PHILADELPHIA--A five-year community outreach and engagement effort by the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania (ACC) to increase enrollment of Black patients into cancer clinical trials more than doubled the percentage of participants, improving access and treatment for a group with historically low representation in cancer research. The percentage of patients enrolled into a treatment clinical trial, for example, increased from 12 to 24 percent. A significant increase was also observed in non-therapeutic interventional and non-interventional trials. The findings were published today in an abstract to be presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting on June 5. (Abstract #100). [ADD ...

New York, NY (May 21, 2021) --Women who were highly exposed to ultra-fine particles in air pollution during their pregnancy were more likely to have children who developed asthma, according to a study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine in May. This is the first time asthma has been linked with prenatal exposure to this type of air pollution, which is named for its tiny size and which is not regulated or routinely monitored in the United States. Slightly more than 18 percent of the children born to these mothers developed asthma in their preschool years, compared ...

Scientists from Hokkaido University have discovered a novel defensive response to SARS-CoV-2 that involves the viral pattern recognition receptor RIG-I. Upregulating expression of this protein could strengthen the immune response in COPD patients. In the 18 months since the first report of COVID-19 and the spread of the pandemic, there has been a large amount of research into understanding it and developing menas to treat it. COVID-19 does not affect all infected individuals equally. Many individuals are asymptomatic; of those who are symptomatic, the large majority have mild symptoms, and only a small number have severe cases. The reasons for this are not fully understood and are an important area of ongoing research. A team of scientists ...

The issue of concern was that the Escherichia coli (E. coli) genome, consisting of 4.6 million base pairs of a single circular DNA, is too large to manipulate following the extraction and transfer to other bacteria. In the present study, a group of Rikkyo University researchers led by Assistant Professor Takahito Mukai and Professor Masayuki Su'etsugu has succeeded in splitting the E.coli genome into tripartite-genome of 1 million base pairs per genome (split-genome) using the smallest E. coli genome strain established so far. In addition, they successfully extracted the split-genome from bacteria and installed it in other E. ...

All living organisms are equipped with sensory organs to detect changes in their surrounding environment. It may not immediately strike us as obvious but, similar to how we can sense heat, cold, light, and darkness, we are also extremely adept at sensing gravity. In our case, it is our inner ear that does this job, helping us maintain balance, posture, and orientation in space. But, what about other organisms, for instance invertebrates that lack a backbone? The gravity sensing organ in some aquatic invertebrates, known as a "statocyst," is, in fact, rather fascinating. The statocyst is essentially a fluid-filled sac with sensory cells lining its inner wall and a small, mineralized ...

[Highlights] - Integrated cyber attack analysis platform "NIRVANA Kai" newly supports IPv6 and enhances its functions. - Observation of IPv6 communications, collection of IPv6-related alerts, and real-time visualization of IPv6 networks. - Expected to simplify security operations in IPv6 networks. [Abstract] The Cybersecurity Laboratory of the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT, President: TOKUDA Hideyuki, Ph.D.) has enhanced its cyber attack integrated analysis platform "NIRVANA Kai" to support the Internet Protocol version ...

China's clean air policies have substantially reduced PM2.5 air pollution in recent years. Yet >99% of Chinese population is still exposed to PM2.5 concentrations in excess of the World Health Organization (WHO) Air Quality Guidelines of 10 μg/m3. Climate actions targeting to reduce fossil fuel consumption also have substantial air quality benefits. The announcement of ambitious climate commitment to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 may fuel the power to long-term air quality improvement in China. Combining Global/China's climate mitigation pathways (i.e. global 2°C- and 1.5°C-pathways, NDC pledges, and carbon neutrality goals) and local clean ...

An international research group involving the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology of Plants (IBMCP), a joint centre of the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), has discovered that a genetic mechanism, called CHLORAD, which is involved in the ageing of plant leaves, also plays a decisive role in the tomato ripening process. Thus, tomatoes with an activated CHLORAD system turn red more quickly, and accumulate more lycopene, a compound beneficial to health. The results, which have been published in the latest issue of the journal Nature Plants, will lead to better quality tomatoes. The ripening of most fleshy fruits gives them attractive colours and smells, which is a trick of the plant to spread its seeds ...

Most of commercial chemicals are produced using catalysts. Usually, these catalysts consist of tiny metal nanoparticles that are placed on an oxidic support. Similar to a cut diamond, whose surface consists of different facets oriented in different directions, a catalytic nanoparticle also possesses crystallographically different facets - and these facets can have different chemical properties. Until now, these differences have often remained unconsidered in catalysis research because it is very difficult to simultaneously obtain information about the chemical reaction itself and about the surface structure of the catalyst. At TU Wien (Vienna), this has now been achieved by combining different microscopic methods: with ...

SINGAPORE, 21 May 2021 - Alzheimer's Disease is the most common form of dementia and is characterised by the build-up of amyloid plaques in the brain. Microglia, the immune sentinels of the brain, are not only responsible for eliminating foreign invaders, but also maintaining brain homeostasis by clearing toxic waste such as the amyloid plaques. However, the role of microglia in Alzheimer's Disease and its relationship to amyloid plaque accumulation remain unclear. Now, a team of scientists from Duke-NUS Medical School and Monash University have found the gene expression signatures underlying microglia associated ...

More than 100 kg of highly toxic uranium (U) and plutonium (Pu) was dispersed in the form of tiny 'hot' radioactive particles after the British detonated nine atomic bombs in remote areas of South Australia, including Maralinga. Scientists say that these radioactive particles persist in soils to this day, more than 60 years after the detonations. Previously, we had limited understanding of how Pu was released from these "hot" particles into the environment for uptake by wildlife around Maralinga. But now, a new study published today in Scientific Reports and led by Monash University researchers warns that the particles are actually more ...

A new study shows that the current rate of biodiversity decline in freshwater ecosystems outcompetes that at the end-Cretaceous extinction that killed the dinosaurs: damage now being done in decades to centuries may take millions of years to undo. The current biodiversity crisis, often called the 6th mass extinction, is one of the critical challenges we face in the 21st century. Numerous species are threatened with extinction, mostly as a direct or indirect consequence of human impact. Habitat destruction, climate change, overexploitation, pollution and invasive species are among the main causes for Earth's biota to decline rapidly. To investigate the tempo of extinction and predict recovery times, an international team of evolutionary biologists, paleontologists, geologists and modelers ...

One of the key aspects of academic and industrial research today is non-destructive imaging, a technique in which an object or sample is imaged (using light) without causing any damage to it. Often, such imaging techniques are crucial to ensuring safety and quality of industrial products, subsequently leading to growing demands for high-performance imaging of objects with arbitrary structures and locations. On one hand, there has been tremendous advancements in the scope of non-destructive imaging regarding the region of electromagnetic (EM) spectrum it can access, which now ranges from visible light to as far as millimeter waves! On the other, imaging devices have become flexible and wearable, enabling stereoscopic (3D) visualization ...

Because individual atoms or molecules are 100 to 1000 times smaller than the wavelength of visible light, it is notoriously difficult to collect information about their dynamics, especially when they are embedded within larger structures. In an effort to circumvent this limitation, researchers are engineering metallic nano-antennas that concentrate light into a tiny volume to dramatically enhance any signal coming from the same nanoscale region. Nano-antennas are the backbone of nanoplasmonics, a field that is profoundly impacting biosensing, photochemistry, solar energy harvesting, and photonics. Now, researchers at EPFL led by Professor Christophe Galland at the School of Basic Sciences ...

Research has shown that joining a gang is associated with increased criminal behavior. A new study examined whether the intermittent nature of gang membership affects offending. Researchers sought to determine whether the association with increased offending was a consistent attribute or, since people enter and exit and re-enter gangs, whether the intermittent nature of membership affected members' likelihood of offending. The study found that first-time membership was associated with increases in criminal behavior from when gang members were not in gangs, and that joining for a second ...

The plant Aristolochia microstoma uses a unique trick: its flowers emit a fetid-musty scent that seems to mimic the smell of decomposing insects. Flies from the genus Megaselia (family Phoridae) likely get attracted to this smell while searching for insect corpses to mate over and lay their eggs in. When they enter a flower, they are imprisoned and first pollinate the female organs, before being covered with pollen by the male organs. The flower then releases them unharmed. "Here we show that the flowers of A. microstoma emit an unusual mix of volatiles that includes alkylpyrazines, which are otherwise rarely produced by flowering plants. Our results suggest that this is the first known case of a flower that tricks pollinators by smelling like dead and rotting insects rather than vertebrate ...

UK doctors have nothing to fear from the introduction of a central register listing money or benefits they receive in addition to their NHS salary, say experts today ahead of a public meeting on the issue hosted by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for First Do No Harm and The BMJ. Last year the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review, chaired by Baroness Julia Cumberlege, investigated harmful side effects caused by the hormone pregnancy test Primodos, the anti-epileptic drug sodium valproate, and pelvic mesh. During the review, she heard from patients who were concerned that clinicians ...

Within the next decade, the novel coronavirus responsible for COVID-19 could become little more than a nuisance, causing no more than common cold-like coughs and sniffles. That possible future is predicted by mathematical models that incorporate lessons learned from the current pandemic on how our body's immunity changes over time. Scientists at the University of Utah carried out the research, now published in the journal Viruses. "This shows a possible future that has not yet been fully addressed," says Fred Adler, PhD, professor of mathematics and ...

LA JOLLA, CA--Fast-spreading variants of the COVID-19-causing coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, carry mutations that enable the virus to escape some of the immune response created naturally or by vaccination. A new study from scientists at Scripps Research, along with collaborators in Germany and the Netherlands, has revealed key details of how these escape mutations work. The scientists, whose study appears in Science, used structural biology techniques to map at high resolution how important classes of neutralizing antibodies bind to the original pandemic ...

Environmental quality is associated with advanced-stage prostate cancer at diagnosis, according to a new study by University of Illinois Chicago researchers.  Prostate cancer is up to 57% heritable, with the remainder attributed to environmental exposures. However, studies on those environmental factors and prostate cancer aggressiveness have previously been limited. For their study, "Association between environmental quality and prostate cancer at diagnosis," published in the journal Prostate Cancer and Prostatic Disease, researchers paired data from the environmental quality index, or EQI, and the Surveillance, ...

Around the world and within the U.S., the percentage of people wearing masks during the Covid-19 pandemic has varied enormously. What explains this? A new study co-authored by an MIT faculty member finds that a public sense of "collectivism" clearly predicts mask usage, adding a cultural and psychological perspective to the issue. The study uses a series of datasets about mask usage and public attitudes, along with well-established empirical indices of collectivism, to evaluate the impact of those cultural differences on this element of the pandemic response. ...

Flies predict changes in their visual environment in order to execute evasive maneuvers, according to new research from the University of Chicago. This reliance on predictive information to guide behavior suggests that prediction may be a general feature of animal nervous systems in supporting quick behavioral changes. The study was published on May 20 in PLOS Computational Biology. Animals use their sensory nervous systems to take in information about their environments and then carry out certain behaviors in response to what they detect. However, the nervous system takes time ...

The immune system is a complex balancing act; if it overreacts or underreacts to foreign molecules, there can be serious health consequences. For cancer patients, tumor progression is often accompanied by immunosuppression, meaning their bodies can't fight off pathogens the way they should. By contrast, for people with autoimmune diseases like type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and multiple sclerosis, their immune systems overreact and attack the body itself. Both of these reactions are influenced by a series of molecular checkpoints found in both immune cells and cancer cells. In immune ...

Oysters live and grow in saltwater. However, the saltiness of their habitat can change dramatically, especially where the mighty Mississippi River flows into the Gulf of Mexico. Louisiana oysters from the northern Gulf of Mexico may experience some of the lowest salinity in the world due to the influx of fresh water from the Mississippi River. In addition, increased rainfall and large-scale river diversions for coastal protection will bring more fresh water that does not bode well for the eastern oyster. New research led by Louisiana State University (LSU) alumna Joanna Griffiths from Portland, Oregon, and her faculty advisor ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- You might be older - or younger - than you think. A new study found that differences between a person's age in years and his or her biological age, as predicted by an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled EKG, can provide measurable insights into health and longevity. The AI model accurately predicted the age of most subjects, with a mean age gap of 0.88 years between EKG age and actual age. However, a number of subjects had a gap that was much larger, either seemingly much older or much younger by EKG age. The likelihood to die during follow-up was much ...