FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - Cold temperatures, prevalent during glacial periods, had a significant impact on past and modern unglaciated landscapes across much of North America, according to a recent study by University of Arkansas geologist Jill A. Marshall. Marshall, assistant professor of geosciences, is the first author of the study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The findings help shape understanding of the earth's "Critical Zone," the relatively thin layer of the planet that extends from where vegetation meets the atmosphere to the lowermost extent of weathered bedrock. "Climate and ecosystems determine how quickly bedrock ...

DALLAS - Feb. 22, 2021 - Three decades-old antibiotics administered together can block a type of pain triggered by nerve damage in an animal model, UT Southwestern researchers report. The finding, published online today in PNAS, could offer an alternative to opioid-based painkillers, addictive prescription medications that are responsible for an epidemic of abuse in the U.S. Over 100 million Americans are affected by chronic pain, and a quarter of these experience pain on a daily basis, a burden that costs an estimated $600 billion in lost wages and medical expenses ...

Scientists have identified a way to "rescue" muscle cells that have genetically mutated, paving the way to a possible new treatment for rare childhood illness such as Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). The study, led by the Universities of Exeter and Nottingham, is published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, USA. The research used novel drugs being developed at the University of Exeter, which "metabolically reprogram" the cellular energy production centres in muscle cells, by providing them with a fuel source to generate metabolic energy. DMD is a genetic condition caused by a mutation in a gene called dystrophin which results in progressive irreversible muscular degeneration and weakening. Its symptoms include muscle ...

Things just got hairy at Princeton. Researchers found they could coat a liquid elastic on the outside of a disc and spin it to form useful, complex patterns. When spun just right, tiny spindles rise from the material as it cures. The spindles grow as the disc accelerates, forming a soft solid that resembles hairs. Inspired by biological designs and rationalized with mathematical precision, the new method could be used at an industrial scale for production with plastics, glasses, metals and smart materials. The researchers published their findings ...

(Boston)--Tau is a protein that helps stabilize the internal skeleton of nerve cells (neurons) in the brain. Groups of toxic tau protein, termed tau oligomers, drive disease progression and memory loss in Alzheimer's disease (AD). A new study from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) shows how these tau oligomers form, and, correspondingly, how they can be prevented. AD is a major cause of disease in the elderly and places a huge financial cost on the health care system. Scientists have known for a long time that two proteins (?-amyloid and tau) clump and accumulate in the brains ...

LOGAN, UTAH, USA -- You might not like mosquitoes, but they like you, says Utah State University biologist Norah Saarman. And where you lead, they will follow. In addition to annoying bites and buzzing, some mosquitoes carry harmful diseases. Aedes aegypti, the so-called Yellow Fever mosquito and the subject of a recent study by Saarman and colleagues, is the primary vector for transmission of viruses causing dengue fever, chikungunya and Zika, as well as yellow fever, in humans. "Aedes aegypti is an invasive species to North America that's become widespread in the eastern United States," says Saarman, assistant professor in USU's Department of Biology and the USU Ecology Center, whose research focuses ...

Adolescents and teens may be more likely to be bullied by their friends -- and friends-of-friends -- than classmates they don't know as well, according to a new study. Diane Felmlee, Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Demography at Penn State and researcher on the paper, said the findings give new insight into how and why bullying occurs -- important information for anti-bullying efforts. "People often assume that bullying occurs between relative strangers, or that it targets those on the fringes of the social network," Felmlee said. "Those do occur, but in our study, we find that the rate of peer aggression is significantly higher between those students who are closely linked. Furthermore, our finding is not due to friends simply spending ...

In a new study out of University of California San Diego School of Medicine, researchers have identified a universal strain of bacteria derived from healthy human skin that can treat the most common type of eczema, also known as atopic dermatitis. In the paper published Feb. 22, 2021, in Nature Medicine, the research team investigated the safety and mechanisms of this certain bacteria in a first-in-human, Phase I, double-blinded clinical trial looking to treat people living with eczema. Of the 54 participants, two-thirds reported improvements in their ...

The diversity and numbers of wild salmon in Northern B.C. have declined approximately 70 per cent over the past century, according to a new Simon Fraser University study. Researchers drawing on 100-year-old salmon scales report that recent numbers of wild adult sockeye salmon returning to the Skeena River are 70 per cent lower than 100 years ago. Wild salmon diversity in the Skeena watershed has similarly declined by 70 per cent over the last century. The research undertaken by Simon Fraser University (SFU) and Fisheries and Oceans Canada was published today in the Journal of Applied Ecology. The research team applied modern genetic tools to salmon scales collected from commercial ...

Boston, Mass. - Even with more than 1.5 million Americans receiving a COVID vaccine each day, officials estimate it will take many more months before enough people are protected from the deadly virus. Until then, and potentially beyond, experts agree that opening up schools, restaurants and other public places as safely as possible will rely on widespread testing for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. As of June 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had granted emergency use authorization for more than 85 different viral DNA test kits -- or assays -- each with widely varying degrees of sensitivity and unknown rates of accuracy. However, with no existing gold standard test for the novel coronavirus, there's little data on which ...

A paper recently published in the scientific journal Stem Cells and Development shares an important advancement in conservation -- one that may make the difference between survival and extinction for wildlife species that have been reduced to very small population sizes. Using fibroblast cells that have been preserved in San Diego Zoo Global's Frozen Zoo®, scientists have been able to generate induced pluripotent stem cells of northern and southern white rhinoceroses. This important breakthrough is the first step in a complex process for generating gametes from deceased and non-reproductive individuals of these two subspecies. "For the northern white rhino, which is functionally extinct, the only hope for survival may be in the ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - Cornell University scientists have identified a new contender when it comes to quantum materials for computing and low-temperature electronics. Using nitride-based materials, the researchers created a material structure that simultaneously exhibits superconductivity - in which electrical resistance vanishes completely - and the quantum Hall effect, which produces resistance with extreme precision when a magnetic field is applied. "This is a beautiful marriage of the two things we know, at the microscale, that give electrons the most startling ...

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Feb. 22, 2021--A team of quantum theorists seeking to cure a basic problem with quantum annealing computers--they have to run at a relatively slow pace to operate properly--found something intriguing instead. While probing how quantum annealers perform when operated faster than desired, the team unexpectedly discovered a new effect that may account for the imbalanced distribution of matter and antimatter in the universe and a novel approach to separating isotopes. "Although our discovery did not the cure the annealing time restriction, it brought a class of new physics problems that can now be studied with quantum annealers without requiring they be too slow," said Nikolai Sinitsyn, a theoretical physicist at Los Alamos National ...

HOUSTON - (Feb. 22, 2021) - Governments with strong female representation are more likely to deliver on campaign promises, according to new research from Rice University. "The Effects of Women's Descriptive Representation on Government Behavior" by author Jonathan Homola, an assistant professor of political science at Rice, examines campaign promises and subsequent policymaking by parties in power in 10 European countries, the United States and Canada along with data on women in party leadership and elected offices. The study also showed that promises are even more likely to be kept when women in government assume leadership roles. Homola said the research demonstrates the importance of women playing part in the ...

Researchers at the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI) found that transitioning land enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) to bioenergy agriculture can be advantageous for American landowners, the government, and the environment. Land enrolled in the CRP cannot currently be used for bioenergy crop production, wherein high-yielding plants (like miscanthus and switchgrass) are harvested for conversion into marketable bioproducts that displace fossil fuel- and coal-based energy. Established by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1985, the CRP incentivizes landowners to retire environmentally ...

A new study by an international team of researchers found that adults with Down syndrome are more likely to die from COVID-19 than the general population, supporting the need to prioritize vaccinating people with the genetic disorder. Investigators found that adults with Down syndrome were roughly three times more likely to die from COVID-19 than the general population. This increased risk was especially apparent in from fifth decade of life: A 40-year-old with Down syndrome had a similar risk of dying from COVID-19 as someone 30 years older in the general population. The study was published this week in The Lancet's ...

Strokes are a leading cause of poor quality of life or even death in Japan and the world over. Since its characterization, several researchers have been working tooth and nail to identify drug-accessible and effective therapeutic targets for this debilitating condition. One such region of interest for drug targets is the blood-brain barrier (BBB). The BBB is a structure located around the brain, which prevents the entry of unnecessary circulating cells and biomolecules into the brain. The blood vessels in the BBB are coated with a distinct and protective layer of sugar, called the endothelial glycocalyx, which prevents their entry. However, in the event of a stroke, which results in the blockage or severance of blood vessels in the brain, studies have shown that this ...

Skoltech researchers have designed a software-based algorithm for synchronizing time across smartphones that can be used in practical tasks requiring simultaneous measurements. This algorithm can essentially help turn several devices into a full-fledged network of sensors. The paper was published in the journal Sensors. If you want a network of intelligent devices - say, an array of cameras capturing a dynamic scene or another kind of network of sensors - to work properly, one of the fundamental tasks you have to solve is clock synchronization: all devices should have the same timeline, often up to sub-millisecond for the more challenging tasks. Modern smartphones can easily be used as multipurpose ...

Female physicians have better patient outcomes compared with their male peers, while female patients are less likely to receive guideline-recommended care when treated by a male physician, according to a systematic review from the American College of Cardiology's Cardiovascular Disease in Women section published today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. While women make up over 50% of internal medicine residents, only 12.6% of cardiologists are female. A dedicated effort to increase diversity in the cardiovascular field could help to lower implicit bias, often considered an important factor in health care disparities. In a detailed systematic review, researchers looked at 13 studies ...

A new study from UCLA and Stanford University researchers finds that three-dimensional human stem cell-derived organoids can mature in a manner that is strikingly similar to human brain development. For the new study, published in Nature Neuroscience February 22, senior authors Dr. Daniel Geschwind of UCLA and Dr. Sergiu Pasca of Stanford University conducted extensive genetic analysis of organoids that had been grown for up to 20 months in a lab dish. They found that these 3D organoids follow an internal clock that guides their maturation in sync with the timeline of human development. "This is novel -- Until now, nobody has grown and characterized these organoids for this amount ...

A trio of recent studies highlight the need to incorporate behavioral and social science alongside the study of biological mechanisms in order to slow aging. The three papers, published in concert in Ageing Research Reviews, emphasized how behavioral and social factors are intrinsic to aging. This means they are causal drivers of biological aging. In fact, the influence of behavioral and social factors on how fast people age are large and meaningful. However, geroscience--the study of how to slow biological aging to extend healthspan and longevity--has traditionally not incorporated ...

Reno, Nev. (Feb. 22, 2021)- Normally, we think of the freezing point of water as 32°F - but in the world of weather forecasting and hydrologic prediction, that isn't always the case. In the Lake Tahoe region of the Sierra Nevada, the shift from snow to rain during winter storms may actually occur at temperatures closer to 39.5°F, according to new research from the Desert Research Institute (DRI), Lynker Technologies, and citizen scientists from the Tahoe Rain or Snow project The new paper, which published this month in Frontiers in Earth Science, used data collected by 200 volunteer weather spotters to identify the temperature cutoff between rain and snow in winter storms that occurred during the ...

Long before COVID-19 entered the picture, West Virginia had been battling two other major public health crises: opioids and HIV. Dr. Sally Hodder, a leading infectious disease expert at West Virginia University, believes that despite the threat of COVID-19, the opioid and HIV epidemics should not be ignored. The two have become so intertwined in the Mountain State, that they must be treated together, she said. "We cannot try to solve the opioid epidemic or our emerging HIV epidemic by combating them separately," said Hodder, who serves as director of the West Virginia Clinical and Translational Science Institute and associate vice president ...

In order to remember similar events, the brain exaggerates the difference between them. This results in divergent brain activity patterns but better memory performance, according to new research published in JNeurosci. Memory is subjective. Different people recall the same event in unique ways, and people exaggerate the difference between similar events in their own life. Yet this type of bias can be advantageous when it helps the brain distinguish between similar things and prevent confusion. In a study by Zhao et al., participants memorized different sets of faces paired with colored objects. Some ...

The cover for issue 46 of Oncotarget features Figure 6, "Establishment of a SARS-CoV-2 pseudovirus that expresses SPIKE protein variants on the envelope of a lentiviral core, infection of human airway epithelial cells or lung cancer cells, and demonstration of MEKi attenuation of infectivity on primary human cells," published in "MEK inhibitors reduce cellular expression of ACE2, pERK, pRb while stimulating NK-mediated cytotoxicity and attenuating inflammatory cytokines relevant to SARS-CoV-2 infection" by Zhou, et al. which reported that Natural Killer cells and innate-immune TRAIL ...