When you slip into sleep, it's easy to imagine that your brain shuts down, but University of Michigan research suggests that groups of neurons activated during prior learning keep humming, tattooing memories into your brain. U-M researchers have been studying how memories associated with a specific sensory event are formed and stored in mice. In a study conducted prior to the coronavirus pandemic and recently published in Nature Communications, the researchers examined how a fearful memory formed in relation to a specific visual stimulus. They found that not only did the neurons activated by the visual ...

SAN ANTONIO -- Feb. 22, 2021 -- From aboard the Juno spacecraft, a Southwest Research Institute-led instrument observing auroras serendipitously spotted a bright flash above Jupiter's clouds last spring. The Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) team studied the data and determined that they had captured a bolide, an extremely bright meteoroid explosion in the gas giant's upper atmosphere. "Jupiter undergoes a huge number of impacts per year, much more than the Earth, so impacts themselves are not rare," said SwRI's Dr. Rohini Giles, lead author of a paper outlining these findings in Geophysical Research Letters. "However, they are so short-lived that it is relatively unusual to see them. Only larger impacts can be seen from Earth, and you have to be lucky to be pointing ...

Astronomers have long been looking into the vast universe in hopes of discovering alien civilisations. But for a planet to have life, liquid water must be present. The chances of that finding scenario have seemed impossible to calculate because it has been the assumption that planets like Earth get their water by chance if a large, ice asteroid hits the planet. Now, researchers from the GLOBE Institute at the University of Copenhagen have published an eye-opening study, indicating that water may be present during the very formation of a planet. According to the study's calculations, this is true for both Earth, Venus and Mars. 'All our data suggest that water was part of Earth's building blocks, right from the beginning. And because the water ...

New research by Swansea scientists in collaboration with scientists at the University of Bristol and the Francis Crick institute in London has indicated that consuming a diet high in the sugar fructose might prevent the proper functioning of peoples' immune systems in ways that has, until now, largely been unknown. Fructose is commonly found in sugary drinks, sweets and processed foods and is used widely in food production. It is associated with obesity, type 2 diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and its intake has increased substantially throughout the developed world in recent years. However, understanding ...

Loneliness is a risk factor associated with adolescents being drawn into compulsive internet use. The risk of compulsive use has grown in the coronavirus pandemic: loneliness has become increasingly prevalent among adolescents, who spend longer and longer periods of time online. A study investigating detrimental internet use by adolescents involved a total of 1,750 Finnish study subjects, who were studied at three points in time: at 16, 17 and 18 years of age. The results have been published in the Child Development journal. Adolescents' net use is a two-edged sword: while the consequences of moderate use are positive, the effects of compulsive use can be detrimental. Compulsive ...

Strategies based on the use of gene therapy to mitigate the effects of mutations that cause blindness are undergoing rapid development. Novel gene vectors now achieve widespread gene delivery and reduce the risks associated with these approaches. The incidence of genetic mutations that result in rapid deterioration of the ability to see is larger than is generally supposed. For example, on the order of five million people around the world suffer from congenital retinal dystrophies, which often lead to blindness at an early age. These diseases are caused by defects in specific genes, which direct the production of proteins that play an essential role ...

WASHINGTON (Feb. 22, 2021) --- People living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) who have a history of severe immunosuppression and at least one copy of the Alzheimer's disease-related gene variant APOE4, might see a compounded adverse effect on the circuitry that impacts memory. This could eventually lead to an increased risk for dementia after age 65, according to Georgetown University Medical Center investigators and colleagues. The researchers used MRI scans to examine the brain, with a focus on two regions - the hippocampus, which is critical for memory and is often affected in Alzheimer's disease, and the caudate ...

Cancer cells acquire growth advantages over normal cells in myriad ways. Changes in cell programming allow these cells to grow in an uncontrolled fashion, thereby forming the cancer mass. Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), being highly malignant and invasive with a high recurrence rate and drug resistant phenotype, is one of the most dreadful cancers. Understanding the underlying molecular mechanisms is crucial to design therapeutic interventions and to predict patient prognosis. Cancer cells use metabolic, immunogenic, or growth-related strategies, which can be controlled by a number of alterations in the cell process. Of these, "post-transcriptional RNA modification" has recently sparked interest among cancer biologists. ...

Syracuse, N.Y. - As the United States approaches the one-year anniversary of the start of COVID-19 lockdowns, a new study by researchers from Syracuse University and the University of Texas at San Antonio shows that material hardship - difficulty paying for food, bills and healthcare - is taking a toll on the mental and physical health of young adults. In the study, " END ...

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, telemedicine has become a new norm for many routine and non-emergency medical needs. But there are lessons to be learned from telemedicine's use - or lack thereof - prior to the pandemic, and a new study from a UConn School of Social Work researcher offers insight for policymakers, administrators, and public health officials when considering the implementation of new services. A qualitative researcher, lead author and licensed clinical social worker Kelsi Carolan was brought into the study - which was conducted in 2017 and 2018 and was recently published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research - to examine the adoption of a telemedicine program in a California independent senior ...

A recent study of homeless preschoolers found a strong correlation between the bonds those children formed with teachers and the children's risk of behavioral and emotional problems. "It's well established that children who are homeless are at higher risk of a wide variety of negative outcomes," says Mary Haskett, corresponding author of the study and a professor of psychology at North Carolina State University. "However, there's a lot of variability within this group. We wanted to learn more about what makes some of these children more resilient than others." For ...

The systemic balance that coordinates the growth of an organism and its progress through the different stages of development occurs across the animal world and is regulated by internal and external signals. Examples of this balance are puberty in humans and metamorphosis in flies. These are transitions characterised by the production of steroid hormones and they mark the turning point that will determine the halting of growth and entry into the adult state. Certain human diseases, such as cancer and inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs), cause a delay in this transition. Led by Dr. Marco Milán, scientists at IRB Barcelona ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A new study illuminates how a gene called HAND2 may have a hand in the timing of human labor. "We don't know why humans go into labor. It's a basic aspect of human biology that we just don't know the answer to, and it's kind of embarrassing that we don't," says senior author Vincent Lynch, an evolutionary biologist at the University at Buffalo. "What happens in many other animals is that as gestation goes on, the level of progesterone keeps going up, and then a few hours before birth, progesterone levels drop to pre-pregnancy levels. Progesterone inhibits contractions, so once you lose it, the uterus starts contracting and the baby is born. "But in ...

The reintroduction of 32 bobcats to an island off the coast of Georgia more than three decades ago created an ideal experiment to examine the accuracy of a genetic-modeling technique that predicts extinction of isolated wildlife populations. That's the conclusion of Penn State researchers who continue to monitor the bobcat population on Cumberland Island National Seashore, and who conducted a study comparing and contrasting the Cumberland Island bobcats to a population of bobcats on Kiawah Island off the coast of South Carolina. The research was led by Cassandra Miller-Butterworth, associate professor of biology at Penn State Beaver, and Duane Diefenbach, Penn State adjunct professor of wildlife ecology who, as a doctoral ...

Like its chemical relative carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrous oxide (N2O) is an important greenhouse gas and the dominant ozone-depleting substance emitted in the 21st Century. Consequently, strategies for limiting its emissions and its catalytic decomposition with metals are being developed. A recent study indicates that nitrous oxide can bind to metals similarly to carbon dioxide, which helps to design new complexes with even stronger bonding. This could allow the use of nitrous oxide in synthetic chemistry or help to degrade it to substances harmless to the atmosphere. The results were reported in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition as a Very Important Paper on February 17th 2021. A comprehensive analysis of the global N2O budget has ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted considerable investigation into how the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein attaches to a human cell during the infection process, as this knowledge is useful in designing vaccines and therapeutics. Now, a team of scientists has discovered additional locations on the Spike protein that may not only help to explain how certain mutations make emerging variants more infectious but also could be used as additional targets for therapeutic intervention. "Significant research is underway to examine how the receptor binding domain (RBD) at the tip of the club-shaped SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein attaches to an ACE2 receptor on a ...

A new study from researchers at the University of Ottawa's School of Psychology has found that using negative emojis in text messages produces a negative perception of the sender regardless of their true intent. Isabelle Boutet, a Full Professor in Psychology in the Faculty of Social Sciences, and her team's findings are included in the study 'Emojis influence emotional communication, social attributions, and information processing' which was published in Computers in Human Behavior. Study background: Eye movements of 38 University of Ottawa volunteer undergraduate student participants were tracked and studied, and the volunteers were shown sentence-emoji pairing under 12 different conditions where sentences could be negative, positive, ...

Philadelphia, February 22, 2021--In April 2020, pediatricians began recognizing a puzzling syndrome in children involving hyperinflammation that results in an array of symptoms, including fever, gastrointestinal distress and rash. The syndrome, thought to be a post-infectious complication of SARS-CoV-2 infection, was given the name Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome Children, or MIS-C. However, diagnosing the condition has posed challenges, as many of its symptoms, including rash, are common in many other pediatric infections. In a study published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases, researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) describe the ...

It has long been known that several chemicals used in plastic toys in different parts of the world can be harmful to human health. However, it is difficult for parents to figure out how to avoid plastic toys containing chemicals that may cause possible health risks to their children. Regulations and labelling schemes are different across regions and countries, and there is no international agreement on which substances should be banned from use in toy materials. For the most part, regulations and international lists of 'chemicals of concern' in toys focus on certain substance groups with known harmful properties, such as phthalates, but do not cover the wider range of chemicals found in plastic toys. Researchers from DTU ...

With the COVID-19 pandemic taking a disproportionate toll on low-income people of color, a research team headed by Marya Gwadz of the Silver School of Social Work at New York University set out to understand the ways the pandemic may put individuals at risk for adverse outcomes, and the ways they successfully adapted to and coped with the emerging pandemic, focused on those from low-socioeconomic status backgrounds who have lived with HIV for a decade or longer. The team's newly published study explores the effects of COVID-19 on engagement in HIV care, HIV medication use and overall wellbeing during the early stages of the ...

About 70% of the world's main crops depend on insect pollination. Climate change is already affecting the abundance and distribution of insects, which could cause geographical mismatches between crops and their pollinators. Crops that rely primarily on wild pollinators (e.g., crops that cannot be effectively pollinated by commercial colonies of honey bees) could be particularly in jeopardy. However, limited information on plant-pollinator associations and pollinator distributions complicate the assessment of climate change impacts on specific crops. To study the potential impacts of climate change on pollination of a specific crop in North America, we use the case of open?field ...

Macrocyclic peptides are promising candidates for pharmaceuticals, but their screening is difficult. Scientists have now developed an easy-to-use, high-throughput screening assay for cyclic peptides with affinity to ubiquitin, a protein that helps to degrade proteins and induce cell death. The results could lead to novel drug candidates against cancer, according to the study published in the journal Angewandte Chemie. Drugs based on peptides (small proteins) are often too large to pass through cell membranes. To make such peptides more compact and stable--and thus more efficient--researchers are investigating their closed versions, called macrocyclic ...

This new finding may pave the way for fabricating a new class of self-driven devices and materials, such as the ability to control the rhythmic movement of soft robots without relying on electronic circuits, and for the study of microbial physiology. It has been published in the scientific journal Nature. A fast growing and interdisciplinary field, active matter science studies systems consist of units where energy is spent locally to generate mechanical work. Active matter includes all living organisms from cells to animals, biopolymers driven by molecular motors, and synthetic self-propelled materials. Self-organisation (the process of producing ordered structures via interaction between ...

A SARS-CoV-2 tracker uses publicly available sequencing data to show how the virus is changing and spreading over time. The tracker, called CovMT, was developed at KAUST and is expected to help researchers and policymakers understand the evolution of the virus's mutations. This could have implications for vaccine development, patient treatment and the implementation of restrictions. "As new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus emerge, authorities around the world need to know if these, or similar variants, have entered their countries," says computational biologist, Intikhab Alam, who designed ...

Treating waste brine using a self-cleaning crystallizer that runs on solar power could be an eco-friendly and efficient way to make seawater desalination more sustainable. In desert regions, seawater desalination provides essential freshwater for drinking and agriculture. A major problem is that the process generates vast quantities of concentrated brine that is often released into nearby lakes and rivers or back into the sea, harming vegetation and marine life. "With tightening environmental regulations and increasing public awareness, there is pressure to treat brine with zero liquid discharge," says Chenlin Zhang, a Ph.D. student in KAUST. This means extracting every last drop of water while leaving behind solid mineral crystals that can be salvaged for other uses. Crystallization ...