Scientists have achieved a breakthrough in predicting the behaviour of neurons in large networks operating at the mysterious edge of chaos. New research from the University of Sussex and Kyoto University outlines a new method capable of analysing the masses of data generated by thousands of individual neurons. The new framework outperforms previous models in predicting and assessing network properties by more accurately estimating a system's fluctuations with greater sensitivity to parameter changes. As new technologies allow recording of thousands of neurons from living animals, there is a pressing demand for mathematical tools to study the non-equilibrium, complex dynamics of the high-dimensional ...

Cancer researcher Rita Fior uses zebrafish to study human cancer. Though this may seem like an unlikely match, her work shows great promise with forthcoming applications in personalised medicine. The basic principle of Fior's approach relies on transplanting human cancer cells into dozens of zebrafish larvae. The fish then serve as "living test tubes" where various treatments, such as different chemotherapy drugs, can be tested to reveal which works best. The assay is rapid, producing an answer within four short days. Some years ago, when Fior was developing this assay, she noticed something curious. "The majority of human ...

University of Warwick scientists model movements of nearly 300 protein structures in Covid-19 Scientists can use the simulations to identify potential targets to test with existing drugs, and even check effectiveness with future Covid variants Simulation of virus spike protein, part of the virus's 'corona', shows promising mechanism that could potentially be blocked Researchers have publicly released data on all protein structures to aid efforts to find potential drug targets: https://warwick.ac.uk/flex-covid19-data Researchers have detailed a mechanism in the ...

Genetic mutations which occur naturally during the earliest stages of an embryo's development can cause the severe birth defect spina bifida, finds a new experimental study in mice led by UCL scientists. The research, published in Nature Communications, explains for the first time how a 'mosaic mutation' - a mutation which is not inherited from either parent (either via sperm or egg cell) but occurs randomly during cell divisions in the developing embryo - causes spina bifida. Specifically the scientists, based at UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, found that when a mutation in the gene Vangl2 (which contains information needed to create spinal cord tissue) was present in 16% of developing spinal cord cells of mouse embryos, this ...

The Biden administration is revising the social cost of carbon (SCC), a decade-old cost-benefit metric used to inform climate policy by placing a monetary value on the impact of climate change. In a newly published analysis in the journal Nature, a team of researchers lists a series of measures the administration should consider in recalculating the SCC. "President Biden signed a Day One executive order to create an interim SCC within a month and setting up a process to produce a final, updated SCC within a year," explains Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at New York University's Department of Environmental Studies and NYU's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and the paper's lead author. "Our work outlines how the ...

Scientific strides in HIV treatment and prevention have reduced transmissions and HIV-related deaths significantly in the United States in the past two decades. However, despite coordinated national efforts to implement HIV services, the epidemic persists, especially in the South. It also disproportionately impacts marginalized groups, such as Black/African-American and Latinx communities, women, people who use drugs, men who have sex with men, and other sexual and gender minorities. Following the release of the HIV National Strategic Plan and marking two years since the launch of the Ending the HIV Epidemic: ...

People who are racial, sexual, and gender minorities continue to be affected by HIV at significantly higher rates than white people, a disparity also reflected in the COVID-19 pandemic. The US HIV epidemic has shifted from coastal, urban settings to the South and rural areas. Despite its role as the largest funder for HIV research and global AIDS programs worldwide, the USA has higher rates of new HIV infections and a more severe HIV epidemic than any other G-7 nation. Series authors call for a unified effort to curb the HIV epidemic in the USA, including universal health ...

Researchers from California Polytechnic State University and University of Oregon published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that examines the potential benefits for firms and consumers of pick-your-price (PYP) over pay-what-you-want (PWYW) and fixed pricing strategies. The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled "The Control-Effort Trade-Off in Participative Pricing: How Easing Pricing Decisions Enhances Purchase Outcomes" and is authored by Cindy Wang, Joshua Beck, and Hong Yuan. Over the past few decades, marketers have experimented with pricing strategies ...

The imposition of various local and national restrictions in England during the summer and autumn of 2020 gradually reduced contacts between people, but these changes were smaller and more varied than during the lockdown in March, according to a study published in the open access journal BMC Medicine. A team of researchers at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), UK combined data from the English participants of the UK CoMix survey and information on local and national restrictions from Gov.uk collected between August 31st and December 7th 2020. CoMix is an online survey asking individuals to record details of their direct contacts in the day prior to the survey. The authors used the data to compare the number of contacts in different settings, such ...

Boys who regularly play video games at age 11 are less likely to develop depressive symptoms three years later, finds a new study led by a UCL researcher. The study, published in Psychological Medicine, also found that girls who spend more time on social media appear to develop more depressive symptoms. Taken together, the findings demonstrate how different types of screen time can positively or negatively influence young people's mental health, and may also impact boys and girls differently. Lead author, PhD student Aaron Kandola (UCL Psychiatry) said: "Screens allow us to engage in a wide range of activities. Guidelines and recommendations about screen time should be based on our understanding of how these different ...

Peer-reviewed | Observational | People Study based on 26.5 million Medicare records finds significant racial and ethnic disparities in uptake of seasonal flu vaccine in people living in the USA aged 65 years and older during the 2015-2016 flu season. Inequities persist among those who were vaccinated, with racial and ethnic minority groups 26-32% less likely to receive the High Dose Vaccine, which is more effective in older people, compared with white older adults. Authors note that while these results are from the 2015-2016 flu season, the findings ...

UPTON, NY--Scientists have demonstrated that modifying the topmost layer of atoms on the surface of electrodes can have a remarkable impact on the activity of solar water splitting. As they reported in Nature Energy on Feb. 18, bismuth vanadate electrodes with more bismuth on the surface (relative to vanadium) generate higher amounts of electrical current when they absorb energy from sunlight. This photocurrent drives the chemical reactions that split water into oxygen and hydrogen. The hydrogen can be stored for later use as a clean fuel. Producing only water when it recombines with oxygen to generate electricity in fuel cells, hydrogen could help us achieve a clean ...

Several treatments for cancer have been devised by science, but unfortunately none of them are completely efficient or foolproof. Novel treatments with minimum side effects are one of the main aims of the ongoing cancer research. All research so far points to several therapy modes, of which immunotherapy, which prepares the body's own immune system to fight cancer, is a promising option. Bispecific antibodies (BsAbs) are synthetically made proteins that emerged as a promising second-generation immunotherapy. They engage with immune cells and enable them to target cancer in a specific manner. Conventional use of T cells for this therapy has caused adverse effects in some cases. Moreover, they are ineffective against cold tumors, which are invisible to T cells of the immune system. ...

Mount Sinai researchers have discovered that Polycomb complexes, groups of proteins that maintain gene expression patterns, are essential for proper skin development, according to a paper published in Genes & Development on February 18. This latest discovery could improve development of future stem cell therapies to generate "skin on a dish" to transplant into burn victims and patients with skin-blistering disorders. Polycomb complexes are groups of proteins that maintain the gene-expression patterns during early development by regulating the structure of DNA and proteins in cells. They play a critical role in the repression of gene expression, or the switching-off of individual genes to help control responses ...

Acres of asphalt parking lots, unshaded roads, dense apartment complexes and neighborhoods with few parks have taken their toll on the poor. As climate change accelerates, low-income districts in the Southwestern United States are 4 to 7 degrees hotter in Fahrenheit -- on average -- than wealthy neighborhoods in the same metro regions, University of California, Davis, researchers have found in a new analysis. This study provides the most detailed mapping yet of how summer temperatures in 20 urban centers in California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas affected different neighborhoods between 2018 and 2020. The researchers found even greater heat disparities in California than in other states. The largest disparities showed up in the Riverside and San Bernardino ...

KANSAS CITY, MO--Researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, in collaboration with colleagues at Stanford University and Technical University of Munich have developed advanced explainable artificial intelligence (AI) in a technical tour de force to decipher regulatory instructions encoded in DNA. In a report published online February 18, 2021, in Nature Genetics, the team found that a neural network trained on high-resolution maps of protein-DNA interactions can uncover subtle DNA sequence patterns throughout the genome and provide a deeper understanding of how these sequences are organized to regulate genes. Neural networks are powerful AI models that can learn complex patterns from diverse types of data such ...

The media has been rife with stories about democracy in decline: the recent coup in Myanmar, the ascent of strongman Narendra Modi in India, and of course ex-President Trump's attempts to overturn the U.S. presidential election--all of which raise alarms about the current status of democracies worldwide. Such threats to the voices of the people are often attributed to the excesses of individual leaders. But while leadership is certainly important, over the past decade, as established democracies like Venezuela and Turkey fell and others slid toward greater authoritarianism, political scientists and pundits have largely overlooked a key factor: ...

When falling in love, humans often pay attention to looks. Many non-human animals also choose a sexual partner based on appearance. Male birds may sport flashy feathers to attract females, lionesses prefer lions with thicker manes and colorful male guppies with large spots attract the most females. But bats are active in the dark. How do they attract mates? Mariana Muñoz-Romo, a senior Latin American postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and National Geographic explorer, pioneers research to understand the role of odors in bat mating behavior. "Aside from their genitalia, most male and female bat species look identical at first glance. However, a detailed examination during mating season reveals odor-producing glands or structures that are only present ...

Gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) are a subytpe of cancers known as sarcomas. GIST is the most common type of sarcoma with approximately 5,000 to 6,000 new patient cases annually in the United States. GIST cannot be cured by drugs alone, and targeted therapies are only modestly effective, with a high rate of drug resistance. In a recent study, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine identified new therapeutic targets that could lead to new treatment options for patients. The study, published in the February 18, 2021 online edition of Oncogene, found that specific cell-to-cell communication influences GIST biology and is strongly associated with cancer ...

A recent study by University of Alberta cardiologists at the Canadian VIGOUR Centre shows that a particular group of patients with stable ischemic heart disease have better outcomes with percutaneous coronary intervention (also called angioplasty with stent) or coronary artery bypass surgery and medication, versus conservative management with medication alone. In a study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, associate professor of medicine and academic interventional cardiologist Kevin Bainey and his team reviewed the patient information of more than 9,000 Albertans with stable ischemic heart disease. While able to function as outpatients, ...

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. -Variation in a specific gene could be related to traits that are beneficial to bonding and relationship satisfaction in the first years of a marriage, according to a new study by a University of Arkansas psychologist. Recent research indicates that a variation called "CC" in the gene CD38 is associated with increased levels of gratitude. Extending that line of work, U of A psychologist Anastasia Makhanova and her colleagues used data from a study of genotyped newlyweds to explore whether a correlation existed between the CD38 CC variation and levels of trust, forgiveness and marriage satisfaction. They found that individuals with the CC variation did report higher levels of perceptions considered beneficial to successful relationships, particularly trust. Marriage ...

Some songbirds are not dissuaded by constant, loud noise emitted by natural gas pipeline compressors and will establish nests nearby. The number of eggs they lay is unaffected by the din, but their reproductive success ultimately is diminished. That's the conclusion of a team of Penn State researchers who conducted an innovative, elaborate study that included unceasing playback of recorded compressor noise, 80 new, never-before-used nest boxes occupied by Eastern bluebirds and tree swallows, and behavioral observations with video cameras placed within boxes. Importantly, the birds did not preferentially select quiet boxes over noisy boxes, suggesting they do not recognize the reduction ...

Irvine, Calif. -- An interdisciplinary team of biologists and mathematicians at the University of California, Irvine has developed a new tool to help decipher the language cells use to communicate with one another. In a paper published today in Nature Communications, the researchers introduce CellChat, a computational platform that enables the decoding of signaling molecules that transmit information and commands between the cells that come together to form biological tissues and even entire organs. "To properly understand why cells do certain things, and to predict their future actions, we need to be able to listen ...

Law enforcement and those in the military, rather than doctors and celebrities, are the most preferred messengers on firearm safety, a Rutgers study found. The findings, published in the journal Preventive Medicine, can help communicate the importance of safe firearm storage and reduce the rate of suicides, Rutgers researchers say. "We know that safe firearm storage is a key component to suicide prevention, but that belief is not widespread among firearm owners," said lead author Michael Anestis, executive director of the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center and an associate professor of Urban-Global Public Health at Rutgers School ...

A research team including the geobiologist Dr. Helge Missbach from the University of Cologne has detected organic molecules and gases trapped in 3.5 billion-year-old rocks. A widely accepted hypothesis says that the earliest life forms used small organic molecules as building materials and energy sources. However, the existence of such components in early habitats on Earth was as yet unproven. The current study, published in the journal 'Nature Communications', now shows that solutions from archaic hydrothermal vents contained essential components that formed a basis for the earliest life on our planet. Specifically, the scientists examined about ...