A research group including Professor MATSUDA Tetsuya of Tamagawa University's Brain Science Institute (Machida City, Tokyo; Director: SAKAGAMI Masamichi) and Assistant Professor ISHIHARA Toru from Kobe University's Graduate School of Human Development and Environment has illuminated the changes in the brain's neural network and cortex structure that underlie the positive association between childhood exercise and the maintenance and promotion of cognitive function in later life. These results were published in the academic journal NeuroImage on May 23, 2021. Main Points The researchers showed that people who are physically active during childhood (up to 12 years of age) have ...

That is the conclusion of new research published in the journal Geriatrics, which examined studies on several "telehealth" applications - smartphone apps used by patients and healthcare professionals to manage their condition. Researchers found that smartphone apps and telehealth initiatives have the potential to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of healthcare systems and patients' quality of life in relation to pain management The authors also emphasise that user involvement in development and construction of smartphone apps and telehealth initiatives is ...

Graphene consists of carbon atoms arranged in a chicken-wire like pattern. This one-atom-thick material is famous for its many extraordinary properties, such as extreme strength and remarkable capability to conduct electricity. Since its discovery, researchers have looked for ways to further tailor graphene through controlled manipulation of its atomic structure. However, until now, such modifications have been only confirmed locally, because of challenges in atomic-resolution imaging of large samples and analysis of large datasets. Now a team around Jani Kotakoski at the University of ...

TheMUC5Bgene codes for mucin - a protein that is normally found in mucus secretions, and which is part of the body'snaturaldefence against infection. The promoter variantcalledrs35705950is a common variantin theMUC5Bgene, with anallele frequency of 0.1 in the Finnish population.Overexpression ofMUC5Bin lungs influences the development of pulmonary fibrosis.The promoter variant rs35705950 inMUC5Bis the strongest known genetic risk factor for rheumatoid arthritis-associated interstitial lung disease (RA-ILD). However, there are no large-scale data on the impact oftheMUC5Bpromoter varianton the long-term incidence of RA-ILD. AnttiPalomäkiand colleagues usedFinnGen- a collection of epidemiological ...

New study by the ICTA-UAB shows that residents and visitors highlight the natural and biodiversity values of the Llobregat Delta, in Barcelona. A new study undertaken by researchers at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) supports protestors' concerns about damage to the Llobregat Delta in airport expansion plans. The research, carried out in 2019, found that the well-maintained and unique natural environment of the Llobregat Delta is important or very important to 100% residents and 98.8% of visitors who responded to the survey. The recently published article in Environmental Science ...

Pioneering technology developed by UCL (University College London) and Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI) researchers could transform the ability to accurately interpret HIV test results, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Academics from the London Centre for Nanotechnology at UCL and AHRI used deep learning (artificial intelligence/AI) algorithms to improve health workers' ability to diagnose HIV using lateral flow tests in rural South Africa. Their findings, published today in Nature Medicine, involve the first and largest study ...

Footprints from at least six different species of dinosaur - the very last dinosaurs to walk on UK soil 110 million years ago - have been found in Kent, a new report has announced. The discovery of dinosaur footprints by a curator from Hastings Museum and Art Gallery and a scientist from the University of Portsmouth is the last record of dinosaurs in Britain. The footprints were discovered in the cliffs and on the foreshore in Folkestone, Kent, where stormy conditions affect the cliff and coastal waters, and are constantly revealing new fossils. Professor of Palaeobiology, David Martill, said: "This is ...

Biologists have identified a family of algae as a living missing link in the microscopic domain. Over the course of evolutionary time, marine microorganisms have undergone an immense range of diversification. This applies in particular to the group known as dinophytes. Also known as dinoflagellates, these unicellular algae can account for a significant fraction of the phytoplankton in the oceans, and their ecological and economic significance is correspondingly high. A team of researchers led by Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich biologist Professor Marc Gottschling now reports the identification of a missing link between the two major phylogenetic groups of dinophytes, ...

One in six women and one in twelve men in Austria suffers from some form of IBS - therefore around one million people in all. Using currently available techniques, it is only possible to diagnose IBS by a process of elimination. Most people suffering from irritable bowel syndrome only go to their doctor when they have severe symptoms such as constipation, diarrhoea, abdominal pain, or a change in bowel motion. Researchers from the Department of Medicine III of the Medical University of Vienna and the University of Vienna have now shown that, in most cases, IBS is associated with bacterial biofilms ...

Due to sample size limitations, previous studies of DMARD use and COVID-19 outcomes have combined several different rheumatic diseases and medications, and investigated a single outcome- for example, the risk of hospitalization. EULAR has given financial support to a global project collecting information on SARS-CoV-2 infection in people with rheumatic diseases. The COVID-19 Global Rheumatology Alliance physician-reported registry launched in March 2020 to collect data on adults with rheumatic disease and confirmed or presumptive COVID-19. This analysis from Jeffrey Sparks, Zachary Wallace, and colleagues aimed to investigate the associations between baseline use of biologic or ...

Climate warming plays a larger role than plant genes in influencing the number and identity of fungal species on oak leaves, especially in autumn. Recently published in the journal New Phytologist, this research by ecologists sheds light on how warming and tree genes affect the dynamics of fungal communities across the season. "One of our major findings was that elevated temperature decreased the number of fungal species and changed their community composition, especially in the late season" says Maria Faticov, a researcher at the Department of Ecology, Environment and Plant Sciences (DEEP) at Stockholm University. Plants host thousands of microscopic organisms and leaves are no exception. ...

In this proof-of-concept study, Maja Skov Kragsnaes and colleagues evaluated efficacy and safety of FMT in people with psoriatic arthritis (PsA). PsA is an inflammatory arthritis that causes a person's joints to become stiff and painful. It is often found people with the skin condition psoriasis, and there is also a link between PsA and inflammatory bowel disease or gastrointestinal symptoms. This double-blind, parallel-group, sham-controlled, superiority trial randomly allocated31adults with active peripheral PsAd espite ongoing treatment with methotrexate to one gastroscopic-guided FMT procedure, or sham transplantation into the duodenum. The transplants (50 g faeces) came from one of four healthy, anonymous stool ...

Massive heavy-lift crane vessels, capable of hauling thousands of tons, navigate the rough waves and strong winds offshore to construct wind turbines and oil fields in the ocean. An international team of researchers has developed a new modeling system to help improve the control, and ultimately the safety, of such vessels. They published their approach in the April issue in IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica. "Dynamic positioning allows the ship to stay fixed in a certain location, by acting on the thruster," said paper author Simone Baldi, professor in the School of Mathematics and School of Cyber Science and Engineering, Southeast University in China, and guest with the Delft Center for System and Control, Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. This positioning operation ...

Sweet sorghum can be used to produce biogas, biofuels, and novel polymers. In addition, it can help replace phosphate fertilizers. A new sweet sorghum variety developed at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) accumulates particularly high amounts of sugar and thrives under local conditions. As the scientists reported in the Industrial Crops & Products journal, sugar transport and sugar accumulation are related to the structure of the plants' vessels. This was the result of a comparison between sweet and grain sorghums. (DOI: 10.1016/j.indcrop.2021.113550) As the world's population grows, the demand for food, raw materials, and energy is also on the rise. This increases the burden on the environment and the climate. One strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to grow so-called ...

Scientists have developed a new technique that could revolutionise medical imaging procedures using light. A team of physicists, led by Dr David Phillips from the University of Exeter, have pioneered a new way in which to control light that has been scrambled by passage through a single hair-thin strand of optical fibre. These ultra-thin fibres hold much promise for the next generation of medical endoscopes - enabling high-resolution imaging deep inside the body at the tip of a needle. Conventional endoscopes are millimetres wide and have limited resolution - so cannot be used to inspect individual cells. Single optical fibres are approximately 10x narrower and can enable much higher-resolution imaging - enough to examine the features of individual ...

Various automobile companies are preparing to shift from internal combustion (IC) engine vehicles to electric vehicles (EVs). However, due to higher cost, EVs are not as easily accessible to consumers; hence, several governments are subsidizing EVs to promote sales. For EV costs to compete with those of IC engine vehicles, their batteries, which account for about 30% of their cost, must be more economical than that of IC-based vehicles. The Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) has announced that Dr. Sang-Ok Kim's team at the Center for Energy Storage Research had developed a novel, high-performance, economical anode material for use in sodium-ion secondary batteries, which are ...

New classes of drugs are biologic disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (bDMARDs) and Januskinase inhibitors (JAKi). At the 2021 EULAR congress, Strangfeld and colleagues shared new data assessing the effects of these medications on the risk of serious infections in elderly people with RA. RA is an inflammatory autoimmune disease that causes pain, swelling, and stiffness in the joints, but it also affects other organ systems through underlying systemic inflammation, causing for example cardiovascular diseases or fatigue. RABBIT is a prospective, observational cohort study in Germany. ...

The loss of a loved one can be a defining moment, even in the animal world. In chimpanzees, for example, individuals whose mothers die when they are young are smaller than their counterparts, reproduce less and are also more likely to die at a young age. But why? To find out, an international research team* led by a CNRS researcher** studied the short- and long-term effects of maternal loss on the stress levels of orphaned chimpanzees over a 19-year period. By comparing the levels of a stress hormone marker, cortisol, between young and adult orphans and non-orphans, the scientists found that young ...

The body is well protected against invading pathogens by barriers such as the skin. But if you injure yourself and break your skin, pathogens can easily enter your body through the wound and cause severe infections. If this occurs, the innate immune system takes over the first rapid defense with an effective arsenal of cellular weapons infiltrating the wounded tissue in large numbers. As one of the first cell types on the spot, neutrophil granulocytes are recruited within few hours from the bloodstream to the infection site to eliminate potential microbial invaders. Swarming against infections "Neutrophils are very efficient in hunting and ...

Singapore, 18 Jun 2021 - Scientists at Duke-NUS Medical School and National Heart Centre Singapore (NHCS), in collaboration with colleagues in Singapore and the UK, have shown that the human form of the signalling protein interleukin 11 (IL-11) has a damaging effect on human liver cells--overturning a prior hypothesis that it could help livers damaged by paracetamol poisoning. The finding, published last week in Science Translational Medicine, suggests that blocking IL-11 signalling could have a restorative effect. Paracetamol, also called acetaminophen, is a widely available over-the-counter painkiller, and an overdose can lead to serious liver damage and even death. It is the most common pharmaceutical ...

Most of us have heard of Alzheimer's disease, a neurodegenerative disorder marked by brain cell death and the shrinking of the brain. It is the most common cause of dementia and cognitive impairment, which typically have a devastating effect on a person's quality of life. There is still no cure for Alzheimer's. One way of tackling the progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is to prevent the underlying adverse changes in the brain. A team of researchers from the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) has recently published a study in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, dedicated to neuroprotection against these toxic changes. They used tiny free-living soil worms --called Caenorhabditis elegans--and the often-ornamental ...

Kanazawa, Japan - Interluekin-1α (IL-1α) is an important part of the immune response, but until now it has been unclear how this molecule is processed from its precursor, pro-IL-1α, and exits the cell during inflammasome activation. Now, researchers from Japan have found that gasdermin D, a protein that was already known to mediate pyroptosis, a form of regulated cell death, plays a crucial role in the maturation and release of IL-1α. In a study published in March in Cell Reports, researchers from Kanazawa University report that, when the ...

COVID-19 has changed the world in unimaginable ways. Some have even been positive, with new vaccines developed in record time. Even the extraordinary lockdowns, which have had severe effects on movement and commerce, have had beneficial effects on the environment and therefore, ironically, on health. Studies from all around the world, including China, Europe and India, have found major drops in the level of air pollution. However, to fully understand the impact of anthropogenic causes, it is important to separate them from natural events in the atmosphere like wind flow. To demonstrate this point, a new study by researchers at the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Japan, uses satellite data and mathematical modeling to explain just ...

Identifying the causes of human neurodegenerative diseases is a global research priority, warranting frequent reviews of the accumulating knowledge. In doing just that, biologists from the Plant Physiology Laboratory at the University of Guam and neuroscientists from the Experimental Medicine Program at The University of British Columbia have published an update on the reputed environmental toxins that have been suspected of being involved in mammal neurodegeneration. Their summary was published in April in the book Spectrums of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, which is available online ...

According to a recent Finnish study, higher levels of moderate and vigorous physical activity can curb arterial stiffening already in childhood. However, sedentary time or aerobic fitness were not linked to arterial health. The results, based on the ongoing Physical Activity and Nutrition in Children (PANIC) Study conducted at the University of Eastern Finland, were published in the Journal of Sports Sciences. The study was made in collaboration among researchers from the University of Jyväskylä, University of Eastern Finland, the Norwegian School of Sport sciences, and the University of Cambridge. Arterial stiffening predisposes to heart diseases, ...