Sesame seed oil, used by many for its nutty aroma and high burn-point, is made by extracting the fatty oils from sesame seeds, with the empty shells thrown out as waste. In a literal instantiation of the age-old adage "one man's trash is another man's treasure", researchers discovered that a chemical called sesaminol, abundant in this waste, has protective effects against Parkinson's disease. "Currently there is no preventive medicine for Parkinson's disease", states OCU Associate Professor Akiko Kojima-Yuasa, "we only have coping treatments". Associate Professor Kojima-Yuasa led her research group ...

HPSTAR scientists Dr. Songhao Guo and Dr. Xujie Lü report three orders of magnitude increase in the photoconductivity of Cs2PbI2Cl2 from its initial value, at the industrially achievable level of 2 GPa, using pressure regulation. Impressively, pressure regulating the 2D perovskite's excitonic features gains it 3D compound characteristics without diminishing its own advantages, making it a more promising material for photovoltaic and photodetector applications. Their study is published as a Cover article in the latest issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Two-dimensional ...

New research from The University of Manchester has identified various ways in which UK higher education institutions are beginning to tackle emissions associated with business travel and catering. These are two substantial contributors to emissions in this sector, and difficult to decarbonise. The findings suggest need for further sector-wide efforts to tackle the planet's most pressing issue. This new study, from The University of Manchester's Tyndall Centre for Climate Change and the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST), analysed publicly available policies of 66 UK universities to identify strategies ...

Red ginseng, which has long been used as an ingredient in traditional Korean medicine, has recently drawn increased attention as a functional material for its health-promoting effects. The composition and activities of red ginseng vary depending on the processing method, and this has become an active area of research. Recently, a research team in Korea has entered the spotlight as they discovered that red ginseng has inhibitory effects against lung cancer metastasis. The Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) reported that a joint study conducted by Dr. Jungyeob Ham from the Natural Product Research Center at the KIST Gangneung Institute of Natural Products and Dr. Hyeonseok Ko of Seoul Asan Medical Center revealed that two components of red ginseng, ...

Researchers from the University of Texas, University of Chicago, University of Notre Dame, and London School of Economics published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that examines whether entrepreneurs in emerging markets can benefit from marketers' help. The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled "Do Marketers Matter for Entrepreneurs? Evidence from a Field Experiment in Uganda" and is authored by Stephen Anderson, Pradeep Chintagunta, Frank Germann, and Naufel Vilcassim. Can marketers help improve the world? While this question may seem vast and unknowable, this new study proposes ...

BINGHAMTON, NY -- Customized diets and lifestyle changes could be key to optimizing mental health, according to new research including faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York. "There is increasing evidence that diet plays a major role in improving mental health, but everyone is talking about a healthy diet," said Begdache, an assistant professor of health and wellness studies at Binghamton University and co-author of a new paper in Nutrients. "We need to consider a spectrum of dietary and lifestyle changes based on different age groups and gender," she said. "There is not one healthy diet that will work for everyone. There is not one fix." Begdache, who is also a registered dietitian, believes that ...

Home health visits change to virtual ones during pandemic 'We don't have to rely on mental health professionals' As perinatal depression soars during pandemic, there's a growing need for treatment CHICAGO --- Perinatal depression has soared during the pandemic. But many mental health professionals are overwhelmed and can't take on new clients. Good news comes from a new Northwestern Medicine study finding paraprofessionals generated similar reductions in depressive symptoms as mental health professionals when delivering a group-based cognitive-behavioral therapy intervention. The study findings are based on ...

New research has revealed that the diets of early lizards and snakes, which lived alongside dinosaurs around 100 million years ago, were more varied and advanced than previously thought. The study, led by the University of Bristol and published in Royal Society Open Science, showed lizards, snakes, and mosasaurs in the Cretaceous period already had the full spectrum of diet types, including flesh-eating and plant-based, which they have today. There are currently some 10,000 species of lizards and snakes, known collectively as squamates. It was originally understood their great diversity was acquired only after the extinction ...

Patients with type 2 diabetes that were treated with a weekly injection of the breakthrough drug Semaglutide were able to achieve an average weight loss of nearly 10kg, according to a new study published in The Lancet today. Led by Melanie Davies, Professor of Diabetes Medicine at the University of Leicester and the Co-Director of the Leicester Diabetes Centre, the study showed that two thirds of patients with type 2 diabetes that were treated with weekly injections of a 2.4mg dose of Semaglutide were able to lose at least 5% of their body weight and achieved significant improvement in blood glucose control. More than a quarter of patients were able to ...

Pregnant patients in Colorado may be told about parenting and adoption, but not abortion. This is according to a new study led by Kate Coleman-Minahan of the University of Colorado College of Nursing published in the END ...

Our brains are non-stop consumers. A labyrinth of blood vessels, stacked end-to-end comparable in length to the distance from San Diego to Berkeley, ensures a continuous flow of oxygen and sugar to keep our brains functioning at peak levels. But how does this intricate system ensure that more active parts of the brain receive enough nourishment versus less demanding areas? That's a century-old problem in neuroscience that scientists at the University of California San Diego have helped answer in a newly published study. Studying the brains of mice, a team of researchers led by Xiang Ji, David Kleinfeld and their colleagues has deciphered the question of brain energy consumption and blood vessel density through newly developed maps that detail ...

When you think about your carbon footprint, what comes to mind? Driving and flying, probably. Perhaps home energy consumption or those daily Amazon deliveries. But what about watching Netflix or having Zoom meetings? Ever thought about the carbon footprint of the silicon chips inside your phone, smartwatch or the countless other devices inside your home? Every aspect of modern computing, from the smallest chip to the largest data center comes with a carbon price tag. For the better part of a century, the tech industry and the field of computation ...

Imagine you're driving up a hill toward a traffic light. The light is still green so you're tempted to accelerate to make it through the intersection before the light changes. Then, a device in your car receives a signal from the controller mounted on the intersection alerting you that the light will change in two seconds -- clearly not enough time to beat the light. You take your foot off the gas pedal and decelerate, saving on fuel. You feel safer, too, knowing you didn't run a red light and potentially cause a collision in the intersection. Connected and automated vehicles, which can interact vehicle to vehicle (V2V) and between vehicles and roadway ...

Type 2 diabetes, once considered an adult disease, is increasingly causing health complications among American youth. A research review published in the Journal of Osteopathic Medicine suggests physicians should work to more aggressively prevent pediatric diabetes. Because few pediatric Type 2 diabetes treatment options are available, prevention is unusually important. To improve health outcomes, the paper's authors recommend physicians conduct regular screenings of children and adolescents, adopt a high level of suspicion, and intervene early and often with families who have children at risk for prediabetes and T2 diabetes. "Pediatric type 2 diabetes is more progressive and aggressive than adult-onset Type 2 diabetes," ...

Boulder, Colo., USA: Several articles were published online ahead of print for GSA Bulletin in February. Topics include earthquake cycles in southern Cascadia, fault dynamics in the Gulf of Mexico, debris flow after wildfires, the assembly of Rodinia, and the case for no ring fracture in Mono basin. Jurassic evolution of the Qaidam Basin in western China: Constrained by stratigraphic succession, detrital zircon U-Pb geochronology and Hf isotope analysis Tao Qian; Zongxiu Wang; Yu Wang; Shaofeng Liu; Wanli Gao ... Abstract: The formation and evolution of an intracontinental basin triggered via the subduction or collision of plates at continental margins can record intracontinental tectonic processes. As a typical ...

In the 1995 movie "Outbreak," Dustin Hoffman's character realizes, with appropriately dramatic horror, that an infectious virus is "airborne" because it's found to be spreading through hospital vents. The issue of whether our real-life pandemic virus, SARS-CoV-2, is "airborne" is predictably more complex. The current body of evidence suggests that COVID-19 primarily spreads through respiratory droplets - the small, liquid particles you sneeze or cough, that travel some distance, and fall to the floor. But consensus is mounting that, under the right circumstances, smaller floating particles called aerosols can carry the virus over longer distances and remain ...

Amyloid plaques are pathological hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease (AD) -- clumps of misfolded proteins that accumulate in the brain, disrupting and killing neurons and resulting in the progressive cognitive impairment that is characteristic of the widespread neurological disorder. In a new study, published March 2, 2021 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine (JEM), researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital and elsewhere have identified a new drug that could prevent AD by modulating, rather than inhibiting, a key enzyme involved ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- When quantum computers become more powerful and widespread, they will need a robust quantum internet to communicate. Purdue University engineers have addressed an issue barring the development of quantum networks that are big enough to reliably support more than a handful of users. The method, demonstrated in a paper published in Optica, could help lay the groundwork for when a large number of quantum computers, quantum sensors and other quantum technology are ready to go online and communicate with each other. The team deployed a programmable switch to adjust how much data goes to each ...

Scientists regularly use remote sensing drones and satellites to record how climate change affects permafrost thaw rates -- methods that work well in barren tundra landscapes where there's nothing to obstruct the view. But in boreal regions, which harbor a significant portion of the world's permafrost, obscuring vegetation can stymy even the most advanced remote sensing technology. In a study published in January, researchers in Germany and at the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Geophysical Institute developed a method of using satellite imagery to measure the depth of thaw directly above permafrost in boreal ecosystems. Rather than trying to peer past ...

They can hear well up to about forty years old, but then suddenly deafness strikes people with DFNA9. The cells of the inner ear can no longer reverse the damage caused by a genetic defect in their DNA. Researchers at Radboud university medical center have now developed a "genetic patch" for this type of hereditary deafness, with which they can eliminate the problems in the hearing cells. Further research in animals and humans is needed to bring the genetic patch to the clinic as a therapy. Hereditary deafness can manifest itself in different ways. Often the hereditary defect (mutation) immediately causes deafness from birth. Sometimes, as with DFNA9, you experience the initial ...

Philadelphia, March 2, 2021--Taking the first deep dive into how the immune system is behaving in patients with multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have found that children with this condition have highly activated immune systems that, in many ways, are more similar to those of adults with severe COVID-19. The results, published today in Science Immunology, show that better understanding the immune activation in patients with MIS-C could not only help better treat those patients but also improve treatment for adults with ...

A new study of patients with Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C), a rare but severe complication of COVID-19 in children, reveals distinct immune features of COVID-19 not seen in adults that may clue scientists in to why SARS-CoV-2 infection manifests differently in children compared with adults. Their results showed that although the immune landscape in pediatric COVID-19 was similar to that in adults, MIS-C patients uniquely exhibited increased activation of a blood vessel-patrolling CD8+ killer T cell subset, and all pediatric COVID-19 patients harbored greater B cell frequencies for a more prolonged period of time than observed in healthy adults. MIS-C is characterized by pervasive inflammation, an array of symptoms ranging from fever ...

Orange, Calif. - Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, college students were reporting record levels of stress and anxiety. According to the American College Health Association END ...

The Deepwater Horizon disaster began on April 20, 2010 with an explosion on a BP-operated oil drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 workers. Almost immediately, oil began spilling into the waters of the gulf, an environmental calamity that took months to bring under control, but not before it became the largest oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry. Nearly 10 years have passed since then, and the oil slick has long since dispersed. Yet, despite early predictions, area wildlife are still feeling the effects of that oil, and research published in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry has shown that negative health impacts have befallen not only dolphins alive at the time of the spill, but also in their young, born years later. A team of researchers, including ...

When central nervous system cells in the brain and spine are damaged by disease or injury, they fail to regenerate, limiting the body's ability to recover. In contrast, peripheral nerve cells that serve most other areas of the body are more able to regenerate. Scientists for decades have searched for molecular clues as to why axons -- the threadlike projections which allow communication between central nervous system cells -- cannot repair themselves after stroke, spinal cord damage, or traumatic brain injuries. In a massive screen of 400 mouse genes, Yale School of Medicine ...