PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- A new study of monsoon rainfall on the Indian subcontinent over the past million years provides vital clues about how the monsoons will respond to future climate change. The study, published in Science Advances, found that periodic changes in the intensity of monsoon rainfall over the past 900,000 years were associated with fluctuations in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), continental ice volume and moisture import from the southern hemisphere Indian Ocean. The findings bolster climate model predictions that rising CO2 and higher global temperatures will lead to stronger monsoon seasons. "We show that over the last 900,000 years, higher CO2 levels along with associated changes in ice volume and moisture ...

Accurate soft tissue measurements are critical when making reconstructions of human ancestors, a new study from the University of Adelaide and Arizona State University has found. "Reconstructing extinct members of the Hominidae, or hominids, including their facial soft tissue, has become increasingly popular with many approximations of their faces presented in museum exhibitions, popular science publications and at conference presentations worldwide," said lead author PhD student Ryan M. Campbell from the University of Adelaide. "It is essential that accurate facial soft tissue thickness measurements are used when reconstructing the faces of hominids to reduce the variability exhibited in reconstructions of the same individuals." Hominids have been readily accepted ...

A new study shows that substantial amounts of carbon dioxide were released during the last millennium because of crop cultivation on peatlands in the Northern Hemisphere. Only about half of the carbon released through the conversion of peat to croplands was compensated by continuous carbon absorption in natural northern peatlands. Peatlands are a type of wetland which store more organic carbon than any other type of land ecosystem in the world. Due to waterlogged conditions, dead plant materials do not fully decay and carbon accumulates in peatlands over thousands of years. Therefore, natural peatlands help to cool the climate by capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere ...

ABSTRACT #9003 HOUSTON - Results from the Phase II cohort of the CodeBreaK 100 study showed that treatment with the KRAS G12C inhibitor sotorasib achieved a 37.1% objective response rate and 12.5 months median overall survival in previously treated patients with KRAS G12C-mutated non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to researchers from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The findings were presented today at the 2021 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting and published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Trial results indicated the targeted therapy was safe and tolerable in a heavily pre-treated patient population. The reported findings make sotorasib the first KRAS G12C inhibitor to demonstrate overall survival benefit in a registrational ...

A research group of the Department of Pharmacy and Biotechnology of the University of Bologna analyzed more than one million SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences. This analysis led to the identification of a new variant that, over the past weeks, has been spreading mostly in Mexico but has also been found in Europe. Their paper published in the Journal of Medical Virology presented the so-called "Mexican variant", whose scientific name is T478K. Like other strains, this presents a mutation in the Spike protein, which allows coronaviruses to attach to and penetrate their targeted cells. "This variant has been increasingly spreading among people in North America, particularly in Mexico. To date, this variant covers more than 50% of the existing viruses in this area. The ...

Tiny algae in Earth's oceans and lakes take in sunlight and carbon dioxide and turn them into sugars that sustain the rest of the aquatic food web, gobbling up about as much carbon as all the world's trees and plants combined. New research shows a crucial piece has been missing from the conventional explanation for what happens between this first "fixing" of CO2 into phytoplankton and its eventual release to the atmosphere or descent to depths where it no longer contributes to global warming. The missing piece? Fungus. "Basically, carbon moves up the food chain in aquatic environments differently than we commonly think it does," said Anne Dekas, an assistant professor of Earth system science at Stanford University. Dekas is the senior ...

Though it might seem inanimate, the soil under our feet is very much alive. It's filled with countless microorganisms actively breaking down organic matter, like fallen leaves and plants, and performing a host of other functions that maintain the natural balance of carbon and nutrients stored in the ground beneath us. "Soil is mostly microorganisms, both alive and dead," says END ...

Like all metals, silver, copper, and gold are conductors. Electrons flow across them, carrying heat and electricity. While gold is a good conductor under any conditions, some materials have the property of behaving like metal conductors only if temperatures are high enough; at low temperatures, they act like insulators and do not do a good job of carrying electricity. In other words, these unusual materials go from acting like a chunk of gold to acting like a piece of wood as temperatures are lowered. Physicists have developed theories to explain this so-called metal-insulator transition, but the mechanisms behind the transitions are not ...

There's a lot of interest right now in how different microbiomes--like the one made up of all the bacteria in our guts--could be harnessed to boost human health and cure disease. But Daniel Segrè has set his sights on a much more ambitious vision for how the microbiome could be manipulated for good: "To help sustain our planet, not just our own health." Segrè, director of the END ...

A new drug reduced tumor size in patients who have lung cancer patients with a specific, disease-causing change in the gene KRAS, a study found. The results of the CODEBREAK 100 phase 2 clinical trial were presented June 4, 2021, at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting and published simultaneously in the New England Journal of Medicine. The efficacy and safety of the drug sotorasib, developed by Amgen Inc., was tested in patients with non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) harboring a specific change, or mutation, in the DNA code for KRAS. The KRAS mutant protein targeted in the study was p.G12C, in which a glycine building ...

Washington, DC--A team led by Carnegie's Thomas Shiell and Timothy Strobel developed a new method for synthesizing a novel crystalline form of silicon with a hexagonal structure that could potentially be used to create next-generation electronic and energy devices with enhanced properties that exceed those of the "normal" cubic form of silicon used today. Their work is published in Physical Review Letters. Silicon plays an outsized role in human life. It is the second most abundant element in the Earth's crust. When mixed with other elements, it is essential for many construction and infrastructure projects. And in pure elemental form, it ...

A study of more than 1,000 demographically representative participants found that about 22 percent of Americans self-identify as anti-vaxxers, and tend to embrace the label as a form of social identity. According to the study by researchers including Texas A&M University School of Public Health assistant professor Timothy Callaghan, 8 percent of this group "always" self-identify this way, with 14 percent "sometimes" identifying as part of the anti-vaccine movement. The results were published in the journal Politics, Groups, and Identities. "We found these results both surprising and concerning," Callaghan said. "The fact that 22 percent of Americans at least sometimes identify as anti-vaxxers was much higher than expected and demonstrates ...

Most Americans should get screened for colorectal cancer beginning at age 45 instead of age 50, according to new recommendations from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which includes UVA Health's Li Li, MD, PhD, MPH. This recommendation applies to Americans without symptoms who do not have a history of colorectal polyps or a personal or family health history of genetic disorders that increase the risk of colorectal cancer. Colorectal cancer is the third-leading cause of cancer death in America, according to the Task Force, and an increasing number of cases are being diagnosed in younger Americans. The Task Force notes that colorectal cancer diagnoses among Americans ages 40 to 49 increased by almost 15% from 2000-02 to 2014-16. Black ...

While previous research early in the pandemic suggested that 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 ...

Tuberculosis (TB) is a deadly infection that occurs in every part of the world. The standard treatment for TB, a six-month multidrug regimen, has not changed in more than 40 years. Patients can find it difficult to complete the lengthy regimen, making it more likely that treatment resistance will develop. A research team led by a Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) investigator reports in the May 6 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine that a four-month treatment regimen using rifapentine is effective for treating TB. Shortening the treatment duration is an important step toward increased patient adherence. In 2019 alone, 1.4 ...

As meat-eating continues to increase around the world, food scientists are focusing on ways to create healthier, better-tasting and more sustainable plant-based protein products that mimic meat, fish, milk, cheese and eggs. It's no simple task, says renowned food scientist David Julian McClements, University of Massachusetts Amherst Distinguished Professor and lead author of a paper in the new Nature journal, Science of Food, that explores the topic. "With Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods and other products coming on the market, there's a huge interest in plant-based foods for ...

Physicists in Israel have created a quantum interferometer on an atom chip. This device can be used to explore the fundamentals of quantum theory by studying the interference pattern between two beams of atoms. University of Groningen physicist, Anupam Mazumdar, describes how the device could be adapted to use mesoscopic particles instead of atoms. This modification would allow for expanded applications. A description of the device, and theoretical considerations concerning its application by Mazumdar, were published on 28 May in the journal Science Advances. The device which scientists from the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev created is a so-called Stern Gerlach Interferometer, which was first proposed one hundred years ago by German physicists Otto Stern and Walter ...

Researchers in Lund, Copenhagen and Norwich have shown that harmful mutations present in the DNA play an important - yet neglected - role in the conservation and translocation programs of threatened species. "Many species are threatened by extinction, both locally and globally. For example, we have lost about ten vertebrate species in Sweden in the last century. However, all these species occur elsewhere in Europe, which means that they could be reintroduced into Sweden. Our computer simulations show how we could theoretically maximize the success of such reestablishments", says Bengt Hansson, biologist at Lund University. In a new study published in Science, the researchers investigated which individuals might be most suited for translocation ...

The COVID-19 pandemic forced instructors to adapt their courses for online learning. Laboratory courses were particularly difficult due to lack of access to specialized equipment for remote learners. To overcome this challenge, researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign designed a laboratory exercise to teach students how to use micropipettes, through remote learning, using at-home kits. Micropipettes are common--and essential--laboratory instruments and are used in several fields including molecular biology, microbiology, and biochemistry. They are used to accurately transfer very small volumes of liquid. To teach students how to use these instruments, the researchers developed kits, costing $135 per student, that were a fraction ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - New research suggests that African American families living in public housing are a "hidden population" when it comes to national suicide prevention efforts. The study showed 11% of Black teens and young adults living in a mid-Atlantic public housing development reported that in the previous 12 months, they had made a plan to die by suicide. The finding fits with what previous research has shown: that African American youths are the fastest-growing group engaging in suicidal behavior and dying by suicide, and have the highest suicide death rate increase among any other racial or ethnic minority group, ...

How plants cope with stress factors has already been broadly researched. Yet what happens when a plant is confronted with two stressors simultaneously? A research team working with Simon Haberstroh and Prof. Dr. Christiane Werner of the Chair of Ecosystem Physiology at the Institute of Forest Sciences and Natural Resources (UNR) of the University of Freiburg is investigating this. Together with colleagues from the Forest Research Center of the School of Agriculture of the University of Lisbon in Portugal and the Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research at ...

Highlights Among adults with kidney failure undergoing hemodialysis in New York City, Black and Hispanic patients were more likely to develop symptomatic COVID-19 than White patients. Neighborhood-level social vulnerability factors were associated with COVID-19 incidence among White patients, but these factors did not explain racial/ethnic disparities. Washington, DC (June 1, 2021) -- In an analysis of patients on hemodialysis in New York City, there were substantial racial/ethnic disparities in COVID-19 rates that were not explained by neighborhood social vulnerability. The findings appear in an upcoming ...

LOWELL, Mass. - A UMass Lowell geologist is among the researchers who have discovered a new type of manmade quasicrystal created by the first test blast of an atomic bomb. The formation holds promise as a new material that could one day help repair bone, insulate heat or convert heat to electricity, among other uses, according to UMass Lowell Prof. G. Nelson Eby, a member of the university's Environmental, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Department. Eby is a member of the research team that identified the quasicrystal substance inside samples of trinitite they examined that were collected from the debris of the first atomic bomb detonated by the U.S. Army on July 16, 1945 in the New Mexico desert. Also known as atomic rock, trinitite ...

New York, NY, June 3, 2021 -- A study of over 59,000 Icelandic adolescents by a team of Icelandic and North American behavioral and social scientists found that COVID-19 has had a significant, detrimental impact on adolescent mental health, especially in girls. The study is the first to investigate and document age- and gender-specific changes in adolescent mental health problems and substance use during the COVID-19 pandemic, while accounting for upward trends that were appearing before the pandemic. The findings are published in The Lancet Psychiatry. The study found that negative mental health outcomes were disproportionately reported by girls and older adolescents (13-18-year-olds), compared to same-age peers prior to the pandemic. At the same ...

A first encounter with the dengue virus typically causes very mild symptoms; however, a subsequent infection is a different story. For a small proportion of people who are reinfected, the virus can cause severe symptomatic disease, which is often life-threatening. "The main hypothesis for some time has been that antibodies generated the first time around, instead of providing protection against disease, can actually exacerbate it," says Stylianos Bournazos, research assistant professor at Rockefeller. "But even in secondary infection, we see a wide range of symptoms--so ...