Researchers from the group of Eva van Rooij in collaboration with the UMC Utrecht identified a new mutation that leads to the cardiac disease arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy (ACM). They assessed the effect of this mutation on heart muscle cells and obtained new insights into the underlying mechanism that causes the disease. The results of this study, published on March 2nd in Stem Cell Reports, could contribute to the development of new treatments for ACM.   Desmosomes Millions of heart muscle cells contract to let the heart fulfill ...

WASHINGTON, DC – The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) today kicked off a multiyear initiative with an initial investment of $50 million to advance the uptake of practice-changing comparative clinical effectiveness research results into health care practice with the selection of 42 U.S. health systems to participate in its groundbreaking Health Systems Implementation Initiative (HSII). In addition, PCORI initiated the first in two stages of HSII funding, focusing on initial capacity-building efforts.   The array of participating health systems representing a wide range of care settings and populations will develop and implement ...

High in a narrow, seawater-filled crevasse in the base of Antarctica’s largest ice shelf, cameras on the remotely operated Icefin underwater vehicle relayed a sudden change in scenery. Walls of smooth, cloudy meteoric ice suddenly turned green and rougher in texture, transitioning to salty marine ice. Nearly 1,900 feet above, near where the surface of the Ross Ice Shelf meets Kamb Ice Stream, a U.S.-New Zealand research team recognized the shift as evidence of “ice pumping” – a process never before directly observed in an ice shelf crevasse, important to its stability. “We were looking at ice that ...

Party loyalty and partisan motivation may interfere less with Americans’ thinking than previously believed, MIT behavioral researchers Ben M. Tappin, Adam J. Berinsky, and David G. Rand report in new research published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.   The study, which looked at how Democrats and Republicans react to persuasive messaging that doesn't align with their party leader’s position, challenges the view that party loyalty distorts how Americans process evidence and arguments.   “Our results are clear and unequivocal: Learning the in-party leader’s ...

Even in their dark isolation from the atmosphere above, caves can hold a rich archive of local climate conditions and how they've shifted over the eons. Formed over tens of thousands of years, speleothems — rock formations unique to caves better known as stalagmites and stalactites — hold secrets to the ancient environments from which they formed. A newly published study of a stalagmite found in a cave in southern Wisconsin reveals previously undetected history of the local climate going back thousands of years. The new findings provide strong ...

•    The blood-brain barrier prevents most drugs from reaching brain tumors. •    A new method using nanoparticles transported drugs across this barrier in mice. •    The nanoparticles target a protein on tumor blood vessel cells called P-selectin. •    The nanoparticles improved the treatment in a model of aggressive pediatric brain cancer Brain tumors are notoriously hard to treat. One reason is the challenge posed by the blood-brain barrier, a network of blood vessels and tissue with closely spaced cells. The barrier forms a tight seal to protect ...

Göttingen, March 2, 2023. A sense of fairness has long been considered purely human – but animals also react with frustration when they are treated unequally by a person. For instance, a well-known video shows monkeys throwing the offered cucumber at their trainer when a conspecific receives sweet grapes as a reward for the same task. Meanwhile, researchers have observed similarly frustrated reactions to unfair rewards in wolves, rats and crows. However, researchers still debate the reasons for this behavior: Does the frustration really stem from a dislike of unequal treatment, or is there another explanation? In a study with long-tailed ...

Researchers from Bochum and Saarbrücken have detected security vulnerabilities, some of them serious, in several drones made by the manufacturer DJI. These enable users, for example, to change a drone’s serial number or override the mechanisms that allow security authorities to track the drones and their pilots. In special attack scenarios, the drones can even be brought down remotely in flight. The team headed by Nico Schiller of the Horst Görtz Institute for IT Security at Ruhr University Bochum, ...

New research led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego has confirmed that coastal water pollution transfers to the atmosphere in sea spray aerosol, which can reach people beyond just beachgoers, surfers, and swimmers. Rainfall in the US-Mexico border region causes complications for wastewater treatment and results in untreated sewage being diverted into the Tijuana River and flowing into the ocean in south Imperial Beach. This input of contaminated water has caused chronic coastal water pollution in Imperial ...

The large number of oily wastewater discharges and oil spills are bringing about severe threats to environment and human health. Corresponding to this challenge, a number of functional materials have been developed and applied in oil-water separation as oil barriers or oil sorbents. These materials can be divided into two main categories which are artificial and natural. Natural materials such as green bio-materials are generally low cost and abundant with biological degradability, which are also regarded as promising alternatives for oil-water separation ...

Existing colour systems, such as RGB and CYMK, are all text-based and require a large range of values to represent different colours, making them difficult to compute and time-consuming to convert. Recently, researchers from City University of Hong Kong (CityU) made a breakthrough by inventing an innovative colour system, called “C235”, based on prime numbers, enabling efficient encoding and effective colour compression. It can unify existing colour systems and has the potential to be applied in various applications, like designing an energy-saving LCD system and colourizing DNA codons. Currently, ...

The Dan David Prize, the largest history prize in the world, has announced University College Dublin (UCD) Archaeologist, Dr Anita Radini, as one of nine recipients for 2023. Each of the winners - who work in Kenya, Denmark, Israel, Canada, the US and Ireland - will receive $300,000 (USD) in recognition of their achievements as emerging scholars and to support their future endeavours in the study of the human past. Dr Radini is the first in Ireland to receive this award. “Our winners represent the next generation of historians,” said Ariel ...

When it comes to venturing into and enjoying nature, forests are the people’s top choice – at least in Denmark. This is also reflected in the sales prices of properties with private forest. But beyond earnings potential, this first study of its kind, conducted by the University of Copenhagen, puts a price tag on the so-called amenity value of Danish private forests. Forests have a nearly therapeutic effect on humans. Perhaps that is why eight out of ten of Danes have wandered in the woods over ...

What are humans? What are animals? And what makes humans unique? The comparative psychologist Fumihiro Kano has set himself a life goal to answer those questions. On 28 February 2023 it was announced that the scientist from the Cluster of Excellence “Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour” (CASCB) at the University of Konstanz will receive the Manfred Fuchs Prize from the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities of the State Baden-Württemberg for his interdisciplinary work in animal behaviour research. Photo gallery for the article: https://www.campus.uni-konstanz.de/en/science/the-map-to-human-behaviour Fumihiro ...

Sarcopenia is the decline of skeletal muscle mass with age, leading to loss of muscle strength (to move objects, shake hands etc.) and performance (walking and making other routine movements effectively). It involves chronic inflammation and is associated with cognitive alterations, heart disease and respiratory disorders. In short, it affects the quality of life, reducing independence and increasing the risk of injury, falls and even death. Sarcopenia affects 15% of adults over the age of 60 and 46% of those over 80. Sleep disorders are also common in these age groups. The aging ...

Bald eagles are often touted as a massive conservation success story due to their rebound from near extinction in the 1960s. But now a highly infectious virus may put that hard-fought comeback in jeopardy. Published in Nature’s Scientific Reports, new research from the University of Georgia showed highly pathogenic avian influenza, also known as H5N1, is killing off unprecedented numbers of mating pairs of bald eagles. “Even just one year of losses of productivity like we’ve documented regionally is very concerning and could have effects for decades to come if representative of broader regions,” said ...

Imagine if harried parents could get the scientific and clinical expertise of a pediatrician just by walking only a few steps next door. That’s the premise of a new podcast, The Pediatrician Next Door, by Dr. Wendy Hunter, M.D. She brings decades of experience in emergency and primary pediatric care to answer burning questions that parents are reluctant to ask. “In the emergency room, I saw a great many frustrated parents and their kids who didn’t always get their questions answered by their pediatrician because there just wasn’t time in the clinic,” said Dr. Hunter. “Or, they didn’t have access to their ...

Instead of special heart scans, physicians can use images of the chest captured months earlier, and for other reasons, to estimate patients’ risk of heart attack or death during several kinds of major surgeries, a new study shows.  Researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine analyzed existing computed tomography (CT) scans to estimate levels of hardened (calcified) fatty plaque deposits in the heart’s three largest blood vessels. They found that patients with greater buildup of this plaque had higher chances of developing serious health issues following surgery. Major surgeries, which usually ...

Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have developed a method for predicting fall accidents and cognitive illnesses such as Alzheimer’s disease by reading a person’s walking pattern with the aid of a radar sensor. The small sensor can be attached to furniture, walls and ceilings, both in the home and in a healthcare setting. “Our method is both precise and easy to use. It can help healthcare staff to carry out a more reliable risk analysis and tailor interventions to achieve a significant effect early on. Hopefully it can ...

New York, NY – March 02, 2023 – Despite COPD’s pervasiveness, it is generally assumed that the main instigator in its development is tobacco smoking. The 2023 Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease or GOLD report is proposing a new definition of COPD, one that acknowledges the key pathogenic role of tobacco smoking but accounts for other factors that also contribute to COPD. The report is now available online in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. The GOLD 2023 report ...

Most adolescents and young adults have experienced bullying in some form, with about one-third of them experiencing cyberbullying, contributing to mental health concerns. Cyberbullying involves electronic communication such as texts, emails, online videos and social media, which has become increasingly problematic over the last few decades. Several reasons include the anonymity it allows, the fact that it is not as easily monitored, and that adolescents and young adults have easier access to devices. In an article published in the journal Primary Care Clinical ...

Scientists have analysed chemicals in the skin of southern right whales to give new insights into the animals’ distribution, as well as long-term environmental changes in the Southern Ocean. The research was published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). [https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2214035120] The scientists from the US, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, Europe, UK, and Aotearoa New Zealand measured the amounts of various carbon and nitrogen isotopes ...

Those living in unstable housing conditions, such as hostels or informal dwellings and those who had not completed post-secondary studies were more likely to contract HIV in South Africa, according to a new study from McGill University. A team of researchers based at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) has reported survey results that show socioeconomic factors play a critical role in the detection, transmission, and treatment of HIV in regions of South Africa. “We found that factors such as education and dwelling situations still impact ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – There is much more to avian biodiversity in the United States than the number of different species living in a given region or community, but the diversity of birds’ ecosystem contributions – assessed through measures of their diet, body structure and foraging methods – are much tougher to study. And with hundreds of species migrating south for the winter and north for summer breeding, birds’ ecosystem function patterns change over space and time – creating a serious analytical challenge. But two scientists from The Ohio State University have ...

To fill the two Chairholders positions, ÉTS is seeking researchers who are experts in the field of buildings and infrastructure and whose work focuses on resilience capacity and adaptability to climate change. Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) This Research Chair will receive CAN$ 200,000 in funding per year over a period of seven years, and is open to researchers whose achievements have had a significant impact on their field of expertise. Candidates who wish to submit an application must be capable of proposing an original, innovative research program related to the adaptability of infrastructure and buildings ...