SAN FRANCISCO, CA--June 21, 2021--The progression from a round ball of cells to an embryo with a head and a tail is one of the most critical steps in an organism's development. But just how cells first start organizing themselves with directionality along this head-to-tail axis is hard to study because it happens in the earliest days of embryonic development, in the confines of a mammal's uterus. Now, scientists at Gladstone Institutes have created an organoid--a three-dimensional cluster of cells grown in the lab--that mimics the earliest developmental steps of the nervous system in embryos. The organoid is the first to show how human spinal cord cells ...

A study conducted in the Una Biological Reserve in the state of Bahia, Brazil, shows that in a habitat with high hunting pressure the risk of predation has such a significant impact on the behavior of the Yellow-breasted capuchin monkey Sapajus xanthosternos that it even avoids areas offering an abundant supply of plant biomass and invertebrates, its main sources of food. An article reporting the findings of the study is published in the American Journal of Primatology. "Many theories in the field of primatology assume that pressure to find food is more important that predation pressure. In this study we were able ...

A high body mass index (BMI) during adolescence is a significant risk factor for Type 2 diabetes, early heart attack and overall poorer health for young adults, regardless of BMI in adulthood, according to a research letter published today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. BMI is calculated based on weight and height. According to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, BMI categories are defined as: less than 18.5 kg/m2 is underweight; 18.5 to 24.9 is normal weight; 25 to 29.9 is overweight; and 30 or greater is obese. Researchers analyzed the BMI z-scores, which is relative weight adjusted for a child's age and sex, of 12,300 adolescents ...

Data captured in NCDR registries is similar in quality, depth and granularity when compared to data captured through clinical trials, according to research in JACC: Cardiovascular Interventions that compared data from the DAPT Study to NCDR CathPCI Registry data. This is good news for streamlining data collection and supports recent efforts to standardize data elements and definitions used in clinical trials and registries. "We found an overall high level of similarity in data between these two sources. This suggests that registries may also be suitable to support baseline data collection for many clinical studies," said senior study author Robert W. Yeh, MD, MSc, director of the Richard A. and Susan F. Smith Center for Outcomes Research in Cardiology ...

The use of statin therapy in adults 65 years old or older is not associated with incident dementia, mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or decline in individual cognition domains, according to a study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC). Cognitive decline and dementia are major health concerns in older individuals, affecting about 10% of people over 60 years old. Statins are used to reduce low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, or bad cholesterol, thus they are a fundamental treatment for prevention of primary and secondary cardiovascular disease (CVD) events. The Food and Drug Administration released a warning in 2012 about cases of apparent short-term ...

It's a treasure trove of data: the global geodatabase of vegetation plots "sPlotOpen" is now freely accessible. It contains data on vegetation from 114 countries and from all climate zones on Earth. The database was compiled by an international team of researchers led by Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) and the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). Researchers around the world finally have a balanced, representative dataset of the Earth's vegetation at their disposal, as the team reports in the journal Global Ecology & Biogeography. Global issues and questions require global answers. "If we want to understand or predict how climate ...

June 21, 2021 -- A new study published in Nutrients investigated the effect of increased dietary potassium from a whole food source--baked/boiled potatoes and baked French fries--or a potassium supplement on blood pressure and other cardiovascular disease risk factors compared to a 'typical American' control diet (lower potassium intake) among 30 pre-hypertensive to hypertensive men and women. Results showed that including baked/boiled potato consumption as part of a typical American diet had the greatest benefit on reducing sodium retention, even more than the supplement, and resulted ...

COVID-19 therapies made from antibodies often are given to patients who are at high risk of severe illness and hospitalization. However, there have been nagging questions about whether such antibody therapies retain their effectiveness as worrisome new virus variants arise. New research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests that many, but not all, therapies made from combinations of two antibodies are effective against a wide range of variants of the virus. Further, combination therapies appear to prevent the emergence of drug resistance. The study, in mice and hamsters, tested all single and combination antibody-based therapies authorized for emergency use ...

HOUSTON - (June 21, 2021) - Diamond may be just a phase carbon goes through when exposed to a flash of heat, but that makes it far easier to obtain. The Rice University lab of chemist James Tour is now able to "evolve" carbon through phases that include valuable nanodiamond by tightly controlling the flash Joule heating process they developed 18 months ago. Best of all, they can stop the process at will to get product they want. In the American Chemical Society journal ACS Nano, the researchers led by Tour and graduate student and lead author Weiyin Chen show that adding organic fluorine compounds and ...

LAWRENCE -- Tulsa may not be the first town one thinks of when talking about jazz, and flood management may not be the first vocation one compares to the musical genre. But the success Tulsa displayed in going from one of the nation's most flood-prone cities to a nationally recognized model of long-term risk reduction in just two decades is analogous to the evolution of one of the most American styles of music, a University of Kansas professor points out in a new study. Tulsa, the second-largest city in Oklahoma, suffered several devastating floods in the 1970s and 1980s, then became a national model for flood mitigation by the 1990s. What hasn't been studied closely is how a group of engineers, planners, government officials, journalists, attorneys and citizens came together ...

The word "tsunami" brings immediately to mind the havoc that can be wrought by these uniquely powerful waves. The tsunamis we hear about most often are caused by undersea earthquakes, and the waves they generate can travel at speeds of up to 250 miles per hour and reach tens of meters high when they make landfall and break. They can cause massive flooding and rapid widespread devastation in coastal areas, as happened in Southeast Asia in 2004 and in Japan in 2011. But significant tsunamis can be caused by other events as well. The partial collapse of the volcano Anak Krakatau in Indonesia in 2018 caused a tsunami that killed more than 400 people. Large landslides, which send immense amounts of debris into the sea, also ...

Following fertilization, early plant embryos arise through a rapid initial diversification of their component cell types. As a result, this series of coordinated cell divisions rapidly sculpts the embryo's body plan. The developmental phenomenon in question is orchestrated by a transcriptional activation of the plant genome. However, the underlying cellular differentiation programs have long remained obscured as the plant embryos were hard to isolate. In fact, previous attempts at creating datasets of the plant embryonic differentiation programs were incapable ...

A commonly studied perovskite can superfluoresce at temperatures that are practical to achieve and at timescales long enough to make it potentially useful in quantum computing applications. The finding from North Carolina State University researchers also indicates that superfluorescence may be a common characteristic for this entire class of materials. Superfluorescence is an example of quantum phase transition - when individual atoms within a material all move through the same phases in tandem, becoming a synchronized unit. For example, when atoms in an optical material such as a perovskite are excited they can individually radiate light, create energy, and fluoresce. Each atom will start moving through these phases randomly, but given the right conditions, they can synchronize in ...

All plant cells obtain their energy mainly from two organelles they contain - chloroplasts (responsible for photosynthesis) and mitochondria (responsible for the biochemical cycle of respiration that converts sugars into energy). However, a large number of a plant cell's genes in its mitochondria and chloroplasts can develop defects, jeopardising their function. Nevertheless, plant cells evolved an amazing tool called the RNA editosome (a large protein complex) to repair these kinds of errors. It can modify defective messenger RNA that result from defective DNA by transforming (deamination) of certain mRNA nucleotides. Automatic error correction in plant cells Automatic error correction in plants was discovered about 30 years ago by a team headed by plant physiologist Axel Brennicke ...

While the LGBTQ+ community has seen significant advancements in legal rights, political representation and social acceptance over recent years, mental and physical health disparities still exist for queer Americans - and are even worse among younger generations, says a new study from Michigan State University. In the first-ever population-based national study comparing mental and physical health of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) Americans to their straight counterparts, MSU sociologist Hui Liu and research partner Rin Reczek, professor of sociology from Ohio State University, found that when compared to their straight counterparts, LGB Millennials have worse health disadvantages than their older peers, though disparities persist throughout older generations as ...

All coronaviruses produce four primary structural proteins and multiple nonstructural proteins. However, the majority of antibody-based SARS-CoV-2 research has focused on the spike and nucleocapsid proteins. A study published in PLOS Biology by Anna Heffron, Irene Ong and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, suggests that immune responses may develop against other proteins produced by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The efficacy of spike protein-based vaccines is variable and not everyone infected with SARS-CoV-2 produces detectable antibodies against the spike or ...

In a new study published today in the American Journal of Human Genetics, researchers announced the development of a new method to increase the utility and equity of large genetic databases. The research was conducted by Audrey Hendricks, an associate professor of statistics at the University of Colorado Denver (CU Denver). Summix, the new method developed by Hendricks and her team of CU Denver undergraduate and graduate students, estimates the genetic ancestry in databases and adjusts the information to match the ancestry of a person or sample of people. This method leads large genetic databases to become more useful for people of various ancestries such as African American or Latinx, as they are underrepresented in genetic ...

Every day, our bodies face a bombardment of UV rays, ozone, cigarette smoke, industrial chemicals and other hazards. This exposure can lead to free-radical production in our bodies, which damages our DNA and tissues. A new study from West Virginia University researcher Eric E. Kelley--in collaboration with the University of Minnesota--suggests that unrepaired DNA damage can increase the speed of aging. The study appears in the journal Nature. Kelley and his team created genetically-modified mice with a crucial DNA-repair protein missing from their hematopoietic stem cells, immature immune cells that develop into white blood cells. Without this ...

Broadband sounds embedded with short pauses can maintain temporal sound processing in a mouse model of hearing loss, according to new research published in eNeuro. Hearing loss treatments supplement auditory system function but don't repair it. However a new intervention -- playing broadband sounds during the onset of hearing loss -- may be able to prevent the damage from ever occurring. Augmented auditory environments have been able to preserve auditory processing of a wide range of sound frequencies in mice models. In a new study, Dziorny et al. modified the traditional paradigm and preserved the processing of time-related, or temporal, sound features which are vital for understanding speech. The research team exposed mice with congenital hearing loss to ...

DURHAM, N.C. - In the fight against viruses, antibodies have the potential to either block infection or enable infection and make the disease worse, leading to concern about their use as a therapy for COVID-19. In a study published in the journal END ...

RUDN University doctors found out what role macrophages play in the recovery of the liver after the removal of its significant part. The results are published in the journal Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy. The liver in mammals is the most regenerative internal organ. It can restore the original size from as little as 25% of the preserved tissue. An important role in this process is played by macrophages. These are the cells that can engulf and digest particles. It is known, for example, that if the liver is affected by foreign substances, including drugs, macrophages migrate to the liver, absorb harmful microorganisms and dead cells, cause inflammation and thus contribute to the restoration of the organ. However, it is still unknown unambiguously how macrophages affect the ...

Nearly a third of Americans who arranged for paid care for an older person or someone with dementia employed workers who were not hired through a regulated agency, according to a new RAND Corporation study. Individuals who hired gray market caregivers were less likely to be employed and more likely to also use unpaid care for their family members. In addition, people who lived in rural areas had an almost five-times higher odds of arranging dementia care through gray markets as compared to those who lived in urban areas. The study is the first national survey to probe the use of gray market care for older adults and people with dementia. The findings ...

HOUSTON - (June 21, 2021) - Rice University engineers have created microscopic seeds for growing remarkably uniform 2D perovskite crystals that are both stable and highly efficient at harvesting electricity from sunlight. Halide perovskites are organic materials made from abundant, inexpensive ingredients, and Rice's seeded growth method addresses both performance and production issues that have held back halide perovskite photovoltaic technology. In a study published online in Advanced Materials, chemical engineers from Rice's Brown School of Engineering describe how to make the seeds and use them to grow homogenous thin films, highly sought ...

A team of scientists from NUST MISIS and MIPT have developed and tested a new platform for realization of the ultra-strong photon-to-magnon coupling. The proposed system is on-chip and is based on thin-film hetero-structures with superconducting, ferromagnetic and insulating layers. This discovery solves a problem that has been on the agenda of research teams from different countries for the last 10 years, and opens new opportunities in implementing quantum technologies. The study was published in the highly ranked journal Science Advances. The last decade has seen significant progress ...

AMHERST, Mass. - Millions of Americans will visit New England's beaches this summer to cool off, play in the waves and soak up the sun. Until now, the factors governing which beaches slope gradually to the sea and which ones end abruptly in a steep drop-off have been largely unknown. However, new research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst reveals, with unprecedented detail, how the grain size of beach sand relates to the slope of the beach itself. These new findings are critical to understanding how New England's beaches will respond to both rising sea levels and increased storm activity. Many of New England's beaches are made up of a mixture of sand and small stones. Or, to be more precise, the grain sizes on these beaches are "bi-modal" ...