Following the repeal of the short-lived Cook County, Illinois Sweetened Beverage Tax, sales of sweetened beverages went right back to where they were before the tax went into place, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago. The study is published in JAMA Network Open. The tax, which included both sugar-sweetened and artificially-sweetened diet beverages, was largely pitched as a way to reduce county budget deficits. The tax lasted just four months -- it went into effect on Aug. 2, 2017 and ended on Dec. 1, 2017. "We ...

Mollusks build shells to protect their soft tissues from predators. Nacre, also known as the mother of pearl, has an intricate, highly regular structure that makes it an incredibly strong material. Depending on the species, nacres can reach tens of centimeters in length. No matter the size, each nacre is built from materials deposited by a multitude of single cells at multiple different locations at the same time. How exactly this highly periodic and uniform structure emerges from the initial disorder was unknown until now. Nacre formation starts uncoordinated ...

Drones, robots and autonomous systems can transform the natural world in and around cities for people and wildlife. International research, involving over 170 experts and led by the University of Leeds, assessed the opportunities and challenges that this cutting-edge technology could have for urban nature and green spaces. The researchers highlighted opportunities to improve how we monitor nature, such as identifying emerging pests and ensuring plants are cared for, and helping people engage with and appreciate the natural world around them. As robotics, autonomous vehicles and drones become more widely used across cities, pollution and traffic ...

What The Study Did: In this observational study of 5,256 U.S. nursing home residents with COVID-19, increased age, male sex and impaired cognitive and physical function were independent risk factors for all-cause 30-day mortality. Authors: Orestis A. Panagiotou, M.D., Ph.D., of the Brown University School of Public Health in Providence, Rhode Island, 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/jamainternmed.2020.7968) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, ...

What The Study Did: The findings of a survey study using data from California suggests the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with increases in self-reported worry about violence for oneself and others, increased firearm acquisition and changes in firearm storage practices. Authors: Nicole Kravitz-Wirtz, Ph.D., M.P.H., University of California Firearm Violence Research Center and Violence Prevention Research Program, Department of Emergency Medicine, University of California Davis School of Medicine in Sacramento, is the corresponding ...

Whether in beta-blockers to treat high blood pressure or in natural products: So-called vicinal aminoalcohols are high-quality organic compounds that are found in many everyday products. However, their production is difficult. For a long time, chemists are trying to develop efficient methods of synthesizing them. In their recent study published in the journal Nature Catalysis, scientists led by Prof. Dr. Frank Glorius of Münster University have found a solution for the production of a special variant of aminoalcohols. "The new method helps to study the properties of the substance and to find applications for these ...

Assembling tiny chips into unique programmable surfaces, Princeton researchers have created a key component toward unlocking a communications band that promises to dramatically increase the amount data wireless systems can transmit. The programmable surface, called a metasurface, allows engineers to control and focus transmissions in the terahertz band of the electromagnetic spectrum. Terahertz, a frequency range located between microwaves and infrared light, can transit much more data than current, radio-based wireless systems. With fifth generation (5G) communications systems offering speeds 10 to 100 times faster than the previous generation, demand for bandwidth is ever increasing. Facing the emergence of technologies such as self-driving cars and augmented reality ...

What The Study Did: Changes were assessed in abortions performed and at what gestational age following a Texas order postponing nonmedically necessary surgeries due to the COVID-19 pandemic compared with abortions performed during the same months in 2019. Authors: Kari White, Ph.D., M.P.H., of the University of Texas at Austin, 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/jama.2020.24096) Editor's Note: The articles includes conflict of interest and funding/support ...

What The Viewpoint Says: The rapid spread of scientific misinformation on social media platforms throughout the COVID-19 pandemic is discussed in this Viewpoint, which also proposes strategies to counteract its adverse effects including surveillance of digital data and partnering with trusted messengers to engage the public and advance scientifically sound public health measures. Authors: Raina M. Merchant, M.D., M.S.H.P., of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, 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/jama.2020.24514) Editor's Note: The ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - From an observatory high above Chile's Atacama Desert, astronomers have taken a new look at the oldest light in the universe. Their observations, plus a bit of cosmic geometry, suggest that the universe is 13.77 billion years old - give or take 40 million years. A Cornell University researcher co-authored one of two papers about the findings, which add a fresh twist to an ongoing debate in the astrophysics community. The new estimate, using data gathered at the National Science Foundation's Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), matches the one provided by the standard ...

All prediabetes is not the same: in people in the preliminary stages of type 2 diabetes, there are six clearly distinguishable subtypes, which differ in the development of the disease, diabetes risk, and the development of secondary diseases. This is shown in a study by the Institute for Diabetes Research and Metabolic Diseases (IDM) of Helmholtz Zentrum München at the University of Tübingen, Tübingen University Hospital and the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD). The results have now been published in Nature Medicine. The new classification can help in the future to prevent the manifestation of diabetes ...

A sugar-binding protein could fuel terrible inflammation and worsen sepsis, a disease that kills more than 270,000 people every year in the US alone, reports a team of researchers led by UConn Health in the 4 January issue of Nature Immunology. Sepsis is caused mostly by bacterial infections. The immune system runs out of controls and triggers a cytokine storm, a condition in which inflammation-causing proteins flood the blood. Organs may break down, and death often follows.  Other diseases can also cause cytokine storms; medical historians believe cytokine storms were behind the lethality of the ...

If you type into a search engine - "why do men have to wait before having sex again?" - you will very quickly come across Prolactin. This little hormone is thought to be involved in hundreds of physiological processes in the body. Among them is the male post-ejaculatory refractory period. This period begins when a male ejaculates and ends when he recovers his sexual capacity. If you search a bit more, you'll see that this theory has even led to the development of so called "treatments". These promise to shorten the length of a person's refractory period by reducing their body's prolactin levels. Well, here is some bad news for anyone who has bought any such merchandise. A new study in mice by scientists at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown ...

A research study at the University of Chicago has found that in pregnancy, while the T cell response to a fetus becomes tolerant to allow for successful pregnancy, the part of the immune system that produces antibodies (known as the humoral response) becomes sensitized, creating memory B cells that can later contribute to the rejection of a transplanted organ. The results help to clarify why it is that the immune system can tolerate a fetus during pregnancy, but later may be more likely to become sensitized to and reject an organ transplant. The study was published on January 4, 2021 in the END ...

Polarons are fleeting distortions in a material's atomic lattice that form around a moving electron in a few trillionths of a second, then quickly disappear. As ephemeral as they are, they affect a material's behavior, and may even be the reason that solar cells made with lead hybrid perovskites achieve extraordinarily high efficiencies in the lab. Now scientists at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have used the lab's X-ray laser to watch and directly measure the formation of polarons for the first time. They reported their findings in Nature ...

Using a new combination of emitter molecules, researchers in Japan have demonstrated the promise of a novel approach to finally overcome a major challenge facing displays using organic light-emitting diodes: a blue light source matching the excellent performance of the red and green ones. By splitting energy conversion and emission processes between two molecules, the researchers achieved devices that produce pure-blue emission with high efficiency, maintain brightness for relatively long times, and lack any expensive metal atoms--a set of properties that has so far been difficult ...

Babies who suffer oxygen deficiencies during birth are at risk of brain damage that can lead to developmental delays, cerebral palsy and even death. To prevent this, most women in labor undergo continuous monitoring of the baby's heart rate and receive supplemental oxygen if the heart rate is abnormal, with the thought that this common practice increases oxygen delivery to the baby. However, there is conflicting evidence about whether the long-recommended practice improves infant health. Now, a comprehensive analysis - led by Washington University School ...

New Columbia Engineering study--first to investigate the long-term effect of soil moisture-atmosphere feedbacks in drylands--finds that soil moisture exerts a negative feedback on surface water availability in drylands, offsetting some of the expected decline New York, NY--January 4, 2021--Scientists have thought that global warming will increase the availability of surface water--freshwater resources generated by precipitation minus evapotranspiration--in wet regions, and decrease water availability in dry regions. This expectation is based primarily on atmospheric thermodynamic processes. As air temperatures rise, more water evaporates into the air from the ocean and land. Because warmer air can hold more water vapor than dry air, a more humid atmosphere ...

ANN ARBOR, Michigan -- Michael Green, M.D., Ph.D., noticed that when his patients had cancer that spread to the liver, they fared poorly - more so than when cancer spread to other parts of the body. Not only that, but transformative immunotherapy treatments had little impact for these patient. Uncovering the reason and a possible solution, a new study, published in Nature Medicine, finds that tumors in the liver siphon off critical immune cells, rendering immunotherapy ineffective. But coupling immunotherapy with radiotherapy to the liver in mice restored the immune cell function and led to better outcomes. "Patients with liver metastases receive little benefit from immunotherapy, a treatment that has been a game-changer for many cancers. Our research suggests ...

MADISON, Wis. -- Deforestation dropped by 18 percent in two years in African countries where organizations subscribed to receive warnings from a new service using satellites to detect decreases in forest cover in the tropics. The carbon emissions avoided by reducing deforestation were worth between $149 million and $696 million, based on the ability of lower emissions to reduce the detrimental economic consequences of climate change. Those findings come from new research into the effect of GLAD, the Global Land Analysis and Discovery system, available on the free and interactive ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Scientists have developed a machine-learning method that crunches massive amounts of data to help determine which existing medications could improve outcomes in diseases for which they are not prescribed. The intent of this work is to speed up drug repurposing, which is not a new concept - think Botox injections, first approved to treat crossed eyes and now a migraine treatment and top cosmetic strategy to reduce the appearance of wrinkles. But getting to those new uses typically involves a mix of serendipity and time-consuming and expensive randomized clinical trials to ensure that a drug deemed effective for one disorder will be useful as a treatment for something else. The Ohio State University researchers ...

The healing process that follows a brain injury could spur tumour growth when new cells generated to replace those lost to the injury are derailed by mutations, Toronto scientists have found. A brain injury can be anything from trauma to infection or stroke. The findings were made by an interdisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Toronto, The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre who are also on the pan-Canadian Stand Up To Cancer Canada Dream Team that focuses on a common brain cancer known as glioblastoma. "Our data suggest that the right mutational change in particular cells in the brain could be modified by injury to give rise to a tumour," says Dr. Peter Dirks, Dream ...

Spintronics refers to a suite of physical systems which may one day replace many electronic systems. To realize this generational leap, material components that confine electrons in one dimension are highly sought after. For the first time, researchers created such a material in the form of a special bismuth-based crystal known as a high-order topological insulator. To create spintronic devices, new materials need to be designed that take advantage of quantum behaviors not seen in everyday life. You are probably familiar with conductors and insulators, which permit and restrict the flow of electrons, respectively. ...

Some racial and ethnic groups suffer relatively more often, and fare worse, from common ailments compared to others. Prostate cancer is one disease where such health disparities occur: risk for the disease is about 75 percent higher, and prostate cancer is more than twice as deadly, in Blacks compared to whites. Yet whites are often overrepresented as research participants, making these differences difficult to understand and, ultimately, address. With this problem in mind, scientists at the USC Center for Genetic Epidemiology and the Institute for Cancer Research, London, ...

Last year, more than fifty years after initial theoretical proposals, researchers in Pisa, Stuttgart and Innsbruck independently succeeded for the first time in creating so-called supersolids using ultracold quantum gases of highly magnetic lanthanide atoms. This state of matter is, in a sense, solid and liquid at the same time. "Due to quantum effects, a very cold gas of atoms can spontaneously develop both a crystalline order of a solid crystal and particle flow like a superfluid quantum liquid, i.e. a fluid able to flow without any friction" explains Francesca Ferlaino from the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Department of Experimental Physics at the ...