Rescuing a member of their own social group, but not a stranger, triggers motivational and social reward centres in rats' brains, suggests a report published today in eLife. The study provides the first description of similar brain activity in both rats and humans underlying this socially biased behaviour. The findings add to our understanding of social biases and could help with developing ways to promote cooperation outside of an individual's social group. "Humans, as well as many other creatures, are biased toward helping other members of their social groups ...

Crenarchaeol is a large, closed-loop lipid that is present in the membranes of ammonium-oxidizing archaea, a unicellular life form that exists ubiquitously in the oceans. In comparison to other archaeal membrane lipids, crenarchaeol is very complex and, so far, attempts to confirm its structure by synthesizing the entire molecule have been unsuccessful. Organic chemists from the University of Groningen have taken up this challenge and discovered that the proposed structure for the molecule was largely, but not entirely, correct. Crenarchaeol contains 86 carbon atoms and is a 'macrocycle, a large closed loop. No fewer than 22 positions in the molecule are chiral. The molecule can be present in two forms that are each other's mirror image, like a left and a right hand. In the crenarchaeol ...

A new University of Iowa study suggests that metabolism of plant-based dietary substances by specific gut bacteria, which are lacking in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), may provide protection against the disease. The study led by Ashutosh Mangalam, PhD, UI associate professor of pathology, shows that a diet rich in isoflavone, a phytoestrogen or plant-based compound that resembles estrogen, protects against multiple sclerosis-like symptoms in a mouse model of the disease. Importantly, the isoflavone diet was only protective when the mice had gut microbes capable of breaking ...

MORGANTOWN, W.Va.--Just as helicopter traffic reporters use their "bird's eye view" to route drivers around roadblocks safely, radiation oncologists treating a variety of cancers can use new guidelines developed by a West Virginia University researcher to reduce mistakes in data transfer and more safely treat their patients. Ramon Alfredo Siochi--the director of medical physics at WVU--led a task group to help ensure the accuracy of data that dictates a cancer patient's radiation therapy. The measures he and his colleagues recommended in their new report safeguard against medical errors in a treatment that more than half of all cancer patients receive. "The most common mistake that happens in radiation oncology is the transfer of information from one system to another," Siochi, ...

How we sense texture has long been a mystery. It is known that nerves attached to the fingertip skin are responsible for sensing different surfaces, but how they do it is not well understood. Rodents perform texture sensing through their whiskers. Like human fingertips, whiskers perform multiple tasks, sensing proximity and shape of objects, as well as surface textures. Mathematicians from the University of Bristol's Department of Engineering Mathematics, worked with neuroscientists from the University of Tuebingen in Germany, to understand how the motion of a whisker across a surface translates texture information into neural signals that can be perceived by the brain. By carrying out high ...

Scientists have found new evidence of menopause in killer whales - raising fascinating questions about how and why it evolved. Most animals breed throughout their lives. Only humans and four whale species are known to experience menopause, and scientists have long been puzzled about why this occurs. Killer whales are a diverse species made up of multiple separate ecotypes (different types within a species) across the world's oceans that differ in their prey specialisation and patterns of social behaviour. Previous studies have found menopause in an ecotype called "resident" killer whales whose social structure appears to favour "grandmothering" (females using their energy and knowledge ...

When a doctor gives a patient antibiotics for a bacterial infection, they usually require them to finish the entire treatment, even when symptoms go away. This is to ensure the drugs kill off any remaining bacteria. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Visiting Scientist Raffaella Sordella investigated a similar problem that occurs in some lung cancers. Approximately 15% of non-small cell lung cancers have a mutation in a growth receptor called EGFR, causing tumor cells to grow uncontrollably. Researchers developed an effective drug that inhibits EGFR and ...

A Skoltech team has developed a model for assessing infection risks for supermarket customers. The researchers believe that their model will help formulate scientifically backed rules for safe shopping during the pandemic. The paper was published in PLOS One. The team included professor Maxim Fedorov, who serves as Skoltech's Vice President for Artificial Intelligence and Mathematical Modeling, and a research group led by professor Nikolai Brilliantov -- the Director of the Skoltech Center for Computational and Data-Intensive Science and Engineering (CDISE). The composite model presented in the paper incorporates ...

LEXINGTON, Ky. (July 13, 2021) -- A recently published study co-authored by University of Kentucky Sanders-Brown Center on Aging researcher Justin Miller, Ph.D., identifies 11 rare candidate variants for Alzheimer's disease. Researchers found 19 different families in Utah that suffered from Alzheimer's disease more frequently than what is considered normal. Miller, an assistant professor in the UK College of Medicine, was a co-first author for the study published in the journal Alzheimer's & Dementia. The work was started at another university, however, some of the computational work was done after Miller arrived at UK in March. For the study, genetic sequencing was conducted on two cousins from each of the 19 families. Miller says they then identified genetic variants that were shared ...

Automation of technology has reshaped both the way in which we work and how we tackle problems. Thanks to the progress made in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) over the last few years, it is now possible to leave several tasks in the hands to machines and algorithms. To highlight these advances, in the July 2021 issue, IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica features six articles covering innovative applications of AI that can make our lives easier. The first article, authored by researchers from Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering Department ASIM Lab, USA, delves into an interesting mixture of topics: intelligent cars, machine learning, and electroencephalography (EEG). Self-driving cars have ...

The concept of topological phases have not only revolutionized our understanding of physics or materials, but also brought about new possibilities for applications. Recent advances in higher-order topological insulators show that multiple forms of topological states can exist at boundaries of different dimensions, which greatly enriched the potentials for diverse applications. Interesting, the topological phases can also be implemented in artificial structures in photonics, electromagnetism, and acoustics. A recent work co-led by Dr. Guancong Ma from Hong Kong Baptist University and Dr. Ying Wu from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology explored the controlling sound propagation with topological modes at different dimensions. They designed and built ...

One in ten school-aged children in Australia have a current diagnosis of asthma. Every year, there are around 40,000 asthma hospitalisations and over 40 per cent of these are in children aged younger than 14 years old. Approximately 80 per cent of these asthma-related hospital presentations are potentially avoidable through a standardised comprehensive care pathway for children with asthma. These preventative measures include the use of evidence-based clinical guidelines, ensuring that there is an asthma action plan in place; regular follow-up with GP; provision of asthma education to parents/carers; and establishing ...

A research group has produced fresh insights about the release of oxygen in lithium-ion batteries, paving the way for more robust and safer high-energy-density batteries. Next-generation batteries that store more energy are critical if society is to achieve the UN's Sustainable Development Goals and realize carbon neutrality. However, the higher the energy density, the higher the likelihood of thermal runaway - the overheating of batteries that can sometimes result in a battery exploding. Oxygen released from cathode active material is a trigger for thermal runaway, yet our knowledge of this process is insufficient. Researchers from Tohoku University ...

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is the most common liver disorder worldwide and is present in approximately 25 percent of the world's population. Over 90 percent of obese, 60 percent of diabetic, and up to 20 percent of normal-weight people develop it. A key feature of the condition is the accumulation of fat in the liver. A liver can remain fatty without disturbing normal function; however, fat accumulations may progress into a so-called non-alcoholic steatohepatitis - an aggressive form of the non-alcoholic fatty liver disease combined with inflammation and sometimes fibrosis. Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis can lead to further complications such as liver cirrhosis, primary liver ...

Every year, thousands of dogs end up in a shelter in the Netherlands. Experts expect an increase in this number in the upcoming period, when people go back to the office after working from home during the corona crisis. Despite the good care of staff and volunteers, the shelter can be a turbulent experience for dogs. Researchers at Utrecht University investigated if dogs can adapt to their new environment based on their nocturnal activity. Janneke van der Laan and fellow researchers from Utrecht University's Faculty of Veterinary Medicine compared the nocturnal activity of 29 shelter dogs and 29 pet dogs in their own homes - similar in breed, age and sex - with the help of night cameras and a small activity tracker on ...

A KAIST research team and collaborators revealed a newly developed hydrogel-based flexible brain-machine interface. To study the structure of the brain or to identify and treat neurological diseases, it is crucial to develop an interface that can stimulate the brain and detect its signals in real time. However, existing neural interfaces are mechanically and chemically different from real brain tissue. This causes foreign body response and forms an insulating layer (glial scar) around the interface, which shortens its lifespan. To solve this problem, ...

Ishikawa, Japan - Sometimes, a material's property, such as magnetism and catalysis, can change drastically owing to nothing more than minute changes in the separation between its atoms, commonly referred to as "local strains" in the parlance of materials science. A precise measurement of such local strains is, therefore, important to materials scientists. One powerful technique employed for this purpose is "high-angle annular dark-field imaging" (HAADF), an approach within scanning transmission electron microscopy (a technique for mapping the position of atoms ...

Museum specimens held in natural history collections around the world represent a wealth of underutilized genetic information due to the poor state of preservation of the DNA, which often makes it difficult to sequence. An international team, led by researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the Museum of Natural History of the City of Geneva (MHN), has optimized a method developed for analyzing ancient DNA to identify the relationships between species on a deep evolutionary scale. This work is published in the journal Genome Biology and ...

Australian reptiles face serious conservation threats from illegal poaching fueled by international demand and the exotic pet trade. In a new study in Animal Conservation, researchers from the University of Adelaide and the Monitor Conservation Research Society (Monitor) investigated the extent of illegal trade in a well-known Australian lizard: the shingleback, also known as the bobtail or sleepy lizard. Using government records, media reports, and online advertisements, the researchers found clear evidence that many shinglebacks have been illegally poached from the wild and are smuggled overseas to be traded as pets. Author and PhD Candidate Adam Toomes from the University of Adelaide says: ...

Low-income neighborhoods and communities with higher Black, Hispanic and Asian populations experience significantly more urban heat than wealthier and predominantly white neighborhoods within a vast majority of populous U.S. counties, according new research from the University of California San Diego's School of Global Policy and Strategy. The analysis of remotely-sensed land surface temperature measurements of 1,056 U.S. counties, which have ten or more census districts, was recently published in the journal END ...

As a minimally invasive method for cancer therapy at precise locations, NIR-induced photothermal therapy (PTT) has drawn extensively attention. The therapeutic mechanism is the use of photothermal agents (PTAs) in the treatment of tumors,and its therapeutic effect happens only at the tumor site where both light-absorbent and localized laser radiation coexist. The development of PTAs with NIR-II absorbance, ranging from 1000nm to 1700 nm, can efficiently improve their penetrating ability and therapeutic effects because of their high penetration depth in the body. Howerever, several disadvantages are associated with these NIR-II responsive PTAs for their ...

Over the past years, graphene oxide membranes have been mainly studied for water desalination and dye separation. However, membranes have a wide range of applications such as the food industry. A research group led by Aaron Morelos-Gomez of Shinshu University's Global Aqua Innovation Center investigated the application of graphene oxide membranes for milk which typically creates dense foulant layers on polymeric membranes. Graphene oxide membranes have the advantage to create a porous foulant layer, therefore, their filtration performance can be maintained better than commercial polymeric membranes. The unique chemical and ...

Clinician well-being is imperative to providing high-quality patient care, yet clinician burnout continues to increase, especially over the last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Four leading cardiovascular organizations - the American College of Cardiology, the American Heart Association, the European Society of Cardiology and the World Heart Federation - are calling for global action to improve clinician well-being in a joint opinion paper published today. "Over the last several decades, there have been significant changes in health care with the expansion of technology, regulatory burden and clerical task loads. These developments have come at a cost to the ...

A new population-based study looking at nearly 30 years of billing data demonstrates that sex-based differences in Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) payments exists for Canadian ophthalmologists. A team led by researchers and clinicians from the Donald K. Johnson Eye Institute, part of the Krembil Research Institute at University Health Network (UHN), studied 22,389 Ontario physicians across three decades and found a significant payment gap between female and male ophthalmologists even after accounting for age, and some practice differences. This disparity was more pronounced among ophthalmologists when compared to other surgical, medical procedural and medical non-procedural specialty groups. "This is real and robust ...

DALLAS, July 13, 2021 -- Sharing the results of genetic testing for cardiomyopathy in adolescents ages 13-18 does not appear to cause emotional harm to families or adversely impact family function or dynamics, according to new research published today in Circulation: Genomic and Precision Medicine, an American Heart Association journal. Genetic testing for cardiomyopathy in symptomatic children has the potential to confirm a diagnosis, clarify prognosis, determine eligibility for disease-specific cardiomyopathy therapies and even inform risk for other family members. Genetic testing for asymptomatic adults and children also occurs after one of their family members receives positive cardiomyopathy genetic ...