University of Cambridge Media Release   Beethoven’s genome offers clues to composer’s health and family history   UNDER STRICT EMBARGO UNTIL 11:00 US ET / 15:00 UK / 16:00 CET ON WEDNESDAY 22nd MARCH 2023   International team of scientists deciphers renowned composer’s genome from locks of hair.   Study shows Beethoven was predisposed to liver disease, and infected with Hepatitis B, which – combined with his alcohol consumption – may have contributed to his death.   DNA ...

In 1802, Ludwig van Beethoven asked his brothers to request that his doctor, J.A. Schmidt, describe his malady—his progressive hearing loss—to the world upon his death so that "as far as possible at least the world will be reconciled to me after my death." Now, more than two centuries later, a team of researchers reporting in the journal Current Biology on March 22 have partially fulfilled his wish by analyzing DNA they lifted and pieced together from locks of his hair. “Our primary goal was to shed light on Beethoven’s health problems, which famously include progressive hearing loss, beginning in his mid- to late-20s and eventually leading to him ...

Scientists in California are raising the alarm about a newly reported form of toxoplasmosis that kills sea otters and could also infect other animals and people. Although toxoplasmosis is common in sea otters and can sometimes be fatal, this unusual strain appears to be capable of rapidly killing healthy adult otters. This rare strain of Toxoplasma hasn’t been detected on the California coast before, and may be a recent arrival, but scientists are concerned that if it contaminates the marine food chain it could potentially pose a public health risk. “I have studied Toxoplasma infections in sea otters for 25 years — I have never ...

Four sea otters that stranded in California died from an unusually severe form of toxoplasmosis, according to a study from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the University of California, Davis. The disease is caused by the microscopic parasite Toxoplasma gondii. Scientists warn that this rare strain, never previously reported in aquatic animals, could pose a health threat to other marine wildlife and humans. The preliminary findings, published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, note that toxoplasmosis is common in sea otters and can be fatal. This unusual strain appears to be especially virulent and capable of rapidly killing healthy adult otters. The ...

About The Study: Statin use for primary prevention of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) was low among all race and ethnicity groups regardless of ASCVD risk, with the lowest use occurring among Black and Hispanic adults in this study of survey data representing 39.4 million adults. Improvements in access to care may promote equitable use of primary prevention statins in Black and Hispanic adults. Authors: Joshua A. Jacobs, Pharm.D., of the Spencer Fox Eccles University of Utah School of Medicine in Salt Lake City, and Ambarish Pandey, M.D., of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, are the corresponding authors. To ...

About The Study: In this analysis involving 19,000 female participants, mailing human papillomavirus (HPV) self-sampling kits to women overdue for cervical cancer screening was cost-effective for increased screening uptake relative to usual care. These results support mailing HPV kits as an efficient outreach strategy for increasing screening rates among eligible women in U.S. health care systems.  Authors: Richard T. Meenan, Ph.D., M.P.H., M.B.A., of Kaiser Permanente Northwest in Portland, Oregon, is the corresponding author.  To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link ...

Chocolate bars, crisps and fries - why can't we just ignore them in the supermarket? Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Metabolism Research in Cologne, in collaboration with Yale University, have now shown that foods with a high fat and sugar content change our brain: If we regularly eat even small amounts of them, the brain learns to consume precisely these foods in the future. Why do we like unhealthy and fattening foods so much? How does this preference develop in the brain? "Our tendency to eat high-fat and high-sugar foods, the so-called Western diet, could be innate or develop as a result of being overweight. But we think that the brain learns this preference," ...

A new study from researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, has shed new light on the best strategies hospitals can use for medication reconciliation, the critical and difficult task of updating and verifying a patient’s medication lists and orders, regardless of where they are in the health care system. The study, published in BMJ Quality and Safety, is a new analysis of data from the second Multi-center Medication Reconciliation ...

Lithium-ion batteries are ubiquitous today - from electric cars to smartphones. But that does not mean that they are the best solution for all areas of application. TU Wien has now succeeded in developing an oxygen-ion battery that has some important advantages. Although it does not allow for quite as high energy densities as the lithium-ion battery, its storage capacity does not decrease irrevocably over time: it can be regenerated and thus may enable an extremely long service life. In addition, oxygen-ion batteries can be ...

On Wednesday, 22 March 2023, at Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Europe’s most powerful 7-Tesla magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine was formally inaugurated. The symbolic push of the button to start the high-performance MRI machine for future research work took place in the presence of the Minister of Science for Saxony-Anhalt, Prof. Dr. Armin Willingmann.  Henceforth, the MAGNETOM Terra.X Impulse Edition will enable brain functions and structures to be mapped and measured on site with a previously unachievable level of precision. “With ...

As the search for high-quality pharmaceutical drugs continues, researchers also continue spending countless hours discovering the underlying mechanisms of drug action. Knowing various pathophysiological mechanisms dramatically expedites the process of drug discovery. A recent example includes the discovery of the broad-spectrum anti-inflammatory effects of inosine, a nucleoside found in transfer RNAs, by researchers in China. These findings were made available online on 22 October 2022 and subsequently published in Volume 13, Issue 1 of Journal of Pharmaceutical Analysis (JPA) on 1st January 2023. The ...

SAN DIEGO, March 22, 2023 — PetDx® – The Liquid Biopsy Company for Pets™ published a study today showing that OncoK9®, its multi-cancer early detection test for dogs using next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology, performs similarly in real-world veterinary practice settings as in the CANcer Detection in Dogs (CANDiD) study, the test’s landmark clinical validation study. Appearing in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, the new study examined the clinical experience with 1,500 consecutive blood samples submitted ...

Single-cell analysis is a powerful biomedical technique used in various fields of biology and medicine to identify rare cell populations, track cell development and differentiation, understand disease mechanisms and develop personalized therapies, but it generates large amounts of data that can be difficult to manage. An international team of researchers led by Demetri Psaltis of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne and Pietro Ferraro of the Institute of Applied Sciences and Intelligent Systems has demonstrated an effective encoding strategy for single-cell tomograms that greatly streamlines ...

MIAMI, FLORIDA (EMBARGOED UNTIL WEDNESDAY, MARCH 22, 2023 AT 10 A.M. ET) – Researchers have shown for the first time exactly how immature neutrophils – white blood cells that are an important part of the immune system – are hijacked by pancreatic cancers to drive immunosuppression and treatment resistance. The study, led by investigators at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, is published in Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. The paper describes a previously unrecognized signaling circuit in pancreatic cancer that instigates immunosuppression ...

Effective energy storage is paramount to society’s transition to renewable energy.  Lithium metal batteries (LMBs) have the potential to double the amount of energy stored in a single charge compared to current lithium ion batteries (LIBs), but lithium dendrite growth and electrolyte consumption in current LMB technologies are hindering battery performance. Substrates for solid polymer electrolytes (SPEs) offer a potential solution to current LMB limitations, but SPEs require their own optimization prior to integration into all-solid-state LMB (ASSLMB) systems.  A ...

As an international study involving University of Gothenburg researchers has shown, a decision tool for health professionals has proved capable of halving the use of antibiotics against urinary tract infections while maintaining patient safety. The study, now published in The BMJ, comprises a total of 1,041 frail older people at 38 senior care homes in the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, and Sweden. A group of researchers at the University of Gothenburg and Region Västra Götaland has been running the Swedish part of the study, ...

A promising cancer drug that targets only cancer cells has been developed by researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and a university spin-off company, APIM Therapeutics. NTNU has been responsible for the basic research. APIM Therapeutics has used the basic research to develop the medicine. It has taken 18 years and more than EUR 20 million. The medicine has now been tested on 20 cancer patients who were terminally ill. They had tried all available treatments, and as a last resort they opted ...

Fukuoka, Japan—Researchers from Kyushu University have found how a single mechanosensitive protein induces the process that thickens and scars tissue, known as fibrosis. The protein, called VGLL3, was shown to contribute to fibrosis in multiple organs. The team hope their findings will lead to new treatments against fibrosis, a pathology that is attributed to 45% of all deaths in industrial nations. Their study was published in Nature Communications. In response to any injury, the body immediately begins a stream of events. Blood coagulates, the tissue ...

CHICAGO – March 21, 2023 – A new study from VillageMD Research Institute, in collaboration with a scientist from Harvard-affiliated Marcus Institute for Aging Research, demonstrates the prevalence of frailty in both middle-aged and older adults and frail patients’ challenges in accessing healthcare in the United States. This study was recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association titled “Self-Reported Frailty and Health Care Utilization in Community-Dwelling Middle-Aged and Older Adults ...

Researchers from University of Pennsylvania, University or Maryland, and Emory University published a new Journal of Marketing article that examines how and why the language used in content engages readers. The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled “What Holds Attention? Linguistic Drivers of Engagement” and is authored by Jonah Berger, Wendy W. Moe, and David A. Schweidel. Everyone wants to hold an audience’s attention. Brands want consumers ...

Another new mosquito species has made its way across the tropics into Florida, making a permanent home in at least three counties. Scientists are concerned because of the rate of new mosquitoes arriving in Florida and the potential for them to transmit mosquito-borne diseases. A mosquito known only by its scientific name, Culex lactator, is the latest to establish in the Sunshine State, according to a new study published in the Journal of Medical Entomology by faculty at the UF/IFAS Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory (UF/IFAS FMEL). This species was first discovered ...

A new leaf has turned in scientists' hunt for developing cutting-edge materials used in organic light-emitting diode (OLED) TV's, touchscreens, and more. The advance involves the polaron, a quasiparticle consisting of an electron and its surrounding distortions of atoms in a crystal lattice. Simulations on the Texas Advanced Computing Center's (TACC) Frontera supercomputer have helped scientists map for the first time the conditions that characterize polarons in 2D materials, the thinnest materials that have ever been made. "We charted a map to indicate in which materials polarons should be found, under what conditions, and the characteristics ...

Nearly a third of Americans (29%) say COVID-19 made them more worried than ever about having obesity prompting about 28 million people to consider weight-loss methods they hadn’t thought about before the pandemic began, including nearly 6.4 million thought about turning to either weight-loss surgery or taking prescription anti-obesity drugs for the first time, according to a new survey whose findings were published online in the peer-reviewed journal, Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases (SOARD). Another nearly 1 in 5 people (18%) said they were more likely to initiate a discussion about their weight with their physician specifically because ...

Following enormous collisions, such as asteroid impacts, some amount of material from an impacted world may be ejected into space. This material can travel vast distances and for extremely long periods of time. In theory this material could contain direct or indirect signs of life from the host world, such as fossils of microorganisms. And this material could be detectable by humans in the near future, or even now. When you hear the words vacuum and dust in a sentence, you may groan at the thought of having ...

With the first paper compiling all known information about planets like Venus beyond our solar system, scientists are the closest they’ve ever been to finding an analog of Earth’s “twin.”  If they succeed in locating one, it could reveal valuable insights into Earth’s future, and our risk of developing a runaway greenhouse climate as Venus did.  Scientists who wrote the paper began with more than 300 known terrestrial planets orbiting other stars, called exoplanets. They whittled the list down to the five most likely to ...