Childhood abuse and trauma are linked to many health issues in adulthood. New research from the University of Georgia suggests that a history of childhood mistreatment could have negative ramifications for the children of people who experienced abuse or neglect in childhood. Teaching your children how to manage their emotions is an integral part of parenting. For people who experienced childhood abuse, that can become a difficult task. People who were frequently mistreated as children may find it hard to identify their emotions and implement strategies to regulate them. This difficulty, in turn, can harm their kids' emotional development. The study, published ...

Recently, the eROSITA (extended Roentgen Survey with an Imaging Telescope Array) x-ray telescope, an instrument developed by a team of scientists at Max-Planck-Institut für Extraterrestrische Physik (MPE), has gained attention among astronomers. The instrument performs an all-sky survey in the x-ray energy band of 0.2-8 kilo electron volts aboard the Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) satellite that was launched in 2019 from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. "The eROSITA has been designed to study the large-scale structure of the universe and test cosmological models, including dark energy, by detecting galaxy clusters with redshifts greater than 1, corresponding to a cosmological expansion ...

Plants contain several types of specialized light-sensitive proteins that measure light by changing shape upon light absorption. Chief among these are the phytochromes. Phytochromes help plants detect light direction, intensity and duration; the time of day; whether it is the beginning, middle or end of a season; and even the color of light, which is important for avoiding shade from other plants. Remarkably, phytochromes also help plants detect temperature. New research from Washington University in St. Louis helps explain how the handful of phytochromes found in every plant respond differently to light intensity and temperature, thus ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- When the worsening COVID-19 pandemic prompted colleges to shutter their campuses and shift to remote learning in spring 2020, concerns arose that many underrepresented students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines would be demotivated and drop out in even greater numbers. However, a study of 182 undergraduate students in a biology course at one university found little evidence to support that belief. Instead, across all demographic groups, the impact varied: Some students were more motivated, some were less so, and some saw no changes ...

(10 a.m. EDT May 25, 2021 Denver)-- Adding sintilimab to a regimen of gemcitabine and platinum demonstrates clinical benefit over gemcitabine and platinum alone as first-line therapy in patients with locally advanced or metastatic squamous cell non-small cell lung cancer, according to a study published in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology, the official journal of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer. The standard chemotherapy for squamous NSCLC (sqNSCLC), includes platinum plus gemcitabine. sintilimab, an anti-PD-1 antibody, plus platinum/gemcitabine, has shown encouraging efficacy as first-line therapy for sqNSCLC in the phase III study ECOG 1594. Platinum/gemcitabine is another standard regimen of chemotherapy for sqNSCLC and is commonly used in ...

China has made remarkable gains in reducing the number of women who die during childbirth and boosting child survival rates over the past 70 years, according to new review. The Lancet report brought together China's health research institutions alongside its international colleagues from Australia, the UK and the US to review the country's progress in maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health and nutrition since 1949. Murdoch Children's Research Institute (MCRI) Professor George Patton, one of the international researchers, said over the past 70 years China had made a remarkable transition from where the survival of women and children was the priority to one where children ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- A new combination of optical coherence tomography (OCT), adaptive optics and deep neural networks should enable better diagnosis and monitoring for neuron-damaging eye and brain diseases like glaucoma. Biomedical engineers at Duke University led a multi-institution consortium to develop the process, which easily and precisely tracks changes in the number and shape of retinal ganglion cells in the eye. This work appears in a paper published on May 3 in the journal Optica. The retina of the eye is an extension of the central nervous system. Ganglion cells are one of the primary neurons in the eye that process and send visual information to the brain. In many neurodegenerative ...

Popular television shows and movies can bolster teenagers' mental health and help them cope with bullying, sexual assault, suicidal thoughts, substance abuse and depression when these issues are depicted with empathy and appropriate resources are provided, a report published by UCLA's Center for Scholars and Storytellers shows. And the need is great. Recent research has shown that children between the ages of 11 and 17 are more likely than any other age group to report moderate to severe anxiety and depression, said Yalda Uhls, founder and executive director of the center and an adjunct assistant professor of psychology. Even before the pandemic, teen suicide rates were rising, along with reported symptoms of anxiety and depression, she noted. At the same time, nearly half ...

QUT researchers have used experimental x-ray techniques at the Australian Synchrotron to gain fundamental insights into how gypsum dehydrates under pressure and the processes that create earthquakes. In the study published in the Nature Research journal Communications Materials, QUT researchers Dr Christoph Schrank, Dr Oliver Gaede, from the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and Master of Science graduate Katherine Gioseffi teamed up with the Australian Synchrotron and colleagues from the University of New South Wales and the University of Warsaw to study how gypsum dehydrates much faster under pressure. "Dehydration is a process in which minerals shed the water bound in their crystal lattices due to heating," Dr Schrank ...

Tsukuba, Japan - Carbonic anhydrases are essential enzymes that are present in virtually all living things; all eight classes of carbonic anhydrases that have been identified to date need a metal ion to function. But now, researchers from Japan have discovered that metal is not crucial for all carbonic anhydrases. In a study published this month in BMC Biology, researchers from the Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Tsukuba have described two members of the COG4337 protein family that are the first known examples of carbonic anhydrase enzymes that do not require a metal ion to function. Carbonic anhydrases ...

Tokyo, Japan - Most people don't think much about the food scraps they throw away; however, investigators from the Institute of Industrial Science at The University of Tokyo have developed a new method to reduce food waste by recycling discarded fruit and vegetable scraps into robust construction materials. Worldwide industrial and household food waste amounts to hundreds of billions of pounds per year, a large proportion of which comprises edible scraps, like fruit and vegetable peels. This unsustainable practice is both costly and environmentally unfriendly, so researchers have been searching for new ways to recycle these organic ...

Researchers have flipped traditional 3D printing to create some of the most intricate biomedical structures yet, advancing the development of new technologies for regrowing bones and tissue. The emerging field of tissue engineering aims to harness the human body's natural ability to heal itself, to rebuild bone and muscle lost to tumours or injuries. A key focus for biomedical engineers has been the design and development of 3D printed scaffolds that can be implanted in the body to support cell regrowth. But making these structures small and complex enough for cells to thrive remains a significant challenge. Enter a RMIT University-led research team, collaborating with clinicians at St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne, Australia, who have overturned ...

A new study has shown that effective opioid-sparing anaesthesia with dexmedetomidine can be guided with NOL pain monitoring technology (Medasense, Israel). The study showed that the NOL monitor is able to detect the effect of dexmedetomidine on the patient's pain response and enable administration of less intraoperative opioids. Patients undergoing anaesthesia for surgical procedures are traditionally treated with opioids (e.g., remifentanil) to manage intraoperative pain. But clinicians are progressively seeking to reduce opioid use by introducing multimodal analgesia, a technique that involves a combination of medications that often includes a central ...

Professor UEYAMA Takehiko (Biosignal Research Center, Kobe University) and the inner ear research group (Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine) have identified the cell types in the inner ear cochlea (*1) responsible for the production of superoxide (Nox3*2-expressing cells). They achieved this by using genetically modified mice that they developed. The researchers discovered that these superoxide-producing cells increase in number in response to aging, noise damage, and ototoxic drugs, thus causing age-related, noise-induced and drug-induced hearing loss. In addition, they were able to suppress the onset of these three types of ...

HERSHEY, Pa. -- Screening and testing for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) decreased by 63% for men and 59% for women during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study led by Penn State and Quest Diagnostics researchers. The researchers said this may be the result of restrictions placed on direct patient care and shifts to telehealth and could lead to a possible future surge in STI cases. This is the first national study to explore the impact of the pandemic on STIs since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ...

Computational tools are indispensable in almost all scientific disciplines. Especially in cases where large amounts of research data are generated and need to be quickly processed, reliable, carefully developed software is crucial for analyzing and correctly interpreting such data. Nevertheless, scientific software can have quality quality deficiencies. To evaluate software quality in an automated way, computer scientists at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS) have designed the SoftWipe tool. "Adherence to coding standards is rarely considered in scientific software, although it can even lead to incorrect scientific results," says ...

BOSTON - Physical activity that conforms to medical and health association guidelines is associated with a lower risk of atrial fibrillation (Afib) and stroke, according to a study by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), who analyzed nearly 100,000 individuals equipped with wrist-worn accelerometers to measure their movement. The researchers' findings suggest that data from wearables, including a new generation of devices with sensors that allow for Afib detection, could provide an opportunity for the public health community to promote moderate physical activity as an effective way to improve health outcomes. The study ...

Digital medicine is opening up entirely new possibilities. For example, it can detect tumors at an early stage. But the effectiveness of new AI algorithms depends on the quantity and quality of the data used to train them. To maximize the data pool, it is customary to share patient data between clinics by sending copies of databases to the clinics where the algorithm is being trained. For data protection purposes, the material usually undergoes anonymization and pseudonymization processes - a procedure that has also come in for criticism. "These processes have often proven inadequate in terms of protecting patients' health data," says Daniel Rueckert, ...

From shamans and mystics to cult leaders and divine kings, why have people throughout history accorded high status to people believed to have supernatural powers? According to a study led by researchers from the University of Oxford, this tendency to attribute social dominance to such individuals is rooted in early development. As part of the study, 48 infants aged 12 to 16 months watched a series of animated videos in which two characters competed for a reward. In each scenario, one character displayed physically counterintuitive methods of making ...

In a new publication from Opto-Electronic Advances; DOI https://doi.org/10.29026/oea.2021.200077, Researchers led by Professor Jeongyong Kim at the Department of Energy Science, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Republic of Korea review light-emitting MXene quantum dots. MXenes have found wide-ranging applications in energy storage devices, sensors, catalysis, etc. owing to their high electronic conductivity and wide range of optical absorption. However, the absence of semiconducting MXenes has limited their applications related to light emission. Extensively reviewing current relevant research, the authors summarise recent advances in MXene quantum dot (MQD) research on the synthesis, optical properties and applications of MQDs as light emitting quantum materials. Research ...

Graphene is an ultrathin material characterized by its ultrasmall bending modulus, superflimsiness. Now the researchers at the Nanoscience Center of the University of Jyväskylä have demonstrated how an experimental technique called optical forging can make graphene ultrastiff, increase its stiffness by several orders of magnitude. The research was published in npj 2D Materials and Applications in May 2021. Graphene is an atomically thin carbon material loaded with excellent properties, such as large charge carrier mobility, superb thermal conductivity, and high ...

When it comes to distinguishing a healthy cell from an infected one that needs to be destroyed, the immune system's killer T cells sometimes make mistakes. This discovery, described today in eLife, upends a long-held belief among scientists that T cells were nearly perfect at discriminating friend from foe. The results may point to new ways to treat autoimmune diseases that cause the immune system to attack the body, or lead to improvements in cutting-edge cancer treatments. It is widely believed that T cells can discriminate perfectly between infected cells and healthy ones based on how tightly they are able to bind to molecules called antigens ...

About 14 billion years ago, our universe changed from being a lot hotter and denser to expanding radically - a process that scientists have named 'The Big Bang'. And even though we know that this fast expansion created particles, atoms, stars, galaxies and life as we know it today, the details of how it all happened are still unknown. Now a new study performed by researchers from University of Copenhagen reveals insights on how it all began. "We have studied a substance called Quark-Gluon Plasma that was the only matter, which existed during the first microsecond ...

A rare mutation that causes Parkinson's disease-like symptoms interrupts the flow of dopamine in the brain, suggests a study in fruit flies published today in eLife. The findings provide more detailed insights about why young children with this mutation develop these symptoms. This new information, as well as previous evidence that therapies helping to improve dopamine balance in the brain can alleviate some symptoms in the flies, suggests that this could be a beneficial new treatment strategy. Parkinson's disease causes progressive degeneration of the brain that leads to impaired movement and coordination. Current treatments focus on replacing or increasing the levels of dopamine to help reduce movement-related symptoms. But these drugs can have side ...

Graphene nanoribbons (GNRs), narrow strips of single-layer graphene, have interesting physical, electrical, thermal, and optical properties because of the interplay between their crystal and electronic structures. These novel characteristics have pushed them to the forefront in the search for ways to advance next-generation nanotechnologies. While bottom-up fabrication techniques now allow the synthesis of a broad range of graphene nanoribbons that feature well-defined edge geometries, widths, and heteroatom incorporations, the question of whether or not structural disorder is present in these atomically precise GNRs, and to what extent, is still subject to debate. The answer to this ...