Scientific papers suggesting that smokers are less likely to fall ill with covid-19 are being discredited as links to the tobacco industry, reveals an investigation by The BMJ today. Journalists Stéphane Horel and Ties Keyzer report on undisclosed financial links between certain scientific authors and the tobacco and e-cigarette industry in a number of covid research papers. In April 2020, two French studies (shared as preprints before formal peer review) suggested that nicotine might have a protective effect against covid-19 - dubbed the "nicotine hypothesis." The stories made headlines worldwide ...

New York, NY (June 2, 2021) - A phase 3 clinical trial co-led by Mount Sinai researchers is the first to show that immunotherapy after surgery to remove bladder cancer can reduce the risk of relapse for patients who are at high risk of their cancer returning in a deadly metastatic form, according to results published in The New England Journal of Medicine. The immunotherapy nivolumab was used as an adjuvant therapy, which is given after surgery in the hopes of maximizing its effectiveness. The randomized trial, named "Checkmate 274," showed that using nivolumab increased these patients' chance of staying cancer free after surgery compared to patients who received a placebo. The average length of time before relapse nearly doubled ...

June 5, 2021 marks the 40th anniversary of the first report of AIDS cases and the onset of the American AIDS epidemic. In a new, thought-provoking paper in the New England Journal of Medicine, Professor Ronald Bayer and co-author Gerald Oppenheiner capture the experiences of the physicians who were central to the AIDS epidemic. In the words of the doctors, they relay what it meant to look back after 40 years and how they "aged together." The doctors called their experiences extraordinary and the conditions demanding, under which they performed their duties and treated their patients. They speak of their work as "in the trenches," giving their careers immediate meaning and value that they never expected. As several physicians expressed, ...

MINNEAPOLIS - Deep brain stimulation continues to be effective in people with Parkinson's disease 15 years after the device is implanted, according to a study published in the June 2, 2021, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Researchers found that compared to before deep brain stimulation, study participants continued to experience significant improvement in motor symptoms, which are symptoms that affect movement, as well as a reduction in medications 15 years later. Parkinson's disease can progressively affect speech, walking and balance due to a gradual reduction of a chemical in the brain called dopamine. Parkinson's symptoms of muscle stiffness, tremor and slowness ...

MINNEAPOLIS - Older people with type 1 diabetes who have been to the hospital at some point for both low and high blood sugar levels may be at six times greater risk for developing dementia years later. The research is published in the June 2, 2021, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study also found that people with type 1 diabetes who visit the hospital for just one of the blood sugar extremes may also be at greater risk for developing dementia. Type 1 diabetes is a chronic condition in which the pancreas produces little or no insulin. Hypoglycemia is low blood glucose, or the main sugar in blood, that may result in loss of consciousness. Hyperglycemia results from insulin deficiency or extremely ...

URBANA, Ill. -When pigs get hit with significant illnesses during key stages of pregnancy, their immune response may negatively affect developing piglets, making them less productive on the farm. New research from the University of Illinois shows that when those piglets - especially males - experience a second stressor in early life, they are at higher risk of neurodevelopmental and other neurological anomalies, putting them at an even greater disadvantage in production settings. "With more information about maternal illness, what we call maternal immune activation, we can make better decisions about how to handle these types of immune challenges within animal production settings," says Marissa Keever-Keigher, doctoral student ...

In a new study, University of Maine researchers found that culture helps humans adapt to their environment and overcome challenges better and faster than genetics. After conducting an extensive review of the literature and evidence of long-term human evolution, scientists Tim Waring and Zach Wood concluded that humans are experiencing a "special evolutionary transition" in which the importance of culture, such as learned knowledge, practices and skills, is surpassing the value of genes as the primary driver of human evolution. Culture is an under-appreciated factor in human evolution, Waring ...

Icebergs crumbling into the sea may be what first come to mind when imagining the most dramatic effects of global warming. But new University of Arizona-led research, published in Geophysical Research Letters, suggests that more record-breaking temperatures will actually occur in the tropics, where there is a large and rapidly growing population. "People recognize that polar warming is much faster than the mid-latitudes and tropics; that's a fact," said lead study author Xubin Zeng, director of the UArizona Climate Dynamics and Hydrometeorology Center and a professor of atmospheric sciences. "The second fact is that the warming over land is greater than over ...

People of color are more than twice as likely to die after a traumatic brain injury as white people, according to a new retrospective review from Oregon Health & Science University. The study published today in the journal Frontiers in Surgery. In the report, "Racial and Ethnic Inequities in Mortality During Hospitalization for Traumatic Brain Injury: A Call to Action," the researchers analyzed more than a decade of data related to the health outcomes and demographics of thousands of patients treated for traumatic head injuries at OHSU Hospital, one of two Level 1 trauma centers in the state. They found a clear delineation of worse outcomes for people of color. "We have a societal and professional duty to recognize and accept that the effects of structural ...

Hydrogels are commonly used inside the body to help in tissue regeneration and drug delivery. However, once inside, they can be challenging to control for optimal use. A team of researchers in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University is developing a new way to manipulate the gel -- by using light. Graduate student Patrick Lee and Dr. Akhilesh Gaharwar, associate professor, are developing a new class of hydrogels that can leverage light in a multitude of ways. Light is a particularly attractive source of energy as it can be confined to a predefined area as well as be finetuned by the time or intensity of light exposure. Their work was recently published in the journal Advanced Materials. Light?responsive hydrogels are an ...

OAKLAND, Calif. -- In patients with insulin-treated type 2 diabetes, the use of continuous glucose monitors is associated with better blood sugar control and fewer visits to the emergency room for hypoglycemia, a Kaiser Permanente study published June 2 in the journal JAMA found. The monitors have previously been shown to improve glucose control for patients with type 1 diabetes. Continuous glucose monitors are now the standard of care for these patients. "The improvement in blood sugar control was comparable to what a patient might experience after starting a new diabetes medication," said the study's lead author Andrew J. Karter, PhD, a senior research scientist with the Kaiser Permanente Northern California ...

What The Study Did: Researchers investigated the effect of real-time continuous glucose monitoring on glycemic control among patients with insulin-treated diabetes. Authors: Andrew J. Karter, Ph.D., of Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, California, 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/jama.2021.6530) 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. INFORMATION: Media advisory: The full study and editorial ...

BAR HARBOR, MAINE — Many salamanders can readily regenerate a lost limb, but adult mammals, including humans, cannot. Why this is the case is a scientific mystery that has fascinated observers of the natural world for thousands of years. Now, a team of scientists led by James Godwin, Ph.D., of the MDI Biological Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, has come a step closer to unraveling that mystery with the discovery of differences in molecular signaling that promote regeneration in the axolotl, a highly regenerative salamander, while blocking it in the adult mouse, which is a mammal with limited regenerative ability. "Scientists at ...

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University's Computational Biology Department in the School of Computer Science have developed a new process that could reinvigorate the search for natural product drugs to treat cancers, viral infections and other ailments. The machine learning algorithms developed by the Metabolomics and Metagenomics Lab match the signals of a microbe's metabolites with its genomic signals and identify which likely correspond to a natural product. Knowing that, researchers are better equipped to isolate the natural product to begin developing it for a possible drug. "Natural products are still one of the most successful paths for drug discovery," said Bahar Behsaz, a project scientist in the lab and lead author of a paper about the process. "And ...

A team of Colorado State University scientists, led by veterinary postdoctoral fellow Dr. Anna Fagre, has detected Zika virus RNA in free-ranging African bats. RNA, or ribonucleic acid, is a molecule that plays a central role in the function of genes. According to Fagre, the new research is a first-ever in science. It also marks the first time scientists have published a study on the detection of Zika virus RNA in any free-ranging bat. The findings have ecological implications and raise questions about how bats are exposed to Zika virus in nature. The study was recently published in Scientific Reports, a journal published by Nature Research. Fagre, a researcher at CSU's Center for Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases, ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - All fish are not created equal, at least when it comes to nutritional benefits. This truth has important implications for how declining fish biodiversity can affect human nutrition, according to a computer modeling study led by Cornell and Columbia University researchers. The study, "Declining Diversity of Wild-Caught Species Puts Dietary Nutrient Supplies at Risk," published May 28 in Science Advances, focused on the Loreto region of the Peruvian Amazon, where inland fisheries provide a critical source of nutrition for the 800,000 inhabitants. At the same time, the findings apply to fish biodiversity worldwide, as more than 2 billion people depend on fish as their primary source of animal-derived nutrients. "Investing in safeguarding biodiversity can deliver ...

Researchers at Kyoto University's Institute for Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS) have developed a new approach to speed up hydrogen atoms moving through a crystal lattice structure at lower temperatures. They reported their findings in the journal Science Advances. "Improving hydrogen transport in solids could lead to more sustainable sources of energy," says Hiroshi Kageyama of iCeMS who led the study. Negatively charged hydrogen 'anions' can move very quickly through a solid 'hydride' material, which consists of hydrogen atoms attached to other chemical elements. This system is a promising contender for clean energy, but the fast ...

Stone tools have been made by humans and their ancestors for millions of years. For archaeologists these rocky remnants - lithic artefacts and flakes - are of key importance. Because of their high preservation potential they are among the most common findings in archaeological excavations. Worldwide, numerical dating of these lithic artefacts, especially when they occur as surface findings, remains a major challenge. Usually, stone tools cannot be dated directly, but only when they are embedded in sediment layers together with, for example, organic material. The age of such organic material can be constrained via the radiocarbon technique. If such datable organic remains are ...

Tested on human blood in the lab, the selective nanocapsules could reduce the side effects of a major blood clot dissolving drug, which include bleeding on the brain. If confirmed with animal tests, the nanocapsules could also make the drug more effective at lower doses. Blood clots, also known as thrombi, are a key cause of strokes and heart attacks which are leading causes of death and ill-health worldwide. They can be treated with a clot dissolving drug called tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) which disrupts clots to clear the blocked blood vessel and re-establish blood ...

Known as nature's own sonar system, echolocation occurs when an animal emits a sound that bounces off objects in the environment, returning echoes that provide information about the surrounding space. While echolocation is well known in whale or bat species, previous research has also indicated that some blind people may use click-based echolocation to judge spaces and improve their navigation skills. Equipped with this knowledge, a team of researchers, led by Dr Lore Thaler, of Durham University, UK, delved into the factors that determine how people learn this skill. Over the course of a 10-week training programme, the team investigated how blindness and age affect learning ...

Atomically thin van der Waals magnets are widely seen as the ultimately compact media for future magnetic data storage and fast data processing. Controlling the magnetic state of these materials in real-time, however, has proven difficult. But now, an international team of researchers led by Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) has managed to use light in order to change the anisotropy of a van der Waals antiferromagnet on demand, paving the way to new, extremely efficient means of data storage. The thin atomic layers that make up van der Waals magnets may seem extremely fragile, but they can be about 200 times stronger ...

In a six-month study of more than 1,000 Americans, R. Kelly Garrett and Robert Bond found that U.S. conservatives were less able to distinguish truth from falsehoods in 20 viral political news stories that appeared online between January and July 2019. Differences in the political orientation of these stories may help explain this observation, the researchers note, writing that "we find that high-profile true political claims tend to promote issues and candidates favored by liberals, while falsehoods tend to be better for conservatives." Two-thirds (65%) of the high-profile true stories were characterized as benefiting the political left, compared with only 10% that were described as benefiting the political right. Among high-profile false stories, 45.8% were perceived to benefit the ...

Individuals at higher risk of developing pancreatic cancer could be identified earlier using machine learning (ML) techniques which would result in a greater number of patients surviving the disease, suggests a new study published in PLOS ONE. The study was led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and funded by the UK charity Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund (PCRF). It used UK electronic health records for more than 1,000 patients aged 15-99 years who were diagnosed with pancreatic cancer between January 2005 and June 2009. The researchers examined numerous symptoms and ...

A team of researchers led by diabetes specialists and biomedical engineers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Cornell University has demonstrated that, using a miniscule device, they can implant insulin-secreting cells into diabetic mice. Once implanted, the cells secrete insulin in response to blood sugar, reversing diabetes without requiring drugs to suppress the immune system. The findings are published June 2 in the journal Science Translational Medicine. "We can take a person's skin or fat cells, make them into stem cells and then grow those stem cells into insulin-secreting cells," said Jeffrey R. Millman, PhD, an associate professor of medicine at Washington ...

A new study reveals that B cells can produce antibodies against the H1N1 influenza virus that also neutralize various other influenza strains, marking a development that could inform research into potential universal flu vaccines. The findings showed that the antibodies targeted two conserved regions of the virus - the cause of the 2009 swine flu pandemic - and that transfers of the antibodies protected mice from lethal infection. The work suggests that vaccines that target the two sites might be able to protect against a broader array of flu strains. Influenza is one of humanity's greatest microbial ...