the risk of Parkinson disease was 70% higher in veterans who were stationed at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, during 1975-1985 when the water supply was contaminated with the solvent trichloroethylene and other volatile organic compounds. The findings suggest that exposure to trichloroethylene in water may increase the risk of Parkinson disease; millions worldwide have been and continue to be exposed to this ubiquitous environmental contaminant. Authors: Samuel M. Goldman, ...

TORONTO - A new international study published in Nature Medicine and presented as a late-breaking abstract at the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) annual conference, shows great promise for patients with glioblastoma. Drs. Farshad Nassiri and Gelareh Zadeh, neurosurgeons at the University Health Network (UHN) in Toronto, published the results of a Phase 1/2 clinical trial investigating the safety and effectiveness of a novel therapy which combines the injection of an oncolytic virus – a virus that targets and kills ...

Our body functioning is delicately balanced between the synthesis and breakdown of various cellular components. When these cellular components grow old or get damaged, they are digested by a process called “autophagy”—literally, “self-eating.” This process not only helps in the elimination of toxic wastes, but also helps to deliver building blocks for the synthesis of new cellular macromolecules. Thus, autophagy serves as the body's cellular cleaning and recycling system.   Researchers have long been studying the ...

Plants are impressive in their diversity, but especially in the variety of metabolites they produce. Many plant natural products are highly complex molecules, such as the alkaloids vincristine and vinblastine, which are produced by the Madagascar periwinkle Catharanthus roseus. These two substances are already indispensable in cancer therapy. Researchers are very interested in finding out which individual biosynthetic steps are required to form the complex molecules. "Currently, these compounds are still obtained in very small quantities from the plant's leaf extract. We can learn from the plant how this compound is produced and use this knowledge ...