LOS ANGELES (May 31, 2021) -- Today The Lundquist Institute announced that its investigators contributed data from several studies, including data on Hispanics, African-Americans and East Asians, to the international MAGIC collaboration, composed of more than 400 global academics, who conducted a genome-wide association meta-analysis led by the University of Exeter. Now published in Nature Genetics, their findings demonstrate that expanding research into different ancestries yields more and better results, as well as ultimately benefitting global patient care. Up to now nearly 87 percent of genomic research of this type has been conducted in Europeans. ...

Pollution from manufacturing is now widespread, affecting all regions in the world, with serious ecological, economic, and political consequences. Heightened public concern and scrutiny have led to numerous governments considering policies that aim to lower pollution and improve environmental qualities. Inter-governmental agreements such as the Paris Agreement and the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals all focus on lowering emissions of pollution. Specifically, they aim to achieve a "zero-emission society," which means that pollution is cleaned up as it is produced, while also reducing pollution (This idea of dealing with pollution is referred to as the "kindergarten rule.") Of course, any efforts to achieve this ...

The use of many chemical fumigants in agriculture have been demonstrated to be harmful to human health and the environment and therefore banned from use. Now, in an effort to reduce waste from the agricultural industry and reduce the amounts of harmful chemicals used, researchers have investigated using organic byproducts from beer production and farming as a potential method to disinfest soils, preserve healthy soil microorganisms and increase crop yields. In this study published to Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, researchers from the Neiker Basque Institute for Agricultural Research and Development in Spain investigated using agricultural by-products rapeseed cake and beer bagasse (spent beer grains), along with fresh cow manure as two organic biodisinfestation ...

Oncotarget published "Activation of plasmacytoid dendritic cells promotes AML-cell fratricide" which reported that Interferons have been previously shown to aid in the clearance of AML cells. Type I interferons are produced primarily by plasmacytoid dendritic cells. However, these cells exist in a quiescent state in AML. In addition, the authors showed increased expression of the immune-stimulatory receptor CD40. Then they next tested whether IFNβ would influence antibody-mediated fratricide among AML cells, as our recent work showed that AML cells could undergo cell-to cell killing in the presence of the CD38 antibody daratumumab. These Oncotarget findings suggest that the tolerogenic phenotype ...

Oncotarget published "A higher De Ritis ratio (AST/ALT) is a risk factor for progression in high-risk non-muscle invasive bladder cancer" which reported that a recent study revealed that a high De Ritis ratio was a risk factor in some solid malignancies. This Oncotarget study examined the importance of the De Ritis ratio as a prognostic marker in high-risk NMIBC. This Oncotarget study examined the importance of the De Ritis ratio as a prognostic marker in high-risk NMIBC Among these patients, 32 patients developed recurrent disease and 15 patients showed progression. A multivariate analysis revealed that non-BCG treatment was an independent risk factor ...

Oncotarget published "Piperlongumine promotes death of retinoblastoma cancer cells" which reported that while retinoblastoma initiation is triggered by the inactivation of both alleles of the retinoblastoma tumor suppressor gene in the developing retina, tumor progression requires additional epigenetic changes, retinoblastoma genomes being quite stable. In this report, the authors analyzed the pro-death effect of piperlongumine, a natural compound isolated from Piper longum L., on two human retinoblastoma cell lines, WERI-Rb and Y79. The effects of PL on cell proliferation, cell death and cell cycle were investigated. PL effectively inhibited cell growth, impacted ...

Gender roles absorbed at an early age seem to have shaped today's youth regarding their involvement in politics, in line with traditional stereotypes, concludes a new study, conducted amongst adolescents and young adults aged between 15 and 30 in Italy, within the Horizon 2020 project: "CATCH-EyoU. Processes in Youth's Construction of Active EU Citizenship". In their research article, published in the peer-reviewed, open-access scientific journal Social Psychological Bulletin, the research team from the University of Bologna report that it is young males that would more often engage directly with politics, like enrolling in a political party, acting to influence government policy, contacting a politician or taking part in a protest. On ...

Debates over women's health have long been contentious, but have also resulted in significant improvements in areas like equitable access to health care and survivorship. But the overall picture remains far from perfect. For example, the United States still has the highest rate of maternal death among high-income countries, particularly among African American women. As the United States Supreme Court prepares to hear a Mississippi abortion case challenging the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, some experts are questioning whether women's health may be reversing course. Cynthia A. Stuenkel, MD, clinical professor ...

Tokyo, Japan - Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have enhanced "super-resolution" machine learning techniques to study phase transitions. They identified key features of how large arrays of interacting "particles" behave at different temperatures by simulating tiny arrays before using a convolutional neural network to generate a good estimate of what a larger array would look like using "correlation" configurations. The massive saving in computational cost may realize unique ways of understanding how materials behave. We are surrounded by different states or "phases" of matter i.e. gases, liquids, and solids. The study of phase transitions, how one phase transforms into another, lies at the heart of our understanding of matter in the universe, and remains a hot topic ...

Highlight Among individuals with healthy kidneys, those with more frequent depressive symptoms were more likely to show signs of rapid kidney function decline over a median follow-up of 4 years. Washington, DC (May 28, 2021) -- In a study of adults with normal kidney function, those who had frequent depressive symptoms were more likely to later experience a rapid decline in kidney function. The study will appear in an upcoming issue of CJASN. Depression is a common condition in middle-aged and older adults, and it can contribute to a variety of mental and physical problems. Previous research has found a link between depressive symptoms and rapid kidney function decline in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). To look ...

In 2015, nearly half of Hawai?i's coral reefs were affected by the most severe bleaching event to date. Coral bleaching occurs when warmer-than-normal ocean temperatures prompt corals to expel the algae that normally live inside them and on which the corals rely for food. Bleaching events are dismaying, but corals can sometimes recover, while others resist bleaching altogether. In a new study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers led by Katie Barott of the University of Pennsylvania found that these battle-tested, resilient corals could thrive, even when transplanted to a different environment and subjected to additional heat stress. The findings offer hope that hardy corals could ...

Boulder, Colo., USA: The Geological Society of America regularly publishes articles online ahead of print. For April, GSA Bulletin topics include multiple articles about the dynamics of China and Tibet; new insights into the Chicxulub impact structure; and the dynamic topography of the Cordilleran foreland basin. You can find these articles at https://bulletin.geoscienceworld.org/content/early/recent . Tectonic and eustatic control of Mesaverde Group (Campanian-Maastrichtian) architecture, Wyoming-Utah-Colorado region, USA Keith P. Minor; Ronald J. Steel; Cornel Olariu Abstract: We describe and analyze the depositional history and stratigraphic architecture of the Campanian and Maastrichtian ...

WACO, Texas (May 28, 2021) - About 36 million people have blindness including 1 million children. Additionally, 216 million people experience moderate to severe visual impairment. However, STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education maintains a reliance on three-dimensional imagery for education. Most of this imagery is inaccessible to students with blindness. A breakthrough study by Bryan Shaw, Ph.D., professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Baylor University, aims to make science more accessible to people who are blind or visually impaired through small, candy-like models. The ...

Five researchers shed new light on a key argument to reduce greenhouse gases (GHG): they provided the first economic analysis of conversion factors of other GHG like methane into their CO2 equivalent in overshoot scenarios. Although the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) considers settling for one value of reference (known as "Common Metric") to make this conversion among the Paris Agreement, the models presented here show the economic advantage of flexibility between various factors of conversion. "A key notion in the UNFCCC is to reduce GHG emissions in the least costly way so as to ensure global benefits" highlights Katsumasa Tanaka, primary author of the Science Advances study. The research provides series of dynamic variations of ...

A study coordinated by Luís Graça, principal investigator at the Instituto de Medicina Molecular João Lobo Antunes (iMM; Portugal) and Professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon (FMUL) used lymph nodes, tonsils and blood, to show how the cells that control production of antibodies are formed and act. The results published now in the scientific journal Science Immunology* unveiled key aspects about the regulation of antibody production, with significant importance for diseases where antibody production is dysregulated such as autoimmune diseases or allergies. In the last few ...

A new study of dozens of wild fish species commonly consumed in the Peruvian Amazon says that people there could suffer major nutritional shortages if ongoing losses in fish biodiversity continue. Furthermore, the increasing use of aquaculture and other substitutes may not compensate. The research has implications far beyond the Amazon, since the diversity and abundance of wild-harvested foods is declining in rivers and lakes globally, as well as on land. Some 2 billion people globally depend on non-cultivated foods; inland fisheries alone employ some 60 million people, and provide the primary source of protein for some 200 million. The study appears this week in the journal Science Advances. The ...

Centuries-old smoke particles preserved in the ice reveal a fiery past in the Southern Hemisphere and shed new light on the future impacts of global climate change, according to new research published in Science Advances. "Up till now, the magnitude of past fire activity, and thus the amount of smoke in the preindustrial atmosphere, has not been well characterized," said Pengfei Liu, a former graduate student and postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and first author of the paper. "These results have importance for understanding the evolution of climate change from the 1750s until ...

Since the onset of the CRISPR genetic editing revolution, scientists have been working to leverage the technology in the development of gene drives that target pathogen-spreading mosquitoes such as Anopheles and Aedes species, which spread malaria, dengue and other life-threatening diseases. Much less genetic engineering has been devoted to Culex genus mosquitoes, which spread devastating afflictions stemming from West Nile virus--the leading cause of mosquito-borne disease in the continental United States--as well as other viruses such as the Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) and the pathogen causing avian malaria, a threat to ...

DALLAS - May 28, 2021 - A study of gene activity in the brain's hippocampus, led by UT Southwestern researchers, has identified marked differences between the region's anterior and posterior portions. The END ...

East Hanover, NJ. May 28, 2021. A team of researchers has shown that physical intervention plans that included exoskeleton-assisted walking helped people with spinal cord injury evacuate more efficiently and improved the consistency of their stool. This finding was reported in Journal of Clinical Medicine on March 2, 2021, in the article "The Effect of Exoskeletal-Assisted Walking on Spinal Cord Injury Bowel Function: Results from a Randomized Trial and Comparison to Other Physical Interventions" (doi: 10.3390/jcm10050964). The authors are Peter H. Gorman, MD, of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Gail F. Forrest, PhD, of Kessler Foundation's Tim and Caroline Reynolds Center for Spinal Stimulation, Dr. William Scott, of VA Maryland Healthcare System, ...

Neurological disorders such as Parkinson's disease and epilepsy have had some treatment success with deep brain stimulation, but those require surgical device implantation. A multidisciplinary team at Washington University in St. Louis has developed a new brain stimulation technique using focused ultrasound that is able to turn specific types of neurons in the brain on and off and precisely control motor activity without surgical device implantation. The team, led by Hong Chen, assistant professor of biomedical engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering and of radiation oncology at the School of Medicine, is the first to provide direct evidence showing noninvasive, cell-type-specific ...

Corals are in trouble. All across the globe the diverse and dynamic ecosystems are taking huge hits year after year. The Great Barrier Reef has lost half of its coral since 1995. Scientists are seeing similar declines in reefs from Hawai'i to the Florida Keys and across the Indo-Pacific region. The widespread decline is fueled in part by climate-driven heatwaves that induce coral bleaching -- the breakdown of the relationship between shallow-water coral and the symbiotic algae they rely upon for nutrients. Climate change is a clear and present danger to the persistence of coral reefs, and global reductions in carbon emissions is ...

East Hanover, NJ. May 28, 2021. A team of multiple sclerosis (MS) experts at Kessler Foundation led the first pilot randomized controlled trial of robotic-exoskeleton assisted exercise rehabilitation (REAER) effects on mobility, cognition, and brain connectivity in people with substantial MS-related disability. Their results showed that REAER is likely an effective intervention, and is a promising therapy for improving the lives of those with MS. The article, "A pilot randomized controlled trial of robotic exoskeleton-assisted exercise rehabilitation in multiple sclerosis," (doi: 10.1016/j.msard.2021.102936) was published on April 4, 2021, by Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders. It is available open access at https://www.msard-journal.com/article/S2211-0348(21)00203-0/fulltext. The ...

Adults with cerebral palsy are more likely to experience the debilitating pains of musculoskeletal disorders, but they receive significantly less physical therapy for those ailments, according to a recent study. The findings, published in Disability & Health, analyzed four years of Medicare service claims from community-living older adults with and without cerebral palsy who had one or more ambulatory claims for a musculoskeletal diagnosis. Fewer than one-third of general population patients utilized physical therapy. Those with cerebral palsy, despite having greater risk of secondary comorbid conditions, received even less physical therapy. "The results are staggering, but they support our hypothesis that people with cerebral palsy receive inequitable health care," says Mark ...

Climate change will make outbreaks of West Nile virus more likely in the UK within the next 20-30 years, scientists say. West Nile virus is spread by mosquitoes and has no vaccine. Most people have no symptoms, but it can cause serious neurological disease. Scientists from the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH), Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland (BioSS) and the University of Glasgow developed a new model to determine the risk of a West Nile virus outbreak in the UK. They found the risk is low for the next two to three decades, but will increase as temperatures ...