During meiosis, reshuffling of genetic information between homologous chromosomes through meiotic recombination creates variable gametes and hence genetic variation in offsprings. Meiotic recombination occurs in the context of the meiotic chromosome axis, a proteinaceous structure along which sister chromatids are arranged in a loop base array during prophase I. Data across organisms suggests meiotic chromosome axis serving as a scaffold for meiotic recombination. In the model plant A. thaliana, the axis associated proteins ASY1 and ASY3 are critical for synapsis and meiotic recombination. “Due to the key role of axis proteins such as ...

One of the biggest challenges for a climate-neutral energy supply is the storage of electrical energy. Conventional batteries can hold large amounts of energy, but the charging and discharging processes take time. Supercapacitors, on the other hand, charge very quickly but are limited in the amount of stored energy. Only in the last few years has a new class of materials been discussed that combines the advantages of batteries with those of supercapacitors, named pseudocapacitors. Promising materials: Pseudocapacitors Among pseudocapacitive materials, so-called MXenes consisting of a large family of 2D transition metal carbides and nitrides appear particularly promising. Their structure ...

The number of injuries in youth athletics is significantly reduced when coaches and parents have access to digital information on adolescent growth. It also takes twice as long for the first injury to occur. This is shown in a study from Linköping University published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.  Many promising athletes have had their careers ruined because of injuries. One thing that almost all events in athletics have in common is a high load for a short time, as in jumping, throwing and running. ...

We all know how important sleep is for mental health, but a meta-analysis publishing in the journal Current Biology on March 13 found that getting good shut-eye also helps our immune systems respond to vaccination. The authors found that people who slept less than six hours per night produced significantly fewer antibodies than people who slept seven hours or more, and the deficit was equivalent to two months of antibody waning. “Good sleep not only amplifies but may also extend the duration of protection of the vaccine,” says senior author Eve Van Cauter, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago who, along ...

The arrival of the new year is a prime time for Antarctic birds like the south polar skua, Antarctic petrel, and snow petrel to build nests and lay their eggs. However, from December 2021 to January 2022, researchers did not find a single skua nest on Svarthamaren, one of the regions where the birds go to raise their young. Similarly, the number of Antarctic petrel and snow petrel nests dropped to almost zero.  In these regions, climate change caused snowfall and snow accumulation to be significantly higher than in previous years. Now, a study published on March 13 in the journal Current Biology shows that these unusually strong snowstorms ...

About The Study: In this study of 398,000 adult outpatients with COVID-19, the absolute risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE) was low. Several patient-level factors were associated with higher VTE risk; these findings may help identify subsets of patients with COVID-19 who may benefit from more intensive surveillance or VTE preventive strategies.  Authors: Margaret C. Fang, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of California, San Francisco, 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/jamanetworkopen.2023.2338) Editor’s ...

BOSTON – Hypertension is the leading risk factor for death worldwide. During the COVID-19 pandemic, routine blood pressure assessments decreased because of global disruptions to medical care delivery. However, new research has found that a remote hypertension program, operated by Mass General Brigham since 2019, successfully supported patients through the pandemic in achieving their blood pressure goals, with patients who enrolled during the pandemic reaching and maintaining their goal blood pressures an average of two months earlier than in the pre-pandemic period. The results, published in Journal ...

How strongly a vaccine protects you may depend on getting enough sleep in the days before and after inoculation, finds a new meta-analysis examining the relationship between sleep duration and the body’s response to vaccination. Sleeping fewer than six hours per night around the time of vaccination was associated with a robust decrease in antibody response, according to the multi-institution study published March 13 in Current Biology. Adults are typically recommended to get between seven and nine hours of sleep per night. The meta-analysis included data on the association between sleep duration and antibody responses for the ...

In reviewing data from previous studies, a team lead by researchers at the University of Chicago and the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm) found that individuals who had fewer than six hours of sleep per night in the days surrounding vaccination had a blunted antibody response. That indicates efforts to promote heathy sleep duration ahead of an immunization could be an easy way to improve vaccine effectiveness. The study was published March 13 in Current Biology. The latest work builds off a 2002 study by members of the team showing that restricting sleep ...

While drugs are on the market to slow the progression of neurodegenerative diseases, there are still no cures. But researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School are looking for new pathways for slowing neuronal dysfunction and treating amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a fatal motor neuron disease. The team found that proteins involved in the innate immune system could be at the root of the disease. “The unmet need for therapies for neurodegenerative diseases is huge, and our work opens up a whole new ...

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (March 13, 2023) — In a paper published today in Current Biology, researchers from the California Academy of Sciences Hope for Reefs initiative, along with Brazilian collaborators from the University of São Paulo, Federal University of Espírito Santo, and the Instituto Nacional da Mata Atlântica, show that mesophotic coral reefs function much differently than their shallower counterparts and are unlikely to offer a refuge for shallow water fishes trying to escape climate-change driven warming on the ocean’s surface.  The research is based on hundreds of dives totaling ...

Achieving the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement will require the combined efforts of states and companies around the world. How can developing countries achieve carbon neutrality and boost their resilience while pursuing economic growth and improved living standards? A study by the Research Institute for Sustainability (RIFS) draws on the example of Nepal to analyse the benefits of a net-zero emissions strategy. Nepal is among the 10 countries most vulnerable to climate-change-related disasters and risks. However, its contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions is minor. As Nepal prepares to graduate ...

In 1957, Maurice Raben successfully isolated and purified the growth hormone (GH) from the pituitary gland, opening up a potential avenue of GH therapies. Children who were born with a deficiency of this hormone could now receive medical intervention in the form of daily injections to substitute the product into their body, thus avoiding the ill-effects of GH deficiency. However, given that it was a product that had to be meticulously extracted from the pituitary of dead bodies, and was time-consuming as well as labor- and resource-intensive process, it remained ...

Materials science is constantly evolving research area as researchers strive to discover and synthesize novel functional materials with desirable properties suited to a variety of applications. One example on this front is furnished by covalent organic frameworks (COFs), a class of materials characterized by crystalline porous polymers connected in the form of a network via covalent bonds. Owing to their structural diversity, high porosity, and easily accessible active sites, COFs can be designed for a range of applications such as gas storage and separation, catalysis, and drug delivery. ...

Embargoed until 8:00 a.m. CT / 9:00 a.m. ET Monday, March 13, 2023 DALLAS and ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 13, 2023 — Health inequities can be detrimental to employees’ emotional, psychological and physical health and place a significant economic burden on employers. To improve employee well-being and reduce health inequities nationwide, the American Heart Association—a global force for longer, healthier lives for all—introduces the Health Equity in the Workforce initiative in collaboration with the Deloitte Health Equity Institute and the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Foundation. The Health Equity ...

Metal organic frameworks, or MOFs, are kind of like LEGOs. The pieces are simple to connect, yet they’re capable of building highly sophisticated structures. These structures can be used to filter toxic gasses out of the air or to store fuel for natural or hydrogen gas-powered engines.  LEGOs melt when they interact with heat. But, what happens to MOFs?  A new study from the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering found that MOFs heat up significantly when they soak up gasses and if they ...

Annapolis, MD; March 13, 2023—Black widow spiders have earned a fearsome reputation for their venomous bite. But in parts of the southern United States these spiders have much to fear themselves—from spider relatives who really don't like their company. In the past couple decades, researchers have noticed black widow spiders commonly being displaced by the brown widow, a fellow species in the same genus, Latrodectus. But new research suggests this isn't a just simple case of one species winning the competition for food or habitat. Instead, a study shows brown widow spiders have a striking propensity to seek out and kill nearby ...

Researchers from Colorado State University and the Colorado School of Mines have thought up a new computational imaging strategy that exploits the best of both the quantum and classical worlds. They developed an efficient and robust algorithm that fuses quantum and classical information for high-quality imaging. The results of their research were published Dec. 21 in Intelligent Computing, a Science Partner Journal. Recently, the quantum properties of light have been exploited to enable super­resolution microscopy. While quantum information brings new possibilities, it has its own set of limitations. The researchers’ approach is based on classical and quantum ...

Surprisingly, bitter taste receptors are not only located in the mouth, but also elsewhere in the body, including the airways. Activating those receptors opens up lung passageways, so they’re a potential target for treating asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Now, researchers report in ACS’ Journal of Medicinal Chemistry that they have designed a potent and selective compound that could lead the way to such therapies. Among the 25 different types of bitter taste receptors, the TAS2R14 subtype is one of the most widely distributed in tissues outside the mouth. Scientists are uncertain about ...

A new study published in PeerJ Life & Environment and featured in the International Association for Biological Oceanography Hub evaluates the use of DNA metabarcoding to identify fish eggs. The study assessed the performance of DNA metabarcoding to increase throughput and reduce financial and labor costs associated with a long-term fish egg monitoring program.  The study found:  Egg identifications were consistent with prior species distributions observed from individual egg DNA barcoding, and spatial ...

Date: 13 March 2023, 08:30 CET   13 to 15 April in Malaga, Spain   Get ready for practice-changing science at ESC Preventive Cardiology 2023, a scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).   The annual congress of the European Association of Preventive Cardiology (EAPC), a branch of the ESC, takes place 13 to 15 April at the Trade Fair and Congress Centre of Malaga (FYCMA - Palacio de Ferias y Congresos de Malaga) in Malaga, Spain. Explore the scientific programme.   Novel research ...

Climate models used by the UN’s IPCC and others to project climate change are not accurately reflecting what the Arctic’s future will be. Researchers at the University of Gothenburg argue that the rate of warming will be much faster than projected. Due to the Arctic´s sea ice cover and its harsh climate, relatively few observations are made in that part of world. This means that the climate models used for projecting the future of the Arctic have not been calibrated to the same extent there as in other parts of the world. Two recent ...

Patients with ‘blinding’ headaches known as Idiopathic Intercranial Hypertension (IIH) could be treated with an injectable peptide used for type 2 diabetes, a new trial has found.   The study, published in the journal Brain, today reports on a phase two trial of a drug called exenatide, a GLP-1 receptor agonist, as a potential treatment for IIH.   The IIH Pressure Trial led by a team of neurologists from the University of Birmingham and University Hospitals Birmingham found that for the seven ...

The relationship between adolescents and their parents has always been an intriguing issue in psychological research. Several studies underscore the significance of parenting behavior in the development of young people. Parental autonomy support, in particular, has been considered essential for adolescents’ growth and healthy functioning. Parental autonomy support and controlling parenting are the two most important facets of parenting. The former refers to parents supporting the independence of their children, including listening carefully, providing choices, perspective-taking, and offering valid reasoning for particular behaviors. On the contrary, controlling parenting refers to parental ...

Osaka, Japan – The health-promoting effects of sulfur-rich vegetables such as onions and garlic have been known for a long time. How food containing sulfur compounds promotes health has not been easy to explore, as the levels—and types—of reactive polysulfides found in different vegetables had not been accurately measured. A research team, led by Assistant Professor Shingo Kasamatsu from the Osaka Metropolitan University Graduate School of Science, has established a method for selective and sensitive detection of reactive ...