Research shows that inhibiting necroptosis, a form of cell death, could be a novel therapeutic approach for treating chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), an inflammatory lung condition, also known as emphysema, that makes it difficult to breathe. Published in the prestigious American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, the study by a team of Australian and Belgian researchers, revealed elevated levels of necroptosis in patients with COPD. By inhibiting necroptosis activity, both in the lung tissue of COPD patients as well as ...

Electrons are ubiquitous among atoms, subatomic tokens of energy that can independently change how a system behaves--but they also can change each other. An international research collaboration found that collectively measuring electrons revealed unique and unanticipated findings. The researchers published their results on May 17 in Physical Review Letters. "It is not feasible to obtain the solution just by tracing the behavior of each individual electron," said paper author Myung Joon Han, professor of physics at KAIST. "Instead, one should describe or track all the entangled electrons at once. This requires a clever way of treating this entanglement." Professor Han and the researchers used a recently developed "many-particle" theory to account for the ...

New UMD study suggests that everywhere tyrannosaurs rose to dominance, their juveniles took over the ecological role of medium-sized carnivores A new study shows that medium-sized predators all but disappeared late in dinosaur history wherever Tyrannosaurus rex and its close relatives rose to dominance. In those areas--lands that eventually became central Asia and Western North America--juvenile tyrannosaurs stepped in to fill the missing ecological niche previously held by other carnivores. The research conducted by Thomas Holtz, a principal lecturer in ...

Like the movie version of Spider-Man who shoots spider webs from holes in his wrists, a little alpine plant has been found to eject cobweb-like threads from tiny holes in specialised cells on its leaves. It's these tiny holes that have taken plant scientists by surprise because puncturing the surface of a plant cell would normally cause it to explode like a water balloon. The small perennial cushion-shaped plant with bright yellow flowers, Dionysia tapetodes, is in the primula family and naturally occurs in Turkmenistan and north-eastern Iran, and through the mountains of Afghanistan to the border of Pakistan. What makes it unusual is its leaves, which are covered in long silky fibres that ...

A team of scientists using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to study the young star Elias 2-27 have confirmed that gravitational instabilities play a key role in planet formation, and have for the first time directly measured the mass of protoplanetary disks using gas velocity data, potentially unlocking one of the mysteries of planet formation. The results of the research are published today in two papers in The Astrophysical Journal. Protoplanetary disks--planet-forming disks made of gas and dust that surround newly formed young stars--are ...

Ocean currents sometimes pinch off sections that create circular currents of water called "eddies." This "whirlpool" motion moves nutrients to the water's surface, playing a significant role in the health of the Florida Keys coral reef ecosystem. Using a numerical model that simulates ocean currents, researchers from Florida Atlantic University's Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute and collaborators from the Alfred-Wegener-Institute in Germany and the Institut Universitaire Europeen De La Mer/Laboratoire d'Océonographie Physique et Spatiale in France are shedding light on this important "motion of the ocean." They have conducted a first-of-its-kind study identifying ...

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have developed a prototype device that could potentially diagnose pregnancy complications by monitoring the oxygen level of the placenta. The device sends near-infrared light through the pregnant person's abdomen to measure oxygen levels in the arterial and venous network in the placenta. The method was used to study anterior placenta, which is attached to the front wall of the uterus. The researchers described their results as promising but added that further study is needed before the device could be used routinely. The small study was conducted by Amir Gandjbakhche, Ph.D., of the Section on Translational Biophotonics at NIH's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute ...

People--who get lost easily in the extraordinary darkness of a tropical forest--have much to learn from a bee that can find its way home in conditions 10 times dimmer than starlight. Researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute's (STRI) research station on Barro Colorado Island in Panama and the University of Lund in Sweden reveal that sweat bees (Megalopta genalis), find their way home based on patterns in the canopy overhead using dorsal vision. This first report of dorsal navigation in a flying insect, published in Current Biology, may be of special interest to makers of drones and other night-flying vehicles. "One of the pioneers of studies on homing behaviors in bees was Charles H. Turner, an African-American scientist from the University ...

Bacteria do not sexually reproduce, but that does not stop them from exchanging genetic information as it evolves and adapts. During conjugal transfer, a bacterium can connect to another bacterium to pass along DNA and proteins. Escherichia coli bacteria, commonly called E. coli, can transfer at least one of these gene-containing plasmids to organisms across taxonomic kingdoms, including to fungi and protists. Now, researchers from Hiroshima University have a better understanding of this genetic hat trick, which has potential applications as a tool to promote desired characteristics or suppress harmful ones across genetic hosts. They published their results on ...

Young people with poor mental health took a turn for the better during the pandemic but those with good mental health saw a considerable decline, new research reveals. The first nationally representative evidence regarding the diverse impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on adolescent mental health in the UK was led by researchers at Lancaster University working with the University of British Columbia in Canada. Adolescents (aged 10 to 16) with better than average mental health before the pandemic experienced an increase in their emotional and conduct problems, hyperactivity, and problems interacting with their peers and friends, but a decrease in their prosocial ...

Scientists have identified key molecular events in the developing human embryo between days 7 and 14 - one of the most mysterious, yet critical, stages of our development. The second week of gestation represents a critical stage of embryo development, or embryogenesis. Failure of development during this time is one of the major causes of early pregnancy loss. Understanding more about it will help scientists to understand how it can go wrong, and take steps towards being able to fix problems. The pre-implantation period, before the developing embryo implants into the mother's womb, has been studied extensively in human embryos ...

Ikoma, Japan - The katana, a Japanese sword, may be thought of solely as a weapon used by the samurai. But researchers from Japan have discovered that not only do plants wield their own katanas within their cells, they recruit them to specific locations within those cells to do their work. In a study published in Nature Communications, researchers from Nara Institute of Science and Technology have revealed that the enzyme katanin, which is named after the katana, is used by an anchoring complex to cut microtubules at specific locations of the framework within individual plant cells. Katanin ...

NEW YORK (June 17, 2021)--New York City neighborhoods that had higher levels of socioeconomic disadvantage experienced more COVID-19 infections and deaths, according to Mount Sinai scientists who created a neighborhood-level COVID-19 inequity index. The index measured factors that fueled inequities in the residents' lives, such as employment and commuting patterns, population density of their neighborhood, food access, socioeconomic status, and access to health care. This allowed the scientists to compare between neighborhoods the contributions of these social factors in facilitating disease transmission during the first wave of the pandemic in a study published in Nature Communications in June. "Much of the early rhetoric around COVID-19 ...

As almost all our private information is digitalized, it is increasingly important that we find ways to protect our data and ourselves from being hacked. Quantum Cryptography is the researchers' answer to this problem, and more specifically a certain kind of qubit - consisting of single photons: particles of light. Single photons or qubits of light, as they are also called, are extremely difficult to hack. However, in order for these qubits of light to be stable and work properly they need to be stored at temperatures close to absolute zero - that is minus ...

AI is used in an array of extremely useful applications, such as predicting a machine's lifetime through its vibrations, monitoring the cardiac activity of patients and incorporating facial recognition capabilities into video surveillance systems. The downside is that AI-based technology generally requires a lot of power and, in most cases, must be permanently connected to the cloud, raising issues related to data protection, IT security and energy use. CSEM engineers may have found a way to get around those issues, thanks to a new system-on-chip they have developed. It runs on a tiny ...

Bottom Line: Genetic mutations indicative of DNA damage were associated with high red meat consumption and increased cancer-related mortality in patients with colorectal cancer. Journal in Which the Study was Published: Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research Author: Marios Giannakis, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a physician at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Background: "We have known for some time that consumption of processed meat and red meat is a risk factor for colorectal cancer," ...

The unique mechanical and optical properties found in the exoskeleton of a humble Asian beetle has the potential to offer a fascinating new insight into how to develop new, effective bio-inspired technologies. Pioneering new research by a team of international scientists, including Professor Pete Vukusic from the University of Exeter, has revealed a distinctive, and previously unknown property within the carapace of the flower beetle - a member of the scarab beetle family. The study showed that the beetle has small micropillars within the carapace - or the upper section of the exoskeleton - that give the insect both strength and flexibility to withstand damage very effectively. Crucially, these micropillars are incorporated into highly regular layering in the exoskeleton ...

Sophia Antipolis - 17 June 2021: People living with obesity who attended a non-judgemental and personalised lifestyle modification programme improved their cardiovascular and mental health during just 10 weeks, according to a study presented today at EuroHeartCare - ACNAP Congress 2021, an online scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).1 Participants lost weight and achieved benefits in anxiety and depression and physical measurements including blood pressure. "We focus on changing behaviours and improving people's relationship with food," said study ...

The fast-food industry spent $5 billion on advertising in 2019, and the advertisements disproportionately targeted Black and Hispanic youth, according to new research published today by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at the University of Connecticut. The new report, Fast Food FACTS 2021, finds that the industry's annual ad spending in 2019 increased by over $400 million since 2012, and that children and teens were viewing on average more than two fast food TV ads per day. Frequent and widespread exposure to fast-food marketing increases young people's preferences for, and consumption ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - The price tag for giving birth in America may bring some families sticker shock - even for those with private insurance. And when delivering moms require caesarians or their newborns need neonatal care, some families may spend as much as $10,000 out-of-pocket, according to a new Michigan Medicine-led study. "Childbirth is the most common reason for hospitalization in the U.S.," said lead author Kao-Ping Chua, M.D., Ph.D.,a pediatrician and researcher at University of Michigan Health C.S. Mott Children's Hospital and the Susan B. Meister Child Health Evaluation and Research Center. "Our findings show that some privately insured families are shouldering ...

A recent study by Nagoya University researchers revealed that microRNAs in urine could be a promising biomarker to diagnose brain tumors. Their findings, published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, have indicated that regular urine tests could help early detection and treatment of brain tumors, possibly leading to improved patient survival. Early diagnosis of brain tumors is often difficult, partly because most people undergo a brain CT or MRI scan only after the onset of neurological deficits, such as immobility of limbs, and incapability of speech. When brain tumors are detected by CT or MRI, in many cases, they have already grown too large to be fully removed, which could lower patients' survival rate. From this perspective, accurate, easy, and inexpensive ...

Green hydrogen, a source of clean energy that can be generated without using fossil fuels, has recently gained immense attention as it can be potentially used to promote carbon neutrality. Korean researchers have succeeded in improving the efficiency of unitized regenerative fuel cells that can be used to efficiently produce green hydrogen and generate power. The unitized regenerative fuel cells boast of hydrogen production and fuel cell modes. They are eco-friendly, cost-effective, and independent energy storage and power generation devices that require less space for ...

SPOKANE, Wash. - Many people likely lost sleep over COVID-19. A study of twins led by Washington State University researchers found that stress, anxiety and depression during the first few weeks of the pandemic were associated with less and lower quality sleep. In a survey of more than 900 twins taken shortly after COVID-19 lockdown measures began, about half of the respondents reported no change in their sleep patterns, but around a third, 32.9%, reported decreased sleep. Another 29.8% reported sleeping more. In the analysis, the researchers found that any change in sleep was connected to self-reported mental health issues, though it was more strongly associated with decreased ...

Ireland, June 17 2021: Popular video games have the potential to provide low-cost, easy access, effective and stigma-free support for some mental health issues, researchers at Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software, have found. The team at Lero, a world leader in connected-health research, said video games could be used where conventional therapies are not available because of cost or location, or as an addition to traditional therapeutic treatments for depression or anxiety. Lero researcher Dr Mark Campbell said there is mounting scientific ...

Researchers have designed a device that delivers two medications that help stop HIV transmission. Although condom usage is the best strategy for preventing HIV transmission, the researchers are working to design a device that can be used by sex workers and in situations where women are not in a position to negotiate condom use. The device is an intravaginal ring (IVR ) that can be inserted into the female genital tract where it will deliver medications known to decrease the transmission of HIV. The researchers examined how effectively their IVR delivered two medications - hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), an FDA approved medication, and a nanomedicine gene therapy developed by the team in previous research. Their results were published in a ...