A recent study in the Journal of Biological Chemistry revealed the key to a protein that commonly causes blindness. The biological process involves a protein that is essential for transporting toxic compounds out of the eye, similar to a garbage recycling service. The challenge is that, like food and the waste it generates, these compounds are essential for the eye to function properly — until they build up and cause blindness. The scientists behind the study research a protein transporter, called ABCA4, that lines the edges of specialized photoreceptor cells in the retina and is normally poised to remove toxic, fatty retinal byproducts ...

In a study conducted in the lab as well as during the COVID-19 lockdowns, participants reported higher levels of tiredness after eight hours of social isolation. The results suggest that low energy may be a basic human response to a lack of social contact. The study conducted at the University of Vienna and published in Psychological Science also showed that this response was affected by social personality traits of the participants.  If we do not eat for an extended period, a series of biological processes ensue that create a craving sensation we recognize as hunger. As a social species, we also need other people to survive. Evidence shows that a lack of social contact induces ...

Insilico Medicine (“Insilico”), a clinical-stage generative artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery company, today announced that four abstracts have been accepted as poster presentations at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2023. Insilico will present four novel inhibitors for the treatment of cancer developed with its end-to-end Pharma.AI platform. Drawing from trillions of data points and millions of compounds and molecular fragments, the platform uses ...

Red tides, caused by Karenia brevis blooms, are a recurring problem in the coastal Gulf of Mexico. The organism, Karenia brevis, produces toxins that can cause fish kills, respiratory irritation in humans and cause death in sea turtles, dolphins, manatees and birds. The ability to detect red tide blooms at all life stages and cell concentrations is critical to increasing predictive capabilities and developing potential mitigation strategies to protect public health and vital resources. Current methods used to monitor red tide such as microscopic identification and enumeration, standard flow cytometry, as well as others have limitations. Some of these ...

April 4, 2023, TORONTO — Becoming the first genomics lab to be accredited by three of the leading North American accreditation organizations positions OICR Genomics to generate new discoveries about what drives diseases like cancer and new, personalized ways to diagnose and treat them. The lab earned a Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) certificate of accreditation in January 2023 for its whole genome and whole transcriptome sequencing assay, a comprehensive genetic test that can find all changes in the DNA of a tumour. This comes after accreditation from the College of American Pathologists (CAP) in 2021 and from Accreditation Canada Diagnostics (ACD) — ...

SPOKANE, Wash.—Researchers have long known that many animals live longer in colder climates than in warmer climates. New research in C. elegans nematode worms suggests that this phenomenon is tied to a protein found in the nervous system that controls the expression of collagens, the primary building block of skin, bone and connective tissue in many animals. Since the C. elegans’ protein is similar to nervous system receptor proteins found in other species including humans, the discovery potentially brings scientists closer to finding ways to harness collagen expression to slow down human aging and increase lifespan in the ...

In the United States alone, drug-resistant bacteria and fungi infect almost 3 million people per year and kill about 35,000. Antibiotics are essential and effective, but in recent years overuse has led to some bacteria developing resistance to them. The infections are so difficult to treat, the World Health Organization deemed antibiotic resistance a top 10 global public health threat. Now, Professor John E. Moses at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has created a new weapon against these drug-resistant ...

Sixty per cent of the world's fresh water is bound up in Antarctic ice sheets. Thirty million cubic kilometres of ice is perhaps a difficult number to grasp. But if absolutely all Antarctica’s ice melted, the seas would rise by 58 metres on average. “The ice sheet in East Antarctica stores enormous amounts of water. This means that this is the biggest possible source of future sea level rise – up to 53 meters if all of the East Antarctic ice melts – and is seen as the largest source of uncertainties in the ...

A research team at Chalmers University of Technology is the first to demonstrate a unique method that reduces the aerodynamic resistance of ships by 7.5 per cent. This opens the way for large cargo ships borne across the oceans by wind alone, as wind-powered ships are more affected by aerodynamic drag than fossil-fueled ones. To hit international climate targets, the carbon emissions from shipping must be reduced by more than 50 per cent by 2050 compared to 2008 levels. As much as 99 per cent of global shipping is currently dependent on fossil fuels. Even though electricity may carry smaller ferries ...

Québec City, April 4, 2023 – Genetic factors could contribute to up to 50-75% of the variance in body mass index, or BMI, in the population. By analyzing the genome of more than 800,000 people of European descent, a research team from Université Laval and the Quebec Heart and Lung Institute Research Centre has identified 60 unique proteins expressed in the brain that may be critical regulators of body weight.  This study explored the link between genetic regions associated with body weight and the proteins expressed in the brain. "Previous ...

Research Highlights: Surviving family members of a person who died from sudden cardiac death rely on information from death investigators and health care professionals to process their relative’s death and understand their own risk of inherited heart conditions. The type and timing of the communication received from death investigators and health care professionals influences family members’ experiences and decisions about whether to pursue genetic screening. Future research is needed to guide death investigators and health ...

With a growing interest in generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems worldwide, researchers at the University of Surrey have created software that is able to verify how much information an AI farmed from an organisation’s digital database. Surrey’s verification software can be used as part of a company’s online security protocol, helping an organisation understand whether an AI has learned too much or even accessed sensitive data. The software is also capable of identifying whether AI has identified and is capable of exploiting flaws in software code. For example, in ...

When the human remains found on board the warship Vasa were investigated, it was determined that the skeleton designated G was a man. New research now shows that the skeleton is actually from a woman. About thirty people died when Vasa sank on its maiden voyage in 1628. We cannot know who most of them were, only one person is named in the written sources. When the ship was raised in 1961 it was the scene of a comprehensive archaeological excavation, in which numerous human bones were found on board and examined. “Through osteological analysis it has been ...

Using real data from an online chess platform, scientists of the Complexity Science Hub and the Centro Ricerche Enrico Fermi (CREF) studied similarities of different chess openings. Based on these similarities, they developed a new classification method which can complement the standard classification. "To find out how similar chess openings actually are to each other - meaning in real game behavior - we drew on the wisdom of the crowd," Giordano De Marzo of the Complexity Science Hub and the Centro Ricerche Enrico Fermi (CREF) explains. The researchers analyzed 3,746,135 chess games, 18,253 players and 988 ...

A new paper in Rheumatology Advances in Practice, published by Oxford University Press, indicates that Granulomatosis With Polyangiitis, a nasal disease that causes inflammation of the blood vessels and commonly presents with symptoms in sinuses, throat, lungs, and kidneys, may be commonly misdiagnosed. Researchers believe that many patients identified with the sinus and nasal limited form of the disease may actually be suffering from nasal damage due to cocaine usage. Cocaine is the second most commonly abused drug in the United Kingdom with 2.6% of the population between ages 16 and 59 years old using it. Some 4.8 million people in the United States (or 1.7% ...

Vitamin D deficiency is common among serving military personnel of Navies in the global north, especially submariners, finds a systematic review of the available evidence, published online in Occupational & Environmental Medicine. Countermeasures, such as periodic vitamin D assessment and dietary supplements, should now be considered, say the researchers. Vitamin D has an essential role in musculoskeletal health and in helping to control infections and dampen down inflammation in the body, so is key to ensuring the physical fitness of active duty Navy military ...

A new study from researchers in the Lifecourse Epidemiology of Adiposity (LEAD) Center at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus shows that 90 percent of pregnant women do not receive adequate nutrients during pregnancy from food alone and must look to supplements to fill that deficit. However, they also discovered that 99 percent of the affordable dietary supplements on the market do not contain appropriate doses of key micronutrients that are urgently needed to make up for the nutritional imbalance. The study was published today in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.   “Nutrition is critical for a healthy mom and a healthy baby. ...

Nocturnal basking has only recently been reported in wild freshwater turtles, but this study suggests that the behaviour is widespread and occurs in many species. Postdoctoral Researcher at La Trobe University Dr Donald McKnight said he first observed freshwater turtles nocturnal basking at the Ross River in Townsville. “They were coming up at night and sitting on logs exhibiting very much the same behavior they do during the day; when we looked into it, it wasn’t something that turtles reportedly did,” Dr McKnight said. “We think it's related to temperature. The water is staying so warm at night that it's actually ...

Cancer is not incurable anymore. Nevertheless, according to statistics released by Statistics Korea last year, cancer remained the primary cause of mortality in Korea in 2021. This highlights the ongoing struggle against cancer, which demands effective prevention measures as well as timely diagnosis and prompt intervention through effective treatment. However, the question remains whether it is feasible to provide treatment promptly upon diagnosis.   A POSTECH research team led by Professor Young Tae Chang (Department of Chemistry) ...

Fresh insights into how our bodies interact with the microbes living in our guts suggest that a two-drug combination may offer a new way to treat inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. The potential treatment pathway emerges from a study led by experts at Cincinnati Children’s published online March 28, 2023, in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.  Co-first authors were Garrett Overcast, PhD, and Hannah Meibers, BS. Corresponding author was Chandrashekhar Pasare, DVM, PhD, Division of Immunobiology and ...

The photoexcitation, and especially photoionization, is one of the most important manifestations of the light-matter interaction in nature, ranging from photosynthesis in plants and vision in biology to photography and laser processing of materials. It is generally accepted that the change in a substance is weaker, the less light is absorbed. Here we found that this is not always the case. In a new paper published in Light Science & Application, a team of scientists, led by Professor Peter G. Kazansky from Optoelectronics Research Centre, University of Southampton, United Kingdom and co-workers have demonstrated efficient ultrafast laser nanostructuring ...

Marine predators have expanded their ranges  into the Arctic waters over the last twenty years, driven by climate change and associated increases in productivity. The seas surrounding the Arctic are important fisheries and ecological regions; they are also among the areas most affected by climate change. The effects of warming waters and loss of sea ice on the biodiversity of these waters, and hence their ecology, is still not fully understood. An international team of researchers led by Dr. Irene D. Alabia at the Arctic Research Center at Hokkaido University has examined Arctic-wide ...

Gas emissions are the manifestation of activity occurring beneath the surface of a volcano. Measuring them lets researchers see what can’t be seen from the surface. This knowledge is vital for hazard monitoring and the prediction of future eruptions. Since the mid-2000s, ultraviolet SO2 cameras have become important tools to measure emissions. The measurement campaigns, however, must be accompanied by a user, making SO2 cameras unsuitable for acquiring long-term datasets. Building and operating this type of camera can cost upwards ...

Personality has become a more important factor than finances when it comes to dating, a new study has found. Researchers from the University of York and the University of Essex analysed more than a million lonely hearts ads and found that in the USA, France, and Canada, there was a sharp decline in economic factors when choosing a partner. However, finances remained an important issue in India when it came to relationships. To see how partner preferences changed over time, the researchers analysed lonely hearts ads from various major news outlets from Canada, France, and India. They collected data from publications from 1950 to 1995, the year that most of these ads shifted to being online. ...

Today (4 April) the British Ecological Society has published the results of a three-year randomised trial comparing double and single-anonymous peer review in the journal Functional Ecology. The findings indicate a reduction in reviewer bias when author identities are anonymised.  The three-year randomised trial in the journal Functional Ecology, provides the most compressive data yet on the effects of anonymising authors during scholarly journal peer review.  Double-anonymous peer review, also referred to as double-blind peer review, is where author identities are not disclosed to reviewers. This differs from single-anonymous peer review where reviewers know ...