Just as people keep their houses clean and clutter under control, a crew of cells in the body is in charge of clearing the waste the body generates, including dying cells. The housekeeping cells remove unwanted material by a process called phagocytosis, which literally means 'eating cells.' The housekeepers engulf and ingest the dying cells and break them down to effectively eliminate them. "Phagocytosis is very important for the body's health," said Dr. Zheng Zhou, whose lab at Baylor College of Medicine has been studying phagocytosis for many years and provided key new insights into this essential process. "When this cell-eat-cell process fails, the dying cells will lose their integrity, break down and release their content into the surrounding tissues. Dumping the ...

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists have developed an integrated, high-throughput system to better understand and possibly manipulate gene expression for treatment of disorders such as sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia. The research appears today in the journal Nature Genetics. Researchers used the system to identify dozens of DNA regulatory elements that act together to orchestrate the switch from fetal to adult hemoglobin expression. The method can also be used to study other diseases that involve gene regulation. Regulatory elements, also called genetic switches, are scattered throughout non-coding regions of DNA. ...

Retinoblastoma starts in the retina, the thin membrane at the back of the eye. Most patients are infants or toddlers when their cancer is found. Without treatment, the cancer spreads. Thanks to chemotherapy, surgery and other treatments, 96% of patients survive. St. Jude researchers studied how survivors fared years later at home and at school. A previous St. Jude study of 98 retinoblastoma survivors found that their early learning and life skills declined from diagnosis to age 5. Researchers tested 78 of the same survivors five years later. The results were more upbeat. By age 10, almost all the children functioned within the normal range ...

Asthma attacks account for almost 50 percent of the cost of asthma care which totals $80 billion each year in the United States. Asthma is more severe in Black and Hispanic/Latinx patients, with double the rates of attacks and hospitalizations as the general population. When the COVID-19 pandemic swept over the United States, a series of reports suggested that fewer people were coming to emergency departments for all sorts of medical problems, including asthma attacks and even heart attacks. In the case of asthma, it was not clear if the drop was due to people avoiding emergency services or due to better asthma control. A new analysis from investigators at Brigham and Women's Hospital shines new light on this question. In a report of ...

Vaccination dramatically reduced COVID-19 symptomatic and asymptomatic infections in St. Jude Children's Research Hospital employees compared with their unvaccinated peers, according to a research letter that appears today in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study is among the first to show an association between COVID-19 vaccination and fewer asymptomatic infections. When the Pfizer-BioNTech BNT162b2 vaccine was authorized for use in the U.S., the vaccine was reported to be highly effective at preventing laboratory-confirmed COVID-19. Clinical trial data suggested that the two-dose regimen ...

New research combines cutting-edge engineering with animal behaviour to explain the origins of efficient swimming in Nature's underwater acrobats: Seals and Sea Lions. Seals and sea lions are fast swimming ocean predators that use their flippers to literally fly through the water. But not all seals are the same: some swim with their front flippers while others propel themselves with their back feet. In Australia, we have fur seals and sea lions that have wing-like front flippers specialised for swimming, while in the Northern Hemisphere, grey and harbor seals have stubby, clawed paws and swim with their feet. But the reasons ...

Sea turtles are known for relying on magnetic signatures to find their way across thousands of miles to the very beaches where they hatched. Now, researchers reporting in the journal Current Biology on May 6 have some of the first solid evidence that sharks also rely on magnetic fields for their long-distance forays across the sea. "It had been unresolved how sharks managed to successfully navigate during migration to targeted locations," said Save Our Seas Foundation project leader Bryan Keller, also of Florida State University Coastal and Marine Laboratory. "This research supports the theory that they use the earth's magnetic field to help them find their way; it's nature's GPS." Researchers ...

Scientists in China and Germany have designed an artificial color-changing material that mimics chameleon skin, with luminogens (molecules that make crystals glow) organized into different core and shell hydrogel layers instead of one uniform matrix. The findings, published May 6 in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science, demonstrate that a two-luminogen hydrogel chemosensor developed with this design can detect seafood freshness by changing color in response to amine vapors released by microbes as fish spoils. The material may also be used to advance the development of stretchable electronics, dynamic camouflaging robots, and anticounterfeiting technologies. "This novel core-shell layout does not require a careful choice of luminogen pairs, nor does it require an ...

Mini-organs or organoids play a big role in the future of medicine. Their countless applications can help develop and implement tailored therapies for each patient. The revolutionary development of organoids started in Utrecht with a group of curious scientists. But when organoid research starting booming, confusion arose. What exactly is an organoid? Are there different types, and if so, what should they be called? A group of experts from around the world now publishes the first consensus on what is - and what is not - an organoid. Bart Spee, Associate Professor at Utrecht University's faculty of Veterinary Medicine, is ...

The "Third Pole" of the Earth, the high mountain ranges of Asia, bears the largest number of glaciers outside the polar regions. A Sino-Swiss research team has revealed the dramatic increase in flood risk that could occur across Earth's icy Third Pole in response to ongoing climate change. Focusing on the threat from new lakes forming in front of rapidly retreating glaciers, a team, led by researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, demonstrated that the related flood risk to communities and their infrastructure could almost triple. ...

New research by Joseph Wu, Edgar Engelman, and colleagues at Stanford University, US has advanced an old concept to develop a new strategy to train the immune system of mice to recognize cancer cells. This work is based on the recent understanding that induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which are stem cells generated from skin or blood cells through a method called reprogramming, produce a large set of antigens that have overlap to a specific type of pancreatic cancer and that these similarities can be used for potential clinical benefit. It is well known that vaccines can be highly effective ...

In spintronics, the magnetic moment of electrons (spin) is used to transfer and manipulate information. An ultra-compact 2D spin-logic circuitry could be built from 2D materials that can transport the spin information over long distances and also provide strong spin-polarization of charge current. Experiments by physicists at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands) and Colombia University (USA) suggest that magnetic graphene can be the ultimate choice for these 2D spin-logic devices as it efficiently converts charge to spin current and can transfer this strong spin-polarization ...

At extremely low temperatures, matter often behaves differently than in normal conditions. At temperatures only a few degrees above absolute zero (-273 degrees Celsius), physical particles may give up their independence and merge for a short time into a single object in which all the particles share the same properties. Such structures are known as Bose-Einstein Condensates, and they represent a special aggregate state of matter. An international team of researchers led by physicists Dr Carlos Anton-Solanas and Professor Christian Schneider from the UNiversity of Oldenburg has now succeeded for the first time in generating this unusual quantum state in charge carrier complexes that are closely linked ...

Hydrogen-based fuels should primarily be used in sectors such as aviation or industrial processes that cannot be electrified, finds a team of researchers. Producing these fuels is too inefficient, costly and their availability too uncertain, to broadly replace fossil fuels for instance in cars or heating houses. For most sectors, directly using electricity for instance in battery electric cars or heat pumps makes more economic sense. Universally relying on hydrogen-based fuels instead and keeping combustion technologies threatens to lock in a further fossil fuel dependency ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. ? Heart disease can take a number of forms, but some types of heart disease, such as asymptomatic low ejection fraction, can be hard to recognize, especially in the early stages when treatment would be most effective. The ECG AI-Guided Screening for Low Ejection Fraction, or EAGLE, trial set out to determine whether an artificial intelligence (AI) screening tool developed to detect low ejection fraction using data from an EKG could improve the diagnosis of this condition in routine practice. Study findings are published in Nature Medicine. Systolic low ejection fraction is defined as the heart's inability to contract strongly enough with each beat to pump at least 50% of the blood from ...

What The Editorial Says: JAMA Health Forum debuts this week as a peer-reviewed, open-access, online journal focused on health policy, health care systems, and global and public health. The journal has transitioned from an online health policy channel and is the newest member of the family of JAMA Network specialty journals. The editor of JAMA Health Forum is John Z. Ayanian, M.D., M.P.P., of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and the deputy editor is Melinda B. Buntin, Ph.D., of the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee. Authors: John Z. Ayanian, M.D., M.P.P., of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at ...

What The Study Did: Researchers compared health care use among patients with COVID-19 who were enrolled in a home monitoring program with similar patients who were not enrolled. Authors: Anita D. Misra-Hebert, M.D., M.P.H., of the Cleveland Clinic, 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/jamahealthforum.2021.0333) 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 and financial disclosures, and funding and support. INFORMATION: Media advisory: The full study and editor's ...

New York, NY (May 6, 2021) -- Researchers have finally cracked the code of a bewildering pediatric disease that sets off a characteristic cytokine storm--a harmful immune system overaction resembling one that arises in COVID-19 cases--and can lead to catastrophic multisystem organ failure or neurodegeneration. Their study, which identifies the cause of the cytokine storm and possible treatments, was published in Nature Medicine in May. The mystery of this disease, Langerhans-cell histiocytosis (LCH), runs deep. Its symptoms vary widely, and LCH has the ability to infiltrate almost any organ system, leaving most patients with long-term ...

A team of researchers from UCLA, Cedars-Sinai and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation has developed a first-of-its-kind molecular catalog of cells in healthy lungs and the lungs of people with cystic fibrosis. The catalog, described today in the journal Nature Medicine, reveals new subtypes of cells and illustrates how the disease changes the cellular makeup of the airways. The findings could help scientists in their search for specific cell types that represent prime targets for genetic and cell therapies for cystic fibrosis. "This new research has provided us with valuable insights into the cellular makeup of both healthy and diseased airways," said Dr. Brigitte Gomperts, a co-senior author of the study and a member of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative ...

Obesity may be a stronger risk factor for death, severe pneumonia and the need for intubation in men than in women with COVID-19, according to a study published in the European Journal of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases. An analysis of a cohort of 3530 COVID-19 patients showed that both moderate (BMI of 35/m2 or higher) and severe obesity (BMI of 40kg/m2 and higher) in men but only severe obesity in women (BMI of 40kg/m2 and higher) was associated greater risk of developing severe disease, needing intubation and dying from COVID-19 in hospital. Previous research demonstrated that obesity is a risk factor for hospitalization, severe disease, and death in patients with COVID-19. ...

Bacteria contain symmetry in their DNA signals that enable them to be read either forwards or backwards, according to new findings at the University of Birmingham which challenge existing knowledge about gene transcription. In all living organisms, DNA code is divided into sections which provide information about a specific process. These must be read before the information can be used. Cells identify the start of each section using 'signposts', which scientists first identified in the 1960s. It has always been assumed that these signposts enable genetic sequences ...

The origins of a pretty smile have long been sought in the fearsome jaws of living sharks which have been considered living fossils reflecting the ancestral condition for vertebrate tooth development and inference of its evolution. However, this view ignores real fossils which more accurately reflect the nature of ancient ancestors. New research led by the University of Bristol and the Naturalis Biodiversity Center published in Nature Ecology and Evolution reveals that the dentitions of living shark relatives are entirely unrepresentative of the last shared ancestor of jawed vertebrates. The study reveals ...

What The Study Did: This study estimates the association between Pfizer-BioNTech BNT162b2 vaccination and symptomatic and asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections among health care workers more than seven days after getting a second vaccine dose. Authors: Ronen Ben-Ami, M.D., of the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center in Israel, 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.2021.7152) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support. INFORMATION: Media advisory: The full study ...

What The Study Did: This study describes an association between the Pfizer-BioNTech BNT162b2 vaccine and decreased risk of symptomatic and asymptomatic infections with SARS-CoV-2 in hospital employees. Authors: Li Tang, Ph.D., of the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, 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.2021.6564) 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 ...

The bulging, equator-belted midsection of Earth currently teems with a greater diversity of life than anywhere else -- a biodiversity that generally wanes when moving from the tropics to the mid-latitudes and the mid-latitudes to the poles. As well-accepted as that gradient is, though, ecologists continue to grapple with the primary reasons for it. New research from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Yale University and Stanford University suggests that temperature can largely explain why the greatest variety of aquatic life resides in the tropics -- but also why it has not ...