Genome sequencing of thousands of SARS-CoV-2 samples shows that surges of COVID-19 cases are driven by the appearance of new coronavirus variants, according to new research from the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California, Davis published April 1 in Scientific Reports. "As variants emerge, you're going to get new outbreaks," said Bart Weimer, professor of population health and reproduction at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. The merger of classical epidemiology with genomics provides a tool public health authorities could use to predict the course of pandemics, whether of coronavirus, influenza or some new pathogen. Although it has just 15 genes, SARS-CoV-2 is constantly mutating. Most of these changes make very little ...

Hamilton, ON (April 1, 2021) - People living with the often-debilitating effects of Crohn's disease may finally gain some relief, thanks to ground-breaking research led by McMaster University. McMaster investigator Brian Coombes said his team identified a strain of adherent-invasive E-coli (AIEC) that is strongly implicated in the condition and is often found in the intestines of people with Crohn's disease. "If you examine the gut lining of patients with Crohn's disease, you will find that around 70 to 80 per cent of them test positive for AIEC bacteria, but one of the things we don't understand is why," said Coombes, professor and chair of the Department of Biochemistry and ...

Ishikawa, Japan - Any high-performance computing should be able to handle a vast amount of data in a short amount of time -- an important aspect on which entire fields (data science, Big Data) are based. Usually, the first step to managing a large amount of data is to either classify it based on well-defined attributes or--as is typical in machine learning--"cluster" them into groups such that data points in the same group are more similar to one another than to those in another group. However, for an extremely large dataset, which can have trillions of sample points, it is tedious to even group data points into a single cluster without huge memory requirements. "The problem can be formulated as follows: Suppose we have a clustering tool that ...

The kangaskhan, Australia's only species of endemic Pokemon in Pokemon Go, is commonly poached within its natural habitat by Pokemon trainers for use in fighting contests Researchers used several species distribution modeling algorithms to predict how climate change, on top of the already existing human-induced pressures, would impact the distribution of the kangaskhan in the future In addition to this, they found a way to measure how biased commonly used species distribution models are, and found that some models are so biased that their results weren't influenced by the data at all The ...

Obesity rates have increased dramatically in developed countries over the past 40 years -- and many people have assumed that food marketing is at least in part to blame. But are people with obesity really more susceptible to food marketing? And if they are, is that a permanent predisposition, or can it change over time? According to a new study by UBC Sauder School of Business Assistant Professor Dr. Yann Cornil (he/him/his) and French researchers, people with obesity do tend to be more responsive to food marketing -- but when their weight drops significantly, so does their responsiveness to marketing. For the study, which was published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, the researchers followed three groups: patients with severe ...

Oak Brook, IL - The April edition of SLAS Discovery is a special issue on advances in protein degradation curated by guest editors M. Paola Castaldi, Ph.D., and Stewart L. Fisher, Ph.D. Targeted protein degradation has generated interest within the drug discovery arena due to the inhibition of one particular function of a protein not often delivering the successful results that comes from whole-protein depletion. The pharmacology of PROTACs present challenges, however, namely for the development of orally bioavailable drugs. In the article "Target Validation Using PROTACs: Applying the Four Pillars Framework" authors Rados?aw P. Nowak, Ph.D., and Lyn H. Jones, Ph.D., describe the application of a translational pharmacology framework (the four pillars) ...

Oak Brook, IL - The April edition of SLAS Technology features the cover article "Therapeutic Potential of Reactive Oxygen Species: State of the Art and Recent Advances" by Valeria Graceffa, Ph.D. (Institute of Technology Sligo, Sligo, Ireland). The cover article explores the therapeutic potential of reactive oxygen species (ROS) including applications ranging from wound healing and hair growth enhancement, to cancer treatment, stem cell differentiation and tissue engineering. At low concentrations, ROS can be utilized as inexpensive and convenient inducers of tissue regeneration, triggering stem cell differentiation and enhancing collagen synthesis. Recent cancer studies have represented ROS as the 'Achilles Heels' of cancers given their high basal levels, leaving ...

(APRIL 1, 2021) -The pandemic has exacerbated risk factors for gender-based violence, such as unemployment and financial strain, substance use, isolation, depression anxiety, and general stress, according to the American Psychological Association. That's inspired The University of Texas at San Antonio criminology and criminal justice professor Kellie Lynch, along with professor TK Logan from the University of Kentucky, to work with the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence on a national survey to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the dynamics of gender-based violence and the experiences of those serving victims of gender-based violence. "The consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic are far-reaching and we still have much to learn about ...

The public could lose trust in science if scientific and medical researchers choose to bypass the traditional high standards of peer-reviewed medical journals in the rush to get research data released, particularly during crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. That's the warning from three leading medical communications organizations, that have published a joint statement in the peer-reviewed journal Current Medical Research and Opinion - asserting that the integrity of published scientific and medical research must be protected. Out today, the joint statement from the American Medical ...

Review of 40 published studies from 17 countries offers first global assessment of the collateral impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on pregnancy outcomes. Findings reveal overall increase in the chances of stillbirth and maternal death during the pandemic, but chances of pre-term birth decreased in high-income countries. Women requiring surgery for ectopic pregnancies increased almost six-fold during the pandemic across all studies, after accounting for the size of included studies (surgery rate for ectopic pregnancies during pandemic 27/37 vs pre-pandemic 73/272), and symptoms of maternal depression were also increased. Study reveals disproportionate impact ...

The pandemic is affecting every country, but not every country has equal access to the lifesaving COVID-19 vaccines. Recent estimates show that high-income countries -- which have just one-fifth of the global adult population -- have purchased more than half of the world's total vaccine doses, resulting in disparities for low- and middle-income countries. A new study by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University investigates a key question: Will the U.S. population support donating part of its COVID-19 vaccine stockpile to less prosperous countries? "COVID-19 is a true global pandemic that has touched every nation ...

Houston Methodist has been a leader in successfully treating high-risk patients with monoclonal antibodies (mAB) for mild to moderate Covid-19 infection. Among the nation's largest providers of mAB therapy, Houston Methodist has infused nearly 4,000 patients since the FDA's Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) was issued. The hospital system was able to quickly ramp up its program once the EUA was granted by leveraging a number of resources through interdisciplinary collaboration. As more hospitals begin to ramp up for treating Covid-19 with mAB therapy, Houston Methodist's example serves as a valuable model for other medical systems to establish or expand mAB treatment programs and improve patient access to this critical therapy. A commentary outlining the challenges, ...

A team of University of Colorado School of Medicine researchers recently published a paper offering new insight into the role that oxygen deprivation, or hypoxia, plays in cancer development. CU Cancer Center member Joaquin Espinosa, PhD, is the senior researcher on the paper, which he hopes will help lead to more targeted treatments for cancer.  For their paper published this month in the journal Nature Communications, Espinosa and the rest of the team -- Zdenek Andrysik, PhD; Heather Bender, PhD; and Matthew Galbraith, PhD -- used state-of-the-art genomics technologies to map the response of cancer cells to hypoxia with unprecedented detail, ...

Abusive alcohol drinking considerably impacts human health. Alcoholism, better defined as Alcohol Use Disorders (AUD), includes a group of pathological entities related to alcohol-induced damage. Individuals with AUD exhibit compulsive alcohol drinking and negative emotional states when alcohol drinking ceases. In the most severe AUD forms, the individuals lose control over consumption despite a decided will to stop. Some controversial issues have arisen as to whether the definition of AUD can help to delimit and characterize clinical entities related to abusive alcohol ingestion. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that approximately 3,3 million people (5,9% of global ...

New findings from a Michigan Medicine study reveal that antibody testing is predictive of prior COVID-19 infection, and rapid screening methods - even from finger pricks - are effective testing tools. Researchers analyzed antibody tests conducted on more than 500 subjects in patient care settings. They found that people who had COVID, including those with mild symptoms, produced antibodies. "For a long time, people were very worried that people with mild COVID did not make immune responses," says Charles Schuler, M.D., a clinical assistant professor of allergy and immunology at Michigan Medicine. "This should give people confidence that the tests that are available to them aren't just random number generators. They're actually giving them ...

New "sweat stickers" may streamline the early diagnosis of cystic fibrosis by enabling scientists to easily gather and analyze sweat from the skin of infants and children. The stickers matched the performance of previous, more cumbersome devices when tested with 51 subjects, suggesting the stickers could address design obstacles that have held back the diagnosis and treatment of cystic fibrosis in pediatric patients. Diagnosing cystic fibrosis in infancy or childhood is critical to achieve good outcomes, as current treatments must be given early to extend lifespans and alter the course of the disease. Many current diagnostics work by detecting levels of chloride in sweat, which are elevated in cystic fibrosis patients. However, these tests must often be repeated and use unwieldy wrist-wrapped ...

For many parents, the COVID-19 pandemic has made life's everyday juggling act--managing work, school, extracurricular, and household responsibilities--much, much harder. And according to a new study led by Penn sociologists, those extra burdens have fallen disproportionately on mothers. The research, shared in the April issue of the journal Gender and Society, investigated how shifts in work and school that arose due to the pandemic triggered changes in the division of labor in families. Using data on two-parent households from a nationwide survey conducted in April 2020, the researchers found that ...

Scientists from the Skoltech Center for Energy Science and Technology (CEST) have developed a method for modeling the behavior of 2D materials under pressure. The research will help create pressure sensors based on silicene or other 2D materials. The paper was published in the ACS Nano journal. Silicene, which is regarded as the silicon analog of graphene, is a two-dimensional allotrope of silicon. In its normal state, bulk silicon is a semiconductor with a diamond crystal type structure. As it thins down to one or several layers, its properties change dramatically. However, it has not yet been possible to study the change in the electronic properties of 2D materials at high pressure. Scientists from Russia, Italy, the United ...

In a longitudinal study published earlier this month in the Journal of the American Dental Association, researchers analyzed untreated decay in a cohort of nearly 7,000 children enrolled in the ForsythKids preventive dentistry program. Over the course of six years, the percentage of children with untreated cavities in the program decreased from 39 to 19 percent, suggesting that school-based prevention programs are effective in combating childhood dental disease. Tooth decay is the most common chronic early childhood disease in the United States. More than half of children aged 6-8 years old have had a cavity, and kids from low-income families ...

High cholesterol is the most commonly understood cause of atherosclerosis, a hardening of the arteries that raises the risk of heart attack and stroke. But now, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a gene that likely plays a causal role in coronary artery disease independent of cholesterol levels. The gene also likely has roles in related cardiovascular diseases, including high blood pressure and diabetes. The study appears March 24 in the journal Science Translational Medicine. Studying mice and genetic data from people, the researchers found ...

LA JOLLA--(March 31, 2021) Clinicians using a new viral screening test can not only diagnose COVID-19 in a matter of minutes with a portable, pocket-sized machine, but can also simultaneously test for other viruses--like influenza--that might be mistaken for the coronavirus. At the same time, they can sequence the virus, providing valuable information on the spread of COVID-19 mutations and variants. The new test, dubbed NIRVANA, was described online today by a multi-institution team of scientists in the journal Med. "This is a virus detection and surveillance method that doesn't require an expensive infrastructure like other approaches," says Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, co-corresponding author and a professor in Salk's Gene Expression ...

AURORA, Colo. (March 31, 2021) - A new study published in Frontiers in Psychiatry finds that patients with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) as well as other psychiatric comorbidities, such as autism spectrum or tic disorders, may respond well to Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS). DBS is a minimally invasive neurosurgical procedure that uses coordinates to target certain areas of the brain, implanting electrodes that can help regulate abnormal brain activity. DBS procedures are rare for OCD in the United States; only a couple hundred patients have received this treatment for OCD management since its FDA approval ...

An aggressive type of brain cancer, glioblastoma has no cure. Patients survive an average of 15 months after diagnosis, with fewer than 10% of patients surviving longer than five years. While researchers are investigating potential new therapies via ongoing clinical trials, a new study from Washington University in St. Louis suggests that a minor adjustment to the current standard treatment -- giving chemotherapy in the morning rather than the evening -- could add a few months to patients' survival. The study appears online in the journal Neuro-Oncology Advances. Average overall survival ...

AURORA, Colo. (March 30, 2021 - Researchers at the University of Colorado College of Nursing have found that nearly one-quarter of graduate nursing students have reported elevated levels of stress, anxiety and depression, compounded in the past year by the COVID-19 pandemic. Study findings, published recently in END ...

A new invention that uses sunlight to drive water purification could help solve the problem of providing clean water off the grid. The device resembles a large sponge that soaks up water but leaves contaminants - like lead, oil and pathogens - behind. To collect the purified water from the sponge, one simply places it in sunlight. The researchers described the device in a paper published this week in the journal Advanced Materials. The inspiration for the device came from the pufferfish, a species that takes in water to swell its body when threatened, and then releases water when danger passes, said the device's co-inventor END ...