Individuals who contract COVID-19 even after vaccination are likely to have a lower viral load, experience a shorter infection time and have milder symptoms than people who are unvaccinated, according to research that includes data from ongoing University of Arizona Health Sciences studies. "If you get vaccinated, about 90% of the time you're not going to get COVID-19," said Jeff Burgess, MD, MS, MPH, associate dean for research and professor at the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health and principal investigator of the Arizona Healthcare, ...

MINNEAPOLIS - Finding treatments for advanced multiple sclerosis (MS) has been difficult. But new research may help neurologists identify which drugs are best for people with the advanced form of MS called secondary progressive MS. The new study, published in the June 30, 2021, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, found that the more potent disease-modifying drugs are more effective in reducing flare-ups in secondary progressive MS than the less potent drugs that tend to be safer to take. However, the researchers found no difference in how fast the disease progressed between these two types of drugs. Most ...

MINNEAPOLIS - A new study suggests that even when differences in socioeconomic status are taken into consideration, Black people with multiple sclerosis (MS) may be more negatively impacted by the disease than white people with MS. The research is published in the June 30, 2021, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study found that Black people with MS had lower scores on certain measures of neurological health, like dexterity and walking tests and showed more evidence of disease progression on brain scans. "While lower socioeconomic status appears to be linked to doing worse on tests ...

June 30, 2021 - For most patients, the reasons for having a facelift are simple: to "turn back the clock" for a younger and more attractive appearance. Even during the pandemic year 2020, more than 234,000 patients underwent facelift surgery, according to American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) statistics. When considering facelift surgery, patients may ask, "How much younger will I look?" For plastic surgeons, that has been a difficult question to answer. Typically, the cosmetic outcomes of facelifting have been judged on a case-by-case basis, or with the use of subjective ratings. Now research suggests a new, objective approach to assessing the reduction in apparent age after facelift surgery: artificial intelligence (AI) networks trained to estimate age based on facial ...

Electron motion in atoms and molecules is of fundamental importance to many physical, biological, and chemical processes. Exploring electron dynamics within atoms and molecules is essential for understanding and manipulating these phenomena. Pump-probe spectroscopy is the conventional technique. The 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry provides a well-known example wherein femtosecond pumped laser pulses served to probe the atomic motion involved in chemical reactions. However, because the timescale of electron motion within atoms and molecules is on the order of attoseconds (10-18 seconds) rather than femtoseconds (10-15 seconds), attosecond pulses are required to probe electron motion. With the development of ...

A recent University of Arizona College of Pharmacy study suggests that Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) may be a valuable means of assesing clinical skills while providing learning experiences for pharmacy students in community pharmacy settings. While the OSCEs were designed to assess health care professionals in a clinical setting, there was limited data on its use in testing skills required in community pharmacies, until now. For pharmacists working in retail, guiding patients on the use of over-the-counter (OTC) drugs is a common part of the job. According to a recent survey from the American ...

Directing a meeting, dialing up an old acquaintance, dictating the perfect tuna salad sandwich across a drive-through window. For business and for pleasure, human beings are in constant communication.Our proclivity for socialization is lifelong, equally prominent in the lives of adolescents and adults. A recent study determined key differences in the ways that various age groups communicate, as well as one conversational component that stands the test of time: friendship. Specifically, bonds between individuals who identify as female. Led by former Beckman Institute postdoctoral researchers Michelle Rodrigues and Si On Yoon, an interdisciplinary team evaluated how interlocutors' age and familiarity with one another impacts a conversation, reviewing the interaction's ...

Elevated levels of three specific circulating proteins are associated with protection against kidney failure in diabetes, according to research from the Joslin Diabetes Center that will be published 30th June in Science Translational Medicine. "As well as acting as biomarkers for advancing kidney disease risk in diabetes, the proteins may also serve as the basis for future therapies against progression to the most serious types of kidney disease," said Andrzej S. Krolewski MD, PhD, senior author on the publication, senior investigator at Joslin Diabetes Center and professor of medicine ...

A 7- to 15-year longitudinal study of 358 diabetics has linked 3 proteins in blood with a slower progression of diabetic kidney disease and progressive kidney failure. The results from Zaipul Md Dom and colleagues suggest that the proteins could help researchers identify diabetics most at risk of kidney damage, potentially enabling earlier interventions and treatment. Despite advancements in blood sugar control and kidney therapies, patients with type 1 or type 2 diabetes still face a high risk of diabetic kidney disease. This condition can eventually progress to end-stage kidney disease, but some patients show slower kidney decline than others. In recent ...

Despite unprecedented advancements in technology and countless depictions of complex human-AI interactions in sci-fi movies, we have yet to fully achieve AI bots that can engage in conversation as naturally as humans can. Kushal Chawla, researcher at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) and a doctoral student in computer science, along with collaborators at both the USC Information Sciences Institute (ISI) and ICT are taking us one step closer to this reality by teaching AI how to negotiate with humans. The research, presented at the 2021 Annual Conference of ...

Although cardiovascular disease is the main cause of illness among women in the U.S., certain conditions such as coronary microvascular disease (CMD) cannot be easily diagnosed. In a new study, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have identified specific biomarkers for CMD, which might reduce future hospitalizations. CMD damages the inner walls of blood vessels causing spasms and decreased blood flow to the heart muscle. "Clinicians look for plaque formation in the blood vessels, which does not occur in CMD," said Zeynep Madak-Erdogan (CGD/EIRH/GSP), an associate professor of nutrition. "Usually, ...

The virus that gives rise to COVID-19 is the third coronavirus to threaten humanity in the past two decades. It also happens to move more efficiently from person to person than either SARS or MERS did. The first African case of COVID-19 was diagnosed in Egypt in mid-February of 2020. Four weeks later, the first lockdowns began across Africa. Steven Schiff, Brush Chair Professor of Engineering at Penn State, who already had established research partnerships in Uganda, saw an opportunity for his team to apply what they were learning from their ongoing efforts to track and control infectious disease and ...

Ten estuaries on the West Coast of North America have been identified as priority locations for expanding the use of conservation aquaculture in a study led by the Native Olympia Oyster Collaborative and funded by the Science for Nature and People Partnership (SNAPP). SNAPP is a research collaboration supported by the National Center for Ecological Analysis & Synthesis (NCEAS) at UC Santa Barbara. The study, published in Plos One, recommends locations and methods for the strategic expansion of conservation aquaculture to bring back Olympia oyster populations -- both to local estuaries where they have most declined, and into more local restaurants for oyster lovers to dine on. The authors propose using aquaculture in these estuaries -- ...

Even the mundane act of swallowing requires a well-coordinated dance of more than 30 muscles of the mouth. The loss of function of even one of these, due to disease or injury, can be extremely debilitating. For these people, nerve stimulation offers a ray of hope to regain some of their lost oral function. In a new study, researchers at Texas A&M University have delineated the minimum size of electrical currents needed to provide sensation in different parts of the mouth. The researchers said their study is a first but vital step toward building electrical stimulation implants that can restore essential intraoral functions that are lost due to nerve or brain damage. The results of the study are published in the journal ...

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is widely used in medicine to detect, diagnose and treat diseases such as cancer, while relying on experts' interpretation of images. Quantitative MRI, which obtains numerical measurements during the scans, can now potentially offer greater accuracy, repeatability and speed -- but rigorous quality control is needed for it to reach its full potential, according to a new study. Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) led the study by 11 institutions comparing measurements by 27 MRI scanners from three vendors at nine clinical sites around the country. To obtain reference values and disentangle sources of bias and variation, the study used a tissue stand-in, or "phantom," originally ...

A city's street names can provide a glimpse into its cultural value system and a way to quantify cultural indicators, according to a study published June 30, 2021 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Melanie Bancilhon from Washington University in Saint Louis, U.S., and colleagues. Ever since named streets have existed, they have been used as a form of social engineering, mirroring a town or city's social, cultural, political, and religious values. Building off this concept in what they term "streetonomics," Bancilhon and colleagues used street names as an alternative route to quantify cultural indicators in four influential Western cities: Paris, Vienna, London, and New York. The authors used multiple open data sources ...

The deep sea Pacific Salas y Gómez and Nazca ridges are highly biodiverse and host unique fish and invertebrate taxa, according to video surveys. INFORMATION: Article Title: Deep-sea biodiversity at the extremes of the Salas y Gómez and Nazca ridges with implications for conservation Funding: The expeditions were funded by the National Geographic Society and Pristine Seas donors with support to AMF. Conservation International, the Paul M. Angell Family Foundation, Tom and Currie Barron, and Alan Eustace provided additional support to DW, WG and JG. The Chilean Millennium Science Initiative Program grant #NC120030 ...

In the German population, a surprisingly high 6% of under-18s are at risk of cognitive decline, falls and more from the cumulative effect of anticholinergic medications such as antihistamines and antidepressants. INFORMATION: Article Title: Anticholinergic burden: First comprehensive analysis using claims data shows large variation by age and sex Funding: The authors received no external funding for this work. Competing Interests: UH, OR, MB and JR are working at an independent, non-profit research institute, the Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology - BIPS. Unrelated to this study, BIPS occasionally conducts studies financed by the pharmaceutical industry. Almost exclusively, these are post-authorization ...

Researchers have developed and successfully demonstrated a novel method for studying how cells repair damaged DNA in space. Sarah Stahl-Rommel of Genes in Space and colleagues present the new technique in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on June 30, 2021. Damage to an organism's DNA can occur during normal biological processes or as a result of environmental causes, such as UV light. In humans and other animals, damaged DNA can lead to cancer. Fortunately, cells have several different natural strategies by which damaged DNA can be repaired. Astronauts traveling outside of Earth's protective atmosphere face increased risk of DNA damage due to the ionizing radiation ...

An important function of our vision is to segregate relevant figures from the irrelevant background. When we look at a visual stimulus, it drives a cascade of neural activity from low-level to higher level visual brain areas. The higher areas also provide feedback to the lower areas, where figures elicit more activity than the background, as if figures in the brain are highlighted with extra activity. Researchers from the Netherlands Institute of Neuroscience (NIN) now showed that feedback causes the extra neuronal activity in low-level areas and that the extra activity is essential for figure-ground ...

MIT engineers and researchers in South Korea have developed a sweat-proof "electronic skin" -- a conformable, sensor-embedded sticky patch that monitors a person's health without malfunctioning or peeling away, even when a wearer is perspiring. The patch is patterned with artificial sweat ducts, similar to pores in human skin, that the researchers etched through the material's ultrathin layers. The pores perforate the patch in a kirigami-like pattern, similar to that of the Japanese paper-cutting art. The design ensures that sweat can escape through the patch, preventing skin irritation and damage to embedded sensors. The kirigami design also helps the patch conform to human skin as it stretches and bends. This flexibility, paired with ...

New Brunswick, N.J. (June 30, 2021) - A Rutgers-led team of researchers has developed a microchip that can measure stress hormones in real time from a drop of blood. The study appears in the journal Science Advances. Cortisol and other stress hormones regulate many aspects of our physical and mental health, including sleep quality. High levels of cortisol can result in poor sleep, which increases stress that can contribute to panic attacks, heart attacks and other ailments. Currently, measuring cortisol takes costly and cumbersome laboratory setups, so the Rutgers-led team looked for a way to monitor its natural fluctuations in daily life and provide patients with feedback that allows them to receive the right treatment at the right ...

A new study based on computational analyses of how SARS-CoV-2 interacts with host cell proteins has identified 200 previously approved drugs that could be repurposed to treat COVID-19, 40 of which have already entered clinical trials. Furthermore, Namshik Han and colleagues identified 30 proteins induced by the SARS-CoV-2 virus that are targeted by 8 or more existing drugs, finding that nitric oxide production, which is important for viral synthesis, may be targeted by these drugs to fight infection. The researchers also identified 2 of these drugs with good safety profiles that successfully reduced viral replication in cellular assays, suggesting they could potentially prevent or treat COVID-19. Scientists now have sufficient ...

The Bronze Age in the eastern Mediterranean has long been considered by researchers to have been the 'first international age,' especially the period from 1600-1200 BC, when powerful empires from Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Egypt set up large networks of subordinate client kingdoms in the Near East. These empires fought, traded, and corresponded with one another, and ancient texts from the period reveal rich economic and social networks that enabled the movement of people and goods. A new study conducted by an interdisciplinary team of archaeologists, geneticists, and isotope experts, and published in PLOS ONE, investigated the movement of people in this period at a single regional center, a Bronze Age city-state called Alalakh in present-day southeastern Turkey. Their results indicate ...

University of Leeds news Embargo: Wednesday 30 June, 7pm GMT Bereavement care lacking for ethnic minorities Grieving friends and relatives from ethnic minority backgrounds are suffering from a lack of appropriate help to cope with the loss of a loved one, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers say. And the scarcity of data on the services that are available means providers do not know how support should be delivered to ensure they are suitable for different groups of people. The researchers, led by the University of Leeds and the University of Sheffield, reviewed evidence on UK bereavement care for ethnic minority ...