A new Northwestern University study reaffirms the importance of getting a good night's sleep. By examining fruit flies' brain activity and behavior, the researchers found that deep sleep has an ancient, restorative power to clear waste from the brain. This waste potentially includes toxic proteins that may lead to neurodegenerative disease. "Waste clearance could be important, in general, for maintaining brain health or for preventing neurogenerative disease," said Dr. Ravi Allada, senior author of the study. "Waste clearance may occur during wake and sleep but is substantially enhanced during deep sleep." The ...

Rubbing against catnip and silver vine transfers plant chemicals that researchers have now shown protect cats from mosquitoes. The results also demonstrate that engaging with nepetalactol, which the study identified as the most potent of many intoxicating iridoid compounds found in silver vine, activates the opioid reward system in both domesticated felines and big jungle cats. While nepetalactol had been previously identified, these studies directly illuminate its extremely potent effect on cats. And by revealing the biological significance of well-known feline behaviors, ...

Methamphetamine overdose deaths surged in an eight-year period in the United States, according to a study published today in JAMA Psychiatry. The analysis revealed rapid rises across all racial and ethnic groups, but American Indians and Alaska Natives had the highest death rates overall. The research was conducted at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health. Deaths involving methamphetamines more than quadrupled among non-Hispanic American Indians and Alaska Natives from 2011-2018 (from 4.5 to 20.9 per 100,000 people) overall, with ...

BOSTON -- While deaths related to heart disease have declined among older people, studies suggest that death rates among younger patients have remained stagnant or increased slightly. To understand what factors put younger individuals at higher risk of premature coronary heart disease (CHD), researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Mayo Clinic analyzed more than 50 risk factors in 28,024 women who participated in the decades-long Women's Health Study. Notably, women under 55 with type-2 diabetes had a tenfold greater risk of having CHD over the next two decades, with lipoprotein insulin resistance ...

Over the past 20 years, scientists have been developing metamaterials, or materials that don't occur naturally and whose mechanical properties result from their designed structure rather than their chemical composition. They allow researchers to create materials with specific properties and shapes. Metamaterials are still not widely used in everyday objects, but that could soon change. Tian Chen, a post-doc at two EPFL labs - the Flexible Structures Laboratory, headed by Pedro Reis, and the Geometric Computing Laboratory, headed by Mark Pauly - has taken metamaterials one step further, ...

What The Study Did: This observational study examined how COVID-19-related government-mandated closures and restrictions were associated with changes in mobility and the spread of COVID-19 in Nigeria. Author: Daniel O. Erim, M.D., Ph.D., M.Sc., of Parexel International in Durham, North Carolina, 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.2020.32101) Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support. #  ...

Suppose Smokey the Bear were to go on a tear and start setting forest fires instead of putting them out. That roughly describes the behavior of certain cells of our immune system that become increasingly irascible as we grow older. Instead of stamping out embers, they stoke the flames of chronic inflammation. Biologists have long theorized that reducing this inflammation could slow the aging process and delay the onset of age-associated conditions, such as heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, cancer and frailty, and perhaps even forestall the gradual loss of mental acuity that happens to nearly everyone. Yet the question of ...

What The Study Did: Researchers examined individuals' motivation to self-test and to distribute self-test kits given the urgent need to increase COVID-19 testing coverage and contact tracing. Author: Cedric Bien-Gund, M.D., of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, 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.2020.34001) 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 of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support. #  #  ...

What The Study Did: This investigation analyzed U.S. county-level associations of income inequality, racial/ethnic composition and political attributes with COVID-19 cases and mortality. Author: Tim F. Liao, Ph.D., of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 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.2020.34578) Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support. #  #  # Media advisory: ...

Many patients with multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer, eventually develop resistance to one treatment after another. That's in part because cancer stem cells drive the disease -- cells that continually self-renew. If a therapy can't completely destroy these malignant stem cells, the cancer is likely to keep coming back. Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Ionis Pharmaceuticals are taking a new, targeted approach to myeloma treatment -- silencing IRF4, a gene that allows myeloma stem cells and tumor cells to proliferate and survive. Past studies have shown that high IRF4 levels are associated with lower overall survival rates for patients with the disease. In a study published ...

Attine ants are farmers, and they grow fungus as food. Pseudonocardia and Streptomyces bacteria are their farmhands, producing metabolites that protect the crop from pathogens. Surprisingly, these metabolites lack common structural features across bacteria from different geographic locations, even though the ants share a common ancestor. Now, researchers report in ACS Central Science they have identified the first shared antifungal compound among many of these bacteria across Brazil. The compound could someday have medical applications. Attine ants originated as one species at a single location in the Amazon 50 million years ago. They have evolved to 200 species that have spread their farming practices ...

Renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power, could help decrease the world's reliance on fossil fuels. But first, power companies need a safe, cost-effective way to store the energy for later use. Massive lithium-ion batteries can do the job, but they suffer from safety issues and limited lithium availability. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Nano Letters have made a prototype of an anode-free, zinc-based battery that uses low-cost, naturally abundant materials. Aqueous zinc-based batteries have been previously explored for grid-scale energy storage ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Approximately 1.5 million heart attacks and strokes occur every year in men and women in the U.S. Sex and age play a large part in who experiences a heart attack, the methods used to treat these heart attacks, and the eventual post hospital outcomes of the people who experience heart attacks. Mayo Clinic researchers discuss these sex and age differences in study findings published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings. In this study, Mayo Clinic researchers wanted to see if age was a key factor in sex-related differences in patients with a heart attack. Using public all-payer hospitalization data from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample, the team of researchers ...

New research led by BirdLife International, the University of East Anglia (UEA) and British Antarctic Survey highlights how a proposed network of marine protected areas could help safeguard some of the most important areas at sea for breeding Antarctic penguins. The findings, published today in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, show that if all the Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) proposed around Antarctica were adopted, the permanent conservation of high-quality areas for a flagship group of Antarctic wildlife - the penguins - would increase by between 49% and 100% depending on the species. The Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica is home to thousands of unique species, including seals, whales and four species ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (Jan. 20, 2021)--Hot flashes, insomnia, and vaginal dryness are commonly reported symptoms that accompany the menopause transition. A new study suggests that such symptoms--especially psychological and sexual problems--are worse for women who have premature ovarian insufficiency (POI) than for women undergoing natural menopause. Study results are published online today in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS). Premature ovarian insufficiency is defined as the cessation of ovarian function that leads to menopause before the age of 40 years. The ...

A 15-year research and advocacy effort to make microwave ovens safer has led to a change in national manufacturing standards that will make microwaves more difficult for young children to open, protecting them from the severe microwave-related burns that scar hundreds of kids under 5 years old in the United States each year. Researchers at Rush University Medical Center and other leaders of the campaign, who worked diligently to document the frequency and severity of these injuries and young children's vulnerability to them, published the results of their efforts in The Journal of Pediatrics ...

January 20, 2021 - Plant breeders are constantly working to develop new bean varieties to meet the needs and desires of the food industry. But not everyone wants the same thing. Many consumers desire heirloom-type beans, which have great culinary quality and are visually appealing. On the other hand, farmers desire beans with better END ...

Scientists have discovered how bacteria commonly responsible for seafood-related stomach upsets can go dormant and then "wake up". Vibrio parahaemolyticus is a marine bacterium that can cause gastroenteritis in humans when eaten in raw or undercooked shellfish such as oysters and mussels. Some of these bacteria are able to turn dormant in poor growth conditions such as cold temperatures - and can remain in that state of hibernation for long periods before resuscitating. University of Exeter scientists have identified a population of these dormant cells that are better at waking up, and have discovered an enzyme involved in that waking up process. "Most of these bacteria die when they encounter poor growth conditions, but we identified sub-populations ...

BEER-SHEVA, Israel...January 20, 2021 -Ben-Gurion University of the Negev researchers have discovered that the protein BMP5/7 offers promising therapeutics that could slow down or halt the progression of Parkinson's disease. The findings were published in the prestigious clinical neurology journal, END ...

A new negative pressure ventilator which could provide additional treatment options for patients with respiratory failure, including those with COVID-19 - and whose design can be easily adapted to developing countries - has been created by a team that includes anaesthetists, nurses and engineers. Details on the new exovent system - which is similar in design but much smaller in scale and easier to use than the devices used to help treat polio patients during the 1950s - are published in Anaesthesia (a journal of the Association of Anaesthetists). Use of this system ...

Protected areas are critical to mitigating extinction of species; however, they may also be in conflict with efforts to feed the growing human population. A new study shows that 6% of all global terrestrial protected areas are already made up of cropland, a heavily modified habitat that is often not suitable for supporting wildlife. Worse, 22% of this cropland occurs in areas supposedly enjoying the strictest levels of protection, the keystone of global biodiversity protection efforts. This finding was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by researchers at the University of Maryland's National Socio-Environmental ...

The Tiger Rattlesnake possesses the simplest, yet most toxic venom of any rattlesnake species, and now new research from a team lead by a University of South Florida biologist can explain the genetics behind the predator's fearsome bite. Published in the new edition of "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences," USF Department of Integrative Biology Assistant Professor Mark Margres and colleagues across the southeastern United States have sequenced the genome of the Tiger Rattlesnake to understand the genotype of the venom trait. Despite the simplicity of the Tiger Rattlesnake's venom, Margres says it is roughly 40 times more toxic than the venom of the Eastern Diamondback ...

A new therapy developed by researchers at Rush University Medical Center is showing success as a way to prevent COVID-19 symptoms in mice. In a study published in the Journal of Neuroimmune Pharmacology, mouse models with COVID-19 showed positive results when a small peptide was introduced nasally. The peptide proved effective in reducing fever, protecting the lungs, improving heart function and reversing cytokine storm -- a condition in which an infection triggers the immune system to flood the bloodstream with inflammatory proteins. The researchers also report success in preventing the disease from progression. "This ...

Disasters in high-risk industries can have catastrophic environmental, financial and human safety consequences. One way these industries help prevent and mitigate disasters is formal procedures designed to standardize how work is done. These procedures typically come in the form of a written document workers use while performing a task. Camille Peres, associate professor at the Texas A&M University School of Public Health, said that there are two models of safety companies usually follow to varying degrees, whether they realize it or not. Safety model one "is very much a control paradigm," Peres said. "The idea the company has is that if they control absolutely everything that's going on, then they will be safe." This ...

Before he joined the University of Texas at Arlington as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and founded the Robotic Vision Laboratory there, William Beksi interned at iRobot, the world's largest producer of consumer robots (mainly through its Roomba robotic vacuum). To navigate built environments, robots must be able to sense and make decisions about how to interact with their locale. Researchers at the company were interested in using machine and deep learning to train their robots to learn about objects, but doing so requires a large dataset of images. While there are millions of photos and videos of rooms, none were shot from the vantage point of a robotic vacuum. Efforts to train using images with human-centric perspectives failed. Beksi's ...