Resveratrol is a plant compound found primarily in red grapes and Japanese knotweed. Its synthetic variant has been approved as a food ingredient in the EU since 2016. At least in cell-based test systems, the substance has anti-inflammatory properties. A recent collaborative study by the Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology at the Technical University of Munich and the Institute of Physiological Chemistry at the University of Vienna has now shown that the bitter receptor TAS2R50 is involved in this effect. The team of scientists led by Veronika Somoza ...

CHICAGO, March 2, 2021 -- More than 70 percent of dentists surveyed by the American Dental Association (ADA) Health Policy Institute are seeing an increase of patients experiencing teeth grinding and clenching, conditions often associated with stress. This is an increase from ADA data released in the fall that showed just under 60 percent of dentists had seen an increase among their patients. "Our polling has served as a barometer for pandemic stress affecting patients and communities seen through the eyes of dentists," said Marko Vujicic, Ph.D., chief economist and vice president of the ADA Health Policy Institute. "The increase over time suggests stress-related conditions have become substantially more prevalent since the onset of COVID-19." The ...

BOSTON - Lymph nodes in the armpit area can become swollen after a COVID-19 vaccination, and this is a normal reaction that typically goes away with time. Radiologists at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) who recently published an approach to managing this situation in women who receive mammograms for breast cancer screening in the American Journal of Roentgenology have now expanded their recommendations to include care for patients who undergo other imaging tests for diverse medical reasons. Their guidance is published in the Journal of the American College of Radiology. "Our ...

A new study published today in the journal Geophysical Research Letters used NASA's ice-measuring laser satellite to identify atmospheric river storms as a key driver of increased snowfall in West Antarctica during the 2019 austral winter. These findings from scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego and colleagues will help improve overall understanding of the processes driving change in Antarctica, and lead to better predictions of sea-level rise. The study was funded by NASA, with additional support from the Rhodium Group's Climate Impact Lab, a consortium ...

CLEVELAND - Researchers from Cleveland Clinic's Global Center for Pathogen Research & Human Health have developed a promising new COVID-19 vaccine candidate that utilizes nanotechnology and has shown strong efficacy in preclinical disease models. According to new findings published in mBio, the vaccine produced potent neutralizing antibodies among preclinical models and also prevented infection and disease symptoms in the face of exposure to SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19). An additional reason for the vaccine candidate's early appeal is that it may be thermostable, which would make it easier to transport and store than currently authorized COVID-19 ...

There's more to taste than flavor. Let ice cream melt, and the next time you take it out of the freezer you'll find its texture icy instead of the smooth, creamy confection you're used to. Though its flavor hasn't changed, most people would agree the dessert is less appetizing. UC Santa Barbara Professor Craig Montell and postdoctoral fellow Qiaoran Li have published a study in Current Biology providing the first description of how certain animals sense the texture of their food based on grittiness versus smoothness. They found that, in fruit flies, a mechanosensory channel relays this information about a food's texture. The channel, called TMEM63, is part of ...

UPTON, NY--Physically confined spaces can make for more efficient chemical reactions, according to recent studies led by scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory. They found that partially covering metal surfaces acting as catalysts, or materials that speed up reactions, with thin films of silica can impact the energies and rates of these reactions. The thin silica forms a two-dimensional (2-D) array of hexagonal-prism-shaped "cages" containing silicon and oxygen atoms. "These porous silica frameworks are the thickness of only three atoms," explained Samuel Tenney, a chemist in the Interface Science and ...

AMES, Iowa - Vaccines are an important tool in fighting porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS), but the fast-mutating virus that causes the disease sometimes requires the production of autogenous vaccines tailored to particular variants. The production of autogenous vaccines depends on the ability of scientists to isolate the virus, but sometimes that's a tricky process. A new study from an Iowa State University researcher shows that a new cell line may offer a better alternative to the cell line most commonly used to isolate the PRRS virus. That could lead to more reliable processes for creating autogenous vaccines, but most autogenous vaccine producers would have to make dramatic changes to their processes ...

For nearly a century, improvement in human healthcare has depended heavily on the efficiency with which we can treat bacterial diseases. But today, antibiotic resistance--the ability of certain mutant super-bacteria to block out antibiotics--poses a major threat to healthcare, food security, and overall social development worldwide, threatening to upend much of the progress our civilization has achieved. Scientists are now urgently attempting to tackle this problem from various angles. Professor Yunho Lee at Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), Korea, whose contribution is published in the American Chemical Society's Environmental Science and Technology, is looking at it from the point of view of his field of research--wastewater ...

If you're looking for an indoor space with a low level of particulate air pollution, a commercial airliner flying at cruising altitude may be your best option. A newly reported study of air quality in indoor spaces such as stores, restaurants, offices, public transportation -- and commercial jets -- shows aircraft cabins with the lowest levels of tiny aerosol particles. Conducted in July 2020, the study included monitoring both the number of particles and their total mass across a broad range of indoor locations, including 19 commercial flights in which measurements took place throughout ...

Finding innovative and sustainable solutions to our material needs is one of the core objectives of green chemistry. The myriad plastics that envelop our daily life - from mattresses to food and cars - are mostly made from oil-based monomers which are the building blocks of polymers. Therefore, finding bio-based monomers for polymer synthesis is attractive to achieve more sustainable solutions in materials development. In a paper published in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, researchers from the Kleij group present a new route to prepare biobased polyesters with tuneable properties. The researchers ...

Insects can reprogram plant growth, transforming ordinary plant parts into intricately patterned shelters that are safe havens for feeding and reproduction. These structures, called galls, have fascinated biologists for centuries. They're crafted by a variety of insects, including some species of aphids, mites, and wasps. And they take on innumerable forms, each specific in shape and size to the insect species that's created it - from knobs to cone-shaped protrusions to long, thin spikes. Some even resemble flowers. Insects create galls by manipulating the development of plants, but figuring out exactly how they perform this feat "feels like ...

The backbone is the Swiss Army Knife of mammal locomotion. It can function in all sorts of ways that allows living mammals to have remarkable diversity in their movements. They can run, swim, climb and fly all due, in part, to the extensive reorganization of their vertebral column, which occurred over roughly 320 million years of evolution. Open any anatomy textbook and you'll find the long-standing hypothesis that the evolution of the mammal backbone, which is uniquely capable of sagittal (up and down) movements, evolved from a backbone that functioned ...

WASHINGTON, March 2, 2021 -- Tons of plastic debris get released into the ocean every day, and most of it accumulates within the middle of garbage patches, which tend to float on the oceans' surface in the center of each of their regions. The most infamous one, known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is in the North Pacific Ocean. Researchers in the U.S. and Germany decided to explore which pathways transport debris from the coasts to the middle of the oceans, as well as the relative strengths of different subtropical gyres in the oceans and how they influence long-term accumulation of debris. In Chaos, from AIP Publishing, Philippe Miron, Francisco Beron-Vera, Luzie Helfmann, and Peter Koltai report creating a Markov chain ...

What The Study Did: This study investigates emergency department visits for violence-related injuries occurring at home and outside the home in Cardiff, Wales, before and after COVID-19 lockdown measures were instituted in March 2020. Authors: Jonathan P. Shepherd, Ph.D., Crime and Security Research Institute at Cardiff University in Wales, 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/jama.2020.25511) Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions ...

In a mouse study, Australian researchers have mapped out what happens behind the scenes in fat tissue during intermittent fasting, showing that it triggers a cascade of dramatic changes, depending on the type of fat deposits and where they are located around the body. Using state-of-the-art instruments, University of Sydney researchers discovered that fat around the stomach, which can accumulate into a 'protruding tummy' in humans, was found to go into 'preservation mode', adapting over time and becoming more resistant to weight loss. The findings are published today in Cell Reports. A research team led by Dr Mark Larance examined fat tissue types from different locations to understand their role during every-other-day fasting, ...

The first UK COVID-19 lockdown saw a "rapid and sustained" fall in violence outside the home in the Welsh capital city, a new study led by Cardiff University has shown. Researchers from Cardiff University's Crime and Security Research Institute (CSRI) and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied data from Cardiff's sole emergency department (ED) from March to June 2020 and compared it to weekly data from January 2019 onwards. They found there were almost 60% fewer attendances per week for violent injury outside the home in the first lockdown during ...

WASHINGTON, March 2, 2021 -- When a vehicle travels over a wet or flooded road, water builds up in front of the tire and generates a lift force. In a phenomenon known as hydroplaning, this force can become large enough to lift the vehicle off the ground. In Physics of Fluids, by AIP Publishing, scientists from the CNRS, the University of Lyon, and The Michelin Group use a laser imaging technique to study water flow in front of and through tire grooves. To counteract hydroplaning, tread designs are chosen to drain water from the front of the tire without decreasing its ability to adhere to the road. Very few quantitative experimental studies of the movement of water through tire grooves have been done, so little is known about the exact flow patterns in ...

What The Study Did: This study suggests that, during the COVID-19 pandemic, a hotel- based isolation and quarantine strategy that delivers integrated medical and behavioral health support to people experiencing homelessness can be done safely outside the hospital setting. Authors: Jonathan D. Fuchs, M.D., M.P.H., of the San Francisco Department of Public Health, 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.2021.0490) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest ...

What The Study Did: Wearing surgical face masks for 30 minutes was not associated with changes in respiratory parameters or clinical signs of respiratory distress in this study of 47 infants and young children in Italy. Authors: Silvia Bloise, M.D., of Sapienza University of Rome in Italy, 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.2021.0414) Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and ...

The Medicare Part D program would have saved $977 million in a single year if all branded prescription drugs requested by prescribing clinicians had been substituted by a generic option, according to a new study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. And if Medicare patients had requested generic drugs instead of brand name drugs, the Medicare Part D program would have saved an additional $673 million in one year, for a total savings of $1.7 billion. Medicare Part D offers supplemental outpatient drug coverage plans for seniors ...

WASHINGTON, March 2, 2021 -- Cardiovascular disease remains the number one cause of death globally. Unfortunately, the heart cannot regenerate new tissue, because the cardiomyocytes, or heart muscle cells, do not divide after birth. In their paper, published in APL Bioengineering by AIP Publishing, Syracuse researchers developed a shape memory polymer to grow cardiomyocytes. Raising the material's temperature from 30 degrees Celsius to 37 degrees Celsius turned the polymer's flat surface into nanowrinkles, which promoted cardiomyocyte alignment. The research is part of the growing field of mechanobiology, which investigates how physical forces between cells and changes ...

A 'Fish DJ' at The University of Queensland has used her knowledge of cool beats to understand brain networks and hearing in baby fish. The DJ-turned-researcher used her acoustic experience to design a speaker system for zebrafish larvae and discovered that their hearing is considerably better than originally thought. PhD candidate Rebecca Poulsen from the Queensland Brain Institute said that combining this new speaker system with whole-brain imaging showed how larvae can hear a range of different sounds they would encounter in the wild. "For many years ...

[LAKEWOOD, CO; BRIDGEWATER, NJ; March 2, 2021] Two of the world's leading veterinary organizations are proud to announce updated recommendations in the 2021 AAHA/AAFP Feline Life Stage Guidelines. The American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA) and the American Association of Feline Practitioners (AAFP) convened a Task Force of experts in feline medicine to define distinct feline life stages and provide a framework for individualized healthcare plans. Understanding a cat's life stage and lifestyle greatly impacts healthcare strategies. Veterinary professionals have a responsibility to stress ...

New energy tariffs could leave people on bad deals even worse off despite the potential benefits for everyone, research has found. The study, led by the University of Leeds, found new types of energy contracts designed for a low carbon future could benefit all types of customer, with opportunities to sell excess energy from solar panels or incentives for using energy at off-peak times. However, many people were unlikely to choose them because they were disengaged from the energy market, didn't trust energy companies, or already feel satisfied with their current tariffs. ...