Plants grown in soil are colonized by diverse microbes collectively known as the plant microbiota, which is essential for optimal plant growth in nature and protects the plant host from the harmful effects of pathogenic microorganisms and insects. However, in the face of an advanced plant immune system that has evolved to recognize microbial associated-molecular patterns (MAMPs) - conserved molecules within a microbial class - and mount an immune response, it is unknown how soil-dwelling microbes are able to colonize plant roots. Now, MPIPZ researchers led by Paul Schulze-Lefert, and researchers from the University of Carolina led by Jeffery L. Dangl show, in two separate studies, that a subset ...

Brain tumor cells with a certain common mutation reprogram invading immune cells. This leads to the paralysis of the body's immune defense against the tumor in the brain. Researchers from Heidelberg, Mannheim, and Freiburg discovered this mechanism and at the same time identified a way of reactivating the paralyzed immune system to fight the tumor. These results confirm that therapeutic vaccines or immunotherapies are more effective against brain tumors if active substances are simultaneously used to promote the suppressed immune system. Diffuse gliomas are usually incurable brain tumors that spread in the brain and are difficult to completely remove by surgery. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy often only have a limited ...

Scientists and clinicians at UCL and Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) studying the effectiveness of CAR T-cell therapies in children with leukaemia, have discovered a small sub-set of T-cells that are likely to play a key role in whether the treatment is successful. Researchers say 'stem cell memory T-cells' appear critical in both destroying the cancer at the outset and for long term immune surveillance and exploiting this quality could improve the design and performance of CAR T therapies. Explaining the study, published in Nature Cancer, lead author Dr Luca Biasco (UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health), said: "During clinical trials we have seen some very encouraging results in young patients with leukaemia, however it's still not clear why CAR T-cells continue ...

A population of bridled nailtail wallabies in Queensland has been brought back from the brink of extinction after conservation scientists led by UNSW Sydney successfully trialled an intervention technique never before used on land-based mammals. Using a method known as 'headstarting', the researchers rounded up bridled nailtail wallabies under a certain size and placed them within a protected area where they could live until adulthood without the threat of their main predators - feral cats - before being released back into the wild. In an article published today in Current Biology, the scientists describe how they decided on the strategy to protect only the juvenile wallabies from feral cats in Avocet Nature Refuge, ...

Knowledge systems outside of those sanctioned by Western universities have often been marginalised or simply not engaged with in many science disciplines, but there are multiple examples where Western scientists have claimed discoveries for knowledge that resident experts already knew and shared. This demonstrates not a lack of knowledge itself but rather that, for many scientists raised in Western society, little education concerning histories of systemic oppression has been by design. Western scientific knowledge has also been used to justify social and environmental control, including dispossessing colonised people of their ...

Our brain is usually well protected from uncontrolled influx of molecules from the periphery thanks to the blood-brain barrier, a physical seal of cells lining the blood vessel walls. The hypothalamus, however, is a notable exception to this rule. Characterized by "leaky" blood vessels, this region, located at the base of the brain, is exposed to a variety of circulating bioactive molecules. This anatomical feature also determines its function as a rheostat involved in the coordination of energy sensing and feeding behavior. Several hormones and nutrients are known to influence the feeding neurocircuit in the hypothalamus. Classic examples are leptin and insulin, both involved in informing the brain of available energy. In the last years, the ...

Skoltech scientists and their colleagues from Germany and the United States have analyzed the metabolomes of humans, chimpanzees, and macaques in muscle, kidney, and three different brain regions. The team discovered that the modern human genome undergoes mutation which makes the adenylosuccinate lyase enzyme less stable, leading to a decrease in purine synthesis. This mutation did not occur in Neanderthals, so the scientists believe that it affected metabolism in brain tissues and thereby strongly contributed to modern humans evolving into a separate species. The research was published in the journal eLife. The predecessors of modern humans split from their closest evolutionary relatives, Neanderthals and Denisovans, about 600,000 ...

A new low-cost and sustainable technique would boost the possibilities for hospitals and clinics to deliver therapeutics with aerogels, a foam-like material now found in such high-tech applications as insulation for spacesuits and breathable plasters. With the help of an ordinary kitchen freezer, this newest form of aerogel was made from all natural ingredients, including plant cellulose and algae, says Jowan Rostami, a researcher in fibre technology at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Rostami says that the aerogel's low density and favorable surface area make it ideal for a wide range of uses, ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Scientists report that it is possible to detect and predict heat damage in crops by measuring the fluorescent light signature of plant leaves experiencing heat stress. If collected via satellite, this fluorescent signal could support widespread monitoring of growth and crop yield under the heat stress of climate change, the researchers say. Their study measures sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence - or SIF - to monitor a plant's photosynthetic health and establish a connection between heat stress and crop yield. The findings are published in the journal Global Change Biology. Sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence occurs when a portion of photosynthetic energy, in the form of near-infrared light, is emitted from plant leaves, the researchers said. "There ...

Fifty-six million years ago, as the Earth's climate warmed by five to eight degrees C, new land mammals evolved, tropical forests expanded, giant insects and reptiles appeared and the chemistry of the ocean changed. Through it all, bacteria in the ocean in what is now New Jersey kept a record of the changes in their environment through forming tiny magnetic particles. Now, those particles and their record are all that's left of these microorganisms. Thanks to new research tools, that record is finally being read. In research published in the journal Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology, researchers including University of Utah doctoral student Courtney Wagner and associate professor Peter Lippert report the climate clues that can ...

By making a game out of getting their daily steps, new research points to the possibility that people with diabetes could be nudged toward increasing their physical activity, with changes lasting for a full year. Since many now use apps or other digital means to manage their diabetes, this program - which utilized tools like wearable step counters and electronic scales with personalized goals - could potentially be integrated to help individuals achieve greater success. Findings from the study, conducted by a team from the Perelman School of Medicine ...

Carbon is vital to the existence of all living organisms, since it forms the basis of all organic molecules that, in turn, form the basis of all living beings. While that alone is pretty impressive, it has recently found surprisingly novel applications in disciplines such as aerospace and civil engineering with the development of carbon fibers that are stronger, stiffer, and lighter than steel. Consequently, carbon fibers have taken over steel in high-performance products like aircrafts, racecars, and sports equipment. Carbon fibers are usually combined with other materials to form ...

Scientists studying a special kind of semimetals have found a material with an unusually pristine nature that could be crucial for developing powerful new quantum technologies and discovering new phases of matter. In an open access paper published in Science Advances, Johns Hopkins physicists and colleagues at Rice University, the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien), and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), present experimental evidence of naturally occurring quantum criticality in a material. Criticality is the point at which a material hovers between two phases--like the slushy transition between water and ice--without ever settling. Useful materials often exploit this point. For example, air conditioners use compressors to change refrigerant ...

In order to understand foodways and subsistence strategies of humans in the past, as well as distributions of ancient animal species, it is critical for archaeologists to accurately identify animal taxa in archaeological sites. Many sites across sub-Saharan Africa have fragmented and poorly preserved animal bones, leaving the majority of specimens unidentifiable. Sub-Saharan Africa is also home to the greatest diversity of bovids on Earth, including African buffalo, wildebeest, eland, and duikers, as well as domestic sheep, goat, and cattle. The sheer number of osteologically similar animals in Africa presents a major challenge for identifying animal bones. During the past decade, archaeologists have increasingly used a bone ...

Des Plaines, IL - For acute mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), there were no differences in recovery or health care utilization outcomes with prescribed early light exercise compared to standard care. These are the results of a study titled A randomized trial comparing prescribed light exercise to standard management for emergency department patients with acute mild traumatic brain injury, to be published in the May issue of Academic Emergency Medicine (AEM) journal, a peer-reviewed journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM). Findings of the study suggest that early light exercise may be encouraged as tolerated at emergency department discharge following mTBI, but this guidance is not sufficient ...

HOUSTON ? Several Phase II clinical trials conducted by researchers from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center show promising results for patients with melanoma, breast cancer, HER2-positive tumors and ovarian cancer. The results of these studies, which will be presented at the virtual 2021 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting, highlight new advances in drug therapy research to improve patient outcomes. Combination therapy of nivolumab and relatlimab before and after surgery is effective against melanoma (Abstract #9502) In a Phase II study, MD Anderson researchers showed that a regimen of neoadjuvant and ...

Iahikawa, Japan - Humans benefit from playing games more than some might realize. Games can be a relaxed approach to learning or honing our problem-solving skills while relieving stress. However, game playing generally carries a considerable amount of decision-making, involving mathematical and statistical considerations that we make to decide on what we think is the best move. Thus, games showcase many of the impressive faculties and inner workings of the human brain, which in turns makes them a great testbed and playground for research on artificial intelligence (AI). One aspect common to many games is decision making based on uncertain information about current and potential ...

Months after recovering from mild cases of COVID-19, people still have immune cells in their body pumping out antibodies against the virus that causes COVID-19, according to a study from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Such cells could persist for a lifetime, churning out antibodies all the while. The findings, published May 24 in the journal Nature, suggest that mild cases of COVID-19 leave those infected with lasting antibody protection and that repeated bouts of illness are likely to be uncommon. "Last fall, there were reports that antibodies wane quickly after infection with the virus that causes COVID-19, and mainstream media interpreted that to mean that immunity was not long-lived," said senior author Ali Ellebedy, PhD, an associate professor ...

A critical process in the infection cycle of viruses has been revealed for the first time in dynamic detail using pioneering plant-based technology. Evidence about the process of virus maturation revealed in the research could help us develop new methods for treating viral infections. Maturation plays a critical role for all animal and bacterial viruses and is required to produce infectious virions or particles. Though the outlines of the process have been determined for many groups of viruses, detailed mechanistic studies have not been reported. To provide the first detailed mechanistic study of maturation, Roger Castells-Graells, ...

The research team led by Prof. DU Pingwu from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) first successfully synthesized an all-phenylene bismacrocycle (bis- means two) with Siamese-twin structure and used fullerene as guest molecules to assemble a peanut-shaped supramolecular complex. This study was published in Angewandte Chemie. As a new type of carbon material, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have attracted widespread attention because of their outstanding mechanical and photophysical properties. However, the synthesis of CNTs or CNTs fragments with selective simple structure is still a challenge. This study reported a conjugated highly strained all-phenylene Siamese-twin bismacrocycle, SCPP[10]. Two phenylene nanorings, [10]CPP, conjoined ...

Research co-led by Newcastle University has shed new light on important microscopic scale interactions between algae and bacteria predicated on the mutually beneficial exchange of nutrients. The research was carried out at the University of Cambridge and the Nordsim laboratory at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm by Dr Hannah Laeverenz Schlogelhofer, now at the University of Exeter, and a team led by Dr Ottavio Croze, of Newcastle University's School of Mathematics, Statistics and Physics. They have used an advanced high-spatial resolution isotope mapping technique called 'SIMS' (secondary ion mass spectrometry) to chart for the first time how long it takes for labelled carbon produced by microalgae to be transferred ...

A supersensitised brain connection has been identified in people who suffer from misophonia, an extreme reaction to "trigger" sounds. For the first time, researchers led by Newcastle University, have discovered increased connectivity in the brain between the auditory cortex and the motor control areas related to the face, mouth and throat. Publishing today, in the Journal of Neuroscience, lead author Dr Sukhbinder Kumar, Newcastle University Research Fellow in the Biosciences Institute said: "Our findings indicate that for people with misophonia there is abnormal communication between the auditory and motor ...

Posts to Reddit forum "SuicideWatch" spike in the early hours of Monday morning New research from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King's College London has found that people on a social media suicide support forum are most likely to post to the site during the early hours of Monday morning. The study, which has been published in BMC Psychiatry, suggests that there is a clear variation in behaviour throughout the week and throughout the day. The researchers hope that this means that targeted support to at risk populations can be made more readily available to those most in need. The researchers looked at the timings at which users of the Reddit ...

The study, published in the journal Nature Aging and led by the laboratories of Dr. Alberto Pascual (CSIC), from the Neuronal Maintenance Mechanisms Group, and Prof. Javier Vitorica (University of Seville/CIBERNED) of the Physiopathology of Alzheimer's Disease Group at IBiS, demonstrates for the first time that low oxygen levels in the so-called senile plaques in the brain reduces the immune system's defensive capacity against the disease. The study also suggests that this lack of oxygen in the brain enhances the action of disorders associated with Alzheimer's disease that are characterised by low systemic oxygen levels, such as atherosclerosis and other cardiovascular diseases. What happens ...

Forensic archaeologists and anthropologists from Cranfield University have started to recover the bodies of victims executed by the Franco regime at the end of the Spanish Civil War during an excavation in the Ciudad Real region of Spain. The team from Cranfield is working with partners from the University Complutense of Madrid (UCM) and social anthropologists from Mapas de Memoria (Maps of Memory) to search for, exhume and identify those executed and buried in the civil cemetery at Almagro between 1939 and 1940. Several bodies with gunshot wounds to the head, personal effects and parts of clothing ...