Fifty years after presumably becoming extinct as a breeding species in Bulgaria, the Griffon Vulture, one of the largest birds of prey in Europe, is back in the Eastern Balkan Mountains. Since 2009, three local conservation NGOs - Green Balkans - Stara Zagora, the Fund for Wild Flora and Fauna and the Birds of Prey Protection Society, have been working on a long-term restoration programme to bring vultures back to their former breeding range in Bulgaria. The programme is supported by the Vulture Conservation Foundation, the Government of Extremadura, Spain, and EuroNatur. Its results have been described in the open-access, peer-reviewed Biodiversity Data Journal. Two large-scale projects funded by the EU's LIFE tool, one of them ongoing, facilitate the import of captive-bred or ...

Sophia Antipolis, 17 May 2021: Women with mildly elevated blood pressure in their early 40s have a two-fold risk of acute coronary syndromes in their 50s compared to their counterparts with normal blood pressure. That's the finding of a study published on World Hypertension Day in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).1 "Even if they feel healthy, women should have their blood pressure measured by their primary care physician and repeated at regular intervals with the frequency dependent on the level," said study author ...

Regular gamblers were more than six times more likely to gamble online compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to new research. The study, led by the University of Bristol and published today (17 May) in the Journal of Gambling Studies, showed regular male gamblers were particularly prone to gambling more often online during the public lockdown in the UK, compared to their previously reported gambling habits. Although overall men and women gambled less frequently during lockdown, partly due to betting shops being closed, some forms of gambling increased. For instance, usage of online gambling, including poker, bingo, and casino games, grew six-fold among regular gamblers. Respondents who gambled occasionally were still found to be more than twice ...

A unique commission that today issued major new recommendations aimed at fully understanding and reducing the global burden of heart disease in women was led by Roxana Mehran, MD, Professor of Medicine, and Population Health Science and Policy, and Director of Interventional Cardiovascular Research and Clinical Trials at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. "The Lancet Women and Cardiovascular Disease Commission" developed specific, worldwide recommendations for heart disease prevention and treatment based on an unprecedented global review and analysis. The recommendations ...

The Lancet women and cardiovascular disease Commission outlines 10 ambitious recommendations to improve health outcomes for millions of women around the world and achieve the global targets set. In the first-ever global report on cardiovascular disease (CVD) in women, researchers call for urgent action to improve care and prevention, fill knowledge gaps, and increase awareness to tackle the worldwide leading cause of death among women. The all female-led Commission report was published in The Lancet and presented during a plenary session at the American College of Cardiology's 70th Annual Scientific Session (ACC.21). ...

ATS 2021, New York, NY - Patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a rare lung disease that causes shortness of breath and low oxygen levels because of lung scarring, have worse outcomes if they live in poor neighborhoods, according to research presented at the ATS 2021 International Conference. Gillian Goobie, MD, Human Genetics, Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh, and colleagues sought to determine how environmental and occupational factors contribute to the development and progression of IPF. People who live in areas with high neighborhood-level disadvantage, as ...

ATS 2021, New York, NY - By removing "race correction" from the interpretation of pulmonary function test (PFT) results, Black individuals were shown to have a significantly higher prevalence and severity of lung disease, according to research presented at the ATS 2021 International Conference. Alexander Moffett, MD, clinical fellow, Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, and colleagues, sought to determine the real-world consequences of race correction for the interpretation of PFT results. Race correction, a standard practice in PFT interpretation that has no biological basis, results ...

NEW YORK, NY (May 16, 2021)--Brief pulses of ultrasound delivered to nerves near the kidney produced a clinically meaningful drop in blood pressure in people whose hypertension did not respond to a triple cocktail of medications, reports a new study led by researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and NewYork-Presbyterian. In a clinical trial of the procedure, called renal denervation, daytime blood pressure after two months had dropped 8 points compared to a 3-point drop in patients who were treated with a sham procedure. Nighttime blood pressure decreased ...

Research led by scientists at Children's Cancer Institute and published this week in the international journal, Clinical Cancer Research, has found a combination of therapies that appears to be highly effective against high-risk neuroblastoma and other forms of aggressive childhood cancer. Up to half of all cases of neuroblastoma newly diagnosed in children are 'high-risk', meaning the cancer grows aggressively and is difficult to treat. Despite receiving intensive treatment, most children with high-risk disease die within five years of diagnosis, while those who survive are often left with serious ...

ATS 2021, New York, NY - A weighted "lottery" designed to increase access to the antiviral drug remdesivir during the May-July 2020 COVID-19 surge for those most affected by the coronavirus, including members of the Black, Latinx and indigenous communities, led to more equitable distribution of the badly needed medication, according to research presented at the ATS 2021 International Conference. At a time when supplies of COVID-19 medications were scarce, Douglas B. White, MD, MAS, vice chair and professor of critical care medicine, UPMC endowed chair for ethics in critical care medicine and director of the Program on Ethics and Decision Making in Critical Illness, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and colleagues, convened ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - May 16, 2021 - Heart failure (HF) - when the heart can't pump enough blood and oxygen through the body - affects approximately 6.2 million adults in the United States and is the primary cause of hospitalization in the elderly. Unfortunately, older adults with heart failure often have poor outcomes resulting in reduced quality of life, high mortality and frequent rehospitalizations. Despite many efforts to improve the prognosis in these patients, most previous studies testing a wide range of interventions were not successful. Scientists from the Wake Forest, Duke University and Thomas Jefferson ...

An innovative cardiac rehabilitation intervention started earlier and more custom-tailored to the individual improved physical function, frailty, quality-of-life, and depression in hospitalized heart failure patients, compared to traditional rehabilitation programs. Supported by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of the National institutes of Health, these new study results were published May 16 in the New England Journal of Medicine and also presented at the American College of Cardiology's 70th Annual Scientific Session. "Designing earlier and more personalized individual-specific approaches to heart failure rehab shows great promise for improving outcomes for this common but complex condition that is ...

The investigational drug evinacumab reduced triglycerides in patients with severe hypertriglyceridemia (sHTG) and a history of hospitalizations for acute pancreatitis in a phase 2 global study led by Mount Sinai. The fully human monoclonal antibody produced sustained reductions in triglyceride levels of up to 82 percent, depending on the patient's genotype, while also lowering the risk of recurrent acute pancreatitis. The results of the study will be presented as a late-breaking clinical trial at the American College of Cardiology (ACC) Annual Scientific Session, on May 16. "Evinacumab has the potential to not only lower triglycerides, but the risk of acute pancreatitis, quality of life, and the risk of cardiovascular events in ...

Hamilton, ON (May 15, 2021) - A simple surgery saves patients with heart arrhythmia from often-lethal strokes, says a large international study led by McMaster University. Researchers found that removing the left atrial appendage -- an unused, finger-like tissue that can trap blood in the heart chamber and increase the risk of clots -- cuts the risk of strokes by more than one-third in patients with atrial fibrillation. Even better, the reduced clotting risk comes on top of any other benefits conferred by blood-thinner medications patients with this condition are usually prescribed. "If you have atrial fibrillation and are undergoing heart surgery, the surgeon should be removing your left atrial appendage, because it is a set-up for forming clots. Our trial has shown ...

Researchers at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School are reporting the first instance of COVID-19 triggering a rare recurrence of potentially serious blood clots in people's arms. The discovery, published in the journal Viruses, improves the understanding of how inflammation caused by COVID-19 can lead to upper extremity blood clots and how best to treat them. The case study is part of a larger Rutgers study of 1,000 hospitalized patients diagnosed with COVID-19 who were admitted and discharged between March and May 2020. While there have been reports of lower extremity deep vein thrombosis following COVID-19, ...

Next-generation sequencing technology has made it easier than ever for quick diagnosis of plant diseases. "It's really exciting to see how sequencing technologies have evolved and how this new technology facilitates sequencing of entire genomes in such a short amount of time," said Yazmín Rivera, a plant pathologist with the United States Department of Agriculture's Plant Protection and Quarantine program, who recently published a research paper on the efficacy of Oxford Nanopore Technologies protocols. "We wanted to provide an unbiased assessment of the technology and protocols available for long read sequencing," Rivera explained. Along with other plant pathologists, Rivera used the company's protocols to prepare RNA and DNA libraries from virus-infected plant material ...

People with a high polygenic risk score for colorectal cancer could benefit more at preventing the disease by leading healthy lifestyles than those at lower genetic risk, according to a study by Vanderbilt researchers published in the April issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Analyzing data from participants in the UK Biobank, the researchers estimated that maintaining a healthy lifestyle was associated with a nearly 40% reduction in colorectal cancer risk among those with a high genetic risk of developing the disease. The percentage dropped to only about 25% among people at ...

Dozens of commonly used drugs, including antibiotics, antinausea and anticancer medications, have a potential side effect of lengthening the electrical event that triggers contraction, creating an irregular heartbeat, or cardiac arrhythmia called acquired Long QT syndrome. While safe in their current dosages, some of these drugs may have a more therapeutic benefit at higher doses, but are limited by the risk of arrhythmia. Through both computational and experimental validation, a multi-institutional team of researchers has identified a compound that prevents the lengthening of the heart's electrical event, or action potential, resulting in a major step toward safer use and expanded therapeutic efficacy of these ...

Extracting hydrogen from water through electrolysis offers a promising route for increasing the production of hydrogen, a clean and environmentally friendly fuel. But one major challenge of water electrolysis is the sluggish reaction of oxygen at the anode, known as the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). A collaboration between researchers at Hunan University and Shenzhen University in China, has led to a discovery that promises to improve the OER process. In their recent paper, published in the KeAi journal Green Energy & Environment, they report that etching - or, in other words, chemically removing - the oxide overlayers that form on the surface of the metal phosphide electrocatalysts regularly used in electrolysis, can increase ...

Even the mention of lavender evokes the distinct fragrance of the flower. This beautiful flower has been used to make perfumes and essential oils since time immemorial. The aesthetics of the flower have captured the imagination of hundreds, worldwide. So, what makes this flower so special? What are the "magical" compounds that gives it its unique fragrance? What is the genetic basis of these compounds? These questions have long puzzled scientists. To find out the answers, a group of scientists from China have sequenced the genome of lavender, which is known in the scientific world as Lavandula angustifolia. The team headed by Dr. Lei Shi, Professor at the Key Laboratory of Plant Resources and Beijing Botanical Garden, Institute of Botany, Chinese ...

What if you could predict which cells might become cancerous? Breast tissue changes dramatically throughout a woman's life, so finding markers for sudden changes that can lead to cancer is especially difficult. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Associate Professor Camila dos Santos and her team identified and cataloged thousands of normal human and mouse breast cell types. The new catalog redefines healthy breast tissue so that when something goes awry, scientists can pinpoint its origin. Any breast cell could become cancerous. Dos Santos says: "To understand breast cancer risk, you have to understand normal breast cells first, so when we think about preventive and even targeting therapies, ...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - In a large-animal study, researchers have shown that heart attack recovery is aided by injection of heart muscle cells derived from human induced pluripotent stem cell line, or hiPSCs, that overexpress cyclin D2. This research, published in the journal Circulation, used a pig model of heart attacks, which more closely resembles the human heart in size and physiology, and thus has higher clinical relevance to human disease, compared to studies in mice. An enduring challenge for bioengineering researchers is the failure of the heart to regenerate muscle tissue after a heart attack has killed part of its muscle wall. That dead tissue can strain the surrounding muscle, leading to a lethal heart enlargement. Heart experts thus have sought to create new tissue -- applying ...

Inspired by nature, researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), along with collaborators from Washington State University, created a novel material capable of capturing light energy. This material provides a highly efficient artificial light-harvesting system with potential applications in photovoltaics and bioimaging. The research provides a foundation for overcoming the difficult challenges involved in the creation of hierarchical functional organic-inorganic hybrid materials. Nature provides beautiful examples of hierarchically structured hybrid materials such as bones and teeth. These materials typically showcase a precise atomic ...

HOUSTON - (May 14, 2021) - Rice University bioengineers are fabricating and testing tunable electrospun scaffolds completely derived from decellularized skeletal muscle to promote the regeneration of injured skeletal muscle. Their paper in Science Advances shows how natural extracellular matrix can be made to mimic native skeletal muscle and direct the alignment, growth and differentiation of myotubes, one of the building blocks of skeletal muscle. The bioactive scaffolds are made in the lab via electrospinning, a high-throughput process that can produce single micron-scale fibers. The research could ease the burden of performing an estimated ...

Scientists have used fibre-optic sensing to obtain the most detailed measurements of ice properties ever taken on the Greenland Ice Sheet. Their findings will be used to make more accurate models of the future movement of the world's second-largest ice sheet, as the effects of climate change continue to accelerate. The research team, led by the University of Cambridge, used a new technique in which laser pulses are transmitted in a fibre-optic cable to obtain highly detailed temperature measurements from the surface of the ice sheet all the way to the base, more than 1000 metres below. In contrast to previous studies, which measured temperature from separate sensors located tens or even hundreds of metres apart, the new approach allows temperature ...