HOUSTON - (Jan. 21, 2021) - Where did Earth's nitrogen come from? Rice University scientists show one primordial source of the indispensable building block for life was close to home. The isotopic signatures of nitrogen in iron meteorites reveal that Earth likely gathered its nitrogen not only from the region beyond Jupiter's orbit but also from the dust in the inner protoplanetary disk. Nitrogen is a volatile element that, like carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, makes life on Earth possible. Knowing its source offers clues to not only how rocky planets formed in the inner part of ...

What The Study Did: This randomized clinical trial compares the effects of three doses of bamlanivimab monotherapy (700 vs 2,800 vs 7,000 mg) vs combination bamlanivimab and etesevimab vs placebo on change in day 11 severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 viral load in patients with mild to moderate COVID-19. Authors: Daniel M. Skovronsky, M.D., Ph.D., of Eli Lilly and Company in Indianapolis, 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.2021.0202) Editor's Note: The articles includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, ...

A research team from the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) has joined forces with French researchers from the Institute of Chemistry and Processes for Energy, Environment and Health (ICPEES), a CNRS-University of Strasbourg joint research lab, to pave the way towards the production of green hydrogen. This international team has developed new sunlight-photosensitive-nanostructured electrodes. The results of their research were published in the November 2020 issue of the journal of Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells. An Energy Transition Vector Hydrogen is being considered by several countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as a key player in the transition towards decarbonized ...

CHICAGO (January 21, 2021): A multimodal pain regimen (MMPR) designed to minimize opioid exposure and relieve acute pain associated with traumatic injury kept patient self-reported pain scores low while also reducing the daily and total amount of opioid drugs given to trauma patients. Results from the first study of its kind to evaluate an MMPR in a rigorous, randomized controlled trial are published online as an "article in press" by the Journal of the American College of Surgeons in advance of print. "Opioids should not be considered the pillar of treatment for acute pain after injury," said lead study author John A. Harvin, MD, FACS, an associate professor for the department of surgery, McGovern Medical School, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) ...

What The Study Did: This JAMA Insights review provides clinical details of anaphylactic reactions reported to and verified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the first week of use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in the United States. Authors: Tom Shimabukuro, M.D., M.P.H., M.B.A., of the CDC in Atlanta, 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.2021.0600) Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author ...

A new study from the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM-CSIC, Spain) and the National Oceanography Centre brings unprecedented insights into the environmental constraints and climatic events that controlled the formation of these reefs. The results of this research will help understand how cold-water coral reefs can react to the effects caused by the present-day climate change. Similar to tropical coral reefs, cold-water coral reefs are incredible hotspots of biodiversity, with the difference that they do not rely on symbiosis with microscopic algae, and therefore can be found in the dark and deep waters of our oceans. Despite their uniqueness and key functional role in the ocean, they are still partially ...

Breast cancer investigators in the Lambe Institute at NUI Galway have collaborated on a pivotal international study into breast cancer risk which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine today (Wednesday, 20 January). The results of the study have identified that there are nine specific genes associated with breast cancer risk. Contributing authors Professor Michael Kerin, Chair of Surgery at NUI Galway, Director of the Cancer Managed Clinical Academic Network for Saolta University Health Care Group, along with Dr Nicola Miller, Lecturer in NUI Galway's School of Medicine, have directed the Breast Cancer in Galway Genetics Study (BIGGS) since 2008. DNA samples, which have been collected from 2,000 Irish ...

Genetic inheritance affects the likelihood of developing breast cancer. Some genes are already known to increase cancer risk; other genes are suspected to be involved, but not to what extent. It is crucial to clarify this issue to improve prevention since it opens the way to more personalised follow-up and screening programs. A large international consortium, which includes the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), has studied 34 putative susceptibility genes on samples from 113,000 female breast cancer cases and controls, and its results confirm the importance ...

When university campuses sent students, staff and faculty members home in March, Padmini Rangamani, a professor at the University of California San Diego, suddenly found herself running her research lab remotely, teaching her classes online, and supervising her two children, ages 10 and 13, who are also learning online. To deal with the stress the situation created, Rangamani turned to a support network of fellow female faculty members around the United States. They chatted and texted and eventually decided to write a scholarly article with recommendations for all other female principal investigators in academia. The article, "Ten simple rules for women principal investigators during a pandemic," ...

Generating membranes using electrochemical polymerization, or electropolymerization, could provide a simple and cost-effective route to help various industries meet increasingly strict environmental regulations and reduce energy consumption. Researchers from KAUST have produced membranes with well-defined microscopic pores by electrochemically depositing organic conjugated polymers onto highly porous electrodes. These microporous membranes have numerous applications, ranging from organic solvent nanofiltration to selective molecular transport technologies. High-performance separation depends on membranes that are robust with well-ordered and dense microporous structures, such as zeolites and ...

Scientists from an international collaboration have found evidence of alpha particles at the surface of neutron-rich heavy nuclei, providing new insights into the structure of neutron stars, as well as the process of alpha decay. Neutron stars are amongst the most mysterious objects in our universe. They contain extremely dense matter that is radically different from the ordinary matter surrounding us--being composed almost entirely of neutrons rather than atoms. However, in the nucleus at the center of normal atoms, matter exists at similar densities. "Understanding the nature of matter at such extremes is important for our understanding of neutron stars, as well as the beginning, ...

COVID-19 has been spreading rapidly over the past several months, and the U.S. death toll has now reached 400,000. As evident from the age distribution of those fatalities, COVID-19 is dangerous not only for the elderly but for middle-aged adults, according to a Dartmouth-led study published in the European Journal of Epidemiology. "For a person who is middle-aged, the risk of dying from COVID-19 is about 100 times greater than dying from an automobile accident," explains lead author Andrew Levin, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College. "Generally speaking, very few children and young adults die of COVID-19. However, the risk is progressively greater for middle-aged and older adults. The odds that ...

The bipolar membrane, a type of ion exchange membrane, is considered the pivotal material for zero emission technology. It is composed of an anode and cathode membrane layer, and an intermediate hydrolysis layer. Under reverse bias, the water molecules in the intermediate layer produce OH- and H+ by polarization. Large-scale production of the membrane is hindered by the different expansion coefficients of the anode and cathode layers, causing the two layers easy to delaminate. Besides, the mostly used intermediate catalysts are small molecules or transition, which are instable and inefficient. In a study published on Nature Communications, a team led by ...

BOSTON - Regular aspirin use has clear benefits in reducing colorectal cancer incidence among middle-aged adults, but also comes with some risk, such as gastrointestinal bleeding. And when should adults start taking regular aspirin and for how long? There is substantial evidence that a daily aspirin can reduce risk of colorectal cancer in adults up to age 70. But until now there was little evidence about whether older adults should start taking aspirin. A team of scientists set out to study this question. They were led by Andrew T. Chan MD, MPH, a gastroenterologist and chief of the Clinical and Translational Epidemiology Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). Their report appears in JAMA Oncology. The researchers ...

Tsukuba, Japan -- How valuable are earmuffs? The answer to this simple question can depend. What brand are they? Are they good quality? What is the weather like? Given the choice between earmuffs and suntan lotion, most people would choose to have the earmuffs on a cold winter day and the lotion on a sunny day at the beach. This ability to place different values on objects depending on the environmental context is something that we do all the time without much thought or effort. But how does it work? A new study led by Assistant Professor Jun Kunimatsu at the University of Tsukuba in Japan and Distinguished Investigator Okihide Hikosaka at the National Eye Institute (NEI) in the United States has discovered the part of ...

The elusive axion particle is many times lighter than an electron, with properties that barely make an impression on ordinary matter. As such, the ghost-like particle is a leading contender as a component of dark matter -- a hypothetical, invisible type of matter that is thought to make up 85 percent of the mass in the universe. Axions have so far evaded detection. Physicists predict that if they do exist, they must be produced within extreme environments, such as the cores of stars at the precipice of a supernova. When these stars spew axions out into the universe, the ...

Tsukuba, Japan - A team of researchers from the Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences at the University of Tsukuba filmed the ultrafast motion of electrons with sub-nanoscale spatial resolution. This work provides a powerful tool for studying the operation of semiconductor devices, which can lead to more efficient electronic devices. The ability to construct ever smaller and faster smartphones and computer chips depends on the ability of semiconductor manufacturers to understand how the electrons that carry information are affected by defects. However, these motions occur on the scale of trillionths of a second, and they can only be seen with a microscope that can image individual atoms. ...

The results of a study led by Northern Arizona University and the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), an affiliate of City of Hope, suggest the immune systems of people infected with COVID-19 may rely on antibodies created during infections from earlier coronaviruses to help fight the disease. COVID-19 isn't humanity's first encounter with a coronavirus, so named because of the corona, or crown-like, protein spikes on their surface. Before SARS-CoV-2 -- the virus that causes COVID-19 -- humans have navigated at least 6 other types of coronaviruses. The study sought to understand how coronaviruses (CoVs) ignite the human immune system and conduct a deeper ...

An adverse upbringing often impairs people's circumstances and health in their adult years, especially for couples who have both had similar experiences. This is shown by a new study, carried out by Uppsala University researchers, in which 818 mothers and their partners filled in a questionnaire one year after having a child together. The study is now published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE. "When we studied couples where both partners stated they'd had a hard time as children, the connection between negative childhood experience and a relatively ...

Early Medieval Europe is frequently viewed as a time of cultural stagnation, often given the misnomer of the 'Dark Ages'. However, analysis has revealed new ideas could spread rapidly as communities were interconnected, creating a surprisingly unified culture in Europe. Dr Emma Brownlee, Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, examined how a key change in Western European burial practices spread across the continent faster than previously believed - between the 6th - 8th centuries AD, burying people with regionally specific grave goods was largely abandoned in favour of a more standardised, unfurnished burial. "Almost everyone from the eighth century onwards ...

As scientists increasingly rely on eyewitness accounts of earthquake shaking reported through online systems, they should consider whether those accounts are societally and spatially representative for an event, according to a new paper published in Seismological Research Letters. Socioeconomic factors can play a significant if complex role in limiting who uses systems such as the U.S. Geological Survey's "Did You Feel It?" (DYFI) to report earthquake shaking. In California, for instance, researchers concluded that DYFI appears to gather data across a wide socioeconomic range, albeit with some intriguing differences related to neighborhood income levels during earthquakes such as the ...

The neocortex is the part of the brain that humans use to process sensory impressions, store memories, give instructions to the muscles, and plan for the future. These computational processes are possible because each nerve cell is a highly complex miniature computer that communicates with around 10,000 other neurons. This communication happens via special connections called synapses. The bigger the synapse, the stronger its signal Researchers in Kevan Martin's laboratory at the Institute of Neuroinformatics at the University of Zurich (UZH) and ETH Zurich have now shown for the first time that the size of synapses determines the strength of their ...

TAMPA, Fla. -- Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS) and acute myeloid leukemia (AML) are rare hematologic malignancies of the bone marrow. They can occur spontaneously or secondary to treatment for other cancers, so called therapy related disease, which is frequently associated with a mutation of the tumor suppressor gene TP53. Standard treatment for these patients includes hypomethylating agents such as azacitidine or decitabine but unfortunately outcomes are very poor. "Patients with TP53-mutant disease, which is roughly 10% to 20% of AML and de novo MDS cases, don't have many options ...

Growing perennial grasses on abandoned cropland has the potential to counteract some of the negative impacts of climate change by switching to more biofuels, according to a research group from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). Researchers consider increased use of biofuels to be an important part of the solution to reduce CO2 emissions. But the production of plants for biofuels can have some unfortunate trade-offs. Now, the NTNU researchers have come up with a scenario that would put less pressure on food production and plant and animal life. "We can grow perennial grasses in areas that until recently were used for growing food but that are no longer used for that purpose," explains Jan Sandstad ...

DURHAM, N.C. - Researchers at Duke and Mt. Sinai have identified a molecular mechanism that prevents a viral infection during a mother's pregnancy from harming her unborn baby. When a person becomes infected by a virus, their immune system sends out a chemical signal called type I interferon, which tells surrounding cells to increase their anti-viral defenses, including making more inflammation. This response helps to prevent the virus from copying itself and gives the adaptive immune system more time to learn about the new invader and begin to hunt it down. A pregnant woman ...