Counties with a greater number of cannabis dispensary storefronts experience reduced numbers of opioid-related deaths relative to other locales, a recent University of California, Davis, study has found. This is the first study to examine the association between active cannabis dispensary operations -- both medical and recreational -- and opioid-related mortality rates at the county level, suggesting that providing alternative pain management could improve public health outcomes, researchers said. "While the associations documented cannot be assumed to be causal, they suggest a potential relationship between increased prevalence of medical and recreational cannabis dispensaries and reduced opioid-related ...

WASHINGTON --- Pancreatic cancer, one of the most lethal of all cancers, is capable of evading attacks by immune cells by changing its microenvironment so that the immune cells suppress, rather than support, an attack on the tumor. The scientists also found that that some of the mediators of this suppressive response, including a protein called STAT1, represent potential therapeutic targets that could be used to reverse this evasion and point to possible treatment opportunities. The finding appears January 28, 2021, in Cancer Immunology Research. "This ...

The origin of flowering plants famously puzzled Charles Darwin, who described their sudden appearance in the fossil record from relatively recent geological times as an "abominable mystery". This mystery has further deepened with an inexplicable discrepancy between the relatively recent fossil record and a much older time of origin of flowering plants estimated using genome data. Now a team of scientists from Switzerland, Sweden, the UK, and China may have solved the puzzle. Their results show flowering plants indeed originated in the Jurassic or earlier, that is millions of years earlier than their oldest undisputed fossil evidence, according to a new study published in the scientific journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. The lack of older ...

Although loggerhead sea turtles return to the same beach where they hatched to lay their eggs, a new study by a USF professor finds individual females lay numerous clutches of eggs in locations miles apart from each other to increase the chance that some of their offspring will survive. A study published in the journal "Scientific Reports" found that some females lay as many as six clutches as far as six miles apart during the same breeding season. "Nesting females don't lay all their eggs in one basket. Their reproductive strategy is like investing in a mutual fund. Females divide their resources among many stocks rather than investing everything in a single stock," said Deby Cassill, biology professor ...

Researchers with the Kansas City Veterans Affairs Medical Center and North Dakota State University have designed a new way to deliver pancreatic cancer drugs that could make fighting the disease much easier. Encapsulating cancer drugs in nanoparticles shows potential to target tumors more effectively and avoid danger to other parts of the body. The study results appeared in the Jan. 4, 2021, issue of the journal Molecular Pharmaceutics. Study author Dr. Sushanta Banerjee, a researcher with the Kansas City VA and University of Kansas medical centers, explains that this technology has the potential to drastically improve Veterans' cancer care. "Veteran health care will benefit immensely from such therapeutic models, as they are ...

UPTON, NY--A team of researchers led by chemists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory has identified new details of the reaction mechanism that takes place in batteries with lithium metal anodes. The findings, published today in Nature Nanotechnology, are a major step towards developing smaller, lighter, and less expensive batteries for electric vehicles. Recreating lithium metal anodes Conventional lithium-ion batteries can be found in a variety of electronics, from smartphones to electric vehicles. While lithium-ion batteries have enabled the widespread use of many technologies, they still face challenges in powering electric vehicles over ...

URBANA, Ill. - Getting nutrition right during a dairy cow's dry period can make a big difference to her health and the health of her calf. But it's also a key contributor to her milk yield after calving. New research from the University of Illinois shows diets containing consistent energy levels and the rumen-boosting supplement monensin may be ideal during the dry period. "Many producers use a 'steam up' approach where you gradually increase the energy intake during the dry period to help adjust the rumen and adapt the cow to greater feed intakes after calving. Our work has shown that's really of questionable benefit for many farms, and it may be safer to just ...

Global circulating winds can carry bacteria, fungal spores, viruses and pollen over long distances and across national borders, but the United States is ill-prepared to confront future disease outbreaks or food-supply threats caused by airborne organisms, says a new paper published in the Ecological Society of America's journal Ecological Applications. Claire Williams, the paper's primary author and a research professor at American University, has spent decades studying long-range transport of tree pollen. Her early findings led to collaborations with German and Russian scientists who conducted a wide range of research - on forest genetics, atmospheric chemistry and ...

Maybe space is tight in your home and you share a remote office with your spouse. Or your partner asks you to step away from work to watch the children because they have an important call to jump on. Then you may wonder, 'Well, what makes his/her job more important than mine!' There have been no shortage of conflicts arising from the era of COVID-19, and that includes the challenges at home between married couples. In fact, the more a person felt that their spouse disrupted their daily routine, the more they viewed their relationship as turbulent, according to West Virginia University research. Kevin Knoster, a third-year ...

Washington and Chicago, January 28, 2021--The American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the Spencer Foundation have released a report, Voices from the Field: The Impact of COVID-19 on Early Career Scholars and Doctoral Students, that shares findings from focus groups conducted in spring 2020. The report, available on the AERA and Spencer websites, is part of an ongoing initiative by the two organizations to assess the pressing needs facing scholars and doctoral students during the pandemic and ways to address these needs. "The realities of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing impact on social institutions like school, work, and the family have created challenging ...

Boulder, Colo., USA: Eleven new articles were published ahead of print for Geology in January 2021. The include new modeling, geochemical evidence of tropical cyclone impacts, transport of plastic in submarine canyons, and a porphyry copper belt along the southeast China coast. These Geology articles are online at http://geology.geoscienceworld.org/content/early/recent. Episodic exhumation of the Appalachian orogen in the Catskill Mountains (New York State, USA) Chilisa M. Shorten; Paul G. Fitzgerald Abstract: Increasing evidence indicates the eastern North American passive margin has not remained tectonically quiescent since ...

After analyzing the genomes of more than one-quarter of a million military veterans, a team of scientists, led by researchers at University of California San Diego, Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System (VASDHS), Yale University and West Haven VA, have identified 18 specific, fixed positions on chromosomes (known as loci) that appear associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The findings validate the underlying biology of PTSD, its relationship to comorbid anxiety and depressive disorders and provide potential new targets for treatment, write the authors in the January 28, 2021 online issue of Nature Genetics. "We're very intrigued by the findings of this study, for example, as they pertain to the genetic relationships between different kinds of PTSD symptoms," ...

3D-printable resins, such as those used in dental applications, are marketed as biocompatible Clear tooth aligners, a multi-billion-dollar industry, use these resins Many other consumer products use 3D-printable resins CHICAGO --- Two commercially available 3D-printable resins, which are marketed as being biocompatible for use in dental applications, readily leach compounds into their surroundings. These compounds can induce severe toxicity in the oocyte, the immature precursor of the egg which can eventually be fertilized, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study in ...

HOUSTON - (Jan. 28, 2021) - Like a wrench that gums up the gears, a common anesthetic keeps the motor proteins in your cells from making their rounds. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but how it works has been a mystery until now. Researchers at Rice's Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (CTBP) detail the mechanism that allows propofol -- the general anesthetic injected to knock you out before surgery -- to halt the movement of kinesin proteins that deliver cargoes along microtubules to the far reaches of cells. The drug's effect on kinesin was known, ...

WACO, Texas (Jan. 28, 2021) - An organization that projects an ethical face but whose managers fail to respond to internal ethical situations sends mixed messages to its employees, which can lead to a lack of employees' moral courage and an increase in unethical behavior, according to a study led by a Baylor University researcher. The study, "Management Without Morals: Construct Development and Initial Testing of Amoral Management," is published in the journal Human Relations. The research comprises three survey-based studies of 1,034 full- and part-time workers to answer the question of, "What happens when leaders do not respond to the ethical components of business situations?". "I ...

Washington, DC — Research shows that certain segments of the population who contract SARS-CoV-2, the strain of the virus that causes COVID-19, tend to get sicker and are at higher risk for worse outcomes, and that includes pregnant women and infants under two months. In a new study to be presented today at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine's (SMFM) annual meeting, The Pregnancy Meeting™, researchers will unveil findings that suggest that women who contract COVID-19 during pregnancy are able to make antibodies, but that transfer of these antibodies to their infants is less than expected. Antibodies are produced by the body's immune ...

Washington, DC — Pregnant women who contract SARS-CoV-2, the strain of the virus that causes COVID-19, are at greater risk of dying and experiencing serious complications compared to nonpregnant women who contract the disease, according to a recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Now, in a new study to be presented today at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine's (SMFM) annual meeting, The Pregnancy Meeting™, researchers will unveil findings that suggest that pregnant women who become severely or critically ill due to COVID-19 are at greater risk of dying and experiencing serious pregnancy complications compared to pregnant women who ...

FRANKFURT. Many anti-cancer drugs block signals in cancer cells that help degenerated cells to multiply uncontrollably and detach from tissue. For example, blocking the signalling protein FAK, a so-called kinase, causes breast cancer cells to become less mobile and thus less likely to metastasise. The problem is that when FAK is blocked by an inhibitor, the closely related signalling protein PYK2 becomes much more active and thus takes over some of FAK's tasks. The ideal would therefore be an inhibitor that inhibits both FAK and PYK2 in the same way for as ...

An international team of researchers led by the Universities of Liverpool and Keele, working with Public Health England, has found that the common anticoagulant drug heparin inhibits the SARS-Cov2 virus spike protein, by reducing the virus' ability to attach to human cells and infect them. The research, published in the journals British Journal of Pharmacology, and Thrombosis and Haemostasis, found that heparin interacts with the spike protein on the surface of coronavirus (SARS-CoV2), destabilising its structure and preventing it from docking with the ACE2 receptor on human ...

The American lobster, which supports the most valuable fishery in North America, may be more susceptible to the effects of climate change than previously thought, according to a new study published in END ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. - For Michigan State University's Felicia Wu, the surprise isn't that people who work with livestock are at higher risk of picking up antibiotic-resistant bacteria, but instead how much higher their risk levels are. "This is a bit of a wakeup call," said Wu, John. A Hannah Distinguished Professor in the Departments of Food Science and Human Nutrition and Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics. "I don't think there was much awareness that swine workers are at such high risk, for example. Or that large animal vets are also at extremely high risk." Compared with individuals who don't work with animals, those working on swine farms are more than 15 times more likely to harbor a particular strain of a bacterium known as methicillin-resistant ...

The increased global use of antiviral and antiretroviral medication could have a detrimental impact on crops and potentially heighten resistance to their effects, new research has suggested. Scientists from the UK and Kenya found that lettuce plants exposed to a higher concentration of four commonly-used drugs could be more than a third smaller in biomass than those grown in a drug-free environment. They also examined how the chemicals transferred throughout the crop and found that, in some cases, concentrations were as strong in the leaves as they were in the roots. The study - published in Science of the Total Environment - was conducted by environmental chemists from the University of Plymouth (UK), Kisii University (Kenya) and ...

An international team of researchers has characterized the effect and molecular mechanisms of an amino acid change in the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein N439K. Viruses with this mutation are both common and rapidly spreading around the globe. The peer reviewed version of the study appears January 25 in the journal Cell. Investigators found that viruses carrying this mutation are similar to the wild-type virus in their virulence and ability to spread but can bind to the human angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor more strongly. Importantly, researchers show that this mutation confers resistance to some individual's serum antibodies and against many neutralizing monoclonal antibodies, including one that is part of a treatment authorized for emergency use by the U.S. ...

The multidisciplinary research group Lactiker - Quality and Safety of Foods from Animal Origin, which is attached to the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), is working on (among other things) characterising the biochemical, microbiological and technological processes involved in cheese manufacturing that have a direct impact on its technological, nutritional and sensory quality, as well as on its food safety status. The aim is to provide the cheesemaking industry with the information it requires to ensure safe, high-quality products. The group, which has been working in this field for 25 years, has conducted studies focusing on all aspects of the production of cheeses under the Idiazabal Protected Designation of Origin ...

More effective antiviral treatments could be on the way after research from The University of Texas at Austin sheds new light on the COVID-19 antiviral drug remdesivir, the only treatment of its kind currently approved in the U.S. for the coronavirus. The study is END ...