-With pictures- Scientists have demonstrated in a new study that carbon-based molecules can be much more dynamic than previously thought. When a carbon atom forms four bonds to different groups, the molecule can exist in two mirror image forms. These mirror image forms are vital in medicine because they have different biological activities. Usually, it is impossible to interconvert between these ‘enantiomers’ because to do so would require a bond to be broken, a process that needs too much energy. The researchers ...

A new study of Antarctic minke whales reveals a minimum size limit for whales employing the highly efficient “lunge-feeding” strategy that enabled the blue whale to become the largest animal on Earth. Lunge feeding whales accelerate toward a patch of prey, engulf a huge volume of water, and then filter out the prey through the baleen plates in their mouths. This strategy is used by the largest group of baleen whales, known as rorquals, which includes blue, fin, humpback, and minke whales. The ability ...

Scientists have discovered why breast cancer cells that have spread to the lungs may ‘wake up’ following years of sleep - forming incurable secondary tumours. Their research, funded by Breast Cancer Now, reveals the mechanism that triggers this breast cancer 'time bomb' – and suggests a strategy to defuse it. Patients with oestrogen receptor positive (ER+) breast cancer – the most common type – have a continued risk of their cancer recurring in another part of their body for many years or even decades after their original ...

Not all probiotics are created equal. In a new study, researchers found that certain enzymes within a class known as bile salt hydrolases (BSHs) can restrict Clostridioides difficile (C. diff.) colonization by both altering existing bile acids and by creating a new class of bile acids within the gut's microbial environment. The work could lead to “designer” probiotics that protect against disease by introducing specific BSHs to the gut after antibiotic treatment. Selecting the right suite of BSH-producing bacteria is critical, because the study found that interactions between BSHs and bile acids ...

New York, NY (March 13, 2023) – Researchers have identified two previously unknown genes linked to schizophrenia and newly implicated a third gene as carrying risk for both schizophrenia and autism. Led by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the multi-center study further demonstrated that the schizophrenia risk conferred by these rare damaging variants is conserved across ethnicities. The study may also point to new therapeutics. The findings were published in the March 13 online issue of Nature ...

A new study has highlighted how and when changes to the environment result in animal-borne disease thresholds being breeched, allowing for a better understanding and increased capacity to predict the risk of transmissions.  For the first time, researchers from Griffith University, Stanford University and the University of California used cumulative pressure mapping and machine learning to better understand how six vector-borne diseases (those transmitted by biting insects) found in different environments responded to the effects of human pressures.  Published in Nature Sustainability, the research found diseases associated with ...

How does an iPhone predict the next word you’re going to type in your messages? The technology behind this, and also at the core of many AI applications, is called a transformer; a deep-learning algorithm that detects patterns in datasets. Now, researchers at EPFL and KAIST have created a transformer for Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs), a class of porous crystalline materials. By combining organic linkers with metal nodes, chemists can synthesize millions of different materials with potential applications in energy storage and gas separation. The “MOFtransformer” is designed to be the ChatGPT for researchers that study MOFs. It’s architecture is based ...

HOUSTON – (March 13, 2023) – Physicists were surprised by the 2022 discovery that electrons in magnetic iron-germanium crystals could spontaneously and collectively organize their charges into a pattern featuring a standing wave. Magnetism also arises from the collective self-organization of electron spins into ordered patterns, and those patterns rarely coexist with the patterns that produce the standing wave of electrons physicists call a charge density wave. In a study published this week in Nature Physics, Rice University physicists Ming Yi and Pengcheng Dai, and many of their collaborators from the 2022 ...

Ali Beheshti, Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering, received funding for the project: "Surface Integrity and Tribological Study of Propulsion Shaft Materials Subjected to Advanced Surface Strengthening Treatments."  In this project, Beheshti and his team are conducting detailed analyses of IN625, a nickel-based superalloy, and Ni-Cu, alloys of copper and nickel, subjected to an advanced laser peening (LP) process. The process uses very high-speed laser generated shock waves applied to the material and results in significant mechanical strength.  Specifically, they are studying unpeened, ...

Scientists from German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), together with colleagues from Germany, Israel, and the USA, have found that the gut microbiome may modulate the efficacy of CAR-T cellular immunotherpy CAR-T cells in patients with B cell lymphomas. Individualized microbiome information retreaved from patients‘ gut microbiomes prior to initiation of CAR T therapy could accurately predict their subsequent responsiveness to therapy, but only in the condition that these patients were not pre-treated with broad spectrum ...

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 ...