Steroid (sex) hormones play a central role in sexual development: They help determine how boys become boys and girls become girls. If these hormones are disrupted during fetal life, it can lead to a string of reproductive disorders at birth and later in life, including malformed genitals and decreased fertility. Many environmental chemicals are known to disrupt the hormone system and are often referred to as endocrine disrupting chemicals. Azole fungicides constitute one group that can act as endocrine disruptors. Azoles are used to combat yeast infestations in seed and food crops, but are also used in medications for humans. Most azoles used in medicines are tightly regulated and their use is well controlled. However, some are sold over-the-counter, for ...

Philadelphia, June 16, 2021 - The SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 may have the ability to reactivate dormant tuberculosis (TB). In a novel study scientists END ...

In a new publication from Cardiovascular Innovations and Applications; DOI https://doi.org/10.15212/CVIA.2021.0011, Xiao-lei Yin, Dong-xue Liang, Lu Wang, Jing Qiu, Zhi-yun Yang, Jian-zeng Dong and Zhao-yuan Ma from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China; Capital Medical University, Beijing, China and The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, China analyse coronary angiography video interpolation methods to reduce x-ray exposure frequency based on deep learning. Cardiac coronary angiography is a major technique that assists physicians during interventional heart surgery. Under X-ray irradiation, the physician ...

In a new publication from Cardiovascular Innovations and Applications; DOI https://doi.org/10.15212/CVIA.2021.0013, Sharen Lee, Gary Tse, Xin Wang, Adrian Baranchuk and Tong Liu from Laboratory of Cardiovascular Physiology, Hong Kong, China, Second Hospital of Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin, China and Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada consider ST-segment depression in leads I and aVL. The 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) is a routinely performed test but is susceptible to misinterpretation even by experienced physicians. The authors report a case of a 72-year-old lady with no prior cardiac history presenting with atypical chest pain. Her initial electrocardiogram shows an initial ST depression followed by positive deflections leads I and aVL. ...

Commonplace pharmaceuticals, such as ibuprofen, can carry with them an inherent flaw in their atomic structure, which pairs the active, beneficial ingredient with a potentially ineffective -- or even toxic -- counterpart. New research could hold the key to more easily isolating the good while removing the unwanted. Dr. Shoufeng Lan, assistant professor in the J. Mike Walker '66 Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University, is leading a team investigating the use of electromagnetic control over the synthesis of chiral compounds at an atomic level -- a process that could lead to a plethora of practical ...

How do top athletes talk about doping when they themselves are using performance-enhancing drugs? Or do they just avoid the issue? A new study by the University of Göttingen reveals that any decision to use drugs almost inevitably means the decision to engage in deceptive communication such as lying or omitting information. Those using drugs, for example, regularly describe anti-doping policies as being more intense than ever or overly restrictive, play down the extent of the doping problem, or portray themselves as victims. The results were published in the European Journal for Sport and Society. Dr Marcel Reinold, Head of Sport and Health Sociology at the Institute of Sport and Exercise Sciences at Göttingen University, analysed autobiographies of professional ...

A new paper in the journal Cognition examines the visual complexity of written language and how that complexity has evolved. Using computational techniques to analyze more than 47,000 different characters from 133 living and extinct scripts, co-authors Helena Miton of the Santa Fe Institute and Oliver Morin of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, addressed several questions around why and how the characters of different writing systems vary in how complex they appear. "When we started this project, we wanted to test whether you find a general simplification of characters over time," Miton says. "Do scripts simplify their ...

The presence of pro-inflammatory cytokines in the blood can boost the effects of daily cannabis use and heighten the risk of developing psychosis in adulthood. Similar results have been observed, also in the presence of cytokines, when cannabis is used during adolescence. Psychotic disorders have symptoms such as delirium, loss of a sense of reality, hallucinations, hearing voices, and cognitive and social impairments. A study by researchers at the University of São Paulo's Ribeirão Preto Medical School (FMRP-USP) in Brazil, reported in an article in ...

RUDN University biologist studied the aggressive impact of environmental factors (water, salts, and ozone) on ultrathin nanofibers of biopolymers. The results will help choosing suitable bioplastic depending on the use; for example, for medical implants, biodegradable packaging or filters for water cleaning. The results are published in the journal Polymers. Bioplastics are an alternative to ordinary plastics. They are obtained from waste of plant and food industry. The safe composition allows using them as filters for gases and liquids, as "sponges" for cleaning reservoirs and medical implants. Depending on the field ...

NEW YORK, NY (June 16, 2021)--Spectacular images of a molecule that shuttles omega-3 fatty acids into the brain may open a doorway for delivering neurological therapeutics to the brain. "We've managed to obtain a three-dimensional structure of the transporter protein that provides a gateway for omega-3s to enter the brain. In this structure, we can see how omega-3s bind to the transporter. This information may allow for the design of drugs that mimic omega-3s to hijack this system and get into the brain," says first author Rosemary J. Cater, PhD, a Simons Society Fellow in the Mancia Lab at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. The study was published online on June 16 in the journal Nature. A major challenge in treating ...

Bay Area scientists have captured the real-time electrical activity of a beating heart, using a sheet of graphene to record an optical image -- almost like a video camera -- of the faint electric fields generated by the rhythmic firing of the heart's muscle cells. The graphene camera represents a new type of sensor useful for studying cells and tissues that generate electrical voltages, including groups of neurons or cardiac muscle cells. To date, electrodes or chemical dyes have been used to measure electrical firing in these cells. But electrodes and dyes measure the voltage at one point only; a graphene sheet measures the voltage ...

Should zoos display legally protected species that have been smuggled out of their range countries? A new study suggests that a pause and rethink may be needed, as it reports that accredited zoos have acquired a rare and legally protected reptile, the earless monitor lizard endemic to Borneo, without any evidence that the animals were legally exported. The earless monitor lizard occurs only on the island of Borneo and has been described as a "miniature Godzilla" and "the Holy Grail of Herpetology." Discovered by western scientists almost 150 years ago, for most of this period the species was known largely from pickled specimens in natural history collections, and wasn't recorded from ...

American Indian and Alaska Native Enrollment in Clinical Studies in the National Institutes of Health's Intramural Research Program Dejonna Vigil, Ninet Sinaji, and Barbara Karp This is the first study to provide data about the inclusion of American Indians and Alaska Natives in the National Institutes of Health's Intramural Research Program (NIH-IRP), which provides eligible individuals with access to innovative research treatments that may not otherwise be available. The program's mission is to include all Americans. This study analyzed data from more than 1,800 NIH-IRP protocols active in 2014 and 2017. While the number of American ...

When someone bumps their elbow against a wall, they not only feel pain but also might experience bruising. Robots and prosthetic limbs don't have these warning signs, which could lead to further injury. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces have developed an artificial skin that senses force through ionic signals and also changes color from yellow to a bruise-like purple, providing a visual cue that damage has occurred. Scientists have developed many different types of electronic skins, or e-skins, that can sense stimuli through electron transmission. However, these electrical conductors are not always biocompatible, which could limit their use in some types of prosthetics. In contrast, ionic skins, or I-skins, ...

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden found industrial chemicals in the organs of fetuses conceived decades after many countries had banned the substances. In a study published in the journal Chemosphere, the researchers urge decision makers to consider the combined impact of the mix of chemicals that accumulate in people and nature. "These are important findings that call for regulators to consider the collective impact of exposure to multiple chemicals rather than evaluating just one chemical at a time," says first author Richelle Duque Björvang, PhD student at the Department of Clinical ...

As consumers and corporations alike become more environmentally conscious, the chemical industry is working to find solutions to the plastic waste crisis. One idea is to use biodegradable polymers known as polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) as replacements for traditional plastic packaging and other materials. A feature article in Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, explores the possibilities and pitfalls of PHA. PHA is not a new human invention; this class of polymers can be found in nature and is used to store cellular energy, writes Senior Editor Alex Tullo. Commercially, it is manufactured through the industrial fermentation of sugars or lipids. As cities ...

Researchers from the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) have demonstrated a technology that rapidly detects pollutants in water by measuring their impacts on swimming microorganisms. Their proof-of-concept, published in Scientific Reports, does not require any chemicals, reagents or laboratory equipment. Instead, it leverages the regular camera of a smartphone as well as microorganisms called Paramecia that are ubiquitous in water bodies--making it especially suitable for assessing water drinkability in underdeveloped regions. Typically, levels of environmental pollutants are measured by assessing their impact on a given population. Though such impacts may be visible after several days for microorganisms, it takes several years for the true scale to be ...

People with a rare autoimmune disease, who likely experience more serious isolation during a global pandemic, saw their anxiety and depression improve after receiving online mental health intervention through an international study involving investigators from Michigan Medicine. The paper, END ...

Reston, VA--The effects of COVID-19 on the brain can be accurately measured with positron emission tomography (PET), according to research presented at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) 2021 Annual Meeting. In the study, newly diagnosed COVID-19 patients, who required inpatient treatment and underwent PET brain scans, were found to have deficits in neuronal function and accompanying cognitive impairment, and in some, this impairment continued six months after their diagnosis. The detailed depiction of areas of cognitive impairment, neurological symptoms and comparison of impairment over a six-month time frame has been selected as SNMMI's 2021 Image of the Year. Each year, SNMMI chooses an image that best exemplifies the most promising ...

LMU researchers have identified the 14-3-3sigma gene as an important suppressor of carcinogenesis in the gastrointestinal tract. Intestinal cancers, also known as colorectal cancer, are among the most prevalent forms of malignancy worldwide. If detected early enough, tumors can be surgically excised. However, as cancer growth progresses, cells may escape from the primary tumor, which can then establish metastatic tumors in other organs. Once such satellite tumors have formed, survival rates fall significantly. Formation of the initial tumor can be triggered by mutations in any of a number of genes. Together with postdocs ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Health care workers often don't adopt new guidelines for best practices in medical care until well after those guidelines are established. A team of researchers led by Eunice E. Santos, the dean of the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has developed a new computational modeling and simulation framework to analyze decision-making and identify effective dissemination strategies for medical guidelines. The research team examined guidelines for Type 2 diabetes that were established in 2012 and were still not adopted years later. The researchers found that health ...

The lush forests and more than 7,000 islands of the Philippines hold a rich diversity of life, with 258 bird species who live nowhere but the Philippine archipelago. A new study from University of Utah researchers suggests that, due to deforestation and habitat degradation, more bird species may be endangered that previously thought - including species that may not have been discovered yet. The study is published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. "Our study provides a roadmap for not only which species may warrant heightened conservation attention," says Kyle Kittelberger, a doctoral student in the University of Utah School of Biological Sciences, "but which traits ...

An algorithm can predict when narwhals hunt - a task once nearly impossible to gain insight into. Mathematicians and computer scientists at the University of Copenhagen, together with marine biologists in Greenland, have made progress in gathering knowledge about this enigmatic Arctic whale at a time when climate change is pressuring them. The small whale, known for its distinctively spiraled tusk, is under mounting pressure due to warming waters and the subsequent increase in Arctic shipping traffic. To better care for narwhals, we need to learn more about their foraging behaviour - and how these may change as a result of human disturbances and global warming. Biologists know almost nothing about this. Because narwhals live in isolated Arctic regions and ...

For many of us, our smartphone has become our ever-present companion and is usually far more than just a phone. Thanks to the constant availability of online content as well as our reachability through messenger services and social networks via our smartphone, this everyday object's potential to distract us is high - at work too. This is why many employers view the use of smartphones during work time with suspicion, and countermeasures taken range from asking staff to refrain voluntarily from using them to banning smartphones in the workplace through an internal agreement. But do such measures actually work and, if so, how? This is the ...

DURHAM, N.C. - Special diets, exercise programs, supplements and vitamins -- everywhere we look there is something supposed to help us live longer. Maybe those work: human average life expectancy has gone from a meager 40-ish years to a whopping 70-something since 1850. Does this mean we are slowing down death? A new study comparing data from nine human populations and 30 populations of non-human primates says that we are probably not cheating the reaper. The researchers say the increase in human life expectancy is more likely the statistical outcome of improved survival for children and young adults, not slowing the aging clock. "Populations get older mostly because more individuals get through those early stages of life," ...