The 'anterior cingulate cortex' is key brain region involved in linking behaviours to their outcomes. When this region was temporarily silenced, monkeys did not change behaviour even when it stopped having the expected outcome. The finding is a step towards targeted treatment of human disorders involving compulsive behaviour, such as OCD and eating disorders, thought to involve impaired function in this brain region. Researchers have discovered a specific brain region underlying 'goal-directed behaviour' - that is, when we consciously do something with a particular goal in mind, for example going to the shops to buy food. The ...

LA JOLLA, CA--New research led by scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) and the University of Liverpool may explain why many cancer patients do not respond to anti-PD-1 cancer immunotherapies--also called checkpoint inhibitors. The team reports that these patients may have tumors with high numbers of T follicular regulatory (Tfr) cells. In a healthy person, Tfr cells do the important job of stopping haywire T cells and autoantibodies from attacking the body's own tissues. But in a cancer patient, Tfr cells dramatically dial back the body's ability to kill cancer cells. Anti-PD-1 cancer immunotherapies boost the body's cancer-fighting T cells, but ...

'Precision agriculture' where farmers respond in real time to changes in crop growth using nanotechnology and artificial intelligence (AI) could offer a practical solution to the challenges threatening global food security, a new study reveals. Climate change, increasing populations, competing demands on land for production of biofuels and declining soil quality mean it is becoming increasingly difficult to feed the world's populations. The United Nations (UN) estimates that 840 million people will be affected by hunger by 2030, but researchers have developed a roadmap combining smart and nano-enabled agriculture with AI and machine learning capabilities that could help to reduce this ...

A new study by engineers at MIT, Caltech, and ETH Zürich shows that "nanoarchitected" materials -- materials designed from precisely patterned nanoscale structures -- may be a promising route to lightweight armor, protective coatings, blast shields, and other impact-resistant materials. The researchers have fabricated an ultralight material made from nanometer-scale carbon struts that give the material toughness and mechanical robustness. The team tested the material's resilience by shooting it with microparticles at supersonic speeds, and found that the material, which is thinner than the width of a human hair, prevented the miniature projectiles from tearing through ...

HAMILTON, ON June 24, 2021 -- The idea of visiting the doctor's office with symptoms of an illness and leaving with a scientifically confirmed diagnosis is much closer to reality because of new technology developed by researchers at McMaster University. Engineering, biochemistry and medical researchers from across campus have combined their skills to create a hand-held rapid test for bacterial infections that can produce accurate, reliable results in less than an hour, eliminating the need to send samples to a lab. Their proof-of-concept research, published today in the journal Nature Chemistry, specifically describes the test's ...

In a few years, a new generation of quantum simulators could provide insights that would not be possible using simulations on conventional supercomputers. Quantum simulators are capable of processing a great amount of information since they quantum mechanically superimpose an enormously large number of bit states. For this reason, however, it also proves difficult to read this information out of the quantum simulator. In order to be able to reconstruct the quantum state, a very large number of individual measurements are necessary. The method used to read out the quantum state of a ...

A University of Bristol-led team of international scientists with an interest in protoliving technologies, has today published research which paves the way to building new semi-autonomous devices with potential applications in miniaturized soft robotics, microscale sensing and bioengineering. Micro-actuators are devices that can convert signals and energy into mechanically driven movement in small-scale structures and are important in a wide range of advanced microscale technologies. Normally, micro-actuators rely on external changes in bulk properties such as pH and temperature to trigger repeatable mechanical ...

What The Study Did: Researchers found no association between recent vaccination with the Pfizer-BioNTech BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccine and risk of facial nerve palsy. Authors: Asaf Shemer, M.D., of the Shamir Medical Center in Be'er Ya'akov, Israel, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamaoto.2021.1259) Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support. INFORMATION: Media ...

What The Study Did: Researchers estimated the change in life expectancy associated with the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States by race/ethnicity. Authors: Theresa Andrasfay, Ph.D., of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.14520) Editor's Note: The article includes funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support. INFORMATION: Media advisory: The full study is linked to this news release. Embed ...

What The Study Did: Patients with COVID-19-related loss of smell were evaluated for one year after the diagnosis. Authors: Marion Renaud, M.D., of University Hospitals of Strasbourg, France, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.15352) Editor's Note: The article includes funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support. INFORMATION: Media advisory: The full study is linked to this news release. Embed this link to provide ...

What The Study Did: The incidence of Bell palsy among patients with COVID-19 was compared with individuals vaccinated against the disease. Authors: Akina Tamaki, M.D., of the University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, is the corresponding author.  To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamaoto.2021.1266) Editor's Note: The article includes conflicts of interest disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support. INFORMATION: Media advisory: ...

An updated analysis of American COVID-19 deaths throughout 2020 reveals an even bigger drop in average life expectancy as well as still-substantial disparities by race and ethnicity. Lead author Theresa Andrasfay, a postdoctoral scholar at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, and coauthor Noreen Goldman of Princeton University first examined the pandemic's effect on American life expectancy in October 2020. Their initial study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in January 2021, showed the largest single-year decline in life expectancy in at least 40 years and the lowest life expectancy estimated since 2003. The updated analysis, which included the more than 380,000 US COVID-19 deaths in 2020 and used 2018 life expectancies as a comparison, ...

When cancers metastasize, cells from the primary tumor break away, travel through the blood or lymph system, and form new tumors in other body parts. Although metastasis are responsible for more than 90% of all cancer deaths, limited progress has been made in treating cancers that have spread. Besides DNA, RNA is the other molecule of life. For several years now, RNA has become just as important as DNA in understanding the book of life. Especially, messenger RNA (mRNA), the basis of the Covid-19 vaccines, has been put in the spotlight. Just as with DNA, in addition to the 4 well known letters (A, U, G, C), there are further letters defining the RNA alphabet or ...

Discovering and engineering nanobodies with properties suitable for treating human diseases ranging from cancer to COVID-19 is a time-consuming, laborious process. To that end, University of Michigan researchers found a simple method for identifying nanobodies with drug-like properties suitable for preventing SARS-CoV-2 infections. They demonstrated the approach by generating nanobodies that neutralized the SARS-CoV-2 virus more potently than an antibody isolated from an infected patient and a nanobody isolated from an immunized animal. Nanobodies are small antibody fragments ...

Many people don't realize that the trillions of bacteria, viruses, and fungi residing within the gastrointestinal tract--collectively called the gut microbiome-- are connected to overall health, and specifically to cancer. Manipulating the gut microbiome to produce "beneficial" commensal microbes, which protect the host from pathogens and can boost immune responses, among other things, could potentially help patients respond better to cancer drugs called immune checkpoint inhibitors, a type of immunotherapy. To that end, researchers at the University of Michigan have developed ...

Migrating storms and local weather systems known as cyclones and anticyclones were thought to contribute to behaviors and properties of our global weather system. However, the means to probe cyclones and anticyclones were limited. For the first time, researchers demonstrated a new three-dimensional analytical methodology that can quantify the way individual cyclones and anticyclones impact broader weather systems. This study aids longer-term circulation and climate studies, including how storm characteristics may change in the future. To many people, the term cyclone probably conjures up images of ferocious storm ...

A study published on 21 May in Child Development shows that the early production of beat gestures with the hands (i.e., gestures normally associated with emphasis that do not represent the semantic content of speech) by infants between 14 and 58 months of age in natural interactions with their carers predicts that in their later development, nearing the age of five, these children obtain better results insofar as their oral narrative skills. The authors analysed the predictive value of beat gestures, compared with flip gestures of the hands and iconic gestures However, the study did ...

Scientists of Tomsk Polytechnic University jointly with colleagues from Spanish universities have offered a simple method how to enhance the responsivity of terahertz radiation detectors by 3.5 folds using a small Teflon cube. The 1 mm cube must be put on the surface of the detector without changing the inner design of the detector. Such detectors are applied, for instance, in a full-body scanner, spectrometer, in medical devices for diagnosing skin cancer, burn injuries, pathological changes in blood. The research findings are published in the Optics Letters academic journal (IF: 3,714; Q1). Terahertz range lies between ...

Coastal bays are momentous transition zones connecting terrestrial and marine ecosystems. Xiangshan Bay is a typically eutrophic and semi-enclosed bay in the East China Sea. A recent study took Xiangshan Bay as an example, revealing the sources and transformation of dissolved organic matter (DOM) in this eutrophic bay. Dissolved organic matter (DOM), consisting of a vast of complex compounds, has received much attention due to its significant contribution to the largest reduced organic carbon pool in the ocean, which is sizable to the atmosphere CO2 reservoir. Coastal bays are known as semi-enclosed signature and long water retention ...

Monocultures dominate arable land today, with vast areas given over to single elite varieties that promise a high yield. But planting arable land with just one type of crop has its disadvantages: these areas are easy game for fungal and insect pests, posing a threat to crops. To keep pests at bay, farmers are having to use resistant varieties and various pesticides. Mixed cultures present a potential alternative to monocultures. Rather than having large expanses of land planted with just one species or variety, several species or varieties are sown alongside each other. However, as little research has been done ...

A cluster of comet fragments believed to have hit Earth nearly 13,000 years ago may have shaped the origins of human civilisation, research suggests. Possibly the most devastating cosmic impact since the extinction of the dinosaurs, it appears to coincide with major shifts in how human societies organised themselves, researchers say. Their analysis backs up claims that an impact occurred prior to start of the Neolithic period in the so-called Fertile Crescent of southwest Asia. During that time, humans in the region - which spans parts of modern-day countries such as Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon - switched from hunter-gatherer lifestyles to ones centred on agriculture and the creation of permanent settlements. It is thought that the comet strike ...

The Third Pole centered on the Tibetan Plateau is home to the headwaters of multiple rivers in Asia. Despite the importance of these rivers, scientists have not known exactly how much water flows out of the mountains of the Third Pole as river runoff. Now, however, researchers from the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research (ITP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have quantified the total river runoff of 13 major rivers in the region. The study was published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society and was based on data from an observational network of "water meters" at mountain outlets in the Third Pole. The network generates comprehensive discharge data for 13 major Third Pole ...

In a new study published in Circulation Research, Chen-Yu Zhang and Xiaohong Jiang's group from Nanjing University and Dongjin Wang's group from Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital reported a critical role of PGC1α in maintaining the contractile phenotype of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) and highlighted the therapeutic potential of PGC1α for atherosclerosis. The traditional view holds that aberrant proliferation of VSMCs promotes plaque formation after vessel injury and inflammation, whereas the presence of VSMCs in the fibrous cap of the plaque is beneficial. Although it has long been assumed that these seemingly contradictory functions of VSMCs during atherosclerosis arise from their remarkable ...

Somnambulism - otherwise known as sleepwalking - is a phenomenon which has fascinated the public and neurologists for decades, but a lot of what causes it remains a mystery. Affecting up to 4% of adults, sleepwalking is a non-rapid-eye movement (NREM) sleep parasomnia that not only gives someone a poor night's sleep, but also puts them at serious risk of injury and, in some cases, lead to unintended violence against others. The following day can also prove challenging as the sleepwalker will feel unrested and a strong desire to fall asleep (somnolence). Unfortunately ...

Pioneering research, led by a team from Trinity College Dublin and the Marine Research Institute of the Spanish Research Council (IIM-CSIC) in Vigo (Galicia, Spain), suggests "subterranean estuaries" may be critical in managing sustainable fishing and aquaculture - two growing industries of global importance. Subterranean estuaries are analogous to surface water estuaries, where freshwater flowing out to sea mixes with seawater, but are instead located underground, invisible to the naked eye. Yet the newly published research shows these hidden features are very important in the ecology of coastal systems and in filtering pollutants - some of which ...