Trees are often heralded as the heroes of environmental mitigation. They remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which slows the pace of climate change, and sequester nutrients such as nitrogen, which improves water and air quality. Not all tree species, however, perform these services similarly, and some of the strongest impacts that trees have on ecosystems occur below the surface, away from the eyes of observers. This complicates efforts to predict what will happen as tree species shift owing to pests, pathogens, and climate change as well as to predict which species are most beneficial in reforestation ...

Parents know the scenario all too well: their child misbehaves and it comes time for discipline. Research conducted globally shows that spanking is not the best option. But verbal reasoning, which explains why the behavior is wrong, may not always have the intended positive effect if the parent is loud and abrupt, according to a new University of Michigan study. The findings indicate both positive and negative outcomes that could have lasting consequences on children's emotional development. Verbal reasoning was associated with higher levels of getting along with others, but also with increased aggression and higher levels of distraction. "Positive discipline doesn't always seem to have all that many positive benefits," ...

Another wave of COVID-19 is putting millions out of work, while tens of millions more remain unemployed, and Congress debates aid. Now, a new Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) study shows that unemployment help directly translates to people being able to put food on the table. The CARES Act--passed in March of 2020-- expanded unemployment insurance coverage, amount, and duration. Published in JAMA Network Open, the study finds that receiving unemployment insurance cuts a person's risk of food insecurity by a third, and halves the likelihood of needing to eat less because of financial constraints. And receiving more coverage, such as the weekly $600 supplement included in CARES until last July, means an even bigger reduction in the risk of going hungry. "There ...

RICHLAND, Wash.?Unless radon gas is discovered in a home inspection, most people remain blissfully unaware that rocks like granite, metal ores, and some soils contain naturally occurring sources of radiation. In most cases, low levels of radiation are not a health concern. But some scientists and engineers are concerned about even trace levels of radiation, which can wreak havoc on sensitive equipment. The semiconductor industry, for instance, spends billions each year to source and "scrub" ultra-trace levels of radioactive materials from microchips, transistors and sensitive sensors. Now chemists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have developed ...

What if scientists knew exactly what impact the SARS-CoV-2 virus had inside our lung cells, within the first few hours of being infected? Could they use that information to find drugs that would disrupt the virus' replication process before it ever gets fully underway? The discovery that several existing FDA-approved drugs--including some originally designed to fight cancer--can stop coronavirus in its tracks indicates the answer is a resounding yes. A team of Boston University researchers--hailing from BU's National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories ...

Philadelphia, January 29, 2021--Researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have developed a gene therapy vector for blood disorders like sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia that is potentially safer and more effective than those currently used in gene therapy trials for those conditions. The vector, an engineered vehicle for delivering functional copies of the hemoglobin gene to correct a genetic abnormality, leads to the production of more hemoglobin with a lower dose, minimizing the risk of toxic side effects. The findings were published today in Molecular Therapy. "These results have many potential benefits for the successful treatment of patients ...

PITTSBURGH, Jan. 29, 2021 - A study led by UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine shows that Black children are 18% less likely to get imaging tests as part of their emergency department visit compared to White children. Hispanic children are 13% less likely to have imaging done than Whites. The researchers suggest that this disparity results from overuse in White children, though underuse in minority children probably plays a part as well. The root cause likely stems from both patient preferences and implicit bias among providers. "Something else is going on here that's beyond the clinical, that's beyond the diagnoses," said study lead author Jennifer Marin, M.D., M.Sc., associate ...

In just one year, COVID-19 has killed more than 400,000 Americans, and infected more than 24 million others. But a new study shows just how unevenly those deaths and cases have played out across the country. It finds that the more disadvantaged a county's population was before the pandemic, the higher the toll of coronavirus last spring and summer. That level of disadvantage, measured on a standard scale called the Social Vulnerability Index (SVI), tracked closely with the number of cases and deaths per 100,000 residents in each county, according to the new University of Michigan study. The ten-point SVI score combines many measures of the social disadvantage of a county's population, with higher scores meaning greater disadvantage. For every ...

What The Study Did: Maternally derived antibodies are a key element of neonatal immunity. This study examined the association between maternal and neonatal SARS-CoV-2-specific antibody concentrations because understanding the dynamics of maternal antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection during pregnancy and subsequent transplacental antibody transfer can inform neonatal management as well as maternal vaccination strategies. Authors: Scott E. Hensley, Ph.D., of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and Karen M. Puopolo, M.D., Ph.D., of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, are the corresponding authors. To ...

What The Study Did: Researchers investigated the association between county-level social risk factors and COVID-19 cases and deaths, as well as weekly changes in cumulative cases and mortality, using publicly available data sets as of July 29, 2020. Authors: Renuka Tipirneni, M.D., M.Sc., of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, is th corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.36462) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article ...

What The Study Did: This study investigated how unemployment insurance and a $600 per week federal supplement to unemployment insurance were associated with food insecurity among people in low- and middle-income households who lost jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Authors: Julia Raifman, Sc.D., of the Boston University School of Public Health, 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/jamanetworkopen.2020.35884) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict ...

What The Study Did: Researchers examined if the use of diagnostic imaging for children receiving care in pediatric emergency departments in the United States differs by race and ethnicity. Authors: Jennifer R. Marin, M.D., M.Sc., of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, 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/jamanetworkopen.2020.33710) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, ...

Researchers at the University of Arizona are developing a COVID-19 testing method that uses a smartphone microscope to analyze saliva samples and deliver results in about 10 minutes. The UArizona research team, led by biomedical engineering professor Jeong-Yeol Yoon, aims to combine the speed of existing nasal swab antigen tests with the high accuracy of nasal swab PCR, or polymerase chain reaction, tests. The researchers are adapting an inexpensive method that they originally created to detect norovirus - the microbe famous for spreading on cruise ships - using a smartphone microscope. They plan to use the method in conjunction with a saline swish-gargle test developed by Michael Worobey, ...

Evidence is emerging that vitamin D - and possibly vitamins K and A - might help combat COVID-19. A new study from the University of Bristol published in the journal of the German Chemical Society Angewandte Chemie has shown how they - and other antiviral drugs - might work. The research indicates that these dietary supplements and compounds could bind to the viral spike protein and so might reduce SARS-CoV-2 infectivity. In contrast, cholesterol may increase infectivity, which could explain why having high cholesterol is considered a risk factor for serious ...

An international team of researchers led by Oxford Brookes University shows that black howler monkeys in Mexico not only remember where important events took place in their habitat, but also when to return to such locations. The researchers recorded the behaviour of five groups of black howler monkeys accumulating over 3,000 hours of field observations at Palenque National Park, southern Mexico. Expert fruit foragers Black howler monkeys were observed navigating deliberately towards out of sight fruit trees that were ripening. Fruit is a desired food by many animals in rainforests so being able to anticipate when fruit is going to be available and where, is a great strategy to forage ahead of competitors. ...

This is the conclusion of a recent study by an international team of researchers, including Anne-Marie Elbe, Professor of Sports Psychology at Leipzig University. The finding is of social importance because experiences in adolescence in particular have a formative influence on attitudes and behaviour in later life. In sport, football is considered a model of inclusion. "Remarkably, to the best of our knowledge, theory and research on feelings of inclusion in (youth) team sports is lacking," the authors write in their study. They add that filling this gap is important, because team sports are not necessarily inclusive by nature. For ...

Using the developing eye of the fruit fly as a test platform, researchers found that RPS-12 protein overproduction appears to trigger triple-negative breast cancer and possibly some other malignancies. The protein indirectly switches on an important inracellular signaling pathway active while the embryo develops and shut down in healthy cells of adults. Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU), the University of Geneva, and the Institute of Protein Research (Russia) scientists addressed the problem in Scientific Reports. Researchers have taken another step towards targeted treatment of tumors. The idea of such a therapy is to identify the necessary ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Childhood trauma could affect the trajectory of multiple sclerosis development and response to treatment in adulthood, a new study in mice found. Mice that had experienced stress when young were more likely to develop the autoimmune disorder and less likely to respond to a common treatment, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign found. However, treatment that activated an immune-cell receptor mitigated the effects of childhood stress in the mice. Multiple sclerosis is a progressive autoimmune disease in which the body attacks and strips ...

It all sounds similar to a dance event - but are singles or couples dancing here? This was the question Ali Isbilir and Dr. Paolo Annibale at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association (MDC) were trying to answer. However, their investigation did not involve a ballroom, but the cell membrane. The question behind their investigation: does a particular protein receptor on the surface of cancer and immune cells appear alone or connect in pairs? The receptor is called "CXCR4" - the subject of heated debate among experts in recent years due to its mysterious relationship ...

(Boston)--There is a growing awareness of systematic inequality and structural racism in American society. Science and medicine are no exception, as evidenced by historical instances of discrimination and overt racism. In a perspective piece in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM), take an honest look at how the current practice of nephrology (kidney medicine) may have elements rooted in racist ideologies. For twenty years, kidney function has been estimated based on lab tests and equations that consider ...

A combination of reduced-dose radiotherapy using intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) combined with concurrent cisplatin met the threshold for disease control and quality of life compared to the standard of care for good-risk patients with HPV-associated oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma on the NRG Oncology clinical trial NRG-HN002. The outcomes from this data justify the advancement of the reduced radiotherapy dose with cisplatin to a Phase III clinical trial setting in this population. These results were recently published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. "Currently, patients with HPV-associated ...

WHAT: The earliest eye damage from prion disease takes place in the cone photoreceptor cells, specifically in the cilia and the ribbon synapses, according to a new study of prion protein accumulation in the eye by National Institutes of Health scientists. Prion diseases originate when normally harmless prion protein molecules become abnormal and gather in clusters and filaments in the human body and brain. Understanding how prion diseases develop, particularly in the eye because of its diagnostic accessibility to clinicians, can help scientists identify ways to slow the spread of prion diseases. The scientists say their findings, published in the journal Acta Neuropathologica Communications, ...

Colorectal cancer is the third most common form of cancer. While 90% of cases are in people older than 50, there is an as-yet unexplained rising incidence in younger people. Family history ranks high among risk factors for developing colorectal cancer, and people with such a history are often advised to get more frequent screening tests or start screening sooner than the recommended age of 45 years old. Those with a family history of cancer often seek out genetic tests to look for mutations linked to cancer risk. However, those tests don't always provide helpful information. In a new paper in the American Journal of Human Genetics, Jacob Kitzman, Ph.D., of the ...

Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) produced and extensively characterized novel organic molecules with a long helical structure. Unlike previous helical molecules, these longer compounds exhibit special interactions between coils that could give rise to interesting optical and chemical properties with applications in light polarization, catalysis, and molecular springs. More often than not, organic molecules with unique 3D structures bear physicochemical properties that cannot be found in other types of compounds. Helicenes, chains of simple benzene rings that adopt a helical structure, are a good ...

For species to survive in the wild, maintaining connectivity between populations is critical. Without 'wildlife corridors', groups of animals are isolated, unable to breed and may die out. In assessing wildlife connectivity, many aspects of the landscape are measured, but the impact of human behaviour has largely been overlooked. Now, an international team led by the University of Göttingen and Humboldt University Berlin, introduce the concept of 'anthropogenic resistance', which should be studied to ensure sustainable landscapes for wildlife and people ...