LOS ANGELES — A newly published study paves the way for some patients with testicular cancer to avoid chemotherapy and radiation. Seminoma is a slow-growing form of testicular cancer that if untreated, typically metastasizes (spreads) to lymph nodes in an area behind the abdomen lining called the retroperitoneum. The standard treatment for patients at this stage is chemotherapy and radiation to shrink and kill the cancerous lymph nodes.   While effective, chemotherapy and radiation are associated with long-term side effects, such as cardiovascular disease and secondary cancers, that adversely affect a patient’s quality of life. Now, however, the results of a multi-institutional ...

Bratislava, Slovakia, March 21, 2023 BGI Genomics is pleased to announce the launch of COLOTECTTM 1.0 in Slovakia, in collaboration with its local partner, Zentya. Zentya is a Slovak-based healthcare solution provider that is passionate about providing patients with the latest technology in the field of genetic screening, aiming to help identify and facilitate timely treatments of genetic diseases. COLOTECTTM 1.0 is one of the first-ever fecal DNA tests for colorectal cancer that is available in the country. It is a non-invasive fecal DNA test developed by BGI Genomics for detecting ...

PULLMAN, Wash. — Facebook users were more likely to read fake news about the 2020 U.S. presidential election than users of Twitter and other social media websites, a Washington State University-led analysis found.  The study in Government Information Quarterly indicates that fake news consumption and political alignment were the primary forces driving doubt about the integrity of the vote counting process – and surprisingly not the method used to cast votes. The researchers also found that individuals who got ...

Oak Brook, IL – The March special issue of SLAS Discovery deviates from its traditional focus on assay technology, disease area or molecular target to introduce and explore protocol articles – the newly accepted article type for outlining detailed scientific methods and procedures. The six protocol articles featured in this month’s collection cover a range of topics such as 3D imaging, cancer treatments and methods of high-throughput screening. By publishing protocols, SLAS underscores the importance of transparency and rigor ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Once adults reach age 65, the threshold age for the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, the extent of their genetic risk may outweigh age as a predictor of whether they will develop the fatal brain disorder, a new study suggests. The study, published recently in the journal Scientific Reports, is the first to construct machine learning models with genetic risk scores, non-genetic information and electronic health record data from nearly half a million individuals to rank risk factors in order of how strong their association is with eventual development of ...

Biyu J. He receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science for her leadership in the field of cognitive neuroscience, and for her groundbreaking discoveries on the biological bases of perceptual cognition and subjective experience. The Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise is a $50,000 prize awarded annually by the Vilcek Foundation as part of its prizes program. Awarded annually since 2006, the Vilcek Foundation prizes recognize and celebrate immigrant contributions to scientific research and ...

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded a prestigious Advanced Grant of EUR 2.5 million ($2.6 million) over 5 years to Professor Bernt-Erik Sæther at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's (NTNU) Department of Biology. The money will go to find out how we can save species that are in danger of becoming extinct. “The aim is to develop rules of thumb to identify what is needed to prevent a species from dying out in an area in the short term. At the same time, we must ensure that a population’s ability to adapt to ...

Statement Highlights: Primary hypertension—high blood pressure that is not due to an underlying medical condition—occurs in up to 5% of children and adolescents in the U.S. and other countries. Having high blood pressure as a child often leads to high blood pressure in adulthood, which may increase the likelihood of heart disease and stroke, as well as cause damage to the kidneys, eyes and more. Some risk factors that increase the chances for high blood pressure in children are modifiable, while others are not. Regular and appropriate assessment of blood pressure levels in children is important, as there are often no symptoms of high blood pressure. Public health initiatives ...

ROME, ITALY - Cacao of Excellence is proud to unveil its new state-of-the-art cacao R&D laboratory and training centre. Located at Via Baccio Baldini 4 in Rome, the facility will be dedicated to exploring the depths of cacao quality and sensory analysis and revealing the diversity of cacao flavour profiles. The laboratory and training centre will accommodate the processing and evaluation of cacao samples received from over 55 participating origins for the global Cacao of Excellence Awards, and will serve as a cacao quality processing and sensory training centre for cacao-producing origins. Cacao of Excellence’s ...

Osaka, Japan― Tearing their meniscus—a crescent-shaped piece of a soft cushion of cartilage located between the femur and tibia—can be devastating for young athletes. It is easily damaged in people with congenital lateral discoid meniscus or those that are physically active and once damaged, the meniscus cannot repair itself. The most common method has been to remove the damaged portion of the meniscus, but in recent years meniscus-sparing surgeries, that suture the margins of the meniscus at the tear, ...

30 March 2023 - EMBO Press has chosen Springer Nature to be their new publishing partner from 1 January 2024. Authors who publish in EMBO Press journals will benefit from the global reach of Springer Nature’s leading journals. In addition, authors will have the option to transfer manuscripts between journals in the EMBO Press and Springer Nature portfolios.  This announcement follows EMBO Press’ recent decision that to advance global discoverability, transparency and availability of published research outcomes all ...

Birmingham researchers developing novel battery recycling techniques have been awarded funding by the Faraday Institution, as part of a £29m package to re-focus and accelerate key battery research projects, which have been reshaped to focus on areas with the greatest potential for success. Four of the six projects funded involve the University of Birmingham, and these include the Reuse and Recycling of Lithium Ion Batteries (ReLIB) project.  Led by Professor Paul Anderson, Co-Director of the Birmingham Centre for Strategic Elements and Critical Materials at Birmingham’s School of Chemistry, ReLIB aims to develop and scale novel recycling technologies that recover valuable ...

A multidisciplinary team made up of doctors and scientists from the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM-Hospital del Mar) and the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) has led a study, recently published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, which proposes a therapeutic approach for preventing the development of resistance to chemotherapy with oxaliplatin, one of the standard treatments for colon and rectal cancer. The work, which also involved doctors from the Pathological Anatomy and Medical Oncology departments at Hospital del Mar, as well ...

Plans to reintroduce the lynx in Scotland provoke a complex range of opinions, new research shows. Lynx died out in Britain more than 1,000 years ago, but some conservation groups argue the species could help restore natural ecosystems. The new study, by researchers from Vincent Wildlife Trust and the University of Exeter, investigated the views of stakeholders including farmers, land managers and conservationists. “Our results show that views in Scotland about potential future lynx reintroduction are far more diverse, nuanced and complex than might have been assumed,” ...

Poly-3-hydroxybutyrate—a biodegradable plastic—is a strong water-resistant polyester often used in packaging materials, made from 3-hydroxybutyrate as a precursor. In previous studies, a research team led by Professor Yutaka Amao from the Research Center for Artificial Photosynthesis at Osaka Metropolitan University, found that 3-hydroxybutyrate can be synthesized from CO2 and acetone with high efficiency, but only demonstrated this at higher concentrations of CO2 or sodium bicarbonate. This new study aimed to reuse waste acetone from permanent marker ink and low concentrations of CO2—equivalent to exhaust gas from power plants, chemical ...

A novel drug is showing promise for alleviating heart failure, a common condition associated with sleep apnoea and a reduced lifespan. The drug, known as AF-130, was tested in an animal model at Waipapa Taumata Rau, the University of Auckland where researchers found it improved the heart’s ability to pump, but, equally important, prevented sleep apnoea, which itself reduces lifespan (see Nature Communications). “This drug does offer benefit for heart failure, but it’s two for the price of one, in that it’s also relieving the apnoea for which ...

Even for insects, wood is a tough food source as it contains hard substances such as cellulose. To help make wood more palatable, some wood-feeding insects are assisted by symbiotic microorganisms that break down the components of wood into an edible form. A group from Nagoya University in Japan has isolated a symbiotic yeast from adults, larvae, and eggs of the Japanese longicorn beetle and identified specialized organs that store the yeast, allowing the beetles to break down the unpalatable components of wood. Their findings were published in PLOS ONE.  “I have been fascinated with longicorn beetles ...

Urban honeybees could be used to gain insight into the microbiome of the cities in which they forage, which can potentially provide information on both hive and human health, reports a study published in Environmental Microbiome. Cities are built for human habitation but are also spaces that host a wide range of living species, and understanding this diverse landscape is important for urban planning and human health. However, sampling the microbial landscape in a manner to cover wide areas of a city can be labour-intensive. Elizabeth ...

The standard cosmology can answer almost nothing about how the structure of a galaxy is formed. It expects a supermassive black hole at the center and dark matter in the halo to explain the circulation of stars and its velocity. However, why the visible matters are distributed in such a thin plane by the interaction with the black hole while dark matter results in a spherical distribution is a critical open question for a disc galaxy. The formation process of elliptical, ring, and long–barred galaxies also remains unknown. The Energy Circulation ...

A collaboration of Australian and European physicists predict that layered electronic 2D semiconductors can host a curious quantum phase of matter called the supersolid. The supersolid is a very counterintuitive phase indeed. It is made up of particles that simultaneously form a rigid crystal and yet at the same time flow without friction since all the particles belong to the same single quantum state. A solid becomes ‘super’ when its quantum properties match the well-known quantum properties of superconductors. A supersolid simultaneously has two orders, solid and super: solid because of the spatially repeating pattern ...

Throughout her career, Arizona State University Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation Associate Professor Kelly Davis has worked to translate her research into action. An expert in alcohol-involved sexual assault, Davis’ studies have been cited in U.S. legislation and have earned her a MERIT Award and now the prestigious Fulbright Scholar Award. The program will take her to the United Kingdom beginning in early 2024 to collaborate with colleagues at the University ...

The Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), in collaboration with Astellas Pharma Inc., has developed a new toolkit that uses small molecules to control the activity of a piece of synthetic RNA, and ultimately regulate gene expression. The technology, which was described in the Journal of the American Chemical Society on March 30, 2023, worked in mammalian cell cultures and in mice. The ability to precisely control whether a gene is turned on or off is expected to lead to more efficient production of compounds that are made using animal cells, and make gene therapy, cell therapy, and regenerative medicine safer. For genes to be expressed, cells make many RNA copies of a section ...

It has been a longstanding assumption that birth mode and associated exposure of newborns to their mothers’ vaginal microbiome during delivery greatly affects the development of babies’ gut microbiome. To test the scientific validity of this assumption, a team of Canadian researchers has now published a study in Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology in which they examined the effect of maternal vaginal microbiome composition on the development of infants’ stool microbiome at 10 days and three months after birth. “We show that ...

The Gairdner Foundation is pleased to announce the 2023 Canada Gairdner Award laureates, recognizing some of the world’s most significant biomedical and global health research and discoveries.  “Congratulations to all the 2023 Canada Gairdner Award recipients! The ground-breaking work of this year’s laureates has resulted in innovative, globally accessible tools to fight diseases and improve our well-being. The work of two Canadian researchers – Dr. Christopher Mushquash and Dr. Gelareh Zadeh especially ...

Researchers use tiny diamonds to create intracellular sensors Optically trapped nanodiamonds could be used to measure temperature, magnetic fields and other properties inside living cells VANCOUVER -- Researchers have developed a new way to study the intricate dynamics within living cells by using optically trapped nanodiamond particles as intracellular sensors. Using custom built optical tweezers, the research team trapped the particles within the cell at low power while the cell was alive. The work represents an important advancement in quantum sensing, which takes advantage of quantum mechanics to analyze changes at the atomic level.  The researchers used optical tweezers ...