Clots in the arteries (arterial thrombosis) are the most common cause of stroke (ischaemic stroke) and have been reported in detail for the first time in young adults who received the Oxford-AstraZeneca covid-19 vaccine in a letter from UK stroke specialists published online in Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry. While rare cases of blood clots have been reported previously after administration of the Oxford-AstraZeneca covid-19 vaccine, these have affected veins and most specifically veins in the brain (cerebral venous sinuses). People who have experienced this unusual form of stroke (cerebral venous sinus thrombosis) have also had low platelet ...

Up to a third of patients taking methotrexate - a common treatment for immune mediated inflammatory conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis/psoriatic arthritis - failed to achieve an adequate immune response to mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in a small study accepted for publication in the journal Annals of Rheumatic Diseases. While mRNA COVID-19 vaccines have been shown to produce an effective immune response in over 90% of healthy adults in clinical trials, it is unknown whether the immune response is as robust in patients with immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMID) who may also be taking immunomodulatory medications. The authors assessed the immune response to the mRNA Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in 82 patients ...

First-born children have a lower risk of cardiovascular events such as heart attacks and strokes than brothers and sisters born later, but people who are part of a large family with many siblings have an increased risk of these events, suggests the results of a large population study in Sweden, published in the online journal BMJ Open. It is well-known that family history - the health of parents and grandparents - has an impact on a person's health, including their risk of cardiovascular events, but now there is growing interest in what influence the make-up of a person's immediate family - the number and age of siblings - might have. The authors accessed data on 1.36 million men and 1.32 million women born between 1932 and 1960 and aged 30-58 years in ...

While some studies suggest female patients treated by female physicians have better outcomes, there does not appear to be a relationship between operator and patient gender and outcome in patients undergoing coronary angioplasty or stenting. These are the results of a first-of-its-kind study by the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Cardiovascular Consortium (BMC2) and published in Catheterizations and Cardiovascular Interventions. The study looked at procedures performed by 385 male interventional cardiologists, and 18 female interventional cardiologists at 48 non-federal hospitals across the state of Michigan. Female interventional cardiologists continue to be markedly under-represented and only perform a small percentage of cases, with women accounting for ...

Army ants form some of the largest insect societies on the planet. They are quite famous in popular culture, most notably from a terrifying scene in Indiana Jones. But they are also ecologically important. They live in very large colonies and consume large amounts of arthropods. And because they eat so much of the other animals around them, they are nomadic and must keep moving in order to not run out of food. Due to their nomadic nature and mass consumption of food, they have a huge impact on arthropod populations throughout tropical rainforests floors. Their mass raids are considered the pinnacle of collective foraging behavior in the animal kingdom. The raids are a coordinated ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Advanced microscope technology and cutting-edge geological science are giving new perspectives to an old medical mystery: How do kidney stones form, why are some people more susceptible to them and can they be prevented? In a new paper published in the journal Nature Reviews Urology, researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Mayo Clinic and other collaborators described the geological nature of kidney stones, outlined the arc of their formation, established a new classification scheme and suggested possible clinical interventions. "The process of kidney stone formation is part of the natural process of the stone formation seen throughout nature," Illinois geology professor ...

Reno, Nev. (May 25, 2021) - After a wildfire, soils in burned areas often become water repellent, leading to increased erosion and flooding after rainfall events - a phenomenon that many scientists have attributed to smoke and heat-induced changes in soil chemistry. But this post-fire water repellency may also be caused by wildfire smoke in the absence of heat, according to a new paper from the Desert Research Institute (DRI) in Nevada. In this pilot study (exploratory research that takes place before a larger-scale study), an interdisciplinary team of scientists led by DRI Associate Research Professor of Atmospheric Science Vera Samburova, Ph.D., exposed samples of clean sand to smoke from burning Jeffrey pine needles and branches ...

Cells are the building blocks of life, present in every living organism. But how similar do you think your cells are to a mouse? A fish? A worm? Comparing cell types in different species across the tree of life can help biologists understand how cell types arose and how they have adapted to the functional needs of different life forms. This has been of increasing interest to evolutionary biologists in recent years because new technology now allows sequencing and identifying all cells throughout whole organisms. "There's essentially a wave in the scientific community to classify all types of cells in a wide variety of different organisms," explained Bo Wang, an assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford University. In response to this opportunity, ...

A new study finds that fly ash--particles left over from burning coal--make up between 37 and 72 percent of all particulate organic carbon carried by the Yangtze River in China, or around 200,000 to 400,000 tons of carbon per year. The study, which is the first of its kind, shows just how big an impact fossil fuel consumption has on Earth. Beyond pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, coal burning dumps about as much particulate carbon into the Yangtze River as natural processes do. The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) on May 17. "About one-fifth of the world's coal consumption occurs along this river," says Gen Li, postdoctoral ...

A new report by Skoltech scientists and their colleagues describes an organic material for the new generation of energy storage devices, which structure follows an elegant molecular design principle. It has recently been published in ACS Applied Energy Materials and made the cover of the journal. While the modern world relies on energy storage devices more and more heavily, it is becoming increasingly important to implement sustainable battery technologies that are friendlier to the environment, are easy to dispose, rely on abundant elements only, and are cheap. Organic batteries are desirable ...

East Hanover, NJ. May 25, 2021. A team of experts in post-stroke neurorehabilitation confirmed that including prism adaptation treatment in standard of care for patients with post-stroke spatial neglect improved functional and cognitive outcomes according to the Functional Independence Measure®. The article, "Prism Adaptation Treatment Improves Inpatient Rehabilitation Outcome in Individuals with Spatial Neglect: A Retrospective Matched Control Study" (doi: 10.1016/j.arrct.2021.100130. was published in Archives of Rehabilitation Research and Clinical Translation on May XX, 2021. It is available open access at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590109521000343 The ...

LED lightbulbs offer considerable advantages over other types of lighting. Being more efficient, they require much less electricity to operate. They do not give off unwanted heat the way old-school incandescent bulbs do, and the best of them long outlast even fluorescent lightbulbs. But LEDs are not problem-free. Questions linger over suspected links between health concerns such as fatigue, mood disorders, and insomnia from overexposure to the blue-tinted light produced by today's standard LED bulbs. Plus, higher prices can prompt lightbulb shoppers to weigh other options. A University of Houston research team led by Jakoah Brgoch, associate professor of chemistry in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics and principal investigator in the Texas Center for ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - It stands to reason that the more one is compensated for performing a task, the greater the incentive to do a good job and the better one feels about doing it. But what if the task is writing an objective review of a company or service? Does the compensation blur the lines of objectivity? Kaitlin Woolley, assistant professor of marketing in the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, wondered the same thing. "You often receive emails after a purchase, offering you a chance to win a gift card to the company in ...

One in five women experience pain during intercourse. The latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the bible of American psychiatrists, lists it under "genito-pelvic pain or penetration disorder." However, this type of pain is not purely psychological. Provoked vestibulodynia is a condition experienced by approximately 8% of women in North America. It is characterized by severe pain at the vaginal opening during sexual intercourse or when inserting tampons. To reduce the burning sensation, many women apply lidocaine, an anesthetic ...

Boston, MA-- How does the switch to a high-deductible health plan affect children with asthma? A new study led by researchers at the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute suggests that enrollment in a high-deductible health plan (HDHP) may not be associated with changes in asthma medication use or asthma exacerbations when medications are exempt from the deductible. The findings were published in JAMA Pediatrics on May 10. To treat asthma, clinical guidelines recommend the use of controller medications, but adherence to these medications is generally suboptimal, putting those affected at risk for asthma exacerbations. High out-of-pocket costs have been associated with decreased controller medication use and adverse asthma outcomes for children and adults. ...

The energy available from sunlight is 10,000 times more than what is needed to supply the world's energy demands. Sunlight has two main properties that are useful in the design of renewable energy systems. The first is the amount power falling on a fixed area, like the ground or a person's roof. This quantity varies with the time of day and the season. The second property is the colors or spectrum of the sunlight. One way to capture solar energy is to use solar cells that directly turn sunlight into electricity. In a solar module like those that people place on their roof, many cells are assembled on a rigid panel, connected to one another, sealed, and covered ...

New research from the Clemson University Center for Human Genetics has identified specific cell clusters in the brain of the common fruit fly affected by acute cocaine exposure, potentially laying the groundwork for the development of drugs to treat or prevent addiction in humans. While cocaine's neurological effects are well known, the underlying genetic sensitivity to the drug's effects is not. In human populations, susceptibility to the effects of cocaine varies due to both environmental and genetic factors, making it challenging to study. Approximately 70 percent of genes in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, have human counterparts, providing researchers with a comparable model when studying ...

BOSTON -- A multidisciplinary team from MassGeneral Hospital for Children (MGHfC), Brigham and Women's Hospital and other institutions have identified the mechanism of how an extremely rare but serious post-COVID-19 complication develops in children and adolescents. Led by MGHfC pediatric pulmonologist Lael Yonker, MD, researchers determined that viral particles remaining in the gut long after an initial COVID-19 infection can travel into the bloodstream, instigating the condition called Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C). The syndrome can occur several weeks after an initial infection; symptoms include high fever, abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, rash and extreme fatigue. The hyperinflammatory ...

A novel compound similar in structure to the psychedelic drug ibogaine, but lacking its toxic and hallucinogenic effects, has been found to rapidly reverse the effects of stress in mice. Researchers found that a single dose of tabernanthalog (TBG) can correct stress-induced behavioral deficits, including anxiety and cognitive inflexibility, and also promotes the regrowth of neuronal connections and restores neural circuits in the brain that are disrupted by stress. The study was published May 25 in Molecular Psychiatry. "It was very surprising that a single treatment with a low dose had such dramatic effects within a day," said corresponding author ...

Invasive alien plants are plant species that grow in an environment outside their native habitat. If they successfully establish self-sustaining populations in these new environments - an event called "naturalization" - they can have considerable negative impacts on local ecosystems, economies, and societies. But not all alien plant species are equally effective in invading new habitats. Therefore, an international team of scientists, headed by Konstanz-based biologist Professor Mark van Kleunen, investigated different types of "invasiveness" and possible factors that determine invasion success of alien plants in Europe. The new study, published in PNAS, describes ...

Osaka, Japan - Chronic inflammation of the pancreas is a debilitating disease with poorly understood causative factors. Now, researchers at Osaka University have identified the disturbed molecular pathways and revealed the underlying mechanisms that may inform an effective and much-needed therapeutic strategy. The pancreas is an important organ with a dual role in digestion and the production of various hormones including insulin and glucagon that fine-tune blood sugar levels. Chronic pancreatitis (CP) is characterized by inflammation of the gland ...

In the latest National Autism Indicators Report, researchers from Drexel University's A.J. Drexel Autism Institute examined surveys of family members of autistic adults who use Developmental Disability services, and found needs for additional supports like respite care and assistance to plan for crisis and emergencies, especially among families whose adult lived with them. Data from the surveys showed over one quarter of families with autistic adults who use Developmental Disability services and live with family do not have enough services or supports for themselves, according to the report. And over half of these ...

LA JOLLA--In a new paper, scientists from La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) bring together research findings from COVID-19 researchers around the world. The results are striking: human T cells can target more than 1,400 sites on the SARS-CoV-2 virus. "Our lab and many others have shown this very broad and diverse T cell response," says LJI Research Assistant Professor Daniela Weiskopf, Ph.D., co-author of the Cell Host & Microbe review. This kind of research review, called a "meta-analysis," pools the results of multiple studies, and the researchers give close consideration to how the studies were conducted. In the case of COVID-19, a global meta-analysis of T cell response studies is especially helpful because different patient populations ...

An in vitro study conducted by a group of researchers at São Paulo State University (UNESP) in Araraquara, Brazil, shows how fungi and bacteria can activate genes associated with head and neck tumors, as the metabolism of biofilms (communities in which these microorganisms self-organize in a structured and coordinated manner) stimulate tumor cells by favoring the cell signaling pathways required for tumor development and resistance to treatment. The findings include entirely novel information on the links between microbial biofilms and cell behavior in head and neck cancer. The researchers discovered that metabolites secreted by biofilms, termed the secretome, can modulate the expression of proto-oncogenes and cell cycle genes associated with tumor cell growth and survival. Their analysis ...

Geothermal ecosystems, such as volcanoes and hot terrestrial and deep-sea springs, are characterized by severe conditions. The temperatures are high and the environment could be extremely acidic or very alkaline. Moreover, there are chemically active compounds in them that can be fatal to living organisms, because they are capable of destroying the membrane of an ordinary cell. "Exclusively very adapted microorganisms can exist here. They do not only have unique protective systems but are also able to get energy from chemical transformations of those substances that are available to them. Humans are actively using the ...