Research led by the University of Birmingham and Birmingham Women's and Children's NHS Foundation Trust has revealed new insight into the biological mechanisms of the long-term positive health effects of breastfeeding in preventing disorders of the immune system in later life. Breastfeeding is known to be associated with better health outcomes in infancy and throughout adulthood, and previous research has shown that babies receiving breastmilk are less likely to develop asthma, obesity, and autoimmune diseases later in life compared to those who are exclusively formula fed. However, up until now, the immunological mechanisms responsible for these effects have been very poorly understood. In this new study, ...

Aerosols are suspensions of fine solid particles or liquid droplets in a gas. Clouds, for example, are aerosols because they consist of water droplets dispersed in the air. Such droplets are produced in a two-step process: first, a condensation nucleus forms, and then volatile molecules condense onto this nucleus, producing a droplet. Nuclei frequently consist of molecules different to those that condense onto them. In the case of clouds, the nuclei often contain sulphuric acids and organic substances. Water vapour from the atmosphere subsequently condenses onto these nuclei. Scientists led by Ruth Signorell, Professor at the Department of Chemistry and Applied ...

Leading cancer experts at the University of Birmingham have solved a long-standing question of how various types of mutations in just one gene cause different types of diseases. A team of scientists at the University's Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences, led by Professor Constanze Bonifer, studied a gene known as RUNX1, which is responsible for providing instructions for the development of all blood cells and is frequently mutated in blood cancers. The results of their research has shown that the balance of cells types in the blood is affected much earlier than previously thought, which is particularly important for families that carry ...

Adaptability explains why insects spread so widely and why they are the most abundant animal group on earth. Insects exhibit resilient and flexible locomotion, even with drastic changes in their body structure such as losing a limb. A research group now understands more about adaptive locomotion in insects and the mechanisms underpinning it. This knowledge not only reveals intriguing information about the biology of the insects, but it can also help to design more robust and resilient multi-legged robots that are able to adapt to similar physical damage. The insect nervous system is comprised of approximately 105 to 106 neurons. Understanding ...

Posidonia oceanica seagrass -an endemic marine phanerogam with an important ecological role in the marine environment- can take and remove plastic materials that have been left at the sea, according to a study published in the journal Scientific Reports. The article's first author is the tenure-track 2 lecturer Anna Sànchez-Vidal, from the Research Group on Marine Geosciences of the Faculty of Earth Sciences of the University of Barcelona (UB). The study describes for the first time the outstanding role of the Posidonia as a filter and trap for plastics in the coastal areas, and it is pioneer ...

Both past and present-day scientists have suspected the intestines of playing a role in various diseases. Present-day studies focus on the intestinal flora's role in physical diseases such as diabetes and overweight, while others seek to establish a connection between the intestinal flora and e.g. autism, schizophrenia and depression. But even modern-day scientists have difficulties studying the around 500-1000 different species among the approx. 100 billion active bacteria in our intestines. Therefore, researchers from the University of Copenhagen have developed a ground-breaking technique that ...

Roughly 8,200 years ago, the island of Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov in Lake Onega in the Republic of Karelia, Russia, housed a large burial ground where men, women and children of varying ages were buried. Many of the graves contain an abundance of objects and red ochre, signifying the wish to ensure the comfort of the buried also after death. Pendants made of elk incisors were apparently attached to clothing and accessories, such as dresses, coats, cloaks, headdresses and belts. Although no clothing material has been preserved, the location of the elk teeth sheds light on the possible type of these outfits. A people of grooved elk tooth pendants A study headed by archaeologist Kristiina Mannermaa, University of Helsinki, aimed to determine who ...

Bacteria are likely triggering greater melting on the Greenland ice sheet, possibly increasing the island's contribution to sea-level rise, according to Rutgers scientists. That's because the microbes cause sunlight-absorbing sediment to clump together and accumulate in the meltwater streams, according to a Rutgers-led study - the first of its kind - in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The findings can be incorporated in climate models, leading to more accurate predictions of melting, scientists say. "These streams can be seen all over Greenland ...

In patients with bladder cancer, chemotherapy effectiveness is partially determined by the body's immune system response to the malignancy. This is the conclusion of research conducted by a team of scientists from Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the Berlin Institute of Health. The findings, which have been published in Science Translational Medicine*, can be used to predict treatment success and may increase survival in patients with bladder cancer. Bladder cancer is one of the ten most common types of cancer in Germany, and one of the five most common cancers in men. Nationwide, the disease affects approximately 30,000 people a year. The risk of the cancer ...

TAMPA, Fla. -- The hallmarks of cancer include rapid cell reproduction and metabolic activity. But these processes also lead to increased cellular stress and oxidation, and the risk of cell death. To circumvent these negative consequences of supercharged growth, cancer cells stimulate pathways to reduce oxidative stress and avoid cell death. In an article published in Cell Metabolism, Moffitt Cancer Center researchers report on a newly discovered biochemical pathway that protects cells from a type of cell death called ferroptosis. Ferroptosis is a specialized type of cell death that is caused ...

Scientists at the Walter Reed Army Institute for Research have shown that microRNA biomarkers related to Alzheimer's disease play a role in brain damage caused by traumatic brain injury. TBI or brain trauma results from blows to the head, leading to chronic disruption of the brain and a cascade of long-term health conditions. Patients who suffer from TBI are at much higher risk of developing neurodegenerative disease or dementia, particularly Alzheimer's disease. The mechanism behind this relationship remains understudied, making the development effective therapeutics challenging. MiRNAs are small pieces of genetic material that play a critical role in normal gene expression. Yet, studies have also linked abnormal miRNA levels, or dysregulation, to a range of diseases including neurodegenerative ...

Recently, the research team led by academician GUO Guangcan from the University of Science and Technology of China of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has made security analysis and improvement of source independent quantum random number generators with imperfect devices. By studying the actual characteristics of the measurement devices of the source-independent quantum random number generation, the researchers pointed out that the security issues were caused by afterpulse, detection efficiency mismatching, poor sensitivity to photon number distribution ...

Researchers at McGill University have identified a new cellular pathway that limits the growth and spread of brain tumors by controlling the recycling of cell surface receptor proteins. The study, which will be published January 14 in the Journal of Cell Biology (JCB), suggests that the pathway, which involves a protein called Rab35, is defective in many patients with glioblastoma and that restoring Rab35's activity could be a new therapeutic strategy for this deadly form of brain cancer. Glioblastoma is the most aggressive type of brain cancer, and because it is largely untreatable, the average patient dies within 14 months of diagnosis. Like in other cancers, the proliferation and spread of glioblastoma cells depends on various receptor proteins on the outside of the cell. The ...

While humans may struggle to navigate a murky, turbid underwater environment, weakly electric fish can do so with ease. These aquatic animals are specially adapted to traverse obscured waters without relying on vision; instead, they sense their environment via electric fields. Now, researchers are attempting to adapt these electrosensing techniques to improve underwater robotics. Scientists have spent years studying how weakly electric fish--including the knife fish and elephantnose fish--utilize electricity for navigation. These fish have specialized electric organs that discharge small voltages into the surrounding water, creating their own personal electric fields. Nearby objects cause slight disruptions to these fields, which the fish detect with sensitive organs ...

There is a growing consensus among scientists as well as national and local governments representing hundreds of millions of people, that humanity faces a climate crisis that demands a crisis response. New research from the University of California San Diego explores one possible mode of response: a massively funded program to deploy direct air capture (DAC) systems that remove CO2 directly from the ambient air and sequester it safely underground. The findings reveal such a program could reverse the rise in global temperature well before 2100, but only with immediate and sustained investments from governments and firms to scale up the new technology. Despite the enormous undertaking explored in the study, the research also reveals the need ...

Leesburg, VA, January 14, 2021--According to ARRS' American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), new suspicious findings occurred in 5.5% of breast MRI examinations performed to monitor response to neoadjuvant therapy; none of these new lesions were malignant. "Our findings suggest that new lesions that arise in the setting of neoadjuvant therapy are highly unlikely to represent a new site of malignancy, particularly if the index malignancy shows treatment response," wrote Donna A. Eckstein and colleagues in the department of radiology and biomedical imaging at the University of California, San Francisco. Based on a presentation at the ARRS 2019 Annual Meeting, Honolulu, ...

Scientists at the University of Tsukuba show that using a layer of graphene just one atom thick improves the catalytic activity of nickel or copper when generating hydrogen gas, which may lead to cheaper fuel for zero-emission automobiles Tsukuba, Japan - A team of researchers led by the Institute of Applied Physics at the University of Tsukuba has demonstrated a method for producing acid-resistant catalysts by covering them with layers of graphene. They show that using few layers allows for greater proton penetration during a hydrogen evolution reaction, which is crucial for maximizing ...

The Beijing-Arizona Sky Survey (BASS) team of National Astronomical Observatories of Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) and their collaborators of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) project released a giant 2D map of the universe, which paves the way for the upcoming new-generation dark energy spectroscopic survey. Modern astronomical observations reveal that the universe is expanding and appears to be accelerating. The power driving the expansion of the universe is called dark energy by astronomers. The dark energy is still a mystery and accounts for about 68% of the substance ...

Organic luminescent materials have been highlighted as an exciting research topic owing to their prominent potentials in light-emitting diodes, fluorescent sensors, optoelectronic devices, in vivo imaging, anti-counterfeiting, data storage, and information encryption. However, applications of tunable fluorescent materials in the solid states have been largely hampered because these luminescent systems generally require time-consuming organic synthesis procedures and suffer from reduced photoluminescence (PL) owing to the notorious aggregation caused quenching. Aggregation-induced ...

As an elementary type of collective excitation, plasmon has been found to dominate the optical properties of metals. The collective behavior of electrons in plasmons reflects the important difference between condensed matter and molecule-like ones. It is of great significance to study the evolution of plasmonic response and find out the boundary. Controversy exists on such interesting questions as the division between the nanoparticle and molecules, and the physics of mesoscopic and microscopic plasmonic evolution. A unified understanding covering the small and large size limit, namely macro / meso / micro scales with sufficiently atomic precision is thus required. Clusters, as the transition from atomic molecules to condensed matter, are the ideal candidate for studying the evolution ...

Making people stand in front of a scanner to have their body temperature read can result in a large number of false negatives, allowing people with Covid-19 to pass through airports and hospitals undetected. A new study argues that taking temperature readings of a person's fingertip and eye would give a significantly better and more reliable reading and help identify those with fever. The study, co-led by human physiologist and an expert in temperature regulation, Professor Mike Tipton, is published in Experimental Physiology. Professor Tipton, ...

Dinitrogen (N2) fixation is considered as one of the most essential tasks in basic science, providing straightforward methods to produce ammonia and nitrogen-containing molecules. Exploring the reactivity of N2 units of transition metal-nitrogen complexes is of great significance and challenging in the chemistry. Since the first Ru-N2 complex was prepared in 1965, important progress has been made in the synthesis and reactivity of transition metal nitrogen complexes. In many cases, terminal end-on M-N2 complexes as the most prevalent bonding mode were proved ...

In a new study, an international research team led by Sebastian Stumpf from the University of Vienna describes an exceptionally well-preserved skeleton of the ancient shark Asteracanthus. This extremely rare fossil find comes from the famous Solnhofen limestones in Bavaria, which was formed in a tropical-subtropical lagoon landscape during the Late Jurassic, about 150 million years ago. The almost complete skeleton shows that Asteracanthus was two-and-a-half meters long in life, which makes this ancient shark one of the largest of its time. The study is published in the journal Papers in Palaeontology. Cartilaginous fishes, which include sharks and rays, are one of the most successful vertebrate groups still ...

Climate and changes in it have direct impacts on species of plant and animals - but climate may also shape more complex biological systems like food webs. Now a research group from the University of Helsinki has investigated how micro-climate shapes each level of the ecosystem, from species' abundances in predator communities to parasitism rates in key herbivores, and ultimately to damage suffered by plants. The results reveal how climate change may drastically reshape northern ecosystems. Understanding the impact of climatic conditions on species interactions is imperative, as these interactions include such potent ecological forces as herbivory, pollination and parasitism. Lead researcher Tuomas Kankaanpaa from the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry, University of Helsinki, investigated ...

Astronomers using images from Kitt Peak National Observatory and Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory have created the largest ever map of the sky, comprising over a billion galaxies. The ninth and final data release from the ambitious DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys sets the stage for a ground-breaking 5-year survey with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), which aims to provide new insights into the nature of dark energy. The map was released today at the January 2021 meeting of the American Astronomical Society. For millennia humans have used maps to understand and navigate our world and put ourselves in context: we rely on maps to show us where we are, where we came from, and where we're going. Astronomical maps continue this tradition on a vast scale. They ...