DURHAM, N.C. - The brain's neurons tend to get most of the scientific attention, but a set of cells around them called astrocytes - literally, star-shaped cells - are increasingly being viewed as crucial players in guiding a brain to become properly organized. Specifically, astrocytes, which form about half the mass of a human brain, seem to guide the formation of synapses, the connections between neurons that are formed and remodeled as we learn and remember. A new study from Duke and UNC scientists has discovered a crucial protein involved in the communication and coordination between astrocytes as they build synapses. Lacking this molecule, called hepaCAM, astrocytes aren't as sticky as they ...

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (June 24, 2021) -- The same taste-sensing molecule that helps you enjoy a meal from your favorite restaurant may one day lead to improved ways to treat diabetes and other metabolic and immune diseases. TRPM5 is a specialized protein that is concentrated in the taste buds, where it helps relay messages to and from cells. It has long been of interest to researchers due to its roles in taste perception and blood sugar regulation. Now, a team led by scientists at Van Andel Institute has published the first-ever high-resolution images of TRPM5, which reveal two areas that may serve as targets for new medications. The structures also may aid in the development of low-calorie alternative sweeteners that mimic sugar. The findings were published today in Nature ...

BELLINGHAM, Washington, USA - The open access Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems (JATIS) has published END ...

The study was conducted by an international collaboration involving the research team led by Luca Tiberi of the Armenise-Harvard Laboratory of Brain Cancer at the Department of Cellular, computational and integrative biology - Cibio of UniTrento, the Paris Brain Institute-Institut du Cerveau at Sorbonne Université in Paris, the Hopp Children´s Cancer Center (KiTZ) in Heidelberg, Germany, and Sapienza University in Rome. It was supported by Fondazione Armenise-Harvard, Fondazione Airc (Italian Association for Cancer Research) and Fondazione Caritro from Trento. The findings of the study, published in Science Advances, could lead to better and more effective treatments. The team of researchers is proud of the results achieved. Luca Tiberi, coordinator of the study and corresponding ...

Dmitry Blinov is a co-author of the article and Senior Research Associate in the Department of Astrophysics, St Petersburg University. He notes that researchers have been studying the optical polarisation from active galactic nuclei for more than 50 years. Some of the first academic papers on this topic were published back in the 1960s by Vladimir Hagen-Thorn, Professor in the Department of Astrophysics, St Petersburg University, and Viktor Dombrovskiy, Associate Professor in the Department of Astrophysics, Leningrad State University. In the Universe, the main material is concentrated in galaxies with hundreds of billions of stars: there are about 200-400 of them in the Milky Way. At the centre of galaxies there are supermassive ...

An international team of researchers co-led by the University of Adelaide and the University of Arizona has analysed the genomes of more than 2,500 modern humans from 26 worldwide populations, to better understand how humans have adapted to historical coronavirus outbreaks. In a paper published in Current Biology, the researchers used cutting-edge computational methods to uncover genetic traces of adaptation to coronaviruses, the family of viruses responsible for three major outbreaks in the last 20 years, including the ongoing pandemic. "Modern human genomes contain evolutionary ...

Rheumatologists are familiar with the everyday use of immunomodulatory drugs. These are designed to treat the inflammation caused by autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis. A EULAR taskforce was set up to develop a set of new points to consider to give guidance and advice on the best way to use these medicines to treat COVID-19. The taskforce included rheumatologists, immunologists, haematologists, paediatricians, patients and other health professionals. They looked at the published evidence on the use of immunomodulatory therapies to treat severe COVID-19. In total, there are two overarching principles and 14 points to consider. The principles stress that the picture of SARS-CoV-2 infection can be very different in different people. Infections range from asymptomatic ...

Measuring ethane in the atmosphere shows that the amounts of methane going into the atmosphere from oil and gas wells and contributing to greenhouse warming is higher than suggested by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, according to an international team of scientists who spent three years flying over three areas of the U.S. during all four seasons. "Ethane is a gas that is related only to certain sources of methane," said Zachary R. Barkley, researcher in meteorology and atmospheric science, Penn State. "Methane, however, is produced by oil, ...

Understanding work participation is important, but the way in which this is defined and measured in clinical trials is not always the same, which has made it hard to compare data. EULAR set up a taskforce to draft points to consider when designing studies that use work participation as a measure. The taskforce included doctors, experts and patients from 11 countries. They used the published evidence to draw up a set of points to consider. Two overarching principles and nine points to consider were developed. The principles say that work participation is important for people with inflammatory arthritis, their ...

Paper Title: Analysis of Common Shoulder Injuries in Collegiate Baseball Players Journal: The Physician and Sportsmedicine (June 23, 2021, online edition) Authors: Alexis Chiang Colvin, MD, Professor, Department of Orthopedic Surgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; Daniel A. Charen, MD, Resident, Department of Orthopedic Surgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; and other coauthors. Bottom Line: Baseball players are highly susceptible to shoulder injuries due to significant microtrauma including repetitive overhead throwing. Mount Sinai researchers investigated men's National Collegiate ...

Fibromyalgia is one of many chronic pain conditions that remains stubbornly difficult to treat. As the ravages of the opioid epidemic lead many to avoid these powerful painkillers, a significant number of people with fibromyalgia are finding an effective replacement in CBD-containing products, finds a new Michigan Medicine study. CBD, short for cannabidiol, is the second most common cannabinoid in the cannabis plant, and has been marketed for everything from mood stabilization to pain relief, without the intoxicating effects produced by the most common cannabinoid, THC. THC, which stands for ...

The cells of simple organisms, such as bacteria, as well as human cells are surrounded by a membrane, which fulfills various tasks including protecting the cell from stress. In a joint project, teams from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and Forschungszentrum Jülich, with participation of Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU), have now discovered that a membrane protein found in bacteria has a similar structure and function as a group of proteins that are responsible for remodeling and rebuilding the cell membrane in humans. No connection between the two protein groups was known before. The team's research work has been published recently in the renowned journal Cell. PspA plays a key role in bacterial stress response The phage shock protein ...

Boston - In recent years, cancer immunotherapy has been effective in treating patients with immunogenic, or so-called "hot" tumors with increased levels of inflammation and the presence of immune cells in and around the tumors. Prostate cancer, however, is considered a "cold" tumor, with few immune cells recognizing and infiltrating prostate malignancies. Accordingly, prostate cancer has been found to respond poorly to the class of immunotherapies known as immune checkpoint inhibitors. In previous work, a team led by medical oncologists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) identified a subset of prostate cancers that exhibited ...

Cosmic dawn, when stars formed for the first time, occurred 250 million to 350 million years after the beginning of the universe, according to a new study led by researchers at University College London (UCL) and the University of Cambridge. The study, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, suggests that the NASA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), scheduled to launch in November, will be sensitive enough to observe the birth of galaxies directly. The UK-led research team examined six of the most distant galaxies currently known, whose light has taken most of the universe's ...

Researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, together with epidemiologist Lone Simonsen from Roskilde University form part of the panel advising the Danish government on how to tackle the different infection-spreading situations we have all seen unfold over the past year. Researchers have modelled the spread of infections under a variety of scenarios, and the Coronavirus has proven to not follow the older models of disease spreading. An increasingly varied picture of its behaviour and thus its impact on society has emerged. In several scientific articles, researchers ...

During the continued progression of the Corona pandemic, rapid, inexpensive, and reliable tests will become increasingly important to determine whether people have the associated antibodies - either through infection or vaccination. Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have now developed such a rapid antibody test. It provides the result in only eight minutes; the aim is to further reduce the process time to four minutes. There are currently more than 20 different test procedures available for determining whether a person has antibodies against the new Corona virus. The waiting times for the results range between ten minutes and two and a half hours. Matrix effects reduce the sensitivity of many of the methods. The more sensitive assays require numerous steps, ...

While invasive zebra mussels consume small plant-like organisms called phytoplankton, Michigan State University researchers discovered during a long-term study that zebra mussels can actually increase Microcystis, a type of phytoplankton known as "blue-green algae" or cyanobacteria, that forms harmful floating blooms. "Microcystis literally means small cell, but numerous cells cluster together in colonies that can float to the surface to form scums," said Orlando Sarnelle, a professor emeritus with the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife within the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. "It is one of the most common causes of nuisance algal blooms in nutrient-enriched waters, including Lake ...

When it comes to career aspirations for teenagers, a University of Houston psychology researcher believes it's best to shoot for the moon, so you can at least land in the stars. The truth is the moon may sometimes be unreachable. In the Journal of Career Assessment, Kevin Hoff, assistant professor of psychology, reports the existence of important discrepancies between young people's dream jobs and employment realities. "Almost 50% of adolescents aspired to investigative or artistic careers, which together account for only 8% of the U.S. labor market," reports Hoff, whose research examined the career aspirations of 3,367 adolescents (age 13-18 years) from 42 U.S. states. Investigative jobs include those in the field of science and research. Hoff's team ...

FORT LAUDERDALE/DAVIE, Fla. - We know that the domestic cat has distant relatives that roam the earth - lions, tigers, cheetahs and mountain lions. Less familiar are the 38 distinct species in the Family Felidae, many with strange names like pampas cat, kodkod and rusty spotted cat. The new field of genomics - the unravelling of DNA genomes of separate species - is resolving old conundrums and revealing new secrets across the history of evolutionarily related species among cats, dogs, bears and ourselves. In the largest-ever study undertaken of Chinese cats, genetic detectives highlight the evolutionary uniqueness and premier conservation importance of the elusive Chinese mountain cat (Felis silvestris bieti), found only in the Tibetan ...

A joint research team led by Prof. FU Qiaomei from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences sequenced the ancient genomes of 31 individuals from southern East Asia, thus unveiling a missing piece of human prehistory. The study was published in Cell on June 24. Prof. FU's team used DNA capture techniques to retrieve ancient DNA from Guangxi and Fujian, two provincial-level regions in southern China. They sequenced genome-wide DNA from 31 individuals dating back 11,747 to 194 years ago. Of these, two date back to more than 10,000 years ago, making them the oldest ...

This worm that lives in the White Sea is able to restore lost body segments. However, it turned out that suppression of FGF protein activity disturbs this ability. Similar proteins are found in humans. This discovery may lead to developing methods of fast wound healing. The research findings are published in the journal Genes as part of the project supported by the Russian Science Foundation. Fibroblast growth factors (FGF) are proteins that play an important role in wound healing and tissue growth. When the need for regeneration of damaged body parts occur, FGFs are produced by epidermis, nervous tissue, macrophages and fibroblasts, which are the main cells of connective tissue. As a result, ...

Adolescent marijuana use and binge drinking did not significantly change during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite record decreases in the substances' perceived availability, according to a survey of 12th graders in the United States. The study's findings, which appeared online on June 24, 2021, in Drug and Alcohol Dependence, challenge the idea that reducing adolescent use of drugs can be achieved solely by limiting their supply. The work was led by researchers at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health. In contrast to consistent rates of marijuana and alcohol use, nicotine vaping in high school seniors ...

Philadelphia, June 24, 2021 - After beginning treatment with remdesivir for COVID-19, a patient experienced significant bradycardia, or low heart rate. Her physicians used a dopamine infusion to stabilize her through the five-day course of remdesivir treatment, and her cardiac condition resolved itself at the end of the treatment. The case is discussed in Heart Rhythm Case Reports, an official journal of the Heart Rhythm Society, published by Elsevier. "Remdesivir has become the standard of care for COVID-19 pneumonia and there is a paucity of data on its cardiac effects," explained lead author Jomel Patrick Jacinto, DO, HCA Healthcare/USF ...

Motions of a remarkable cosmic structure have been measured for the first time, using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The blast wave and debris from an exploded star are seen moving away from the explosion site and colliding with a wall of surrounding gas. Astronomers estimate that light from the supernova explosion reached Earth about 1,700 years ago, or when the Mayan empire was flourishing and the Jin dynasty ruled China. However, by cosmic standards the supernova remnant formed by the explosion, called MSH 15-52, is one of the youngest in the Milky Way galaxy. The explosion also created ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- A new study demonstrates that many younger adult dental patients are taking medications and highlights the importance of dental providers reviewing medication histories regardless of age. The study from Regenstrief Institute and the Indiana University School of Dentistry looked at dental records from 11,220 dental patients over the age of 18. The results showed: 53 percent of all patients reported taking at least one medication 12 percent of those age 18-24 were taking at least one medication 20 percent of those age 25-34 were taking at least one ...