As a four-day work week is trialled in countries across the globe, health researchers at the University of South Australia say they’re ‘all in’ when it comes to a long weekend, especially as new empirical research shows that the extra time off is good for our health.   Assessing changes in daily movements before, during and after holidays, researchers found that people displayed more active, healthy behaviours when they were on holiday, even when they only had a three-day break.   Across the 13-month study period, people generally took an average two to three holidays, each being around 12 days. The most common holiday type was ‘outdoor ...

Anthocyanins are compounds related to the color of plants. They also have beneficial effects on human health and are used as a supplement. Various species of anthocyanins, divided by their molecular shape, are present in plants. Therefore, simple, and rapid, analytical techniques that can distinguish among these species in crops are necessary for breeding and quality assessment. A team of Nagoya University researchers in Japan has used a technique called probe electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (PESI/MS/MS) to analyze anthocyanins in crops. ...

A research team led by Dr Chaogu ZHENG from the School of Biological Sciences at The University of Hong Kong (HKU) has recently made a significant discovery about the evolutionary age of different type of cells in a small animal called Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans). By using single-cell transcriptomic data and refined phylostratigraphy, the team determines the transcriptomic age of individual cells, which means they are able to estimate the evolutionary origin of different cells based on the age of the genes expressed in the ...

Until recently, fish that eat coral — corallivores — were thought to weaken reef structures, while fish that consume algae and detritus — grazers — were thought to keep reefs healthy. But scientists have discovered that feces from grazers leave large lesions on coral, possibly because they contain coral pathogens. By contrast, feces from corallivores may provide a source of beneficial microbes that help coral thrive. “Corallivorous fish are generally regarded as harmful because they bite the corals,” said Dr Carsten Grupstra of Rice University, ...

Arlington, Va., April 13, 2023 – New data published today in the American Journal of Infection Control (AJIC) provide the first published evidence that a positive safety climate and adherence to standard precautions predict key healthcare-associated infection (HAI) and occupational health outcomes among patients and health care workers, respectively. The findings highlight features within hospitals’ organizations and safety climates that could be modified to improve these outcomes. “Despite the infection prevention and safety benefits associated with standard precautions, generating consistent adherence in the healthcare setting has been ...

“Recently, optimizing selenium intake in the population to prevent diseases [...] has been an important issue in modern health care worldwide.” BUFFALO, NY- April 12, 2023 – A new research paper was published in Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 15, Issue 6, entitled, “Selenium as a predictor of metabolic syndrome in middle age women.” Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is a widespread clinical entity that has become almost a global epidemic. Selenium plays an important role in metabolic homeostasis. It has been suggested that it ...

In a novel effort to create the next generation of plant-based, protein-rich environmentally sustainable and savory alternatives to animal meat, a University of Massachusetts Amherst food scientist has turned his attention to soybean meal. Globally, this byproduct of soybean oil extraction is used almost exclusively for animal feed. In the U.S. alone, some 48 million metric tons of soybean meal was produced in 2022, according to the USDA.  “After the oil extraction, the majority of the protein is in the meal, not the oil,” says Hang ...

“Our phase I study determined the tolerable dose of this combination and investigated its biologic effects.”  BUFFALO, NY- April 12, 2023 – A new research paper was published in Oncotarget's Volume 14 on April 10, 2023, entitled, “A phase I trial of riluzole and sorafenib in patients with advanced solid tumors: CTEP #8850.” Overexpression of metabotropic glutamate receptor 1 (GRM1) has been implicated in the pathogenesis of multiple cancers. Riluzole, an inhibitor of glutamate release, showed synergistic antitumor activity in combination with the multi-kinase inhibitor sorafenib ...

The COVID-19 pandemic led to increased weekday screentime for school-aged children says a new study involving the University of Ottawa published in JAMA Pediatrics. Researchers examined the change in children’s screen time from prior to the pandemic to three separate pandemic waves between 2020 and 2021. Researchers found a boost of up to 1.35 hours per day during the weekdays compared to prior to the pandemic, particularly with school closures at the onset of the pandemic. While the weekend time was on par with pre-pandemic levels, ...

A University of Texas at Arlington materials science and engineering researcher is working on a project to determine when failure happens in electronic device circuits. The research ultimately will help manufacturers design better semiconductor chips. Choong-Un Kim, professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, was awarded a $285,0000 grant from the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) for the project “Enabling Electromigration Solver for Solder Joint With Various Packaging Structures and Alloys.” This is the latest in a series of grants he has received from SRC that aims to answer the demand for improved device reliability. The SRC ...

Quantum information is a powerful technology for increasing the amount of information that can be processed and communicated securely. Using quantum entanglement to securely distribute a secret quantum state among multiple parties is known as “quantum state sharing.” An important protocol in quantum networks and cryptography, quantum state sharing works like this (in simple terms): a secret quantum state is divided into n shares and given to n players. The secret state can only be reconstructed ...

According to the U.S. Surgeon General, women should not drink alcoholic beverages during pregnancy because of the risk of birth defects in their unborn child. Now, research at Texas A&M University demonstrates that a father’s alcohol consumption before conception also links to growth defects that affect the development of his offspring’s brain, skull and face.  Research investigating fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) exclusively examines maternal alcohol exposure. However, because men drink more and are more likely to binge drink than women, Dr. Michael Golding, an associate ...

It’s extremely difficult to study the biological basis of psychiatric disorders, in part because researchers can’t easily collect brain cells from living people to study in the laboratory. Now, University of Utah Health scientists have developed a way around that. The researchers grew three-dimensional structures, called “organoids”, derived from blood cells donated by a patient with pediatric bipolar disorder and by several family members. The approach identified significant molecular changes linked to the psychiatric condition. The results, reported in Molecular Psychiatry, suggest that structural changes in the ...

Key takeaways: American College of Surgeons research published in JAMA Surgery reveals the complexities and variations that occurred in cancer reporting in the National Cancer Database (NCDB) because of the pandemic. The number of reported cancer cases in NCDB declined by 14.4% compared with prior years, representing more than 200,000 cancer cases that were not diagnosed and/or treated at accredited facilities. Research offers guidance to centers across the country on how to interpret data from 2020 and onwards. CHICAGO: New research from the American College of Surgeons (ACS) outlines significant ways that the COVID-19 pandemic destabilized usual patterns of cancer care as reported ...

MINNEAPOLIS – Studies have shown that Mexican Americans have worse outcomes after a stroke than non-Hispanic white Americans. A new study looks at whether the language Mexican American people speak is linked to how well they recover after a stroke. The study is published in the April 12, 2023, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. “Our study found that Mexican American people who spoke only Spanish had worse neurologic outcomes three months after having a stroke than Mexican American people who spoke only English or were bilingual,” said study author ...

Archaeological sites along the Libyan shoreline are at risk of being damaged or lost due to increasing coastal erosion, according to a study published April 12, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Kieran Westley and Julia Nikolaus of Ulster University, UK and colleagues. The Cyrenaican coast of Eastern Libya, stretching from the Gulf of Sirte to the current Egypt-Libya border, has a long history of human occupation back to the Palaeolithic era, and it therefore hosts numerous important and often ...

The death of a parent can affect the health and well-being of children and adolescents, including higher risk of depression. A study published in PLOS ONE by Dröfn Birgisdóttir at Lund University, Lund, Sweden and colleagues suggests poor family cohesion is associated with long-term psychological symptoms among bereaved youth. Parentally bereaved children are at increased risk for mental illness including depression, anxiety, suicide attempts, and self-injurious behaviors. However, the relationship ...

Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0265292 Article Title: Individually unique, fixed stripe configurations of Octopus chierchiae allow for photoidentification in long-term studies Author Countries: USA Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. END ...

Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0282396 Article Title: Uncomfortably high: Testing reveals inflated THC potency on retail Cannabis labels Author Countries: USA Funding: Headspace Sensory LLC provided funding for purchase of 13 of the 23 Cannabis samples that were included as part of another study [47], but had no other involvement in this study. All other funding was provided by the McGlaughlin Lab at the University of Northern Colorado and by the first author. Mile High Labs provided support for this study in the form of salaries for VJ and JH. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ ...

Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0283505 Article Title: The oldest known bat skeletons and their implications for Eocene chiropteran diversification Author Countries: The Netherlands, USA Funding: 1) Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Fund of the American Museum of Natural History (TBR) https://www.amnh.org/research/richard-gilder-graduate-school/academics-and-research/fellowship-and-grant-opportunities/research-grants-and-graduate-student-exchange-fellowships/roosevelt-memorial-fund 2) ...

Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0283465 Article Title: Impact assessment of immunization and the COVID-19 pandemic on varicella across Europe using digital epidemiology methods: A descriptive study Author Countries: Sweden, Lithuania, Ireland, USA, Spain Funding: Funding for this research was provided by Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, a subsidiary of Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA (MSD). We confirm that the funder provided support in the form of salaries for Ugne Sabale, Ligita Jarmale, Janice Murtagh, Manjiri Pawaskar, and Goran Bencina, but did not have any additional ...

New research into ancient populations that resided on the Tibetan Plateau has found that dairy pastoralism was being practiced far earlier than previously thought and may have been key to long-term settlement of the region’s extreme environment.  Professor Michael Petraglia, Director of Griffith’s Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, was part of the international research team that set out to understand how prehistoric populations adapted to the vast, agriculturally poor highlands of the Tibetan Plateau.  The research, ...

Diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) is a lethal pediatric brain cancer that often kills within a year of diagnosis. Surgery is almost impossible because of the tumors’ location. Chemotherapy has debilitating side effects. New treatment options are desperately needed. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Professor Adrian Krainer is best known for his groundbreaking research on antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs)—molecules that can control protein levels in cells. His efforts led to Spinraza®, ...

The Tibetan Plateau, known as the “third pole”, or “roof of the world”, is one of the most inhospitable environments on Earth. While positive natural selection at several genomic loci enabled early Tibetans to better adapt to high elevations, obtaining sufficient food from the resource-poor highlands would have remained a challenge.  Now, a new study in the journal Science Advances reveals that dairy was a key component of early human diets on the Tibetan Plateau. The study reports ancient ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed an electronic patch that can be applied to the leaves of plants to monitor crops for different pathogens – such as viral and fungal infections – and stresses such as drought or salinity. In testing, the researchers found the patch was able to detect a viral infection in tomatoes more than a week before growers would be able to detect any visible symptoms of disease. “This is important because the earlier growers can identify plant diseases or fungal infections, the ...