Scientists have identified a group of drugs that may help stop a leading cause of vision loss after making an unexpected discovery that overturns a fundamental belief about DNA. The drugs, known as Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors, or NRTIs, are commonly used to treat HIV. The new discovery suggests that they may be useful against dry macular degeneration as well, even though a virus does not cause that sight-stealing condition. A review of four different health insurance databases suggests that people taking these drugs have significantly reduced risk of developing dry macular degeneration, a condition that affects ...

A 15-year experiment on Arctic shrubs in Greenland lends new understanding to an enduring ecological puzzle: How do species with similar needs and life histories occur together at large scales while excluding each other at small scales? The answer to this question has important implications for how climate change might shift species' distributions across the globe. The study was published today in the journal PNAS and led by the University of California, Davis. Its findings also reveal trends related to carbon sequestration and carbon exchange as the Arctic becomes both greener and browner. EXPANSION AND EXCLUSION Like lines of traffic traveling the same roads at the same time without crashing into each ...

CLEVELAND - Evidence suggests particulate matter is the air pollutant which poses the greatest threat to global health. Studies have shown that exposure to particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns is associated with acute and chronic elevations in blood pressure (BP) as well as hypertension. In the study "The Benefits of Intensive Versus Standard Blood Pressure Treatment According to Fine Particulate Matter Air Pollution Exposure" published this week in the journal Hypertension, researchers at University Hospitals (UH) and Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) ...

A paper by a multidisciplinary team of scientists affiliated with various Brazilian institutions, including the University of São Paulo (USP) and the National Cancer Institute (INCA), shows that people of African descent are less likely to find a donor in the National Register of Voluntary Bone Marrow Donors (REDOME) than people with predominantly European ancestry. The paper is published in Frontiers in Immunology. REDOME is the world’s third-largest bone marrow bank, with more than 5 million registered voluntary donors. According to the study, having mainly African genetic ancestry can reduce a person’s chances of finding a donor by up to 60%, and having African copies of HLA genes, which must be compatible with ...

Obesity and its duration are significant risk factors for type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular events, multiple cancers and decreased quality of life. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, obesity affects 20.6% of adolescents ages 12-19 in the United States, meaning a potential lifetime of dealing with this condition. Complications from obesity can also result in a potentially decreased life expectancy of five to 20 years for these youth. In a new study published in Pediatrics, researchers at Children's Hospital Colorado (Children's Colorado) have found that both younger and older adolescents have similar weight loss, resolution of high blood pressure and high cholesterol, nutritional impacts and improvement in quality of life after bariatric surgery. These results ...

Article Title: "Game theory to enhance stock management of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) during the COVID-19 outbreak" Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0246110 INFORMATION: ...

Decoy protein intercepts spike of coronavirus Virus prevented from infecting human cells Protein may be new way to treat and prevent COVID-19 CHICAGO --- Northwestern Medicine scientists have developed a new protein that acts as a trickster to neutralize the COVID-19 infection in a human kidney organoid, a miniature organ made from stem cells in the lab. The protein is a variant of ACE2 (angiotensin converting enzyme-2), the receptor the coronavirus uses to enter and infect human cells. The modified protein intercepts the S spike of the coronavirus and fools it into binding to it rather than the real ACE2 receptor in cell membranes. ...

NEW YORK, NY (Feb. 1, 2021)--Errors in the way chromosomes are packed into antibody-producing B cells appear to play a role in the development of B cell-related blood cancers, according to a new study by researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. The findings could lead to new biomarkers for predicting the onset of these cancers and to a new class of cancer therapies that prevent or correct harmful changes in genome architecture. The study was published online Feb. 1 in the journal Nature Genetics. Antibodies are made by immune cells called ...

Taking a particular type of medication to treat enlarged prostate is associated with a reduced risk of developing Parkinson's disease, according to a large observational study led by researchers at the University of Iowa, with colleagues in Denmark and China. The findings, published Feb. 1 in JAMA Neurology, provide compelling evidence that terazosin, and similar medications, might have the potential to prevent or delay the development of Parkinson's disease. The new study used data on almost 300,000 older men from two large, independent patient datasets--the Truven ...

A new kind of wearable health device would deliver real-time medical data to those with eye or mouth diseases, according to Huanyu 'Larry' Cheng, Dorothy Quiggle Career Development Professor in the Penn State Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics (ESM). Cheng recently published a paper in Microsystems & Nanoengineering on new micro- and nano-device technology that could revolutionize how certain health conditions are monitored and treated. "We sought to create a device that collects both small and large substances of biofluids such as tears and saliva, which can be analyzed for certain conditions on a rapid, continuous basis, rather than waiting on test results from samples in a lab," he said. The sensors would be placed near the tear duct or mouth to collect samples, ...

Winter survival of honey bee colonies is strongly influenced by summer temperatures and precipitation in the prior year, according to Penn State researchers, who said their findings suggest that honey bees have a "goldilocks" preferred range of summer conditions outside of which their probability of surviving the winter falls. The results of this study, which used several years of survey data provided by the Pennsylvania State Beekeeper's Association and its members, enabled the development of a tool for forecasting honey bee winter survival to support beekeepers' management decisions, the researchers said. Honey bees contribute more than $20 billion in pollination services to agriculture in the United States and generate another ...

Toxin-antitoxin (TA) systems are now known to negatively control plasmid replication, according to Thomas Wood, Biotechnology Endowed Chair and professor of chemical engineering in the Penn State College of Engineering. Plasmids, or extra-chromosomal bits of DNA, allow bacteria to evade antibiotics, making the antibiotics ineffective in halting a bacterial infection. The presence or absence of plasmids impacts a bacterium's resistance to antibiotics and its ability to cause infection -- important points related to fighting bacterial infections, according to Wood. "Each year, there are at least 700,000 deaths worldwide because of bacterial infections, a growing number that is projected to increase to 10 million by 2050," Wood said. "And of course, the effectiveness ...

February 1, 2021 - Extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation (ECPR) is a potentially lifesaving treatment for patients in cardiac arrest when the circulation can't be restored by conventional CPR. New guidelines for ECPR in adults and children, developed by the Extracorporeal Life Support Organization (ELSO), are presented by the ASAIO Journal, official journal of the American Society for Artificial Internal Organs. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer. A specialized application of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), ECPR is increasingly being used to provide a chance ...

Imagine a rubber band that was capable of snapping itself many times over, or a small robot that could jump up a set of stairs propelled by nothing more than its own energy. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have discovered how to make materials that snap and reset themselves, only relying upon energy flow from their environment. The discovery may prove useful for various industries that want to source movement sustainably, from toys to robotics, and is expected to further inform our understanding of how the natural world fuels some types of movement. Al Crosby, a professor of polymer science and engineering in the College of Natural Sciences at UMass Amherst, ...

A key thread that holds together the delicate balance of a complex biological system is the transmembrane ion channel. These are supramolecular, or multi-molecule, ion and molecule exchange routes embedded within cell membranes to ensure essential chemical transport to and from the cell and facilitate cell signaling. In recent years, synthetic biomolecules that mimic the structures and functions of natural ion channels have garnered much interest among molecular biology researchers as models for studying the fundamentals of these channels and perhaps, even creating drug alternatives or developing advanced biosensors. However, although ...

Social media is increasingly used to spread fake news. The same problem can be found on the capital market - criminals spread fake news about companies in order to manipulate share prices. Researchers at the Universities of Göttingen and Frankfurt and the Jožef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana have developed an approach that can recognise such fake news, even when the news contents are repeatedly adapted. The results of the study were published in the Journal of the Association for Information Systems. In order to detect false information - often fictitious data that presents a company in a positive light - the scientists used machine learning methods and ...

The adoption of recommended changes in concussion management led to a reduction in the length of symptoms among 11- to 18-year-old athletes with first-time, sports-related concussions, according to new research in the Journal of Osteopathic Medicine. These outcomes support the widespread adoption of the updated concussion guidelines. Researchers conducted a retrospective review of the medical records of athletes who sustained a concussion between 2016 and 2018 and were treated by a physician who used the revised approach to concussion management. They then compared the data with a previously published data set from athletes who sustained a concussion between 2011 and 2013 and whose physicians followed older guidelines for concussion ...

ITHACA, NY - When it comes to saving endangered species of a certain size, conservationists often have to think outside the box. This was reinforced by a recent study published in the Journal of Wildlife Diseases, led by faculty in the College of Veterinary Medicine, which analyzed the effects of hanging tranquilized black rhinoceroses upside down by their feet. "We found that suspending rhinos by their feet is safer than we thought," said Dr. Robin Radcliffe, senior lecturer in wildlife and conservation medicine and first author of the study. While ...

The virtual conferencing that has replaced large, in-person gatherings in the age of COVID-19 represents a drastic reduction in carbon emissions, but those online meetings still come with their own environmental costs, new research from the University of Michigan shows. The research offers a framework for analyzing and tallying the carbon emissions of an online conference based on factors that include everything from energy used by servers and monitors to the resources used to manufacture and distribute the computers involved. It also includes a case study showing that a May 2020 virtual conference held by the AirMiners carbon removal networking community produced 66 times less greenhouse gas emissions that an in-person gathering in San Francisco would have. And it highlights ...

How to study the stages children go through as they play together has been highlighted in new research by a Swansea University academic. Play is a crucial part of a child's development. It is how children develop cognitive skills and learn new information as well as social skills and it is an important topic of research by social scientists. Dr Pete King, who specialises in play and childhood studies, devised a method of studying the process of children's play - the Play Cycle Observation Method (PCOM) - and has now published research which demonstrates how effective it is as an observational tool. Working with collaborators Professor LaDonna Atkins and Dr Brandon Burr, his latest ...

Oncotarget recently published "Neuroendocrine carcinoma of uterine cervix findings shown by MRI for staging and survival analysis – Japan multicenter study" which reported that to investigate neuroendocrine carcinoma of the uterine cervix cases for MRI features and staging, as well as pathological correlations and survival. In 50 patients who underwent a radical hysterectomy and lymphadenectomy without neoadjuvant chemotherapy, intrapelvic T staging by MRI overall accuracy was 88.0% with reference to pathology staging, while patient-based sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy for metastatic ...

Oncotarget recently published "Simvastatin is a potential candidate drug in ovarian clear cell carcinomas" which reported that based on previous studies, the authors assessed the anti-proliferative effect of simvastatin, a Rho GTPase interfering drug, in three OCCC cell lines: JHOC-5, OVMANA and TOV-21G, and one high-grade serous ovarian cancer cell line, Caov3. The authors used the Rho GTPase interfering drug CID-1067700 as a control. All OCCC cell lines were more sensitive to single-agent simvastatin than the HGSOC cells, while all cell lines were less sensitive to CID-1067700 than to simvastatin. Most treatments inhibited migration, ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A new deep-learning model that can predict how human genes and medicines will interact has identified at least 10 compounds that may hold promise as treatments for COVID-19. All but two of the drugs are still considered investigational and are being tested for effectiveness against hepatitis C, fungal disease, cancer and heart disease. The list also includes the approved drugs cyclosporine, an immunosuppressant that prevents transplant organ rejection, and anidulafungin, an antifungal agent. The discovery was made by computer scientists, meaning much more work needs to be done before any of these medications would be confirmed as safe and effective treatments ...

Michelle O'Malley(link is external) has long been inspired by gut microbes. Since she began studying the herbivore digestive tract, the UC Santa Barbara chemical engineering professor has guided several students to their doctoral degrees, won early and mid-career awards (including a recognition from President Obama), attained tenure and advanced to the position of full professor. She even had three children along the way. A constant through it all: goat poop. "This has been the longest single effort in my lab," said O'Malley, who with her research team way back in 2015 first embarked on an ambitious project to characterize gut microbes in large herbivores. The purpose? To understand how these animals manage, via their microbiomes, ...

Over the past century, a wide variety of models have emerged to explain the complex behaviours which unfold within atomic nuclei at low energies. However, these theories bring up deep philosophical questions regarding their scientific value. Indeed, traditional epistemological tools have been rather elaborated to account for a unified and stabilised theory rather than to apprehend a plurality of models. Ideally, a theory is meant to be reductionist, unifying and fundamentalist. In view of the intrinsic limited precision of their prediction and of the difficulty in assessing a priori their range of applicability, as well as of their specific and disconnected character, traditional ...