In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was established that SARS-CoV-2 infects cells by binding to the human protein ACE2, which plays a role in regulating blood pressure. But ACE2 is almost absent in human lung cells, so how can the lungs be one of the most affected organs in COVID-19? This gave researchers a hint that ACE2 might be more than just a blood pressure regulator, and might not be the only player in the SARS-CoV-2 infection mechanism. EMBL's Gibson team, in collaboration with Lucía Chemes at Universidad Nacional de San Martín in Buenos Aires and ...

Research from the Business School (formerly Cass) suggests that observing others' decision-making can teach people to make better decisions themselves. The research, co-authored by Professor Irene Scopelliti, Professor of Marketing and Behavioural Science, tested the effectiveness of a new debiasing training strategy and reports first evidence that watching others make decisions can improve our own decision making. The authors carried out three experiments, which involved participants making a set of judgements before and after a training intervention designed to improve their decision-making. Experiment ...

A study led by researchers at Lund University in Sweden showed a connection between lifestyle intervention in pregnant women with obesity and epigenetic alterations in the baby. The study is published in the journal Diabetes. An international collaboration between researchers in Sweden, Denmark and Spain investigated whether children's genes were programmed differently if a pregnant woman with a BMI over 30 underwent lifestyle interventions. The study involved 425 pregnant women, all of whom have a BMI over 30, which is defined as obesity. They were divided at random into three different groups: Group 1 had a lifestyle intervention that included both physical activity (they were urged to walk 11 000 steps per day and use a step counter) and a ...

Those with asthma are experiencing less asthma control related to an increase in using household disinfectants -- known asthma triggers -- because of COVID-19, according to a survey co-conducted by University of Illinois Chicago researchers. "We became concerned with increased cleaning and disinfecting related to the COVID-19 pandemic, combined with people spending more time indoors may expose people with asthma to more environmental triggers for asthma symptoms," Eldeirawi said. "This prompted our interest in studying the impact of disinfectants and asthma control among those living with asthma." Cleaning products are considered respiratory irritants that cause inflammation and bronchial hyperresponsiveness, Eldeirawi explained. ...

American athlete Tom Brady has done the seemingly impossible, winning his seventh Super Bowl at the age of 43 in spectacular fashion. He's joined by stellar company: At 39, Serena Williams has won 23 grand slams, one of them while pregnant. The reasons for age-defying athletic performances are dependent on numerous factors, including diet, but a new study by Iranian and University of South Australia researchers shows that when it comes to track and field events, the age when athletes peak often depends on the sport. Discus and javelin throwers as well as marathon runners and race walkers are likely to achieve their best performances at a later age than sprinters, hurdlers and ...

Australian researchers have come up with two key recommendations from studies of the annual influenza season - one highlighting the benefits of antivirals in reducing repeat hospitalisation, and the other to watch for underlying cardiovascular disease. While the world focuses on the rising COVID-19 death toll, seasonal influenza continues to cause significant mortality and poses a significant economic burden every year. The South Australian study, conducted at two major metropolitan training hospitals between January 2016 and March 2020, collected data from 1,828 adult patients (average age around 66) who were hospitalised with influenza A and B. Researchers compared outcomes for patients who did and did not take the antiviral ...

On February 19, the world's second-largest greenhouse gas emitter, the United-States, will rejoin the Paris Agreement. This will kickstart a year of intensifying policy activity ahead of the United Nations Climate Change conference (COP26) in November, when countries will re-commit to their emissions reduction goals. "The early signs are that 2021 could be the most important year for action on climate change since 2015," says Aengus Collins, deputy director of EPFL's International Risk Governance Center (IRGC). "A growing number of countries and organisations are committing to ambitious decarbonisation goals. The pace is picking up and it is crucial not to let progress be derailed." The most pressing ...

LOS ANGELES -- Some 15% of couples struggle with infertility. When couples fail to conceive, guidelines recommend both the man and woman undergo a tandem fertility evaluation. For men, this includes providing at least one semen sample, which is analyzed to determine if there are factors reducing the sperms' chances of fertilizing an egg. The current gold standard of sperm fertility evaluation requires men to provide a sperm sample in a lab or clinic, which is then examined within an hour. After an hour, the sperm begin to die, and the results are no longer accurate. However, a new END ...

One of the most abundant bats in Europe may be attracted to wind turbines, a new study shows. The activity of common pipistrelle bats was monitored at 23 British wind farms and similar "control" locations close by without turbines. Activity was around a third higher at turbines than at control locations, and two thirds of occasions with high activity were recorded at turbines rather than the controls. The reasons for this are not clear. Possibilities include attraction to the turbines themselves, or the presence of more of the bats' insect prey around turbines. "Either way it means the risk of fatality at wind turbines is increased, and probably explains the high fatalities of common ...

DALLAS - Feb. 11, 2021 - A study led by UT Southwestern has identified a mechanism that controls the activity of proteins known as chaperones, which guide proteins to fold into the right shapes. The findings, published online today in Nature Communications, could shed light on hundreds of degenerative and neurodegenerative diseases caused by protein misfolding, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Huntington's, potentially leading to new treatments for these devastating conditions. Every protein in the body is originally produced in a linear chain, with amino acid building blocks strung together one after another. But to fulfill their roles in cells, explains study leader Lukasz Joachimiak, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Center ...

DALLAS, February 11, 2021 -- Structural racism is a public health crisis in the U.S. and worldwide. The scientific publishing community can improve our understanding and address the significant health impacts of structural racism in racial and ethnic disparities research, according to a new statement, "The Groundwater of Racial and Ethnic Disparities Research: A Statement from Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes," published today in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, an American Heart Association journal, from the journal's editors. It is critical to acknowledge the societal structures - the groundwater, as it is called in "The Groundwater Approach: Building ...

HIV self-testing could reduce the time between HIV infection and HIV diagnosis amongst trans people when compared to standard testing services, suggests new research in EClinicalMedicine. The project was a collaboration between the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), University College London (UCL), and the Medical Research Council Clinical Trials Unit. It involved more than 100 trans men and trans women in England and Wales, and is the largest HIV self-testing trial in this community to be reported. Participants were first randomised into two groups, ...

Variants of nine genes increase the risk of developing Addison's disease, a rare disease in which the immune system attacks the adrenal glands. That is according to the largest genetic study to date on patients with Addison's disease. The findings help increase knowledge about what causes the disease. The study was conducted by researchers at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, and Bergen University, Norway, and is published in the journal Nature Communications. "By studying the single largest collection of samples from patients with Addison's disease, we've been able to carry out the first genetic ...

The strange social structure of tiny fish called emerald coral gobies may be explained by family loyalty, new research shows. Coral goby groups contain a single breeding male and female and - as "sequential hermaphrodites" - the subordinate gobies can take over either role if one of the breeders dies. The puzzle for biologists is why breeders tolerate the smaller non-breeders sharing their space and competing for food. One explanation is "kin selection" (favouring related individuals). Reef fish are often assumed to disperse at random after hatching, meaning groups of adults should not be closely related, but the new study finds "positive relatedness" ...

Pigs will probably never be able to fly, but new research is revealing that some species within the genus Sus may possess a remarkable level of behavioral and mental flexibility. A study published in END ...

Peer reviewed / Review and opinion First comprehensive assessment of damage to health inflicted by former President Trump cites decades of policy failures made worse by the Trump administration, resulting in 461,000 unnecessary US deaths annually before the COVID-19 pandemic, and tens of thousands of unnecessary COVID-19 and pollution-related deaths attributable to his actions. Lancet Commission calls for immediate rollback of Trump's health-harming policies and additional sweeping reforms to reverse the deteriorating health of the US population: "The path away from Trump's politics of anger and despair cannot lead through past policies." The first comprehensive assessment of the health effects of Donald Trump's presidency is published today ...

Researchers at Linköping University, Sweden, have developed biosensors that make it possible to monitor sugar levels in real time deep in the plant tissues - something that has previously been impossible. The information from the sensors may help agriculture to adapt production as the world faces climate change. The results have been published in the scientific journal iScience. The primary source of nutrition for most of the Earth's population is mainly plants, which are also the foundation of the complete ecosystem on which we all depend. Global population ...

A tiny population of neurons known to be important to appetite appear to also have a significant role in depression that results from unpredictable, chronic stress, scientists say. These AgRP neurons reside exclusively in the bottom portion of the hypothalamus called the arcuate nucleus, or ARC, and are known to be important to energy homeostasis in the body as well prompting us to pick up a fork when we are hungry and see food. Now Medical College of Georgia scientists and their colleagues report the first evidence that, not short-term stress, like a series of tough college exams, rather chronic, unpredictable stress like that which erupts in our personal and professional lives, induces changes in the function of AgRP neurons that may contribute to depression, they ...

Researchers from University of Amsterdam and Stanford University published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that examines explores how human-as-machine representations affect consumers--specifically their eating behavior and health. The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled "Portraying Humans as Machines to Promote Health: Unintended Risks, Mechanisms, and Solutions" and is authored by Andrea Weihrauch and Szu-Chi Huang. To combat obesity, governments, marketers, and consumer welfare organizations often encourage consumers ...

Obesity and excess body fat may have contributed to more deaths in England and Scotland than smoking since 2014, according to research published in the open access journal BMC Public Health. Between 2003 and 2017 the percentage of deaths attributable to smoking are calculated to have decreased from 23.1% to 19.4% while deaths attributable to obesity and excess body fat are calculated to have increased from 17.9% to 23.1%. The authors estimate that deaths attributable to obesity and excess body fat overtook those attributable to smoking in 2014. Jill Pell, at the University of Glasgow, United Kingdom, the corresponding author said: "For several decades smoking has been a major target of public ...

The needs of millions of overlooked, 'left behind' adolescent women must become a more significant priority within international efforts to end poverty by 2030, a UK Government-commissioned report is urging. The University of Cambridge report, which was commissioned by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, argues that there is an urgent need to do more to support marginalised, adolescent women in low and middle-income countries; many of whom leave education early and then face an ongoing struggle to build secure livelihoods. Amid extensive evidence which highlights the difficulties these women face, it estimates that almost a third of adolescent ...

One third (35%) of people who took a new drug for treating obesity lost more than one-fifth (greater than or equal to 20%) of their total body weight, according to a major global study involving UCL researchers. The findings from the large-scale international trial, published today in the New England Journal for Medicine, are being hailed as a "gamechanger" for improving the health of people with obesity and could play a major part in helping the UK to reduce the impact of diseases, such as COVID-19. The drug, semaglutide, works by hijacking the body's own appetite regulating system in the brain leading to reduced hunger and calorie intake. Rachel Batterham, Professor of Obesity, Diabetes and Endocrinology ...

MUSC Hollings Cancer Center researchers found that a single strain of bacteria may be able to reduce the severity of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), as reported online in February 2021 in JCI Insight. Bone marrow transplant can be a lifesaving procedure for patients with blood cancers. However, GVHD is a potentially fatal side effect of transplantation, and it has limited treatment options. This proof-of-concept study demonstrates that better treatment options may be on the horizon for patients with GVHD. Xue-Zhong Yu, M.D., associate director of Basic Science at Hollings Cancer Center, and lead ...

Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) and their colleagues published a new analysis today in the journal Nature from genetic sequencing data of more than 53,000 individuals, primarily from minority populations. The early analysis, part of a large-scale program funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, examines one of the largest and most diverse data sets of high-quality whole genome sequencing, which makes up a person's DNA. It provides new genetic insights into heart, lung, blood and sleep disorders and how these conditions impact people with diverse racial and ...

A team, including an astronomer from the University of Hawai?i Institute for Astronomy (IfA), have confirmed a planetoid that is almost four times farther from the Sun than Pluto, making it the most distant object ever observed in our solar system. The planetoid, nicknamed "Farfarout," was first detected in 2018, and the team has now collected enough observations to pin down the orbit. The Minor Planet Center has now given it the official designation of 2018 AG37. Farfarout's name distinguished it from the previous record holder "Farout," found by the same team of astronomers in 2018. The team includes UH Mānoa's David Tholen, Scott S. Sheppard of ...