The Gerontological Society of America's highly cited, peer-reviewed journals are continuing to publish scientific articles on COVID-19. The following were published between May 4 and June 14; all are free to access: Cardiometabolic therapy and mortality in very old patients with diabetes hospitalized due to COVID-19: Research article in The Journals of Gerontology, Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences by Jose Manuel Ramos-Rincón, MD, PhD, Luis M. Pérez-Belmonte, MD, PhD, Francisco Javier Carrasco-Sánchez, MD, PhD, Sergio Jansen-Chaparro, MD, PhD, Mercedes De-Sousa-Baena, MD, José Bueno-Fonseca, MD, ...

Best known for its presence in house cats and a tendency to infect and alter the behaviors of rodents and humans, the parasite Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) is also associated with bold behavior among wild hyena cubs and risk of death during interactions with lions, finds new research from the University of Colorado Boulder. The findings, published this week in Nature Communications, reinforce previous research which has found the parasite can prompt profound behavioral changes in its hosts, and potentially in the 2 billion people worldwide estimated to be infected by it. While T. gondii has been well studied in laboratory settings with humans and wild-caught ...

Researchers from Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the University of California in San Francisco were able to show for the first time that a very low calorie diet significantly alters the composition of the microbiota present in the human gut. In a current Nature* publication, the researchers report that dieting results in an increase of specific bacteria - notably Clostridioides difficile, which is associated with antibiotic-induced diarrhea and colitis. These bacteria apparently affect the body's energy balance by exerting an influence on the absorption of nutrients ...

WHAT: National Institutes of Health scientists and their collaborators have identified an internal communication network in mammals that may regulate tissue repair and inflammation, providing new insights on how diseases such as obesity and inflammatory skin disorders develop. The new research is published in Cell. The billions of organisms living on body surfaces such as the skin of mammals--collectively called microbiota--communicate with each other and the host immune system in a sophisticated network. According to the study, viruses integrated in the host genome, remnants of previous infections called endogenous retroviruses, can ...

Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Brain Science and the RIKEN BioResource Research Center in Japan, along with collaborators at the State University of New York at Buffalo, have created a mouse model that allows the study of naturally occurring melatonin. Published in the Journal of Pineal Research, these first experiments using the new mice showed that natural melatonin was linked to a pre-hibernation state that allows mice to slow down their metabolism and survive when food is scarce, or temperatures are cold. Melatonin is called "the hormone of darkness" because it's released by the brain in the dark, which usually means at night. It tells the body when it's dark outside so that the body can switch to 'night mode'. Although other hormones are easily studied in the laboratory, ...

How many tree species are there in the forest? How are the trees scattered throughout? How high are the individual tree crowns? Are there fallen trees or hollowed-out tree trunks? Forest scientists characterize forests according to structural factors. "Structural richness is very important for biodiversity in forests. But forests used for forestry are generally poor in terms of structure," says Tristan Eckerter from the Chair of Nature Conservation and Landscape Ecology at the University of Freiburg. Therefore, together with research teams from the Chair of Silviculture and the Black Forest National Park, he investigated ...

A new article published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research presents a neural model of maladaptive consumption. Consumption (of, for instance, substances, food, and online media) is driven mainly by expected rewards that stem from the ability of the consumption act to satisfy intrinsic (e.g., curiosity) and extrinsic (e.g., job performance) needs. In the article, "A Triple-System Neural Model of Maladaptive Consumption," the authors define maladaptive consumption as a state of compulsive seeking and consumption of rewarding products or experiences, which are sustained despite the negative consequences of such behaviors. "Understanding the neural basis of maladaptive ...

Pairing blueberry pie with a scoop of ice cream is a nice summer treat. Aside from being tasty, this combination might also help people take up more of the "superfruit's" nutrients, such as anthocyanins. Researchers reporting in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry show that α-casein, a protein found in cow's milk, helped rats absorb more blueberry anthocyanins and their byproducts, boosting accessibility to these good-for-you nutrients. In studies, anthocyanins have been shown to have antioxidant properties, lower blood pressure and reduce the risk of developing some cancers. However, only small amounts of these nutrients are absorbed ...

For patients who have inflammatory bowel syndrome (IBS), the condition is literally a pain in the gut. Chronic -- or long-term -- abdominal pain is common, and there are currently no effective treatment options for this debilitating symptom. In a new study in ACS Pharmacology & Translational Science, researchers identify a new potential source of relief: a molecule derived from spider venom. In experiments with mice, they found that one dose could stop symptoms associated with IBS pain. The sensation of pain originates in electrical signals carried from the body to the brain by cells called ...

Air quality varies greatly within regions and cities around the world, and exposure to air pollution can have severe health impacts. In the U.S., people of color are disproportionately exposed to poor air quality. A cover story in Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, highlights how scientists and community activists are using new technologies to gather data that could help address this inequity. Despite the success of the U.S. Clean Air Act in improving ambient air quality over the past 50 years, discriminatory housing, loan ...

Over recent years, the retina has established its position as one of the most promising biomarkers for the early diagnosis of Alzheimer's. Moving on from the debate as to the retina becoming thinner or thicker, researchers from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Hospital Clínico San Carlos are focusing their attention on the roughness of the ten retinal layers. The study, published in Scientific Reports, "proves innovative" in three aspects according to José Manuel Ramírez, Director of the IIORC (Ramón Castroviejo Institute of Ophthalmologic Research) at the UCM. "This is the first study to propose studying the roughness of the retina and its ten constituent layers. They have devised a mathematical method to measure the degree of wrinkling, through the fractal ...

Children with obstructive sleep apnea are nearly three times more likely to develop high blood pressure when they become teenagers than children who never experience sleep apnea, according to a new study funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the National Institutes of Health. However, children whose sleep apnea improves as they grow into adolescence do not show an increased chance of having high blood pressure, which is a major risk factor for heart disease. The long-term study, one of the largest of its kind in the pediatric population, underscores the seriousness of sleep apnea in children and the importance of early treatment, the researchers said. Their findings appear online in the journal JAMA Cardiology. Obstructive sleep apnea, ...

Previous research was falsely reassuring; captured only 2% of cirrhosis patients Findings underscore lack of access to health care for Black patients Cirrhosis is leading cause of death and affects more than 600,000 people in U.S. CHICAGO --- Black patients with cirrhosis - late-stage liver disease - are about 25% more likely to die compared to non-Hispanic white patients and four times less likely to receive a liver transplant, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study. Estimates of racial disparity in cirrhosis have been limited by a lack of large-scale longitudinal data, which track patients from diagnosis to death and/or transplant. The paper is one of the first to link all seven large liver centers in Chicago with the death registry and transplant registry to examine ...

Psycholinguists from the HSE Center for Language and Brain, in collaboration with researchers from the City University of New York and the University of Stuttgart, investigated how reading in Russian varies among different groups of readers. The authors used a novel method in bilingualism research -comparison of the eye-movement sequences (scanpaths) in adult native speakers of Russian, Russian-speaking children, and adult bilinguals with different levels of Russian proficiency. The results of the study were published in Reading Research Quarterly. A total of 120 readers took part in the study, with 30 participants in each group. Participants included adult ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The giant plumose anemone is an animal, but it looks a bit like an underwater cauliflower. Its body consists of a stalk-like column that attaches to rocks and other surfaces on one end, and to a crown of tentacles on the other. The anemones use these feelers to collect and shove food into their mouths, and a new study provides an in-depth look into the rich diversity of prey the anemones are catching. This includes a surprising menu item: ants, specifically the pale-legged field ant, Lasius pallitarsis. And the occasional spider. The research was published on June 15 in the journal Environmental DNA. The study focused on giant plumose ...

How long do virus-laden particles persist in an elevator after a person infected with COVID-19 leaves? And is there a way to detect those particles? A group of electrical engineers and computer scientists at KAUST set out to answer these questions using mathematical fluid dynamics equations. "We found1 that virus-laden particles can still be detected several minutes after a short elevator trip by an infected person," says KAUST electrical engineer Osama Amin. The team's equations and breath simulations suggest that a biosensor's ability to detect a virus improves when placed on an elevator wall that can reflect particles. Also, to protect future occupants, the amount of particles in the air can be reduced by making the other three walls absorptive. Amin ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. - Throughout her 20-year career as a nurse practitioner, Jennifer Hulett noticed survivors of breast cancer would often express gratitude for being alive and mention God or a divine acknowledgement that had improved their health and well-being. Now an assistant professor at the University of Missouri Sinclair School of Nursing, Hulett is researching the benefits of spirituality on improving immune health and reducing stress, as well as the chances of cancer reoccurrence, among breast cancer survivors. In a recent study, Hulett collected and froze samples of saliva from 41 breast cancer survivors at MU's Ellis Fischel Cancer Center. ...

Researchers from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have discovered a 120-million-year-old partial fossil skeleton of a tiny extinct bird that fits in the palm of the hand and preserves a unique skull with a mix of dinosaurian and bird features. The two-centimeter-long (0.75 inch) skull of the fossil shares many structural and functional features with the gigantic Tyrannosaurus rex, indicating that early birds kept many features of their dinosaurian ancestors and their skulls functioned much like those of dinosaurs rather than living ...

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (06/23/2021) -- A new report from the University of Minnesota Medical School's Healthy Youth Development - Prevention Research Center (HYD-PRC) highlights that Minnesota youth continue to contract sexually transmitted infections (STIs) at alarmingly high rates, despite the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2021 Minnesota Adolescent Sexual Health Report says that chlamydia and gonorrhea rates among Minnesota adolescents in 2020 are likely underreported, as both STI testing and case detection were scaled back during the early stages of the pandemic. However, teen pregnancy rates remain virtually unchanged from 2018, and birth rates are at historic lows for ...

The stink of ammonia in urine, sweat, and rotting meat repels humans, but many insects find ammonia alluring. Now, UConn researchers have figured out how the annoying insects smell it, a discovery that could lead to better ways to make them buzz off. The sense of smell is enormously important. Mammals devote a third of their genetic code to odor receptors found in the nose, and have more than 1,000 different kinds that allow us to smell an estimated trillion different odors. Flies don't have noses. Instead, they smell with their antenna. Each antenna is covered with tiny hairs called sensilla. Each sensilla contains a few neurons--fly brain cells. Each neuron expresses one type of odor receptor, and they all fall into two main ...

A new biocompatible polymer-based composite material could soon replace metal plates in treating difficult and unstable fractures. Developed at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, the newly-developed material is as strong as dental composites yet non-toxic. The material and a surgical method, which were published in Advanced Functional Materials, will be used in clinical studies in 2023 and 2024, with a focus on hand fractures. Michael Malkoch, professor of fibre and polymer technology at KTH, says that the material and method, AdhFix, will enable customized plating for fixation of fractures with a more comfortable, less complicated recovery. Collarbone and rib fractures in particular are ideally suited for the proposed treatment, ...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, cloth face masks became a way to help protect yourself and others from the virus. And for some people, they became a fashion statement, with many fabric choices available. But just how effective are they, especially in containing a sneeze? Now, researchers reporting in ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering used high-speed videos of a person sneezing to identify the optimal cloth mask design. Watch a video of the sneeze cam here. Early in the pandemic, worldwide shortages of surgical masks and N95 respirators led many people to make or purchase cloth face masks. Now, with safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines available, mask restrictions are ...

A new study published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research posits that increased accessibility to anthropomorphized luck (i.e., "lady luck") can lead consumers to be more likely to pursue higher-risk financial behavior. In "Lady Luck: Anthropomorphized Luck Creates Perceptions of Risk-Sharing and Drives Pursuit of Risky Alternatives," authors Katina Kulow, Thomas Kramer, and Kara Bentley propose that preferences for higher-risk options (like lottery tickets with worse odds or investment opportunities with a low chance of return) are driven by shared risk perceptions that might engender feelings of security provided by the idea of "lady luck." This behavior, the authors note, "bodes ill for consumer welfare, given that many financial maladaptive activities ...

Beyond how much cream and sugar to add to their morning brew, coffee lovers also face more serious decisions: one of those is whether or not to buy ecolabelled coffee, which advertises itself as more ethical and environmentally friendly. But whether customers are willing to pay the extra price for these perks remains an unanswered question. In a study publishing in the journal Heliyon on June 23, researchers combined data from 22 studies to conclude that in general, people are willing to pay $1.36 more for a pound of coffee that's produced in an eco-friendly way and are especially partial to coffee that's labelled "Organic." "We hear in the media or sometimes read in the newspaper that there ...

Researchers have developed a simple lab-based technique that allows them to look inside lithium-ion batteries and follow lithium ions moving in real time as the batteries charge and discharge, something which has not been possible until now. Using the low-cost technique, the researchers identified the speed-limiting processes which, if addressed, could enable the batteries in most smartphones and laptops to charge in as little as five minutes. The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, say their technique will not only help improve existing battery materials, ...