A biomarker in the blood of patients with bowel cancer may provide valuable insight into the risk of cancer relapse after surgery and the effectiveness of chemotherapy. Research published in PLOS found circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) measured before and after surgery provided a reliable marker for predicting whether the cancer would recur following chemotherapy treatment. The ctDNA also provided a real-time measure of the effectiveness of chemotherapy, highlighting the potential for this test to provide an early indication of the success of chemotherapy in eradicating microscopic cancer. At a glance By measuring levels of ctDNA present in the blood of bowel cancer patients after surgery, researchers were able to predict the likelihood ...

If insomnia keeps you awake at night, Flinders University researchers recommend a trip to the doctor - not for a sleeping pill prescription but for a short course of intensive behavioural therapy. Researchers have developed new clinical guidelines for Australian doctors to give family GPs insights into the most effective treatment for insomnia - Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for insomnia (or 'CBTi'). CBTi improves insomnia, mental health and quality of life, and can be more successful than sleeping pills, say Adelaide Institute for Sleep Health (AISH) sleep experts from Flinders University in a new paper in the Australian Journal of General Practice. Most patients with insomnia managed in general practice are prescribed potentially addictive ...

Paleo researcher Charlotte Prud'homme, who until recently worked at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and is now a researcher at the Université Lausanne, explains: "The 80-meter-thick sedimentary sequence we found at Charyn Canyon in southeast Kazakhstan provides us with a virtually continuous record of five million years of climate change. This is a very rare occurrence on land!" The alternating dust and soil layers provide the first reliable evidence, in one place, of long-term interactions between major climate systems on the Eurasian continent. "Over the past five million years, the land surfaces of Eurasia appear to ...

The so-called 'bullshit jobs theory' - which argues that a large and rapidly increasing number of workers are undertaking jobs that they themselves recognise as being useless and of no social value - contains several major flaws, argue researchers from the universities of Cambridge and Birmingham. Even so, writing in Work, Employment and Society, the academics applaud its proponent, American anthropologist David Graeber, who died in September 2020, for highlighting the link between a sense of purpose in one's job and psychological wellbeing. Graeber initially put forward the concept of 'bullshit jobs' - jobs that even those who do them view as worthless - in his 2013 essay ...

Researchers at the University of Turku, Finland, showed that the antibody treatment reactivates the immune defense in patients with advanced-stage cancer. The treatment alters the function of the body's phagocytes and facilitates extensive activation of the immune system. The immune defense is the body's own defense system equipped to combat cancer. However, cancer learns to hide from immune attacks and harnesses this system to promote its own growth. Therefore, it would be beneficial to be able to return the immune defense back to restricting the advancement of cancer. Macrophages, a type of white blood cell, are central in the fight against cancer. Cancer educates ...

RUDN University mathematician and his colleagues from France and Hungary developed an algorithm for parallel computing, which allows solving applied problems, such as electrodynamics or hydrodynamics. The gain in time is up to 50%. The results are published in the Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics. Parallel computing methods are often used to process practical problems in physics, engineering, biology, and other fields. It involves several processors joined in a net to simultaneously solve a single problem -- each has its own small part. The way to distribute the work between the processors and make them "communicate" with each other is a choice based on the specifics of a particular problem. ...

"Ornaments composed of elk teeth suspended from or sown on to clothing emit a loud rattling noise when moving," says auditory archaeologist and Academy of Finland Research Fellow Riitta Rainio from the University of Helsinki. "Wearing such rattlers while dancing makes it easier to immerse yourself in the soundscape, eventually letting the sound and rhythm take control of your movements. It is as if the dancer is led in the dance by someone." Rainio is well versed in the topic, as she danced, for research purposes, for six consecutive hours, wearing elk tooth ornaments produced according to the Stone Age model. Rainio and artist Juha Valkeapää held a performance to ...

As G7 governments renew commitments to protecting marine spaces and biodiversity, global conservation initiatives such as 30x30 are feared to pay too little attention to the livelihood impacts on communities Close-up inspection of an upcoming marine conservation area in Cambodia shows mixed livelihood consequences ranging from improving relationships to the state to increased anxiety and social division In the long term and on a regional scale in Southeast Asia, communities exposed to marine conservation are poorer and experience higher child mortality Researchers warn that the rapid global expansion of nominal marine protected area (MPA) coverage can undermine community livelihoods if it proceeds with a sole focus on marine resource conservation, a disregard of local ...

Physiologically, milk contains biocomponents that are highly protective against infections. In light of this, the AGR-149-Infectious Diseases group at the University of Cordoba's Department of Animal Health is doing research that focuses on cow's milk as a possible source of Covid-19 control. The results have been published, partially, in the journal Frontiers in Immunology. This is possible due to "crossed immunity", and there is already evidence of the protection it provides, explained one of the principal investigators, Mari Carmen Borge. "It has been shown that the immune cells that the vaccinated animal generates against bovine coronavirus ...

O-quinone methides have been studied at the Samara Polytech for more than ten years. Vitaly Osyanin, Doctor of Chemistry, Professor of the Department of Organic Chemistry, is in charge of scientific work in this area. The results of the latest research were published in the authoritative Russian journal "Russian Chemical Reviews" (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1070/RCR4971). Thus Professor Osyanin and the Candidate of Chemical Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department Dmitry Osipov and the Candidate of Chemical Sciences, the graduate of the Department Anton Lukashenko prepared a review article in which the main known examples of the transformation of o-quinone methides into chromene and ...

Skoltech scientists have studied the hydroxyl defects in LiFePO4, a widely used cathode material in commercial lithium-ion batteries, contributing to the overall understanding of the chemistry of this material. This work will help improve the LiFePO4 manufacturing process to avoid formation of adverse intrinsic structural defects which deteriorate its performance. The paper was published in the journal Inorganic Chemistry. Lithium iron phosphate, LiFePO4, is a safe, stable and affordable cathode material for Li-ion batteries that has been very well optimized for practical applications despite its low conductivity and medium energy density. Yet scientists continue to study the various properties of this material, and in particular the impact ...

There has been concern at how the pandemic has not only hit physical health and the economy but has also impacted our mental health with the possibility of increased rates of suicide. Now a new study - a collaboration between Swansea University, Cardiff University, and the NHS in Wales - has investigated exactly which Covid-related stressors are most likely to trigger suicidal thoughts and behaviours. The researchers also discovered the important role that hope for the future can play - along with individuals' levels resilience - when it comes to coping with these stressors. More than 12,000 people responded to the Wales Wellbeing survey which asked volunteers to share their experiences during the ...

To limit the impacts of climate change it is essential to predict them as accurately as possible. Regional Climate Models are high-resolution models of the Earth's climate that are able to improve simulations of extreme weather events that may be affected by climate change and thus contribute to limiting impacts through timely action. At their highest resolutions, Regional Climate Models are capable of simulating atmospheric convection, a key process in many extreme weather events which is often the cause of very intense and localized precipitations. Although "convection permitting" models are widely used in weather forecasting, they require large supercomputing ...

Building on their previous findings, scientists from the Immuno-Pharmacology and Interactomics group at the Department of Infection and Immunity of the Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH), in collaboration with the Center for Drug Discovery at RTI International (RTI), a nonprofit research institute, have demonstrated that conolidine, a natural painkiller derived from the pinwheel flower and traditionally used in Chinese medicine, interacts with the newly identified opioid receptor ACKR3/CXCR7 that regulates opioid peptides naturally produced in the brain. The researchers ...

A nasal therapy, built upon on the application of a new engineered IgM antibody therapy for COVID-19, was more effective than commonly used IgG antibodies at neutralizing the COVID-19 virus in animal models, according to research recently published by The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth), The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB Health), the University of Houston, and IGM Biosciences, Inc. The study was published today in Nature. Researchers engineered IgM antibodies and found that in all cases, these antibodies were significantly more potent than standard ...

CHAPEL HILL, NC - Airway mucus consists of various proteins such as long mucins MUC5AC and MUC5B, both of which contribute greatly to the proper gel-like consistency of this most essential bodily fluid. UNC School of Medicine researchers led by mucin expert Mehmet Kesimer, PhD, had previously discovered that the total mucin concentrations in the lungs are associated with COPD disease progression and could be used as diagnostic markers of chronic bronchitis, a hallmark condition for patients with COPD. Kesimer and colleagues now report that one of these mucins, MUC5AC, is more closely and reliably associated with the development ...

The University of Guam College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences has released Volume 11 of its peer-reviewed online journal "Pacific Asia Inquiry: Multidisciplinary Perspectives." The volume is available for download on the UOG website at http://www.uog.edu/pai. This latest volume includes manuscripts representing examples of historical, socio-cultural, and philosophical research. Topics range from the impact of climate change and food security in the Marshall Islands to the Jesuit presence in the Mariana Islands, among others. Inserted between the articles are ...

Researchers have been investigating how the brain controls habitual seeking behaviors such as addiction. A recent study by Professor Sue-Hyun Lee from the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering revealed that a long-term value memory maintained in the ventral striatum in the brain is a neural basis of our habitual seeking behavior. This research was conducted in collaboration with the research team lead by Professor Hyoung F. Kim from Seoul National University. Given that addictive behavior is deemed a habitual one, this research provides new insights for developing therapeutic interventions for addiction. Habitual seeking behavior involves ...

MORGANTOWN, W.Va.--If someone joins a church, mosque or synagogue, they may be seeking better emotional or spiritual health. But according to research out of West Virginia University, faith communities have the potential to promote physical wellbeing, as well. A new study led by Angel Smothers, Stephanie Young and Elizabeth Morrissey--researchers with the WVU School of Nursing--and James Thomas from the School of Medicine's Division of Exercise Physiology suggests that healthcare providers who work directly with a faith community can help congregants stick with an exercise program. Their results appear in the Journal of Interprofessional Education and Practice. "Even in Biblical texts, there were always caregivers who ...

In a recently published paper in the Journal of Hydrology, PhD student Mengzhu Chen and Dean of Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University's Design School, Dr Konstantinos Papadikis, analysed historical flood series and meteorological data from 158 catchment areas across the UK. They found that flood series in most areas do not follow historical patterns. This finding directly challenges the use of a type of analysis that focuses on how often floods occurred in an area in the past. Flood frequency analysis has been the cornerstone of flood risk control, hydraulic structure design, and water resource management. "Conventional methods for flood frequency analysis fail to take into ...

Annapolis, MD; June 3, 2021--Amid the steady growth of solar energy production in the United States, pollinator conservation at solar installations has become an appealing secondary pursuit, but the long-term success of such efforts remains to be seen. Can the land within a solar farm be made a true resource for pollinating insects? Will solar developers see value in the extra investment to plant and maintain flowering vegetation? A group of entomologists tackles these questions in a new article published today in the journal Environmental Entomology. They say pairing solar energy with pollinator habitat offers great promise, but scientific evaluation and meaningful standards will be key to making it a true win-win ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - June 03, 2021 - When people think of microbiome, they typically think about the gut, but there's also a breast microbiome, and the role it plays in breast health and breast cancer isn't thoroughly understood. A microbiome is the collection of microorganisms that live in a particular environment in the body. In 2018, scientists at Wake Forest School of Medicine, part of Wake Forest Baptist Health, showed that diet can influence the breast microbiome, demonstrating that like the gut microbiome, the breast microbiota can respond to diet. Now, new research ...

A dash of milk could make all the difference to a healthy heart as new research from the University of South Australia finds that people who regularly consume milk have a lower risk of heart disease. Conducted in partnership with the University of Reading, the world-first study used a genetic-approach to investigate causal relationships between milk consumption and risk of cardiovascular disease. Assessing genetic biomarkers among 400,000+ people, the study found that greater milk consumption was associated with lower blood cholesterol, lower blood lipid levels, and a lower risk of heart disease. Cardiovascular diseases are ...

Almost half of the world's population currently lives in cities and that number is projected to rise significantly in the near future. This rapid urbanization is contributing to increased flood risk due to the growing concentration of people and resources in cities and the clustering of cities along coastlines. These urban shifts also result in more complex and interconnected systems on which people depend, such as transportation networks. Disruptions to urban traffic networks from flooding or other natural disasters can have serious socioeconomic consequences. In fact, what are defined as indirect impacts from these types of events, such as commute-related ...

Researchers from Osaka University, Toyo University, and Kyushu Institute of Technology clarified the expression mechanism of semiconducting and metallic properties in graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) by analyzing the carrier transport properties in the field effect transistor (FET) with a multilayer GNR channel (Fig. 1). The research team fabricated multilayer GNRs with precisely controlled numbers of layers via a chemical vapor deposition method using a solid template. "This enabled us to compare the observed carrier transport properties in the FET using a multilayer ...