The genome is tightly organised (packaged) within the cell nuclei. This three-dimensional (3D) genome organisation is fundamental, given that it regulates gene expression. A study led by scientists at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) now demonstrates using mice models that the 3D organisation of the genome is extremely dynamic during the formation of male germ cells (precursors of spermatozoa) and that alterations in this structure can affect fertility. The research, published in Nature Communications, describes the 3D genome organisation in germ cells of wild populations of house mice (Mus musculus domesticus) with chromosomal rearrangements, ...

Since they are far more compact than today's accelerators, which can be kilometers long, plasma accelerators are considered as a promising technology for the future. An international research group has now made significant progress in the further development of this approach: With two complementary experiments at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich (LMU), the team was able to combine two different plasma technologies for the first time and build a novel hybrid accelerator. The concept could advance accelerator development ...

An international team, led by researchers from Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) in Barcelona, Spain, David Andreu and Rafael Maldonado, has developed a peptides family that allows delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main component of Cannabis sativa, to fight pain in mice without side effects. The study, published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, was carried out together with researchers from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, ??the University of Barcelona, and the University of Lisbon. At present, there are two main types of pain relievers prescribed based on the severity of the pain. Nonsteroidal ...

The high-power and long-pulse operation of tokamak will cause excessive particle flux and heat load on the divertor target plate. The surface of the target plate will be subject to intense sputtering, and the thermal load of the target plate will exceed the material/component limit. The sputtered atoms generated by the damage of the target plate may be transported to the core plasma, degrading the quality of the fusion plasma and increasing the difficulty of plasma stability control. Recently, the EAST group of Institute of Plasma Physics, Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS), reported their new findings about the influence of different impurity gases ...

"Pretty" parrots are more likely to be snatched up for Indonesia's illegal wildlife trade, a new study reveals. The findings not only expose the key drivers behind the country's illegal trade in these birds, but offer lessons for the potential emergence and spread of infectious diseases that jump from animals to humans - like COVID-19 and avian flu. The study, involving researchers from The Australian National University (ANU), analysed two decades worth of data on the illegal trade of parrots in Southeast Asia. The researchers found some key reasons parrots ...

E-scooters as a new micro-mobility service: SMART researchers explore the potential of e-scooter sharing as a replacement for short-distance transit in Singapore SMART researchers found that e-scooters are not only a last-mile solution to complement transit services, but also provide a mobility service for short-distance transit trips - Through a stated preference survey and mixed logit models, SMART researchers found that fare, transit transfer, and transit walking distance are significant factors driving the use of e-scooters as an alternative means of transit. The uncertainty is higher in predicting e-scooter usage preferences of male, young and high-income ...

Tsukuba, Japan - Warm, dry wind events blowing down from mountain slopes, called foehns, are a meteorological phenomenon typically associated with the European Alps or the Rocky Mountains of North America. However, in recent decades, foehn winds in Japan have caused record-breaking hazardous warm weather events, bringing renewed interest in the behavior of these winds in this part of the world. In a new study published in the International Journal of Climatology, a research team led by the University of Tsukuba has presented the first comprehensive climatological study of Japan's south foehn, a windstorm that originates from the Backbone Mountain Range and is observed along the coast of the Sea of Japan, including in the Toyama ...

Microfluidic chips hold great promise for unparalleled applications in pathogen detection and cancer diagnosis. Such devices often require nanoscale thin films for the filtering of liquid samples, as well as power devices or chemical stimulus that control its flow direction. However, many challenges still remain with most precedent mechanisms, including complicated fabrication processes, limitations of materials, and undesired damage on samples. A research team, led by Professor Taesung Kim in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UNIST presented the ...

Everything from the production of fertilisers and plastics, to liquid fuels and pharmaceuticals require an important chemical reaction known as hydrogenation. This is a process involving the addition of hydrogen to unsaturated chemical bonds. Enhancing the rate of hydrogenation can lead to higher yields for industries and lower environmental impacts. Now, a team of scientists, led by Associate Professor Yan Ning from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS), has come up with a method to increase the rate of ethylene ...

People with Alzheimer's disease (AD) are less likely to have cataract surgery than people without Alzheime's disease. The procedure rate starts to decrease already one year after the diagnosis, according to a new study from the University of Eastern Finland. The lower likelihood of cataract surgery among people with cognitive disorders has been reported previously. This study is the first to report an association between the AD diagnosis and a lower incidence of cataract surgery, and a decrease in the procedure rate related to the time since the diagnosis. The decrease in the incidence of cataract surgery among people with newly diagnosed AD is concerning because the benefits of this low-risk procedure would probably be similar for people with and without ...

DALLAS - May 20, 2021 - An experimental drug that has shown promise in protecting healthy tissue from collateral damage caused by radiation therapy for cancer also appears to enhance radiation's capacity to kill tumors, a new study led by UT Southwestern scientists shows. The findings, published online in Science Translational Medicine, could provide a much-needed boost to the radiation treatments used against a variety of tumor types. The drug, avasopasem manganese (AVA), has already shown promise in clinical trials to prevent a side effect known as acute mucositis. This condition commonly occurs in head and ...

Elephants and lions are iconic species that help raise substantial funds for conservation. However, they also pose significant threats to people, crops, and livestock, and are themselves threatened with extinction. Areas at severe risk are identified In a new article published in the journal Nature Communications, scientists have identified the areas that are most at risk for conflicts between humans and elephants and lions in Africa. They also estimated the associated return on investment of building and maintaining high-quality fences, which are used to reduce conflict between humans and wildlife. Associate Professor Enrico Di Minin, who is the lead author of this article and leads the Helsinki Lab of Interdisciplinary Conservation Science ...

Great tits living in cities are genetically different from great tits in the countryside. This is what researchers have found in a unique study, where they examined populations of great tits in nine large European cities. The researchers compared the city bird genes with the genes of their relatives in the countryside. It did not matter if the great tits lived in Milan, Malmö or Madrid: in order to handle an environment created by humans, the birds evolved in a similar way. Different gene types linked to important biological functions such as cognition and various behaviours regulated by serotonin, including aggression and circadian rhythms, were found to have been selected and passed on from generation to generation. In rural populations, these behaviours are also ...

When the United States issued national stay-at-home guidelines in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, mobility across the country dropped significantly. New research from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) demonstrates that people may be inclined to change their behavior in response to national guidelines, more than state and local policies. "When the next pandemic hits, we need to know what kind of policies are going to have the biggest impact on human behavior and health," said Marianna Linz, Assistant Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering and of Earth and Planetary Sciences at SEAS and senior author of the paper. "While specific, local ...

Two experimental drug approaches that target vulnerabilities in cancer cell metabolism may extend survival and enhance the effectiveness of standard chemotherapies for a highly aggressive type of pediatric brain cancer. The findings were reported by Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center researchers in two published studies. Medulloblastoma is the most common malignant pediatric brain tumor. A subset of patients with tumors known as Group 3 MYC-amplified medulloblastoma have an overall survival rate of less than 25%. In these patients, the cancer-promoting MYC oncogene drives cancer cell growth by altering cancer cell metabolism. Cancer cells use energy in ways that are different from normal cells, ...

Researchers in China, Japan, and Singapore were able to resume research much quicker than their counterparts in the US and Europe after the first covid lockdowns, results of a new international survey suggest. Published 'Open Access' in the peer-reviewed journal Science and Technology of Advanced Materials, the findings of the 'Survey on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on research activities of materials scientists', which also included a series of podcasts with eminent experts, highlight how severe the impact of lockdowns affected researchers internationally. 33% of respondents had to shut down all equipment. The outcomes were not uniform internationally however, as whilst labs in the UK and parts of the USA, Spain, and India were not accessible ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Researchers have discovered a new coronavirus, found in a child with pneumonia in Malaysia in 2018, that appears to have jumped from dog to human. If confirmed as a pathogen, the novel canine-like coronavirus could represent the eighth unique coronavirus known to cause disease in humans. The discovery also suggests coronaviruses are being transmitted from animals to humans more commonly than was previously thought. "How common this virus is, and whether it can be transmitted efficiently from dogs to humans or between humans, nobody knows," said Gregory Gray, M.D., a professor of medicine, ...

Study lead, Research Associate of the Neurobiology Lab Marat Minlebaev explains, "Our brain is a complex mechanism, and it's important to understand how it works. If we understand how our brain functions, we can put forth new treatment methodologies or prevent pathologies, both congenital and acquired." A number of techniques were used to undertake the research, so, apart from biologists, other scientists were also invited to partake. "Fourth year students Viktoria Shumkova and Violetta Sitdikova conducted experiments and analyzed their results," says Minlebaev. "To implement the idea, new software was ...

Researchers from Russia and Germany have created a genome-wide atlas of developmental alternative splicing changes of seven organs in six mammal species and chicken. The research was published in the journal Nature Genetics. As the protein encoding RNA matures in eukaryotes, it gets spliced, with some parts cut out and the remaining fragments stitched together. Alternative splicing means that the same RNA fragment can either be cut out from or kept within the mature RNA. In this case, one gene can encode several RNAs and, therefore, several proteins. Although alternative splicing is known to be essential for many tissues to develop and function properly and its various disorders may cause health problems, ...

It is ingrained in parents to curtail the hours their children spend in front of the television. Anecdotal evidence suggests that prolonged viewing of television and use of smart gadgets during early years can adversely affect a child's eyesight and behavioral development. However, there is little scientific evidence to support such observations on the effects of excessive television exposure on children's visual acuity. Now, Professor MATSUO Toshihiko (M.D., Ph.D.) and Professor YORIFUJI Takashi (M.D., Ph.D.) from Okayama University describe how such exposure can indeed have detrimental effects on children's eyesight during later years. The researchers used a national database of the Japan Government, based on the annual survey of all children born in the certain period of the ...

Nerves release a protein at the injury site that attracts growing nerve fibers and thus keeps them entrapped there. This prevents them from growing in the right direction to bridge the injury. The research team headed by Professor Dietmar Fischer reports in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) from 25. May 2021. There must be another cause Three main causes for the inability of injured nerves of the central nervous system, or CNS, to regenerate have been known to date: the insufficient activation of a regeneration program in injured nerve cells that stimulates the growth of fibers, so-called axons; the formation of a scar at the site ...

TROY, N.Y. -- Heart disease and cancer are the leading causes of death in the United States, and it's increasingly understood that they share common risk factors, including tobacco use, diet, blood pressure, and obesity. Thus, a diagnostic tool that could screen for cardiovascular disease while a patient is already being screened for cancer, has the potential to expedite a diagnosis, accelerate treatment, and improve patient outcomes. In research published today in Nature Communications, a team of engineers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and clinicians from Massachusetts General Hospital developed a deep learning algorithm that can help assess a patient's risk of cardiovascular disease ...

Herndon, Va. (May 20, 2021) - The international journal Risk Analysis has published a timely special issue for May 2021, "Global Systemic Risk and Resilience for Novel Coronavirus and COVID-19." Featuring 11 papers written for this issue over the past year, the collection represents a sampling of insights and viewpoints from scholars across risk sciences and resilience analytics to guide decision-making and operations related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 11 papers address the breadth of risk sciences represented by the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA), including risk perception, risk and resilience, human health and ...

A University of Otago study has revealed how earthquake upheaval has affected New Zealand's coastal species. Lead author Dr Felix Vaux, of the Department of Zoology, says earthquakes are typically considered devastating events for people and the environment, but the positive opportunities that they can create for wildlife are often overlooked. For the Marsden-funded study, published in Journal of Phycology, the researchers sequenced DNA from 288 rimurapa/bull-kelp plants from 28 places across central New Zealand. "All specimens from the North Island were expected to be the species Durvillaea antarctica, but unexpectedly 10 samples from four sites were ...

WASHINGTON--Yellowstone National Park is famous for harsh winters but a new study shows summers are also getting harsher, with August 2016 ranking as one of the hottest summers in the last 1,250 years. The new study drew upon samples of living and dead Engelmann spruce trees collected at high elevations in and around Yellowstone National Park to extend the record of maximum summer temperatures back centuries beyond instrumental records. The findings were published in Geophysical Research Letters, AGU's journal for high-impact, short-format reports with immediate implications spanning all Earth and space sciences. The ...