You can't have your cake and eat it too, as the saying goes. But what if you could save your slice while enjoying the benefits at the same time? New research suggests this is possible when it comes to marine reserves. Marine protected areas (MPAs) are among the best conservation tools at our disposal today. However, by their very nature, these reserves take away fishing grounds, which can make them unattractive to commercial fishermen. Scientists and resource managers often promote MPAs as beneficial for the fishery. In theory, they provide a refuge for stocks to rebuild and spill over into nearby waters, leading ...

More fully appreciating family and engaging in more conflict are among the heightened experiences during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new UC Riverside study. The study from David Funder's psychology lab looked at how people experience everyday life and its situations and how those experiences change because of an extraordinary event - the global pandemic. Undergraduate students took part in the study, which first collected responses from 544 of them in 2017, and then from 123 students during the pandemic in spring 2020, when most of the participants were sheltering at home. The before-and-during comparison isn't all roses for pandemic living. Some everyday experiences suffer, such as conversation, finding ...

The American College of Cardiology's Cardiovascular Summit will feature several poster presentations on care delivery, cost reduction and quality improvement that offer innovative concepts to combat access to care, especially during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and as the broader health care system works to improve health equity. Research examines the rapid adoption of virtual outpatient care, enabling rural primary care teams to improve cardiovascular health and optimizing emergency room use after clinic hours. Summaries of embargoed abstracts are below. For access to the full abstracts ...

When it comes to developing drugs for mental illnesses, three confounding challenges exist: Men and women experience them differently, with things like depression and anxiety far more common in females. A drug that works for one person may not work for another, and side effects abound. New CU Boulder research, published in the journal eLIfe, sheds light on one reason those individual differences may exist. Turns out a key protein in the brain called AKT may function differently in males than females. The study also offers a closer look at where, precisely, in the brain things may go ...

Every late winter and early spring, huge dust storms swirled across the bare and frozen landscapes of Europe during the coldest periods of the latest ice age. These paleo-tempests, which are seldom matched in our modern climate frequently covered Western Europe in some of the thickest layers of ice-age dust found anywhere previously on Earth. This is demonstrated by a series of new estimates of the sedimentation and accumulation rates of European loess layers obtained by Senior Research Scientist Denis-Didier Rousseau from Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, France, and colleagues. The work, which is published in Quaternary Science Reviews is part of the TiPES project on tipping points in the Earth system, coordinated by The University ...

LA JOLLA--(February 1, 2021) Wolffia, also known as duckweed, is the fastest-growing plant known, but the genetics underlying this strange little plant's success have long been a mystery to scientists. Now, thanks to advances in genome sequencing, researchers are learning what makes this plant unique--and, in the process, discovering some fundamental principles of plant biology and growth. A multi-investigator effort led by scientists from the Salk Institute is reporting new findings about the plant's genome that explain how it's able to grow so fast. The research, published in the February 2021 issue of Genome Research, will help scientists to understand how plants make trade-offs between ...

DALLAS, Feb. 1, 2021 -- Women with a history of diabetes during pregnancy (gestational diabetes) are twice as likely by mid-life to develop calcium in heart arteries - a strong predictor of heart disease - even if healthy blood sugar levels were attained many years after pregnancy, according to new research published today in the American Heart Association's flagship journal Circulation. Gestational diabetes, which is high blood sugar levels (glucose intolerance) first recognized during pregnancy, affects approximately 9% of U.S. pregnancies and up to 20% worldwide. After pregnancy, women who had gestational diabetes are at higher risk of developing prediabetes or Type 2 diabetes, conditions that are risk factors ...

Irvine, Calif. -- Researchers from the University of California, Irvine and the University of Minnesota have found that an enriched diet and companionship can reduce pain in mice with sickle cell disease by increasing serotonin. They also discovered that duloxetine, an antidepressant that boosts serotonin levels, could be an alternative to opioids in treating chronic pain. "Finding safe and effective alternatives to opioids is a research priority, especially for patients with sickle cell disease," said Dr. Keith Hoots, director of the Division of Blood Diseases and Resources at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. "It's encouraging to see a dose-response relationship to nutrients and companions in mice, ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Researchers from Mayo Clinic and AliveCor Inc. have been using artificial intelligence (AI) to develop a mobile device that can identify certain patients at risk of sudden cardiac death. This research has yielded a breakthrough in determining the health of the electrical recharging system in a patient's heart. The researchers determined that a smartphone-enabled mobile EKG device can rapidly and accurately determine a patient's QTc, thereby identifying patients at risk of sudden cardiac death from congenital long QT syndrome (LQTS) or drug-induced QT prolongation. The heart beats by a complex system of electrical signals triggering regular and necessary contractions. Clinicians evaluate the heart's rate-corrected QT interval, or QTc, as a vital ...

An underused type of knee surgery in younger patients, called high tibial osteotomy, shows considerable success in reducing the need for total knee replacement, according to new research in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). "High tibial osteotomy is a knee surgery aimed at younger patients in the earlier stages of knee osteoarthritis. One of its goals is to prevent or delay the need for knee replacement," says coauthor Dr. Trevor Birmingham, Canada Research Chair in the Faculty of Health Sciences and the Bone and Joint Institute at Western University, London, Ontario. "In some ways, it's like performing ...

A calculation so complex that it takes twenty years to complete on a powerful desktop computer can now be done in one hour on a regular laptop. Physicist Andreas Ekström at Chalmers University of Technology, together with international research colleagues, has designed a new method to calculate the properties of atomic nuclei incredibly quickly. The new approach is based on a concept called emulation, where an approximate calculation replaces a complete and more complex calculation. Although the researchers are taking a shortcut, the solution ends up almost exactly the same. It is reminiscent of algorithms ...

February 1, 2021 - Researchers have identified another good reason to eat more mushrooms. New research , published in Food Science & Nutrition (January 2021) found that adding a mushroom serving to the diet increased the intake of several micronutrients, including shortfall nutrients such as vitamin D, without any increase in calories, sodium or fat. Dr. Victor L. Fulgoni III and Dr. Sanjiv Agarwal modeled the addition of mushrooms to National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2011-2016 dietary data looking at a composite of white, crimini and portabella mushrooms at a 1:1:1 ratio; one scenario including UV-light exposed mushrooms; and one scenario including oyster mushrooms ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. (Feb. 1, 2020) - A gene panel that looks for about 10 times the number of cancer-causing genes as panels currently used to diagnose and fine tune treatment for a variety of cancers is effective at identifying problematic genes in the most common leukemia, investigators report. The 523-gene panel, developed by San Diego-based biotech company Illumina, which includes all genes known to potentially cause cancer, can be readily adopted for use in clinical laboratories to diagnose acute myeloid leukemia, or AML, the investigators report in the journal PLOS ONE. Identifying ...

(Singapore--January 31, 2021 2:40 p.m. SPT 1:40 a.m. EST)--Patient-reported outcomes from the phase III CROWN study showed that time to treatment deterioration (TTD) in pain in chest, dyspnea, and cough was comparable between those who received lorlatinib and patients who took crizotinib. The research was presented today at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer's 2020 World Conference on Lung Cancer Singapore. Lorlatinib, a third-generation ALK inhibitor, significantly improved progression-free survival compared to crizotinib in ...

COVID-19 mortality racial disparities in the U.S. are associated with social factors like income, education and internet access, according to a Rutgers study. The study, published in the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, highlights the need for public health policies that address structural racism. The researchers investigated the association between COVID-19 cases and deaths in 2,026 U.S. counties from January to October 2020 and social determinants of health, which can raise the risk for infection and death. They also looked at factors known or thought to impact COVID-19 outcomes, including the counties' population density, days since the first COVID-19 death and percent of residents who are over age 65, are smokers or who have chronic diseases such as obesity, ...

CHICAGO (January 30, 2021) -- Select patients born with heart defects and who undergo congenital heart surgery recover with few complications and reduced opioid use when a comprehensive, evidence-based enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) program is used, according to research presented at the 57th Annual Meeting of The Society of Thoracic Surgeons. "We have embarked on a new paradigm for patient care with the goal of improving recovery, patient experience, and the value of care that we provide," said Nathalie Roy, MD, from Boston Children's Hospital in Massachusetts. ...

CHICAGO (January 30, 2021) -- Women are significantly less likely than men to undergo coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) using guideline-recommended approaches, which may result in worse outcomes after surgery, according to a scientific presentation at the 57th Annual Meeting of The Society of Thoracic Surgeons. "This study highlights key differences between women and men in surgical techniques used for CABG and reveals opportunities to improve outcomes in women," said Oliver K. Jawitz, MD, from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Using the STS Adult Cardiac Surgery Database--which contains records of nearly all CABG procedures performed in the US--Dr. Jawitz and colleagues from Duke and The Johns Hopkins University ...

CHICAGO (January 30, 2021) -- The most deadly global health crisis in a century has resulted in a substantial decline in overall heart surgery volume and an unexplained increase in deaths after coronary artery bypass grafting, according to late-breaking research presented at the 57th Annual Meeting of The Society of Thoracic Surgeons. "This study was a true herculean analysis and tour de force that showed the COVID effect on adult cardiac surgery volume, trends, and outcomes," said Tom C. Nguyen, MD, from the University of California San Francisco. "The pandemic has changed the world as we know it, causing a dramatic drop in adult cardiac surgery volume and worsening patient outcomes." Dr. Nguyen and colleagues queried the STS Adult ...

(Singapore--January 30, 2021 11:00 p.m. SPT/January 30, 2021 10:00 a.m. EST)-- Nivolumab monotherapy is an effective treatment option for relapsed malignant mesothelioma (MM), according to research presented today at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer World Conference on Lung Cancer. Malignant mesothelioma is an intractable cancer, and no phase III trial has yet shown an improvement in overall survival following the standard first line chemotherapy doublet comprising pemetrexed and cisplatin or carboplatin since it was licensed in 2004. Professor Dean Fennell, chair of Thoracic Medical Oncology at the University of Leicester in collaboration with Professor Gareth Griffiths and his team at the Southampton Clinical Trials Unit, University of Southampton, ...

(Singapore--January 30, 2021 11:00 p.m. SPT/January 30, 2021 10:00 a.m. EST)-- A phase III study examining whether messenger (m)RNA expression correlated with sensitivity or resistance to chemotherapy did not confer a statistically significant advantage in overall survival for patients with resected stage II-III non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to research presented at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer World Conference on Lung Cancer. Lung cancer researchers and clinicians have sought methods to improve chemotherapy's modest 5% overall survival rate for patients with NSCLC. Dr. Silvia Novello, professor of medical oncology at the University of Torino at ...

(Singapore--January 30, 2021 11:00 p.m. SPT/January 30, 2021 10:00 a.m. EST)-- Primary analysis of the Lung Cancer Mutation Consortium (LCMC) 3 study revealed that neoadjuvant atezolizumab prior to lung cancer surgery was well tolerated by patients and met its primary endpoint of 20% major pathologic response rate, according to research presented today at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer's World Conference on Lung Cancer. Dr. Jay M. Lee, chief, Division of Thoracic Surgery at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, today reported on results from a study of 181 patients with stage IB to IIIB non-small cell lung ...

(Singapore--January 30, 2021 11:00 p.m. SPT/January 30, 2021 10:00 a.m. EST)-- A study presented today by researchers with the Ministry of Health and Welfare in Taiwan confirmed the effectiveness of low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) screening in a pre-defined, never-smoker, high-risk population. The research was presented today at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer 2021 World Conference on Lung Cancer. In Taiwan, lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer mortality, and 53% of those have died of lung cancer were never-smokers. The National Lung Cancer Screening Trial (NLCST) and NELSON Trials demonstrated that the use of low-dose CT is effective for lung cancer screening; however, ...

(Singapore--4:45 p.m. SPT/3:45 a.m. EST January 30, 2021--Using a host immune classifier (HIC) test for patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) may provide better predictors of treatment response and improve outcomes, according to research presented today at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer's 2020 World Conference on Lung Cancer Singapore. Immune checkpoint inhibitors have revolutionized cancer care in patients with advanced stage aNSCLC, but better predictors of treatment response are still needed to guide treatment decisions for patients diagnosed with NSCLC, according to Dr. Wallace Akerley, of Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City, Utah. HIC (Host Immune Classifier) is a serum proteomic measure of inflammation. ...

Nagoya University researchers and colleagues have revealed that colorectal cancer tissues contain at least two types of fibroblasts (a type of cells found in connective tissue), namely, cancer-promoting fibroblasts and cancer-restraining fibroblasts, and that the balance between them is largely involved in the progression of colorectal cancer. Their findings, recently published in the journal Gastroenterology, suggest that artificially altering the balance between the two types of cells could curb the spread of colorectal cancer tumors, which may become an effective strategy for preventing cancer progression. Cancer tissues comprise both cancer cells and non-malignant cells such as fibroblasts. Previous studies have suggested that the proliferation of fibroblasts ...

(Singapore--January 29, 2021 9:35 a.m. SPT/January 28, 2021 8:35 p.m. EST)--Two radiation oncology trials presented at the IALSC World Conference on Lung Cancer Singapore highlight how some researchers are exploring use of higher radiation boost doses to only PET-positive regions in locally-advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). A previous large RTOG phase III trial revealed that the unform delivery of a high dose to the entire tumor led to poorer survival. In one study, Prof. Feng-Ming (Spring) Kong, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, in Cleveland, Ohio presented the results of a multicenter trial which aimed to ...