The cellular glitches underlying a rare genetic disorder called activated PI3K Delta syndrome 2 (APDS2) have been identified by researchers at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research. The disorder is caused by genetic variations that disrupt immune cell signalling through a protein called PI3K. “This study tells us how signalling in the immune system needs to be tightly balanced to make an effective response to infection. Sometimes it’s turned down and you have a problem, and sometimes signalling being turned up can interfere with an immune ...

Bethesda, MD (March 21, 2023) — The American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) has released new clinical guidance to help physicians and patients identify if unexplained digestive symptoms are due to alpha-gal syndrome, a food allergy that is caused by lone star tick bites. The AGA Clinical Practice Update was published today in Gastroenterology. Alpha-gal syndrome is an allergy that causes your body to react to eating meat from mammals and products made from mammals. Symptoms usually start 2-6 hours after eating the mammalian meat or food. Clinicians should consider alpha-gal syndrome in patients ...

Forests, trees and green spaces play a vital role in ensuring a healthy life for all on a global scale. The health benefits of forests and trees, ranging from physical and mental well-being to overall mortality reduction, far outweigh the adverse effects on health. As health threats, such as forest fires, are mainly caused by human activities, urgent action is needed. In order to address health challenges, it is important to recognize the close links between human health and the health of other species, of ecosystems, and of the planet as a whole. Vienna, March, 21, 2023 - The global scientific evidence of the multiple types of benefits ...

The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology sent recommendations to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services related to the agency’s proposed changes to petition processing fees. The USCIS proposed increasing its filing fees for employment-based visas by up to 2,050%, a measure intended to remedy financial deficits at USCIS and ramp up hiring to improve services. The ASBMB expressed concern about how “the proposed rule is likely to harm the retention of highly skilled foreign-born scientific researchers.” The ...

They published their work on February in Energy Material Advances.   "Constructing an efficient ionic/electronic framework is crucial for the development of high-performance solid-state batteries," said Dr. Chuang Yu, a professor at the State Key Laboratory of Advanced Electromagnetic Engineering and Technology at Huazhong University of Science and Technology. "Currently, the application of solid-state batteries with inorganic electrolytes is challenging because most solid electrolytes have an unsatisfactory low oxidation potential."   According to Dr. Yu, halide electrolytes have been found to be cathode-stable materials with relatively wide electrochemical ...

Eight years ago, the data was sound but only suggestive, the evidence strong but circumstantial. Now, the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Karrie Weber and colleagues have experimentally confirmed that nitrate, a compound common in fertilizers and animal waste, can help transport naturally occurring uranium from the underground to groundwater. Their new research backs a 2015 Weber-led study showing that aquifers contaminated with high levels of nitrate — including the High Plains Aquifer residing beneath Nebraska — also contain uranium concentrations far exceeding a threshold set by the Environmental Protection Agency. Uranium concentrations above that EPA threshold ...

WASHINGTON, DC – The Editorial Board of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) has selected six papers published by PNAS in 2022 to receive the Cozzarelli Prize, an award that recognizes outstanding contributions to the scientific disciplines represented by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Papers were chosen from more than 3,200 research articles that appeared in the journal last year and represent the six broadly defined classes under which the NAS is organized. Additionally, the Editorial ...

Microplastics are tiny plastic particles less than 5 mm in diameter that have emerged as a novel marine environment pollutant. Microplastics usually result from a breakdown of larger plastic debris but can also be generated from plastic microbeads used in personal care products. Over the years, there has been a significant buildup of microplastic pollutants in our oceans, with a recent estimate that the world’s oceans contain over 24.4 trillion pieces of microplastics weighing between 82,000 and 578,000 tons. It is highly likely that ...

Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), two teams of astronomers have observed the aftermath of the collision between NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft and the asteroid Dimorphos. The controlled impact was a test of planetary defence, but also gave astronomers a unique opportunity to learn more about the asteroid’s composition from the expelled material. On 26 September 2022 the DART spacecraft collided with the asteroid Dimorphos in a controlled test of our asteroid deflection capabilities. The impact took place 11 million kilometres away ...

WASHINGTON—Women with obesity may share risk for the disease with their daughters, but not their sons, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. Obesity is a common, serious and costly disease affecting nearly half of the adults and 20 percent of children in the United States. It costs an estimated $173 billion in medical care costs. People with obesity are at higher risk of developing diabetes, high blood pressure, heart ...

DALLAS, March 21, 2023 — More than 2 million veterans are living with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) and require management of their high cholesterol, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Left unaddressed, high cholesterol increases the chance of experiencing heart attack and stroke. To control high cholesterol among veterans, the American Heart Association, the world’s leading nonprofit organization focused on heart and brain health for all, in collaboration with the VA, ...

Large-scale, effective, and passive: these descriptions are aptly given to the integrated radiative and evaporative chiller (IREC), designed and tested by researchers at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. The goal of this technology is to come up with an energetically affordable method of cooling to aid in the rising consumption of energy while still minimizing carbon emissions through the process.   “Energy scarcity is a universal challenge to global development. The demand for ...

TAMEST (The Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering, Science and Technology) has announced Florencia McAllister, M.D., The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, as the recipient of the 2023 Mary Beth Maddox Award and Lectureship in cancer research. She was chosen for her seminal discoveries at the intersection of microbes, the immune system and pancreatic cancer, leading to insights into early detection, prevention and therapeutic strategies to fight the disease. The Mary Beth Maddox Award and Lectureship ...

SAN ANTONIO, March 21, 2023 – A real-world, retrospective analysis by the Family Heart Foundation, a leading non-profit research and advocacy organization, found that high-risk Americans who do not maintain levels of LDL-cholesterol (LDL-C) recommended in the 2018 American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association cholesterol treatment guidelines, had a 44% higher rate of cardiovascular events compared to those who did achieve and maintained recommended LDL-C levels. The study findings, which were based on data from the Family Heart DatabaseTM of more than 300 million Americans, will be ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The growing period of hardwood forests in eastern North America has increased by an average of one month over the past century as temperatures have steadily risen, a new study has found. The study compared present-day observations of the time span from budburst to peak leaf coloration in seven tree species to similar documentation that was collected by an Ohio farmer at the turn of the 20th century. An analysis of changes in those leaf patterns along with decades of temperature data for northwest Ohio showed a clear connection between increased warming during winter and spring and an extended period of tree growth. The implications of the longer growing period – ...

A new study investigates how an extinct, carnivorous marsupial relative with canines so large they extended across the top of its skull could hunt effectively despite having wide-set eyes, like a cow or a horse. The skulls of carnivores typically have forward-facing eye sockets, or orbits, which helps enable stereoscopic (3D) vision, a useful adaptation for judging the position of prey before pouncing. Scientists from the American Museum of Natural History and the Instituto Argentino de Nivología, ...

The virus responsible for E. coli infection has a secret weapon: teamwork. Always scrappy in its bid for survival, the virus alights on an unassuming host cell and grips the surface with the business end of its tubular tail. Then, the proteins in the tail contract in unison, flattening its structure like a stepped-on spring and reeling the virus's body in for the critical strike. Thanks to the proteins' teamwork, the tail can flex and flatten with ease. This process, called molecular cooperativity, is often observed in nature but rarely ...

LA JOLLA—(March 21, 2023) The spinal cord acts as a messenger, carrying signals between the brain and body to regulate everything from breathing to movement. While the spinal cord is known to play an essential role in relaying pain signals, technology has limited scientists’ understanding of how this process occurs on a cellular level. Now, Salk scientists have created wearable microscopes to enable unprecedented insight into the signaling patterns that occur within the spinal cords of mice.   This technological advancement, detailed in two papers published in Nature Communications ...

Los Angeles, Calif. – The AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG), the world’s largest HIV research network, is announcing the publication of “Perspectives on Adherence from the ACTG 5360 MINMON Trial: A Minimum Monitoring Approach with 12 Weeks of Sofosbuvir/Velpatasvir in Chronic Hepatitis C Treatment” in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. This publication found that self-reported 100 percent adherence in the first four weeks of hepatitis C treatment with sofosbuvir/velpatasvir was associated with sustained virologic response (which is when no hepatitis C virus is found in the blood 12 weeks after completing ...

ROCKVILLE, Md.—New research shows that the built environment, not social and economic environments, is a strong predictor of adolescents’ body mass index (BMI), overweight and obesity status, and eating behaviors, according to a new study in Obesity, The Obesity Society’s (TOS) flagship journal. This study provides the first quasi-experimental empirical evidence of these environments on adolescents’ BMI, overweight, obesity and related behaviors. “Our research suggests that strategies for addressing ...

Chestnut Hill, Mass (3/21/2023) – Philip Landrigan, MD, director of the Program on Global Public Health and the Common Good and the Boston College Observatory on Planetary Health, is the lead author of a groundbreaking new report about the far-reaching health hazards of plastics manufacturing and pollution across the entire product life cycle. Published in the journal Annals of Global Public Health and released in Monaco during Monaco Ocean Week, the study was undertaken by an international group of scientists ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Increases in mortality among Douglas-fir in the Klamath Mountains are the result of multiple factors that have the iconic tree in a “decline spiral” in parts of the region, a new study by the Oregon State University College of Forestry and OSU Extension Service indicates. Findings, which include a tool landowners and managers can use to assess a stand of trees’ risk as the climate continues to change, were published in the Journal of Forestry. Douglas-fir, Oregon’s official state tree, is the most abundant tree species in the ...

1. Cases and transmission of highly contagious fungal infections see dramatic increase between 2019 and 2021 Many cases resistant to first-line treatment Abstract: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M22-3469 URL goes live when the embargo lifts A study of national surveillance data found that cases of Candida auris, a highly contagious fungal infection, rose drastically between 2019 and 2021 reflecting increased transmission. The researchers also noted an increase in echinocandin-resistant cases and evidence of transmission, which is particularly concerning because echinocandins are first-line therapy for invasive Candida infections, including C auris. These findings ...

The new Ngā Ahurei a Te Apārangi Fellows have been elected for their distinction in research and advancement of science, technology or the humanities to the highest international standards. The University of Auckland is New Zealand’s leading research-led university, which Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research, Frank Bloomfield, says is largely due to the quality of its researchers, and the impact their work has within Aotearoa New Zealand and internationally. “The research and scholarship of our new Fellows is regarded as world leading in their respective areas and as such, they have been recognised by the ...

Almost all countries around the globe criminalise abortion in some circumstances, despite the public health risks and impact on human rights, finds a review of the scope of penalties for the procedure in 182 nations, published in the open access journal BMJ Global Health. Some 134 countries penalise those seeking an abortion, while 181 penalise providers, and 159 those who assist in the procedure, the review shows. The evidence indicates that criminalisation doesn’t deter women from deciding to have an abortion; rather, it limits or delays access to safe abortion and increases the need to turn to unsafe and unregulated services, point out the researchers. Criminalisation ...