Scientists studying the impact of record heat and drought on intact African tropical rainforests were surprised by how resilient they were to the extreme conditions during the last major El Niño event. The international study, reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences today, found that intact rainforests across tropical Africa continued to remove carbon from the atmosphere before and during the 2015-2016 El Niño, despite the extreme heat and drought. Tracking trees in 100 different tropical rainforests across six African countries, the researchers found that intact forests across the continent still removed 1.1 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year from the atmosphere during the El Niño monitoring ...

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine have followed the progression of breast cancer in an animal model and discovered a path that transforms a slow-growing type of cancer known as estrogen receptor (ER)+/HER2+ into a fast-growing ER-/HER2+ type that aggressively spreads or metastasizes to other organs. The study, which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has implications for breast cancer therapy as it suggests the need to differentiate cancer subtypes according to the path the cells follow. Different paths might be linked to different cancer behavior, which should be taken into consideration to plan treatment appropriately. "In ...

Scientists have detected new early-warning signals indicating that the central-western part of the Greenland Ice Sheet may undergo a critical transition relatively soon. Because of rising temperatures, a new study by researchers from Germany and Norway shows, the destabilization of the ice sheet has begun and the process of melting may escalate already at limited warming levels. A tipping of the ice sheet would substantially increase long-term global sea level rise. "We have found evidence that the central-western part of the Greenland ice sheet has been destabilizing and is now close to a critical transition," explains lead author Niklas ...

A new technology developed by UZH researchers enables the body to produce therapeutic agents on demand at the exact location where they are needed. The innovation could reduce the side effects of cancer therapy and may hold the solution to better delivery of Covid-related therapies directly to the lungs. Scientists at the University of Zurich have modified a common respiratory virus, called adenovirus, to act like a Trojan horse to deliver genes for cancer therapeutics directly into tumor cells. Unlike chemotherapy or radiotherapy, this approach does no harm to normal healthy cells. Once inside tumor cells, the delivered genes serve as a blueprint for therapeutic ...

When doctors or scientists want to peer into living tissue, there's always a trade-off between how deep they can probe and how clear a picture they can get. With light microscopes, researchers can see submicron-resolution structures inside cells or tissue, but only as deep as the millimeter or so that light can penetrate without scattering. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) uses radio frequencies that can reach everywhere in the body, but the technique provides low resolution -- about a millimeter, or 1,000 times worse than light. A University of California, Berkeley, researcher has now shown that microscopic ...

PHILADELPHIA and MELBOURNE, Australia -- (May. 17, 2021) -- A team of scientists from The Wistar Institute in Philadelphia and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Center in Melbourne, Australia, discovered a new checkpoint mechanism that fine-tunes gene transcription. As reported in a study published in Cell, a component of the Integrator protein complex tethers the protein phosphatase 2A (PP2A) to the site of transcription allowing it to stop the activity of the RNA polymerase II enzyme (RNAPII). Disruption of this mechanism leads to unrestricted gene transcription and is implicated in cancer. The study points to new viable opportunities for therapeutic ...

Exposure to light is compulsory for photosynthetic organisms for the conversion of inorganic compounds into organic ones. However, if there is too much solar energy, the photosystems and other cell components could be damaged. Thanks to special protective proteins, the overexcitation is converted into heat - in the process called non-photochemical quenching. The object of the published study, OCP, was one of such defenders. It was first isolated in 1981 from representatives of the ancient group of photosynthetic bacteria, ?yanobacteria. OCP comprises two domains forming a cavity, in which a carotenoid pigment is embedded. "When light is absorbed by the carotenoid molecule, OCP can change from an inactive orange to an active red form. ...

For much of the nation's food supply, removing unsafe products off of store shelves can take up to 10 months, according to news reports -- even when people are getting sick. The growing complexity and scope of modern supply chains result in painfully slow product recalls, even when consumer well-being is at stake. For example, in 2009, salmonella-tainted peanuts killed nine people and sickened more than 700 in 46 states, and the resulting nationwide recall cost peanut farmers, their wholesale customers and retailers more than $1 billion in lost production ...

Viruses attack the body by sending their genetic code -- DNA and RNA -- into cells and multiplying. A promising class of therapeutics that uses synthetic nucleic acids to target and shut down specific, harmful genes and prevent viruses from spreading is gaining steam. However, only a handful of siRNA, or other RNA interference-based therapeutics have been approved. One of the main problems is getting the siRNA into the body and guiding it to the target. Chemical engineering researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering aim to solve that problem, while improving the targeting effectiveness of siRNA. In a new paper in the Journal of Controlled Release, the researchers created several different types of nanoparticles and analyzed them for the ability to deliver and protect siRNA from ...

May 17, 2021 - Amid the rising toll of opioid overdoses and deaths in the U.S., several states are considering laws enabling civil commitment for involuntary treatment of patients with substance use disorders (SUDs). Most addiction medicine physicians support civil commitment for SUD treatment - but others strongly oppose this approach, reports a survey study in Journal of Addiction Medicine, the official journal of the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer. "Civil commitment has emerged as a sometimes compelling yet controversial policy option," according to the new study, led by Abhishek Jain, MD. At the time of ...

Some 16 million Americans are believed to have alcohol use disorder, and an estimated 93,000 people in the U.S. die from alcohol-related causes each year. Both of those numbers are expected to grow as a result of heavier drinking during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, in a new study involving data from more than 200,000 people with and without alcohol problems, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found that although the vast majority of those with alcohol use disorder see their doctors regularly for a range of issues, fewer than one in 10 ever get treatment for drinking. The findings are published in the June issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research. Analyzing data gathered from 2015 through 2019 via the National ...

In a world that's changing fast, the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network can seem almost an anachronism. Yet the patience and persistence that have generated 40 years of careful, reliable science about the Earth's changing ecosystems may prove to be just what's needed in this rapidly shifting world. We can't wait for a crystal ball -- and we don't have to. By harnessing decades of rich data, scientists are beginning to forecast future conditions and plan ways to manage, mitigate, or adapt to likely changes in ecosystems that will impact human economies, health and wellbeing. The National Science Foundation established the LTER Network more than 40 years ago to provide an alternative to funding models that favored constant innovation over continuity. The model has proven to be extraordinarily ...

An international study has found that four out of five women in prison in Scotland have a history of head injury, mostly sustained through domestic violence. Published recently in The Lancet, researchers, including SFU psychology graduate student Hira Aslam, say the study has important implications for the female prison population more broadly and could help to inform mental health and criminal justice policy development. "The findings are incredibly sobering," says Aslam. "While we anticipated that the incidence of head injuries among women who are involved in the criminal justice system would be high, these estimates exceeded our expectations." Researchers also found that violent criminal behaviour was three times more likely among women who had a history of significant head injury, ...

ATS 2021, New York, NY - Air quality standards recommended by the American Thoracic Society (ATS) have the potential to prevent more illness and death than standards adopted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), according to research presented at the ATS 2021 International Conference. Laura Gladson, MS, a research scholar with the Air Quality Program at the Marron Institute of Urban Management, New York University (NYU) and colleagues from NYU and the ATS assessed differences between the potential public health protections provided by EPA air quality standards and the more stringent standards proposed by the ATS. Comparing real-world ...

Two components of imagination -- constructing and evaluating imagined scenarios -- rely on separate subnetworks in the default mode network, according to research recently published in JNeurosci. Even when you aren't doing anything, your brain is hard at work. The default mode network (DMN) activates during the brain's resting state and has been linked to daydreaming, planning, and imagining the future. In previous studies, scientists noticed the DMN could be divided into two subnetworks, ventral and dorsal, but their different roles were debated. Lee et al. used fMRI to measure participants' brain activity while they imagined scenarios listed on prompts, like "Imagine you win the lottery." The scenarios ...

KINGSTON, R.I. - May 17, 2021 - An article recently published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications, written by University of Rhode Island END ...

Clinicians and surgeons are increasingly using medical devices based on artificial intelligence. These AI devices, which rely on data-driven algorithms to inform health care decisions, presently aid in diagnosing cancers, heart conditions and diseases of the eye, with many more applications on the way. Given this surge in AI, two Stanford University faculty members are calling for efforts to ensure that this technology does not exacerbate existing heath care disparities. In a new perspective paper, Stanford faculty discuss sex, gender and race bias in medicine and how these biases could be perpetuated by AI devices. The authors suggest several short- and long-term approaches to prevent AI-related ...

BOSTON - Peripheral artery disease (PAD), or blockages in the arteries outside of the heart, affects more than 200 million people worldwide and 12.5 million people in the United States. Patients with this circulatory disorder may develop severe leg pain or unhealing wounds that require a minimally invasive revascularization procedure to open the blood vessels to improve blood flow. For nearly a decade, proceduralists and surgeons have depended on devices coated with a drug called paclitaxel -- which reduces the need for another procedure by up to 50 percent -- during procedures to open the arteries of the leg. However, in the wake of a 2018 study that found a potential link between ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio ­- Up to 38.6% of people with colon cancer who have a hereditary cancer syndrome--including 6.3% of those with Lynch syndrome--could have their conditions remain undetected with current universal tumor-screening methods, and at least 7.1% of people with colorectal cancer have an identifiable inherited genetic mutation, according to new data published by scientists at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC - James). Experts say their data, which was gathered from a cohort of more than 3,300 colorectal cancer patients treated at 51 hospitals across Ohio, makes a strong scientific argument for implementing multi-gene panel ...

A team of Welsh academics has developed a new method of supporting health professionals to make clinical decisions about people who may be at risk of taking their own lives. While the UK may have one of the lowest rates of suicide in the world, it is still the biggest cause of death in men under 45, so being able to make a Structured Professional Judgement about who might attempt suicide and knowing how to intervene is vitally important. Researchers at Swansea and Cardiff universities have put together the Risk of Suicide Protocol (RoSP) which guides a professional to look at 20 aspects of a person's life known ...

PHILADELPHIA (May 17, 2021) - Researchers have known for some time that insulin plays a vital role in regeneration and growth in some types of neurons that relay environmental sensory information to our brains, such as sight. However, they know relatively little about the role of insulin in the sense of smell. Now, investigators at the Monell Chemical Senses Center have shown that insulin plays a critical role in the maturation, after injury, of immature olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs). The team published their findings in eNeuro earlier this month. "Our findings suggest ...

One of the projected effects of a warming climate for species living on mountain slopes is moving their distributions upslope as their habits shift upwards. Eventually, since mountains have a limit to their elevation, a species may have no more habitat to move up to and therefore go extinct. Tracking how and where this is happening is tough, though, if you don't have a good idea of where the species are now. That's the situation in places such as Africa, which have tremendous biodiversity but spotty ecological baseline data. So University of Utah researchers set out to assess the status of bird species in Ethiopia's Bale Mountains through six years' worth of bird banding efforts at five sites. The sites spanned ...

Mothers who are Hispanic or who come from rural or low socioeconomic status neighborhoods are less likely to have their child's critical heart condition diagnosed before birth, according to a new study in the journal Circulation. This is the largest and most geographically diverse study of these challenges to date. The study compared patient data of more than 1,800 children from the United State and Canada diagnosed with two of the most common, and the most serious, critical congenital heart defects: hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS), when the left side of the heart is not developed completely, and transposition of ...

Patients with chronic kidney disease and Type 2 diabetes who took the experimental drug finerenone were about 30% less likely to develop the heart rhythm disorder atrial fibrillation (AFib) than those taking a placebo, according to data presented at the American College of Cardiology's 70th Annual Scientific Session. Last year, researchers reported that the trial, called FIDELIO-DKD, met its primary endpoint showing a significant benefit of finerenone, a nonsteroidal, selective mineralocorticoid receptor antagonist, in terms of a composite of sustained decrease in kidney function, kidney failure and renal death. The new analysis reveals that patients derived these benefits regardless of their history with AFib and suggests that taking finerenone also reduced the rate of ...

A subgroup of patients who experienced an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) that did not respond to standard advanced cardiac life support (ACLS), were immediately transported to a cardiac care center, and placed on a device similar to a heart-lung bypass machine were more likely to have survived with good brain function six months later than similar patients who received standard care at the site where the OHCA occurred. The study was presented at the American College of Cardiology's 70th Annual Scientific Session. "This study--the largest randomized clinical trial that has been conducted to address this question--shows that a hyperinvasive ...