DALLAS, March 29, 2021 -- As NASA seeks to build a lunar outpost, visit Mars and commercialize spaceflight, the long-term effects of weightlessness on the human heart are of critical importance, according to researchers. By analyzing data from astronaut Scott Kelly's year in space and comparing it to information from extreme long distance, which simulates weightlessness, swimming of Benoît Lecomte, researchers found that low-intensity exercise was not enough to counteract the effects of prolonged weightlessness on the heart, according to new research published today in the American Heart Association's flagship journal Circulation. Each time a person sits or stands, gravity draws blood into the legs. The work the heart does to keep blood flowing as it counters Earth's gravity ...

DALLAS, March 29, 2021 -- Adults with periodontitis, a severe gum infection, may be significantly more likely to have higher blood pressure compared to individuals who had healthy gums, according to new research published today in Hypertension, an American Heart Association journal. Previous studies have found an association between hypertension and periodontitis, however, research confirming the details of this association is scarce. Periodontitis is an infection of the gum tissues that hold teeth in place that can lead to progressive inflammation, bone or tooth loss. Prevention and treatment of periodontitis ...

DALLAS, March 29, 2021 -- Six pregnancy-related complications - high blood pressure, gestational diabetes, preterm delivery, small-for-gestational-age delivery, pregnancy loss or placental abruption - increase a woman's risk for developing cardiovascular disease (CVD) later in life, according to a new scientific statement from the American Heart Association, published today in the Association's flagship journal Circulation. The statement calls for vigorous prevention of these risk factors and primary prevention of CVD for women who experience these complications as they transition out of pregnancy and postpartum care into primary care, with continued follow-up to monitor CVD risk throughout life. About 10% to 15% ...

In a new publication in Nature Communications, associate professor of Plant Science at the University of Maryland Yiping Qi continues to innovate genome editing and engineering in plants, with the ultimate goal of improving the efficiency of food production. His recent work contributes six novel variants of CRISPR-Cas12a that have never before been proven in plants, testing them first in rice as a major global crop. In addition to allowing for a much broader scope of possible gene editing targets, these new tools can edit many different sites in the genome at once, or even repress gene expression to tone down undesirable traits. These patent-pending tools greatly expand the scope of what CRISPR-Cas12a can do in plants, which ...

-- Black middle-aged adults had an incidence rate of stroke 4 times higher than that of white middle-aged adults, according to a Kaiser Permanente study published March 29 in Hypertension. The large national prospective study highlights the need to raise awareness among young and middle-aged Black adults about the impact of high blood pressure, called hypertension, on stroke, the research team said. "What we found striking in this study was that the incidence of stroke began to increase rapidly starting at around age 40 for Black adults," said the study's co-author Jamal S. Rana, MD, PhD, an adjunct investigator with the Division of Research at Kaiser Permanente in Northern California, and ...

Despite the enormous amount of research over the decades into lasers and their applications, there have been few ways to accurately, efficiently, and directly observe fine details of their interactions with materials. For the first time, researchers have found a way to acquire such data from a production laser using low-cost equipment that could vastly improve the accuracy of items cut or etched with lasers. Given the ubiquity of lasers, this could have wide-ranging implications in laboratory, commercial and industrial applications. Lasers are used in an extraordinarily wide range of applications in the modern world. ...

A team of Australian and German researchers has discovered a novel pathway that plants can use to save water and improve their drought tolerance. The research published today in Nature Communications shows that the molecule GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid), most commonly associated with relaxation in animals, can control the size of the pores on plant leaves to minimise water loss. Matthew Gilliham, Director of the Waite Research Institute at the University of Adelaide, who led the research team, said they found: "GABA minimised pore openings in a range of crops such as barley, broad bean and soybean, and in lab plants that produce more GABA than normal. ...

Each human being is made of billions of cells. In order to ensure his survival, cells must coordinate with each other and attach in the right place to perform their tasks. Scientists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, in collaboration with the University of Tampere in Finland, have highlighted the key role of a protein called paxillin, which enables cells to perceive their environment and anchor at the right place with the help of cellular "crampons". Indeed, without functional paxillin, the cell is unable to attach properly and slips continuously. These results, to be read in the journal Communications Biology, shed new light ...

Noninfluenza respiratory viral infections (NIRV) are associated with illness and death rates similar to influenza in hospitalized adults, according to new research in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). In a study of 2119 adults admitted to two hospitals over three seasons (2015-2018) in Edmonton, Alberta, and Toronto, Ontario, with confirmed viral acute respiratory infections, more than half (54.6%) were NIRV infections compared with influenza viruses (45.4%). Among patients with NIRV infections, 21.1% needed respiratory support, 18.2% required lengthy hospital stays and 8.4% died within 30 days of diagnosis. About 15% of NIRV infections were acquired in hospital. "These findings show that clinical ...

A new study finds that coffee pulp, a waste product of coffee production, can be used to speed up tropical forest recovery on post agricultural land. The findings are published in the British Ecological Society journal Ecological Solutions and Evidence. In the study, researchers from ETH-Zurich and the University of Hawai`i spread 30 dump truck loads of coffee pulp on a 35 × 40m area of degraded land in Costa Rica and marked out a similar sized area without coffee pulp as a control. "The results were dramatic" said Dr Rebecca Cole, lead author ...

Twenty percent of high school students have easy access to a handgun, according to a new study from the Colorado School of Public Health on the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. In the study published today in The Journal of Pediatrics, the researchers examined the prevalence of handgun access among adolescents in Colorado and explored individual and geographic characteristics, as well as related health factors. "Our findings highlight that it is relatively easy to access a handgun in Colorado for high school students. This finding, combined with ...

Growing cities tend to run out of land for waste management and new landfill sites. Artificial Intelligence can help city managers create more powerful long-term forecasts of solid waste volumes and landfill requirements, even with missing or inaccurate data. UJ researchers found that a 10-neuron model produced the best 30-year forecast for municipal solid waste in a growing city. All over the world, large cities are running out of space for municipal solid waste. Existing landfill sites are rapidly filling up and no-one wants a new site anywhere near their homes or businesses. Meanwhile, taxpayers aren't interested in higher costs for quality waste management either. One way of significantly extending ...

Groundbreaking research from the University of South Australia has delivered world-first national-level guidelines to better inform children's physical activity and screen time in Outside School Hours Care (OSHC). Developed with input from the OSHC sector, the guidelines aim to address growing concerns of children's sedentary behaviour marked by an increase in regular screen time. Research shows that 31-79 per cent of OSHC sessions are sedentary. The guidelines specifically encourage energetic play while discouraging screen use: Before School Care should schedule 45 minutes of physical activities and no more ...

Arctic habitats have fascinated biologists for centuries. Their species-poor insect faunas, however, provide little reward for entomologists - scientists who study insects - to justify spending several weeks or even months in the hostile environments of tundra or polar deserts. As a result, data on insects from the High Arctic islands are often based on occasional collecting and remain scarce. Vize Island, located in the northern part of the Kara Sea, is one of the least studied islands of the Russian High Arctic in terms of its biota. Scientists Dr Maria V. Gavrilo of the Arctic ...

WATERLOO, Ontario, March 29, 2021--A newly-published paper represents one of the most comprehensive reviews of advancements to come in contact lenses, catapulting the commonly-used medical device to applications well beyond refractive error correction. Contact Lens Technologies of the Future (Jones L, et al.) is now in press from Contact Lens and Anterior Eye, the peer review journal of the British Contact Lens Association (BCLA). It joins nine other papers being printed in next month's special edition as part of the BCLA-led Contact Lens Evidence-based Academic Reports (CLEAR) series. "There are a range of ...

Bioengineering researchers at Lehigh University have identified a previously unknown interaction between receptors in human cells and the spike, or "S," protein of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. This new information could aid in the development of new strategies to block SARS-CoV-2 entry into human cells. X. Frank Zhang and Wonpil Im knew from recent studies that the interaction between the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptors in human cells is stronger than the interaction between the structurally identical spike protein of SARS-CoV-1, the virus that caused the 2002-2004 SARS outbreak, and the same receptors. "Our goal was to characterize SARS-CoV-2 ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Monitoring the progression of multiple sclerosis-related gait issues can be challenging in adults over 50 years old, requiring a clinician to differentiate between problems related to MS and other age-related issues. To address this problem, researchers are integrating gait data and machine learning to advance the tools used to monitor and predict disease progression. A new study of this approach led by University of Illinois Urbana Champaign graduate student Rachneet Kaur, kinesiology and community health professor Manuel Hernandez and industrial ...

United Methodist churches -- whether the congregation is white or not -- have higher attendance when located within white neighborhoods. But racial diversity within a church is associated with higher average attendance over time, according to a new study. "This is a startling contrast to previous research that reported multiracial congregations are less stable," said lead author Kevin D. Dougherty, Ph.D., associate professor of sociology at Baylor University. The study is published in the journal Social Forces. Previous research has found that it is difficult for congregations to build and sustain racially diverse memberships, ...

A new study suggests that clearing the invasive woody weed Prosopis julifora and grassland restoration in Baringo County, Kenya, may have significant financial benefits for local stakeholders and contribute to climate change mitigation. Climate change, land degradation, and invasive alien species (IAS) such as Prosopis julifora are major threats to people's livelihoods in arid and semi-arid areas with each of these having negative impacts on ecosystem services - including vegetation biomass, which is a prime resource for pastoralists and agro-pastoralists. The team, comprising PhD students and established scientists from four countries and different ...

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., March 26, 2021--New research has demonstrated that a magnetic uranium compound can have strong thermoelectric properties, generating four times the transverse voltage from heat than the previous record in a cobalt-manganese-gallium compound. The result unlocks a new potential for the actinide elements at the bottom of the periodic table and point to a fresh direction in research on topological quantum materials. "We found that the large spin-orbit coupling and strong electronic correlations in a system of uranium-cobalt-aluminum doped with ruthenium resulted in a colossal anomalous Nernst conductivity," said Filip Ronning, lead investigator on the paper published today in Science Advances. Ronning ...

Presents a brief overview of the eight COVID-19 editorials published in DMPHP over the past year and using them as a framework to follow the evolution of the Pandemic over time. A review of the salient epidemiological and clinical dimensions of COVID-19 over time is given as well as a discussion of the medical and public health impacts of the disease and the interventions and policies put in place to contain and mediate the virus. The concluding discussion questions the validity of the criteria used in selection of priority groups for vaccination in the US and notes that had a uniform program supporting the immunization of all over age 65 (accounting for 80% ...

How do different parts of the body communicate? Scientists at St. Jude are studying how signals sent from skeletal muscle affect the brain. The team studied fruit flies and cutting-edge brain cell models called organoids. They focused on the signals muscles send when stressed. The researchers found that stress signals rely on an enzyme called Amyrel amylase and its product, the disaccharide maltose. The scientists showed that mimicking the stress signals can protect the brain and retina from aging. The signals work by preventing the buildup of misfolded protein aggregates. Findings suggest that tailoring this signaling may potentially help combat neurodegenerative conditions like age-related dementia and Alzheimer's disease. "We found that a stress response ...

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is underestimating methane emissions from oil and gas production in its annual Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks, according to new research from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). The research team found 90 percent higher emissions from oil production and 50 percent higher emissions for natural gas production than EPA estimated in its latest inventory. The paper is published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. The research team, led by Joannes Maasakkers, a former graduate student at SEAS, developed a method to trace and map ...

Australian researchers have discovered a new way to target an aggressive childhood cancer, neuroblastoma, one of the most common and dangerous cancers in young children. The discovery may also have important implications for some other aggressive cancers in children, including certain brain tumours, as well as some adult cancers, including ovarian and prostate cancer. The new research, led by scientists at Children's Cancer Institute and published in Nature Communications, has discovered that a cellular protein called ALYREF plays a crucial role in accelerating the effects of the cancer driver gene, MYCN, in neuroblastoma. Scientists have known for some time that the one third of children with neuroblastoma who have ...

Tumor targeting and intratumoral penetration are long-standing issues for cancer therapeutics. Researchers from the Institute of Process Engineering (IPE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS) have developed a new platelet-based formulation which demonstrated potent therapeutic effects against cancer in murine models. The scientists utilized the aggregation and activation features of the platelets to address issues of tumor targeting and intratumoral penetration. Upon carrying photothermal nanoparticles and immunostimulators, this biomimetic formulation also achieves an efficient combination therapy against multiple types of cancer. This study was published in Science Advances on March 26. Recently, photothermal ...