They're cute, they're furry, and they start diving into frigid Antarctic waters at 2 weeks old. According to a new study from California Polytechnic State University, Weddell seal pups may be one of the only types of seals to learn to swim from their mothers. Weddell seals are the southernmost born mammal and come into the world in the coldest environment of any mammal. These extreme conditions may explain the unusually long time they spend with their mothers. The study, "Early Diving Behavior in Weddell Seal (Leptonychotes Weddellii) Pups," was published earlier this month in the Journal of Mammalogy. According to the Seal Conservation Society, adult Weddell seal females are ...

Once thought to be extinct, lobe-finned coelacanths are enormous fish that live deep in the ocean. Now, researchers reporting in the journal Current Biology on June 17 have evidence that, in addition to their impressive size, coelacanths also can live for an impressively long time--perhaps nearly a century. The researchers found that their oldest specimen was 84 years old. They also report that coelacanths live life extremely slowly in other ways, reaching maturity around the age of 55 and gestating their offspring for five years. "Our most important finding is that the coelacanth's age was underestimated by a factor of five," says Kélig Mahé of IFREMER Channel and North ...

The birth of a human being requires billions of cell divisions to go from a fertilised egg to a baby. At each of these divisions, the genetic material of the mother cell duplicates itself to be equally distributed between the two new cells. In primary microcephaly, a rare but serious genetic disease, the ballet of cell division is dysregulated, preventing proper brain development. Scientists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), in collaboration with Chinese scientists, have demonstrated how the mutation of a single protein, WDR62, prevents the proper formation of the cable network responsible for separating genetic material into two. As cell division is then slowed down, the brain ...

BOSTON - An antibiotic developed in the 1950s and largely supplanted by newer drugs, effectively targets and kills cancer cells with a common genetic defect, laboratory research by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists shows. The findings have spurred investigators to open a clinical trial of the drug, novobiocin, for patients whose tumors carry the abnormality. In a study in the journal Nature Cancer, the researchers found that in laboratory cell lines and tumor models novobiocin selectively killed tumor cells with abnormal BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes, which help repair damaged DNA. The drug was effective even in tumors resistant to agents known as PARP inhibitors, which have become a prime therapy for cancers with DNA-repair glitches. "PARP inhibitors ...

Ultrathin, flexible computer circuits have been an engineering goal for years, but technical hurdles have prevented the degree of miniaturization necessary to achieve high performance. Now, researchers at Stanford University have invented a manufacturing technique that yields flexible, atomically thin transistors less than 100 nanometers in length - several times smaller than previously possible. The technique is detailed in a paper published June 17 in Nature Electronics. With the advance, said the researchers, so-called "flextronics" move closer to reality. Flexible electronics promise bendable, ...

PHILADELPHIA-- The COVID-19 death rate for Black patients would be 10 percent lower if they had access to the same hospitals as white patients, a new study shows. Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and OptumLabs, part of UnitedHealth Group, analyzed data from tens of thousands of hospitalized COVID-19 patients and found that Black patients died at higher rates than white patients. But the study, published today in JAMA Network Open, determined that didn't have to be the case if more Black patients were able to get care at different hospitals. "Our study reveals that Black patients have worse outcomes largely because they tend to go to worse-performing hospitals," said the study's first author, David Asch, MD, ...

What The Study Did: The findings of this study suggest that the increased mortality among Black patients hospitalized with COVID-19 is associated with the hospitals at which Black patients disproportionately received care. Authors: David A. Asch, M.D., M.B.A., of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, is the 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.2021.12842) Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, ...

What The Study Did: Researchers evaluated the association of convalescent plasma treatment with 30-day mortality in hospitalized adults with hematologic (blood) cancers and COVID-19. Authors: Jeremy L.Warner, M.D., M.S., of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, 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/jamaoncol.2021.1799) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please ...

What The Study Did: This study examined whether mandatory daily employee symptom data collection can be used as an early alert surveillance system to estimate COVID-19 hospitalizations in communities where employees live. Authors: Steven Horng, M.D., M.MSc., of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, is the 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.2021.13782) 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 advisory: The full study ...

What The Study Did: In this survey study, COVID-19 was associated with large reductions in economic security among women at high risk of HIV infection in Kenya. However, shifts in sexual behavior may have temporarily decreased their risk of HIV infection. Authors: Harsha Thirumurthy, Ph.D., of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, is the 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.2021.13787) Editor's Note: The article includes funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, ...

What The Study Did: Researchers estimated survival and other outcomes of very preterm infants in China discharged against medical advice from neonatal intensive care units before complete care can be provided compared with infants who receive full intensive care treatment. Authors: Yun Cao, M.D., Ph.D., and Weili Yan, Ph.D., of Children's Hospital of Fudan University in Shanghai, China, are the corresponding authors. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.13197) Editor's Note: The article includes conflicts of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest ...

The 'Xpert Ultra' molecular test has a greater capacity than its predecessor ('Xpert MTB/RIF') in detecting tuberculosis cases, either passively (i.e. people who attend the hospital with disease symptoms) or actively (searching for possible cases in the community among contacts of cases). This is the main conclusion of a study performed by ISGlobal, an institution supported by "la Caixa" Foundation, in collaboration with the Manhiça Health Research Centre (CISM), published in the European Respiratory Journal. Tuberculosis (TB) is the leading cause of death by an infectious agent, worldwide. In 2019, 1.4 million people are estimated to have died and 10 million people fell sick from TB, although only 70% of the cases were diagnosed. ...

Scientists have identified a new class of targeted cancer drugs that offer the potential to treat patients whose tumours have faulty copies of the BRCA cancer genes. The drugs, known as POLQ inhibitors, specifically kill cancer cells with mutations in the BRCA genes while leaving healthy cells unharmed. And crucially, they can kill cancer cells that have become resistant to PARP inhibitors - an existing treatment for patients with BRCA mutations. Researchers are already planning to test the new drug class in upcoming clinical trials. If the trials are successful, POLQ inhibitors could enter the clinic as a new approach to treating a range of cancers with BRCA ...

Many diseases caused by a dysregulated immune system, such as allergies, asthma and autoimmunity, can be traced back to events in the first few months after birth. To date, the mechanisms behind the development of the immune system have not been fully understood. Now, researchers at Karolinska Institutet show a connection between breast milk, beneficial gut bacteria and the development of the immune system. The study is published in Cell. "A possible application of our results is a preventative method for reducing the risk of allergies, asthma and autoimmune disease later in life by helping the immune system to establish its regulatory mechanisms," says the paper's last author Petter Brodin, paediatrician and researcher at the Department of Women's and Children's ...

The giant rhino, Paraceratherium, is considered the largest land mammal that ever lived and was mainly found in Asia, especially China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, and Pakistan. How this genus dispersed across Asia was long a mystery, however. A new discovery has now shed light on this process. Prof. DENG Tao from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and his collaborators from China and the U.S.A. recently reported a new species Paraceratherium linxiaense sp. nov., which offers important clues to the dispersal of giant rhinos across Asia. The study was published in Communications Biology on June 17. The new species' fossils comprise a completely preserved skull and mandible with their associated atlas, ...

The most accurate distance measurement yet of ultra-diffuse galaxy (UDG) NGC1052-DF2 (DF2) confirms beyond any shadow of a doubt that it is lacking in dark matter. The newly measured distance of 22.1 +/-1.2 megaparsecs was obtained by an international team of researchers led by Zili Shen and Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University and Shany Danieli, a NASA Hubble Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. "Determining an accurate distance to DF2 has been key in supporting our earlier results," stated Danieli. "The new measurement reported in this study has crucial implications for estimating the physical properties of the galaxy, thus confirming its lack of dark matter." The ...

One of the main reasons for the hold-ups in the mass vaccination campaigns against COVID-19 are the precautions that must be taken regarding the handling of the vaccines and their administration. They have to be transported under very specific conditions and the syringes used for their administration must be prepared at the same vaccination site. Healthcare workers must ensure they avoid any sudden movements of the vaccines so as not to affect the vector they use, messenger RNA molecules in the case of the Pfizer BioNTech and Moderna vaccines. But research led by the Hospital del Mar Pharmacy Department and Neuropharmacology-Neurophar Research Group at Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), may lead to changes in ...

The ability to insert desirable genes into animal or human cells is the basis of modern life science research and of widespread biomedical applications. The methods used to date for this purpose are mostly non-specific, making it difficult for scientists to control which cell will or will not take up a gene. For this gene transfer, the target genes are often packaged into "viral vectors." These are viruses in which part of the genetic material has been replaced by the target genes. When researchers add these viral vectors to cells, the vectors introduce the genes into the cells. This is the principle behind some of the current SARS-CoV-2 vaccines such as those from AstraZeneca or Johnson&Johnson. However, it is difficult - even impossible - to control into which cells the ...

Tsukuba, Japan - Sometimes a dead log isn't just a dead log. This one in Japan turned out to be the habitat of a species previously unknown to science. In a new study published in the journal Nematology, a University of Tsukuba-led research team has described a new species of nematode found inside bark beetles that emerged from a dead log of a fir tree. Nematodes, also known as roundworms, are a diverse phylum (category) of unsegmented worm-like animals that live in a wide variety of habitats and have diverse life habits. Many nematodes, including this previously unknown species, are either parasitic or live inside a host organism for the duration of a particular life stage. The log from the trunk of a fallen Veitch's fir tree (Abies veitchii) was ...

Southeast Asian monsoon region falls in the warm and humid tropics modulated by Asian monsoon. It is home to nearly 15% of the world's tropical forests and one of the biodiversity hotspots in the world. With the unprecedented urbanization and population growing rate, water scarcity issues have already posed a serious challenge for sustainable development in Southeast Asian monsoon region. However, the impact of anthropogenic forcing, such as greenhouse gases and anthropogenic aerosols, on extreme drought events in the region is still unclear. Scientists from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences investigated the observed drought changes over Southeast ...

Researchers at the University of Gothenburg have observed the absorption of a single electron by a levitated droplet with such a magnification that it is visible with the naked eye and can even be measured with a normal millimeter scaled ruler. Matter in the universe is composed of elementary particles like electrons, protons, and neutrons. They are everywhere, but they are so small that the human eye cannot discern them. In the last century, physicists have proven the existence of these particles through different experiments, but in most cases the observation of the particles have been indirect. - Electrons are one of these fundamental particles. In 1909, Robert Millikan proved that the charge of the electron is quantized. In other words, there exists a minimum, indivisible ...

Researchers from Skoltech and Saratov State University have designed a simple and easily reproducible labeling system for individual cells that enables researchers to track single cell behavior and migration for tasks requiring extreme precision. The paper was published in the journal ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces. Modern biomedical science and developmental biology often require scientists to track and trace individual cells, whether it is to establish the best purified cells from various types of cell lines, in particular to select mesenchymal stem/stromal cells best suited for tissue ...

The production of chemicals is a cumbersome business. Often, only a small part of what is actually wanted is produced in the factory. The large remainder is unusable - or even worse. Examples? The defoliant "Agent Orange" used by the US army in the Vietnam War was produced in great hurry. It contained dioxin as an impurity. As a result, not only did trees in the combat zone lose their foliage, but US soldiers and Vietnamese civilians also fell ill with cancer years later. There are also examples from agriculture: In the production of the insecticide lindane, ...

As a new member of photovoltaic family, antimony trisulfide (Sb2S3) has the satisfactory bandgap of 1.7eV, benefiting the fabrication of the top absorber layer of tandem solar cells. Due to special quasi-one-dimensional structure, it shows advantages of less dangling bonds. Based on these advantages, the vacancy defects upon the surface causing the recombination of the carriers could be reduced sharply, which helps to solve the photovoltaic problems in solar cells. In the previous studies, the relationships between conformation, chemical composition and ...

Scientists have developed a new method that improves dispensing of viscoelastic fluids - a vital process for circuit board production, 3D printing and other industrial applications Viscoelastic fluids are difficult to dispense as liquid bridges that form between the substrate and nozzle must be broken New research has found that twisting these liquid bridges breaks them in a quicker and cleaner way than the conventional method of stretching them Researchers used high speed imaging to observe that when twisted, a crack forms at the edge of the liquid bridge and propagates towards the center The underlying mechanism that breaks the liquid bridge was found to be "edge fracture" and is the first time that ...