As India continues to be ravaged by the pandemic, a Swansea University academic is investigating how green tea could give rise to a drug capable of tackling Covid-19. Dr Suresh Mohankumar carried out the research with colleagues in India during his time at JSS College of Pharmacy, JSS Academy of Higher Education and Research in Ooty prior to taking up his current role at Swansea University Medical School. He said: "Nature's oldest pharmacy has always been a treasure of potential novel drugs and we questioned if any of these compounds could assist us in battling the Covid-19 pandemic? "We screened and sorted a library of natural compounds already know to be active against other coronaviruses using an artificial ...

Hospital price transparency is intended to help inform patients about the cost of services and procedures before they receive them. Since Jan. 1, 2021, hospitals in the U.S. have been required by The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to provide pricing information online about items and services. A team of researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts Eye and Ear leveraged the newly available data to analyze price transparency and price variation for the treatment of thyroid cancer. The team found that both transparency and price varied widely, with only half of the cancer centers studied reporting disclosure ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. - New research from MSU shows that an infant's gut microbiome could contain clues to help monitor and support healthy neurological development Why do some babies react to perceived danger more than others? According to new research from Michigan State University and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, part of the answer may be found in a surprising place: an infant's digestive system. The human digestive system is home to a vast community of microorganisms known as the gut microbiome. The MSU-UNC research team discovered that the gut microbiome was different in infants with strong fear responses and infants with milder ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. - It can be easy to forget that the human skin is an organ. It's also the largest one and it's exposed, charged with keeping our inner biology safe from the perils of the outside world. But Michigan State University's Sangbum Park is someone who never takes skin or its biological functions for granted. He's studying skin at the cellular level to better understand it and help us support it when it's fighting injury, infection or disease. In the latest installment of that effort, Park, who works in IQ -- MSU's Institute for Quantitative Health Science & Engineering -- has helped reveal how the skin's immune ...

Toronto -- Math continues to be a powerful force against COVID-19. Its latest contribution is a sophisticated algorithm, using municipal wastewater systems, for determining key locations in the detection and tracing of COVID-19 back to its human source, which may be a newly infected person or a hot spot of infected people. Timing is key, say the researchers who created the algorithm, especially when COVID-19 is getting better at transmitting itself, thanks to emerging variants. "Being quick is what we want because in the meantime, a newly-infected person can infect others," said Oded Berman, a professor of operations management and statistics at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. This latest ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- A study by researchers at Mayo Clinic Cancer Center has found that cancer patients diagnosed with COVID-19 who received care at home via remote patient monitoring were significantly less likely to require hospitalization for their illness, compared to cancer patients with COVID-19 who did not participate in the program. Results of the study were presented Friday, June 4, at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting and published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. "For our study, we evaluated 224 Mayo Clinic patients with cancer who were found to have COVID-19 through standardized screening prior to receiving cancer treatment, or due to symptoms or close exposure," says Tufia Haddad, ...

While previous research early in the pandemic suggested that the vitamin D cuts the risk of contracting COVID-19, a new study from McGill University finds there is no genetic evidence that the vitamin works as a protective measure against the coronavirus. "Vitamin D supplementation as a public health measure to improve outcomes is not supported by this study. Most importantly, our results suggest that investment in other therapeutic or preventative avenues should be prioritized for COVID-19 randomized clinical trials," say the authors. To assess the relationship between vitamin D levels and COVID-19 ...

Effector and killer T cells are types of immune cells. Their job is to attack pathogens and cancers. These cells can also go after normal cells causing autoimmune diseases. But, if harnessed properly, they can destroy cancer cells that resist treatment. Scientists at St. Jude wanted to understand how these T cells are controlled. They looked at enhancers, sequences of DNA that when bound to certain proteins determine how genes are turned on or off. The scientists found that enhancers of a gene named Foxp3 work as a pair to keep effector and killer T cells in check. The enhancers working together is essential. "These ...

A research group from Kobe University has demonstrated that the heat generated by the impact of a small astronomical body could enable aqueous alteration (*1) and organic solid formation to occur on the surface of an asteroid. They achieved this by first conducting high-velocity impact cratering experiments using an asteroid-like target material and measuring the post-impact heat distribution around the resulting crater. From these results, they then established a rule-of-thumb for maximum temperature and the duration of the heating, and developed a heat ...

The melodic and diverse songs of birds frequently inspire pop songs and poems, and have been for centuries, all the way back to Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" or "The Nightingale" by H.C. Andersen. Despite our fascination with birdsong, we are only beginning to figure out how this complicated behavior is being produced and which extraordinary specializations enabled songbirds to develop the diverse sound scape we can listen to every morning. Songbirds produce their beautiful songs using a special vocal organ unique to birds, the syrinx. It is surrounded by muscles that contract with superfast speed, two orders of magnitude faster than e.g. human leg muscles. "We found that songbirds have incredible fine control of their song, including frequency ...

Philadelphia, June 4, 2021--ADHD medications may lower suicide risk in children with hyperactivity, oppositional defiance and other behavioral disorders, according to new research from the Lifespan Brain Institute (LiBI) of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the University of Pennsylvania. The findings, published today in JAMA Network Open, address a significant knowledge gap in childhood suicide risk and could inform suicide prevention strategies at a time when suicide among children is on the rise. "This study is an important step in the much-needed effort of childhood suicide prevention, ...

What The Study Did: This survey study in California assesses what the public knows about extreme risk protection orders and if people are willing to use them to prevent firearm-related harm, both in general and when a family member is at risk, and if not, why not. The orders temporarily suspend firearm and ammunition access by individuals a judge has deemed to be at substantial risk of harming themselves or others. Authors: Nicole Kravitz-Wirtz, Ph.D., M.P.H., of the University of California Davis School of Medicine in Sacramento, 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/jamahealthforum.2021.0975) Editor's Note: The article includes funding/support disclosures. Please ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- Extreme risk protection orders, also known as END ...

The cost of offsetting corporate carbon emissions needs to increase ten-fold to drive meaningful climate action, says a landmark report by Trove Research and UCL. Current prices of carbon offsets are unsustainably low and need to increase significantly to encourage greater investment in new projects that remove carbon from the atmosphere. If prices stay low companies could be accused of greenwashing their emissions, as real emissions reduction and carbon removals are more costly than today's prices. Prices of carbon credits used by companies to offset their emissions are currently low, due to an excess of supply built up over several years, together with issues over whether payments for credits really result in additional reductions ...

Details: Peripersonal space (PPS) is defined as the space near the body within which we can reach external objects and be reached by others. It has the special function of multisensory facilitation. A research team at Toyohashi University of Technology, in collaboration with researchers at Keio University and the University of Tokyo, investigated PPS representation in the front, rear, left, and right directions by audio-tactile multisensory integration using tactile detection with task-irrelevant approaching and receding sounds. They found that the tactile stimulus was detected faster near the body space than far from it when sound approached from any direction, but not when it receded. Thus, peripersonal representations exist with approaching sound, irrespective ...

Proteins are the key players in our cellular processes. Their generation follows principles called transcription and translation. First, DNA copies its genetic information to messenger RNA (mRNA), which then determines the sequence in a chain of amino acids, which finally fold into a protein. The reality, however, is more complex: More than 90 per cent of our genes do not result in only one mRNA and then one protein, but a process called alternative splicing produces several mRNA variants, only some of which are then translated into a specific protein isoform in a specific cell at a given time. Conventional techniques to detect alternative splicing are mostly single time-point measurements that are work-intense and cannot reliably ...

Since the era of meteorological satellites began in the 1950s, continuous remote sensing instrument improvements have elevated Earth science and have significantly increased available atmospheric observations. Likewise, scientists have made considerable advancements in understanding Earth's atmosphere, climate, and environment. Furthering growth of atmospheric science within the last 20 years, satellite-based infrared (IR) sounders onboard low Earth orbiting (LEO) satellites have provided high spectral (or hyperspectral) IR radiances. These sounders can determine ...

The first evidence of a genetic link explaining why some people who catch Covid-19 don't become sick has been discovered A scientific and medical team led by Newcastle University, UK, has demonstrated that the gene, HLA-DRB1*04:01, is found three times as often in people who are asymptomatic. This suggests that people with this gene have some level of protection from severe Covid. The study, funded by Innovate UK, the UK's innovation agency, compared asymptomatic people to patients from the same community who developed severe Covid but had no underlying illnesses, and is published in the HLA journal. The study team believe this is the first clear evidence of genetic ...

They recently published their findings in the renowned journal "Advanced Materials". Cells are not only our biological building blocks, but also highly dynamic, active systems. The research group led by Professor Käs has succeeded in significantly reducing these dynamics with heavy water, without damaging the cells. "Generally, a lot of people know heavy water for its important technical use in nuclear power plants. We took a different approach here and were able to show that for cells, time - or, more specifically, their dynamics - can be significantly slowed down in the presence of heavy ...

Graphene may be among the most exciting scientific discoveries of the last century. While it is strikingly familiar to us--graphene is considered an allotrope of carbon, meaning that it essentially the same substance as graphite but in a different atomic structure--graphene also opened up a new world of possibilities for designing and building new technologies. The material is two-dimensional, meaning that each "sheet" of graphene is only 1 atom thick, but its bonds make it as strong as some of the world's hardest metal alloys while remaining lightweight and flexible. This valuable, unique mix of properties have piqued the interest of scientists from a wide range of fields, leading to research in using graphene for next-generation ...

Engaged listening techniques such as eye contact, nodding and using key words to praise openness helps teenagers when they admit bad behaviour and share hurt feelings with their parents, a new study has shown. University of Reading and Haifa researchers asked 1001 13 to 16-year-olds to watch a staged conversation between a parent and teenager about a difficult situation, with the parent adopting different body language and listening behaviour in different versions. The participants who watched the versions where the parent was visibly attentive stated that they would have felt better about themselves as the teenager and would be more likely to open up about their ...

Water is weird - and yet so important. In fact, it is one of the most unusual molecules on Earth. It boils at a temperature it shouldn't. It expands and floats when it is in the solid-state. Its surface tension is higher than it should be. Now, new research published in the journal Nature has added one other equally strange property to water's list of oddities. The implications of this new revelation could have a remarkable impact on all water-related processes from water purification to drug manufacturing. Stephen Cronin, professor of electrical and computer engineering at USC Viterbi School of Engineering, ...

Cancer researchers say they have established a new, life-extending treatment option for men with prostate cancer that has spread and become resistant to hormone therapy. The injected treatment combines a targeting compound with a radioactive isotope to irradiate and kill cancer cells. An international clinical trial sponsored by Endocyte, Inc., a Novartis company tested the targeted radioligand therapy in study participants with advanced prostate cancer. All subjects had cancers that had spread to other organs and continued to progress after previous treatment with two kinds of drugs, androgen axis inhibitors and taxanes. The experimental treatment significantly extended survival, delayed ...

Leesburg, VA, June 4, 2021--According to a pilot study published in ARRS' American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), the flexed elbow valgus external rotation (FEVER) view can improve MRI evaluation of the ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) in Major League Baseball (MLB) pitchers. "The increased joint space width confirms elbow valgus stress with FEVER view," wrote corresponding author Thomas Knoblauch at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. "Diagnostic confidence increased, and additional UCLs were identified as abnormal." Due to repetitive extreme valgus stress during overhead throwing maneuvers, UCL injuries remain common in throwing athletes. Because standard positioning for elbow MRI ...

DALLAS - June 4, 2021 - Increasing a protein concentrated in brown fat appears to lower blood sugar, promote insulin sensitivity, and protect against fatty liver disease by remodeling white fat to a healthier state, a new study led by UT Southwestern scientists suggests. The END ...