DNA sequencing has become so common, few realize how hard it is to even extract a single molecule of DNA from a biological sample. Research led by UC Riverside is making it easier to detect and capture DNA from fluid samples such as blood using a tiny glass tube and electric current. The technique, described in the journal, Nanoscale, can also improve cancer diagnosis in the future. DNA, a double-stranded, electrically charged molecule that contains all the information an organism needs to create and organize the building blocks of life, is tightly folded within the cell nucleus. Extracting the DNA from a single cell is time consuming and impractical for many medical and scientific purposes. Fortunately, as cells die naturally, their membranes burst, releasing the contents, including ...

Bans on menthol cigarettes across Canada from 2016 to 2017 led to a significant increase in the number of smokers who attempted to quit, smokers who quit successfully, and lower rates of relapse among former smokers, according to a new research study from the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project (the ITC Project) at the University of Waterloo. Menthol is the most common flavoring for cigarettes in many countries. Menthol creates a cooling sensation, which reduces the harshness of cigarette smoke. Because of this, menthol leads to increased experimentation and progression ...

New research from UVA Cancer Center could rescue once-promising immunotherapies for treating solid cancer tumors, such as ovarian, colon and triple-negative breast cancer, that ultimately failed in human clinical trials. The research from Jogender Tushir-Singh, PhD, explains why the antibody approaches effectively killed cancer tumors in lab tests but proved ineffective in people. He found that the approaches had an unintended effect on the human immune system that potentially disabled the immune response they sought to enhance. The new findings allowed Tushir-Singh to increase the approaches' effectiveness significantly in lab models, reducing tumor size and improving overall survival. The promising results suggest the renewed potential for the strategies in human patients, he and his ...

Seafood is a pillar of global food security--long recognized for its protein content. But research is highlighting a critical new link between the biodiversity of aquatic ecosystems and the micronutrient-rich seafood diets that help combat micronutrient deficiencies, or 'hidden hunger', in vulnerable populations. "Getting the most nutritional value per gram of seafood is crucial in fighting hidden hunger and meeting United Nations Sustainable Development Goals," says Dr. Joey Bernhardt, an ecologist from the University of British Columbia (UBC) who led the study, published this week in the Proceedings of the National ...

Nagoya University scientists in Japan have demonstrated how DNA-like molecules could have come together as a precursor to the origins of life. The findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, not only suggest how life might have begun, but also have implications for the development of artificial life and biotechnology applications. "The RNA world is widely thought to be a stage in the origin of life," says Nagoya University biomolecular engineer Keiji Murayama. "Before this stage, the pre-RNA world may have been based on molecules called xeno nucleic acids ...

Tsukuba, Japan - Many life forms use light as an important biological signal, including animals with visual and non-visual systems. But now, researchers from Japan have found that neuronal cells may have initially evolved to regulate digestion according to light information. In a study published this month in BMC Biology, researchers from the University of Tsukuba have revealed that sea urchins use light to regulate the opening and closing of the pylorus, which is an important component of the digestive tract. Light-dependent systems often rely on the activity of proteins in the Opsin family, and these are found across the animal kingdom, including in organisms with visual and non-visual systems. Understanding ...

LOS ANGELES (April 5, 2021) -- New research from the Smidt Heart Institute shows that more patients--specifically those with medical risk factors or from underserved communities--opted into telehealth appointments for their cardiovascular care during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data also suggests these telehealth patients underwent fewer diagnostic tests and received fewer medications than patients who saw their doctors in person. The findings, published in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) Network Open, point to "digital shifts" in cardiovascular care amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. "We were encouraged to learn that access to cardiovascular ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Emily Ury remembers the first time she saw them. She was heading east from Columbia, North Carolina, on the flat, low-lying stretch of U.S. Highway 64 toward the Outer Banks. Sticking out of the marsh on one side of the road were not one but hundreds dead trees and stumps, the relic of a once-healthy forest that had been overrun by the inland creep of seawater. "I was like, 'Whoa.' No leaves; no branches. The trees were literally just trunks. As far as the eye could see," said Ury, who recently earned a biology Ph.D. at Duke University working with professors Emily Bernhardt and Justin Wright. In bottomlands throughout the U.S. East ...

Tsukuba, Japan - With a prevalence of about one in 10 people worldwide, chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a global health problem. It also often goes undetected, leading to a range of negative health outcomes, including death. Catching it at an early stage and adjusting nutrition and lifestyle can improve and extend life, but only if there are economically feasible systems in place to promote and educate on this. Amid finite health-care resources, any CKD intervention must be both practical and cost-effective. A team of researchers centered at the University of Tsukuba now believe they have found a CKD behavioral intervention that can be delivered at a reasonable cost. They published their findings in the Journal of Renal Nutrition. Changing eating and lifestyle habits, and ...

For the implementation of the effective hydrogen economy in the forthcoming years, hydrogen produced from sources like coal and petroleum must be transported from its production sites to the end user often over long distances and to achieve successful hydrogen trade between countries. Drs. Hyuntae Sohn and Changwon Yoon and their team at the Center for Hydrogen-fuel Cell Research of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) have announced a novel nanometal catalyst, constituting 60% less *ruthenium (Ru), an expensive precious metal used to extract hydrogen via ammonia decomposition. *Ruthenium is a metal with the atomic number 44, and is a hard, expensive, silvery-white member of the platinum group of elements. Ammonia has recently emerged as a liquid storage and transport ...

Epidemiological studies have found that transportation noise increases the risk of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, with high-quality evidence for ischaemic heart disease. According to the WHO, ?1.6 million healthy life-years are lost annually from traffic-related noise in Western Europe. Traffic noise at night causes fragmentation and shortening of sleep, elevation of stress hormone levels, and increased oxidative stress in the vasculature and the brain. These factors can promote vascular dysfunction, inflammation and hypertension, thereby elevating the risk of cardiovascular ...

Humans have altered the ocean soundscape by drowning out natural noises relied upon by many marine animals, from shrimp to sharks. Sound travels fast and far in water, and sea creatures use sound to communicate, navigate, hunt, hide and mate. Since the industrial revolution, humans have introduced their own underwater cacophony from shipping vessels, seismic surveys searching for oil and gas, sonar mapping of the ocean floor, coastal construction and wind farms. Global warming could further alter the ocean soundscape as the melting Arctic opens up more ...

The world's first ground-based observations of the bare nucleus of a comet nearing the end of its active life revealed that the nucleus has a diameter of 800 meters and is covered with large grains of phyllosilicate; on Earth large grains of phyllosilicate are commonly available as talcum powder. This discovery provides clues to piece together the history of how this comet evolved into its current burnt-out state. Comet nuclei are difficult to observe because when they enter the inner Solar System, where they are easy to observe from Earth, they heat up and release gas and dust which ...

April 06, 2020-- A new commentary published online in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society provides an exhaustive examination of published research that discusses whether air pollution may be linked to worse COVID-19 outcomes. The studies that the authors examined look at several potential disease mechanisms, and also at the relationship between pollution, respiratory viruses and health disparities. In "COVID-19 Pandemic: A Wake-Up Call for Clean Air," Stephen Andrew Mein, MD, Department of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, and colleagues ...

A University of Guam review of published research on the critically endangered Serianthes nelsonii tree has revealed a reason why the population of the trees continues to be endangered despite a long history of funded conservation projects and a national recovery plan implemented 26 years ago. The review article, co-authored by biologists of the Plant Physiology Laboratory of UOG's Western Pacific Tropical Research Center, was published on March 2 in Horticulturae journal (doi:10.3390/horticulturae7030043). "A main message of our paper is that decision-makers from funding agencies limit conservation success when practitioners ...

A revolutionary technology developed within the END ...

WASHINGTON, April 6, 2021 -- Home brewing enthusiasts and major manufacturers alike experience the same result of the beer-making process: mounds of leftover grain. Once all the flavor has been extracted from barley and other grains, what's left is a protein- and fiber-rich powder that is typically used in cattle feed or put in landfills. Today, scientists report a new way to extract the protein and fiber from brewer's spent grain and use it to create new types of protein sources, biofuels and more. The researchers will present their results today at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS Spring 2021 is being held online April 5-30. Live sessions will be hosted April 5-16, ...

By 2050 global warming could reduce crop yields by one-third. UC Riverside researchers have identified a gene that could put the genie back in the bottle. Warmer temperatures signal to plants that summer is coming. Anticipating less water, they flower early then lack the energy to produce more seeds, so crop yields are lower. This is problematic as the world's population is expected to balloon to 10 billion, with much less food to eat. "We need plants that can endure warmer temperatures, have a longer time to flower and a longer growth period," said UCR botany and plant sciences professor ...

DALLAS, April 6, 2021 -- A tsunami of chronic health conditions as a result of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, especially cardiometabolic disease, may produce an enormous wave of death and disability that demands immediate, comprehensive strategies. In addition, COVID-19 has disrupted cardiovascular science and medicine, yet it presents opportunities to transform and create novel approaches that can yield new successes. These are the opinions of two esteemed leaders in cardiovascular disease care, research and strategy, detailed in two new Frame of Reference articles published today in the American Heart Association's flagship journal Circulation. While COVID-19 has severely impacted everyone's daily lives, its societal ...

The inequality is enormous: Mothers in select African countries are more than 100 times more likely to have had a child die than mothers in high-income countries. This is what Diego Alburez-Gutierrez (Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in Rostock, Germany), Emily Smith-Greenaway (Researcher at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles and Guest Researcher at MPIDR), and co-authors found in their recent paper published in BMJ Global Health. "We offer the first global estimates of the cumulative number of child deaths experienced by mothers ...

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (APRIL 6, 2021). New research by a team from the Cleveland Clinic and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) has determined that surgeries performed late in the workweek, and those culminating in discharge to a specialty care facility, are associated with higher costs and unnecessarily longer stays in the hospital following a common elective spine surgery. Sebastian Salas-Vega, PhD, and colleagues retrospectively reviewed the data for all adult patients who underwent elective lumbar laminectomy over a nearly three-year period at any Ohio hospital included within ...

Newer is not always better; a study in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) led by researchers at the University of Warwick shows that simple fetal heartbeat monitoring is still the best method for determining whether a baby is in distress during delivery and whether cesarean delivery is needed http://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.202538. Cesarean delivery is the most common surgical procedure worldwide, performed to expedite birth and avoid neonatal complications. Listening to the fetal heart rate using a stethoscope -- intermittent auscultation -- has been used for years to assess the fetal state and whether the baby is experiencing distress that might require a cesarean delivery. Other monitoring techniques have become ...

Legalization of recreational cannabis may be associated with an increase in fatal motor vehicle collisions based on data from the United States, and authors discuss the implications for Canada in an analysis in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). "Analyses of data suggest that legalization of recreational cannabis in United States jurisdictions may be associated with a small but significant increase in fatal motor vehicle collisions and fatalities, which, if extrapolated to the Canadian context, could result in as many as 308 additional driving fatalities annually," says Ms. Sarah Windle, Lady Davis Institute/McGill ...

Hamilton, ON (April 6, 2021) - If you are one of the millions of people worldwide suffering from allergies, you may take an antihistamine pill to ward off hives, sneezing and watery eyes. But you may be taking your medications incorrectly, says Derek Chu, a McMaster University allergy expert and clinical scholar. "People need to rethink what they stock in their home cabinets as allergy medicines, what hospitals keep on formulary, and what policymakers recommend. The message needs to get out. This publication is on time for the spring allergy season and as COVID vaccines roll out, for which rashes are common and antihistamines can be helpful," said Chu. Co-author Gordon ...

The idea of implantable sensors that continuously transmit information on vital values and concentrations of substances or drugs in the body has fascinated physicians and scientists for a long time. Such sensors enable the constant monitoring of disease progression and therapeutic success. However, until now implantable sensors have not been suitable to remain in the body permanently but had to be replaced after a few days or weeks. On the one hand, there is the problem of implant rejection because the body recognizes the sensor as a foreign object. On the other hand, the sensor's color which indicates concentration changes has been unstable so far and faded over time. Scientists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) have developed a novel type of implantable sensor which can ...