Invasions by alien insect and animal species have much in common with outbreaks of infectious diseases and could tell us a great deal about how pandemics spread, according to a research paper published today. Biological invasions, where animals, insects, plants and microorganisms are transported around the globe by humans, are becoming more common and have a global annual cost of at least £118billion. An investigation by an international team of scientists, including the University of Leeds' School of Biology, says the emergence of human diseases share many of the same challenges as species invasions and that studying them together could provide solutions. Co-author of the report, Dr Alison M. Dunn, a Professor of Ecology in the School of Biology, ...

Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt has launched a study to determine the impact of a predictive model for identifying pediatric patients at risk for developing blood clots or venous thromboembolisms (VTEs). The study uses advanced predictive analytics to inform medical teams of patients at risk for blood clots before they happen. "Hospital-associated blood clots are an increasing cause of morbidity in pediatrics," said the study's principal investigator, Shannon Walker, MD, clinical fellow of Pediatric Hematology-Oncology at Children's Hospital. While these events are more rare among children than they are among adults, Walker noticed that blood clot development was on the rise. "The reason children get blood clots is very different ...

The cover for issue 7 of Oncotarget features Figure 5, "SUM149-MA cells surviving a 6-MP treatment are sensitive to chemotherapeutic drugs," published in "Inhibition of resistant triple-negative breast cancer cells with low-dose 6-mercaptopurine and 5-azacitidine" by Singh, et al. which reported that the authors have reported that a lengthy treatment with low-dose 6-mercaptopurine, a clinically useful anti-inflammatory drug, inhibits such resistant cells. They found that a lengthy treatment with 1 μM 5-azacitidine, without a significant effect on cell proliferation, sensitized cancer cells to the inhibitory effects of ...

No matter one's age, race, gender, socioeconomic status or political party, COVID-19 has impacted everyone at some level. That impact has been especially palpable for the approximately 1.3 million elderly Americans who reside in the country's 15,600 nursing homes. Inside these facilities, the forced isolation caused by COVID-19 disrupted daily routines and left many of the residents with higher-then-normal levels of stress, anxiety and depression. Because many of these elderly individuals lack the resources or knowledge to use communications tools such as FaceTime or Zoom, their family and friends had no way to visit them except through a facility window. What these family members couldn't see as they peered through their loved one's glass frame was the mental ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Researchers at Oregon State University have found a key new piece of the puzzle in the quest to use gene therapy to enable people born deaf to hear. The work centers around a large gene responsible for an inner-ear protein, otoferlin. Mutations in otoferlin are linked to severe congenital hearing loss, a common type of deafness in which patients can hear almost nothing. "For a long time otoferlin seemed to be a one-trick pony of a protein," said Colin Johnson, associate professor of biochemistry and biophysics in the OSU College of Science. "A lot of genes will find various things to do, but the ...

Rice farmers in Nepal are chronically falling short of their potential productivity. Poor rice yields are persistent across the Terai--a lowland region lying south of the outer foothills of the Himalayas that extends through southern Nepal into northern India--and existing decision support systems are failing to provide the precision required. To date, farmers in the area have lacked the knowledge and support they need to properly plan nutrient applications for their crops. Current nutrient recommendation systems only provide "blanket" prescriptions that fail ...

VANCOUVER, Wash. - Employer COVID-19 safety measures influenced worker precautions even when they were not on the clock, according to a new study out of Washington State University. The study found that workplace cultures that adopted COVID-19 prevention measures, such as daily health checks and encouraging sick workers to stay home, resulted in less "sickness presenteeism" or going places when feeling ill. The effect was found both inside and outside of work - meaning fewer employees with COVID-19 symptoms showed up to work and other public places like grocery stores, gyms and restaurants. The same held true for attitudes toward the COVID-19 prevention measures recommended ...

While some international students come to Canada knowing whether they intend to stay or return home after completing their degrees, the majority decide after they have had a chance to live here for a few years, a new study has found. "Nearly a quarter of our participants made the decision prior to arriving in Canada," said Elena Neiterman, a lecturer in the School of Public Health and Health Systems at the University of Waterloo. "However, the majority were not certain what their plans for the future were until they had a chance to live here and explore life in Canada." The students identified several factors shaping their decision to stay or go, including family ties in Canada or abroad, ...

Researchers from Case Western Reserve University have identified a potential new approach to better controlling epileptic seizures. Lin Mei, professor and chair of the Department of Neurosciences at the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, who led the new study in mouse models, said the team found a new chemical reaction that could help control epileptic seizures. Their findings were recently published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation. Epilepsy is a neurological disorder in which abnormal brain activity causes seizures or periods of unusual behavior, sensations and sometimes loss of awareness. A human brain contains about 86 billion nerve cells, also known as neurons. Eighty percent ...

Sophia Antipolis, 19 May 2021: Cities harbour a dangerous cocktail of environmental stressors which politicians must tackle to save lives and preserve health. That's the conclusion of a paper published today in European Heart Journal, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).1 "By 2050, three in four people will live in cities, where up to 80% of energy is consumed and 70% of greenhouse gases are emitted," said study author Professor Thomas Münzel of the University Medical Centre Mainz, Germany. "There are limited actions that individuals can take to protect themselves from pollutants so politicians and policy makers need to take on this responsibility." Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of mortality in Europe, accounting for 47% and ...

New research published in Anaesthesia (a journal of the Association of Anaesthetists) shows the huge pressure that anaesthesia and critical care staff in the UK have been under throughout the winter wave of COVID-19, as the number of newly admitted infected patients surged and most planned surgeries, including a substantial number of critical cancer operations, were cancelled. "These findings have important implications for understanding what has happened during the COVID-19 pandemic, planning recovery and building a system that will better respond ...

A general practitioner, wife and mother has recounted her experience with COVID-19 which saw her stay in hospital 150 days and become one of the first patients to be treated with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), special equipment that completely takes over the function of the lungs and is a last resort option. The self-written case report, which appears in the journal Anaesthesia Reports (a journal of the Association of Anaesthetists) is by Dr Anushua Gupta, who works as a general practitioner in Stockport, Greater Manchester, UK. It is thought to be the first patient-written account of ECMO to treat COVID-19 to appear in the medical literature. Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation was introduced as ...

Simon Fraser University researchers are playing a key role in guiding conservation efforts to protect a declining butterfly population. The eastern monarch butterfly, an important pollinating species known for its distinct yellow-orange and black colour, is diminishing due to the loss of the milkweed plant--its primary food source. Researchers analyzed current conservation strategies and recommended changes to how and where declining milkweed can be restored, based on assessments of climate and butterfly migration. Their study is published today in Frontiers in Environmental ...

As the global energy demand continues to grow along with atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), there has been a major push to adopt more sustainable and more carbon-neutral energy sources. Solar/wind power and CO2 capture - the process of capturing waste CO2 so it is not introduced into the atmosphere - are two promising pathways for decarbonization, but both have significant drawbacks. Solar and wind power is intermittent and cannot be deployed everywhere; CO2 capture processes are incredibly energy-intensive. Both of these pathways have benefits, but each ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- Mindfulness-based meditation programs have emerged as a promising treatment for conditions ranging from stress to sleeplessness to depression. In some cases, they're even offered to people -- schoolkids or employees, for example -- who aren't actively seeking help or who haven't been screened for suitability. Yet most research and discourse about these programs focuses only on their benefits, with little investigation of the risks or the potential for adverse effects. A recent review of nearly 7,000 studies of meditation practices found that less than 1% of them measured adverse effects. Willoughby Britton, an associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University, said that this is largely because ...

New research from BYU published in PLOS Medicine found that providing medical patients with social support leads to an increased chance of survival and elongation of life. Such findings come at a critical time as doctors and healthcare professionals seek new ways to improve care and decrease mortality. "The premise of the research is that everyone is strongly influenced by their social context," said BYU counseling psychology professor Timothy B. Smith, lead author of the study. "Relationships influence our behavior and our physical health. We now know that it is possible to prolong ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - Wines and table grapes exist thanks to a genetic exchange so rare that it's only happened twice in nature in the last 6 million years. And since the domestication of the grapevine 8,000 years ago, breeding has continued to be a gamble. When today's growers cultivate new varieties - trying to produce better-tasting and more disease-resistant grapes - it takes two to four years for breeders to learn whether they have the genetic ingredients for the perfect flower. Females set fruit, but produce sterile pollen. Males have stamens for pollen, but lack fruit. The perfect flower, however, carries both sex genes and can self-pollinate. These hermaphroditic varieties generally yield bigger and better-tasting berry ...

Due to climate change, the average global temperature will rise in the coming decades. This should also significantly increase the number of so-called cooling degree days. These measure the number of hours, in which the ambient temperature is above a certain threshold, at which a building must be cooled to keep the indoor temperature at a comfortable level. The rising values may lead to an increased installation of AC systems in households. This could lead to a higher energy demand for cooling buildings, which is already expected to increase due to climate change and population growth. Nip-and-tuck ...

Scientists have long thought that there was a direct connection between the rise in atmospheric oxygen, which started with the Great Oxygenation Event 2.5 billion years ago, and the rise of large, complex multicellular organisms. That theory, the "Oxygen Control Hypothesis," suggests that the size of these early multicellular organisms was limited by the depth to which oxygen could diffuse into their bodies. The hypothesis makes a simple prediction that has been highly influential within both evolutionary biology and geosciences: Greater atmospheric oxygen should always increase the size to which multicellular organisms can grow. ...

When a person views a familiar image, even having seen it just once before for a few seconds, something unique happens in the human brain. Until recently, neuroscientists believed that vigorous activity in a visual part of the brain called the inferotemporal (IT) cortex meant the person was looking at something novel, like the face of a stranger or a never-before-seen painting. Less IT cortex activity, on the other hand, indicated familiarity. But something about that theory, called repetition suppression, didn't hold up for University of Pennsylvania neuroscientist Nicole Rust. "Different images produce different amounts of activation even when they are all novel," says ...

The combination of a carb-heavy diet and poor oral hygiene can leave children with early childhood caries (ECC), a severe form of dental decay that can have a lasting impact on their oral and overall health. A few years ago, scientists from Penn's School of Dental Medicine found that the dental plaque that gives rise to ECC is composed of both a bacterial species, Streptococcus mutans, and a fungus, Candida albicans. The two form a sticky symbiosis, known scientifically as a biofilm, that becomes extremely virulent and difficult to displace from the tooth surface. Now, a new study from the group offers a strategy for disrupting this biofilm by targeting the yeast-bacterial interactions ...

In studying COVID-19 testing and positivity rates in West Virginia between March and September 2020, West Virginia University researchers found disparities among Black residents and residents experiencing food insecurity. Specifically, the researchers found communities with a higher Black population had testing rates six times lower than the state average, which they argue could potentially obscure prevalence estimates. They also found that areas associated with food insecurity had higher levels of testing and a higher rate of positivity. "This could mean that public health officials are targeting predominately rural areas to keep tabs on how the pandemic will unfold in isolated communities within higher food insecurity," said Brian Hendricks, a research assistant professor with ...

Australian scientists have compared an ancient Greek technique of memorising data to an even older technique from Aboriginal culture, using students in a rural medical school. The study found that students using a technique called memory palace in which students memorised facts by placinthem into a memory blueprint of the childhood home, allowing them to revisit certain rooms to recapture that data. Another group of students were taught a technique developed by Australian Aboriginal people over more than 50,000 years of living in a custodial relationship with the Australian land. The ...

Researchers at Michigan Medicine found that people with venom allergies are much more likely to suffer mastocytosis, a bone marrow disorder that causes higher risk of fatal reactions. The team of allergists examined approximately 27 million United States patients through an insurance database - easily becoming the nation's largest study of allergies to bee and wasp stings, or hymenoptera venom. The results, published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, revealed mastocytosis in fewer than 0.1% of venom allergy patients - still near 10 times higher than those without allergies. "Even though there is mounting interest, mast cell diseases are quite understudied; ...

Modern and emerging applications in various fields have found creative uses for organic thin films (TFs); some prominent examples include sensors, photovoltaic systems, transistors, and optoelectronics. However, the methods currently available for producing TFs, such as chemical vapor deposition, are expensive and time-consuming, and often require highly controlled conditions. As one would expect, making TFs with specific shapes or thickness distributions is even more challenging. Because unlocking this customizability could spur advances in many sophisticated applications, researchers are actively exploring new approaches for ...