A lot of our medicines and other bioactive drugs are based on chemical structures called "enantiomers"-- molecules that are mirror images of each other and are non-superimposable. Notable among them are chiral N,N-acetals contained in diuretic drugs like bendroflumethiazide and thiabutazide, used to treat high blood pressure and edema. Because an enantiomer and its mirror image version often have different biological activities, with only one of them having pharmacological utility, an "enantioselective" or asymmetric synthesis yielding the desired enantiomer in greater amounts is highly desirable. In the case of N,N-acetals, several studies have demonstrated their enantioselective preparation from aldehydes, aldimines, or enamines. However, in all these cases, ...

CLEVELAND (Feb. 9)--A study led by Case Western Reserve University researchers found that patients with dementia were at a significantly increased risk for COVID-19--and the risk was higher still for African Americans with dementia. Reviewing electronic health records of 61.9 million adults in the United States, researchers found the risk of contracting COVID-19 was twice as high for patients with dementia than for those without it--while among those with dementia, African Americans had close to three times the risk of being infected with COVID-19 as Caucasians did. In addition, patients with dementia who ...

KEY STUDY FINDINGS INCLUDE: 2.9% of U.S. adults report a current peanut allergy. About one in six adults with a peanut allergy developed it after age 18. Approximately one in five adults with peanut allergy report visiting the emergency department for food allergy treatment each year. Patients who developed their peanut allergy during adulthood are less likely to report having an epinephrine auto-injector prescription than those who developed their peanut allergy during childhood, despite similar frequencies of severe reactions among both groups. CHICAGO --- Peanut allergy affects at least 4.5 million adults in the U.S., many of whom report developing their ...

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and other institutions have identified a novel strategy that can eliminate bacteria in a specific location before they cause an infection. The strategy uses a phage, a virus that infects and destroys bacteria, that can specifically locate in the same place the bacteria live in the gastrointestinal tract. The proximity between phage and bacteria facilitates the phage's attack and subsequent elimination of the bacteria. This strategy has the potential of becoming a game changer in the fight against antibiotic-resistant bacteria ...

DALLAS, Feb. 9, 2021 -- Participants in a two-year, lifestyle intervention/weight-loss program provided through health coaches at their primary care center were able to lower their blood sugar and improve their cholesterol levels, according to new research published today in the American Heart Association's flagship journal Circulation Journal. Researchers with the PROmoting Successful Weight Loss in Primary CarE in Louisiana (PROPEL) Trial reported previously that participants also reduced body weight by an average of 5% and note that patients who lost more weight experienced greater improvements in their heart disease risk factors. "Our results demonstrate lifestyle intervention and weight-loss programs can be successful for people in underserved, low-income ...

DALLAS, Feb. 9, 2021 -- Dietary information from three large, well-known heart disease studies suggests drinking one or more cups of caffeinated coffee may reduce heart failure risk, according to research published today in Circulation: Heart Failure, an American Heart Association journal. Coronary artery disease, heart failure and stroke are among the top causes of death from heart disease in the U.S. "While smoking, age and high blood pressure are among the most well-known heart disease risk factors, unidentified risk factors for heart disease remain," according to David P. Kao, M.D., senior author of the study, assistant professor of cardiology and medical director at the Colorado Center for Personalized Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine ...

In 2017, a widely cited study used statistical tools to model how likely the world is to meet the Paris Agreement global temperature targets. The analysis found that on current trends, the planet had only a 5% chance of staying below 2 degrees Celsius warming this century -- the international climate treaty's supposed goal. Now, the same authors have used their tools to ask: What emissions cuts would actually be required to meet the goal of 2 C warming, considered a threshold for climate stability and climate-related risks such as excessive heat, drought, extreme weather and sea level rise? The University of Washington study finds that emissions reductions about 80% more ambitious than those in the Paris Agreement, or an average of 1.8% drop in emissions per year rather than 1% ...

New research led by Monterey Bay Aquarium reveals that even the revered white shark cannot escape the impacts of a changing ocean. The study, published in Scientific Reports, finds that unprecedented sightings of juvenile white sharks at the northern end of Monterey Bay signal a significant shift in the young white sharks' range. Researchers conclude the northward range shift demonstrates the young sharks are being subjected to a loss of suitable thermal habitat, meaning water temperatures within their preferred temperature range are becoming harder to find. "Nature has many ways to tell us the status quo is being disrupted, but it's up to us to listen," said Monterey Bay Aquarium Chief Scientist Dr. Kyle Van Houtan. "These sharks - by venturing into territory where they have not historically ...

Our consumer products, such as food, cosmetics and clothes, might be filled with nanomaterials - unbeknownst to us. The use of nanomaterials remains unregulated and they do not show up in lists of ingredients. This is a cause of concern since nanomaterials can be more dangerous than COVID-19 in the long term if no safety action is taken: they are tricky to measure, they enter our food chain and, most alarmingly, they can penetrate cells and accumulate in our organs. Nanotechnology is appearing everywhere, to change our daily lives. Thanks to applications of nanotechnology, we can treat many diseases so efficiently that they'll soon be a thing of the past. We also have materials that are 100 times stronger than steel, batteries that last 10 times longer than ...

The term plankton describes usually very small organisms that drift with the currents in the seas and oceans. Despite their small size, they play an important role for our planet due to their immense quantity. Photosynthesizing plankton, known as phytoplankton, for example, produce half of the oxygen in the atmosphere while binding huge amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2). Since the Southern Ocean around Antarctica is very rich in nutrients, phytoplankton can thrive there. It is therefore a key region for controlling atmospheric CO2 concentrations. As other nutrients are abundant, scientists have ...

Exposure to radiation can wreak indiscriminate havoc on cells, tissues, and organs. Curiously, however, some tissues are more vulnerable to radiation damage than others. Scientists have known these differences involve the protein p53, a well-studied tumor-suppressor protein that initiates a cell's auto-destruct programs. Yet, levels of this sentinel protein are often similar in tissues with vastly different sensitivities to radiation, posing the question: How is p53 involved? A new study by researchers in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research now sheds light on this mystery. Reporting in Nature Communications on Feb. 9, they describe how cellular survival after radiation exposure depends ...

What is the best way to monitor a brain tumor? This question is at the heart of a new Position Statement published in open-access journal Frontiers in Oncology. The article is the work of a large collaboration of UK experts and stakeholders who met to discuss the value of routinely imaging brain tumor patients to assess their tumor treatment response, which is known as "interval imaging". Their verdict: there is very limited evidence to support the practice at present. However, the article also discusses how future research could determine and maximize the value of interval ...

A new study in Frontiers in Communication has demonstrated the powerful impact that subtle messaging and cues, or 'nudges', can provide on encouraging people to show socially desirable behaviors. Travelers who were observed on the Indonesian island of Gili Trawangan, a popular tourist destination, were more likely to demonstrate environmentally conscious actions, such as refusing a plastic bag or avoiding contact with a coral reef, when they were 'nudged' towards the desirable action with either a written or face to face interaction. The researchers found that any intervention, whether framed positively or negatively, was ...

Asthma attack rates seen at GP surgeries fell significantly during the first Covid-19 pandemic lockdown of 2020, a study suggests. Lower levels of air pollution, fewer cold and flu infections, and the fear of attending doctor surgeries due to Covid-19 were possible reasons for the 20pc drop in cases seen at GP surgeries, researchers said. The study is the first national review of lockdown effects on asthma attacks and includes data from more than 100,000 patients. Asthma attacks - or exacerbations - are bouts of shortness of breath, wheezing or a tight chest. There are usually more than six million GP consultations and 1400 deaths attributed to asthma in the UK every year. For the study researchers from the University of Edinburgh looked at a national GP database ...

Higher excess COVID-19 death risk in middle-aged people with type 2 diabetes raises vaccine prioritisation questions A largescale analysis led by the University of Exeter and funded by Diabetes UK, has found a disproportionately higher COVID-19 death risk in middle-aged people with type 2 diabetes, raising questions over vaccination strategies across Europe. The study, accepted for publication in Diabetologia, found that compared to people of a similar age without type 2 diabetes, the additional COVID-19 mortality risk from having type 2 diabetes increases the younger someone is. Although the ...

Children aged between 5 months and 4 years attending daycare during lockdown in March to May 2020 in France had low rates of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in their blood - known as seroprevalence - suggesting that virus infection rates were low in this population. Research assessing seroprevalence in daycare centres that remained open during the first national lockdown in France, suggests that the rate of SARS-CoV-2 virus infection was low at 3.7%, with positive cases likely infected by an adult in their household, rather than whilst at daycare. The seroprevalence rate among daycare staff was similar to that of a control group of adults who were not exposed to children or COVID positive patients ...

In the event of a pandemic, delayed reactions and a decentralized approach by the authorities at the start of a follow-up wave can lead to longer-lasting, more severe and more fatal consequences, researchers from the universities of Zurich and Toronto have found. The interdisciplinary team compared the Spanish flu of 1918 and 1919 in the Canton of Bern with the coronavirus pandemic of 2020. The Spanish flu was the greatest demographic catastrophe in Switzerland's recent history, causing approximately 25,000 deaths in the country during 1918 and 1919. In the wake of the current coronavirus pandemic, there has been increased public and scientific interest in the events of that time. An interdisciplinary team of researchers in evolutionary medicine, history, geography and ...

Oakland, Calif. -- An analysis of Kaiser Permanente members in Northern California early in the COVID-19 pandemic found racial and ethnic disparities in the likelihood of testing positive for the coronavirus, but no significant disparities in mortality among those who were hospitalized. According to the study published Feb. 8 in Annals of Internal Medicine, Latino patients were nearly 4 times as likely as white patients to become infected with the virus, while Asian and Black patients were 2 times as likely to get COVID-19 as white patients. The odds of hospitalization were also higher for Latino, Asian, and Black patients with ...

PITTSBURGH, Feb. 8, 2021 - With the aid of sophisticated machine learning, researchers at UPMC and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine demonstrated that a tool they developed can rapidly predict mortality for patients facing transfer between hospitals in order to access higher-acuity care. This research, published today in PLOS One, could help physicians, patients and their families avoid unnecessary hospital transfers and low-value treatments, while better focusing on the goals of care expressed by patients. Each year, nearly 1.6 million patients--or as much as 3.5% of all inpatient admissions--are transferred from one hospital to another to access specialized care for complex conditions. ...

Economic growth is often prescribed as a sure way of increasing the well-being of people in low-income countries, but a study led by McGill and the Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technologies at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) suggests that there may be good reason to question this assumption. The researchers set out to find out how people rate their subjective well-being in societies where money plays a minimal role, and which are not usually included in global happiness surveys. They found that the majority of people reported remarkably high levels of happiness. This was especially true in the communities with the lowest levels of monetization, where citizens reported a degree of happiness comparable to that ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - Soft robots may not be in touch with human feelings, but they are getting better at feeling human touch. Cornell University researchers have created a low-cost method for soft, deformable robots to detect a range of physical interactions, from pats to punches to hugs, without relying on touch at all. Instead, a USB camera located inside the robot captures the shadow movements of hand gestures on the robot's skin and classifies them with machine-learning software. The group's paper, "ShadowSense: Detecting Human Touch in a Social Robot Using Shadow ...

URBANA, Ill. - From flooded spring fields to summer hailstorms and drought, farmers are well aware the weather is changing. It often means spring planting can't happen on time or has to happen twice to make up for catastrophic losses of young seedlings. According to a joint study between University of Illinois and USDA-ARS, it also means common pre-emergence herbicides are less effective. With less weed control at the beginning of the season, farmers are forced to rely more heavily on post-emergence herbicides or risk yield loss. "We're having more variable precipitation, including conditions where folks aren't able to plant because fields are too wet. In those cases, pre-emergence herbicide applications are getting pushed back into a period that is consistently drier," ...

Colorectal cancer screening rates jumped by more than 1,000 percent when researchers sent take-at-home tests to patients overdue for testing at a community health center that predominantly serves people of color. Instead of the oft-standard text message that simply reminds a patient that they are overdue for screening, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania made it the default to send a take-at-home test to the patient's home unless they opted out via a text message prompt. The research was published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. "Colorectal cancer screening rates remain limited ...

New research from West Virginia University biologists shows that trees around the world are consuming more carbon dioxide than previously reported, making forests even more important in regulating the Earth's atmosphere and forever shift how we think about climate change. In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Professor Richard Thomas and alumnus Justin Mathias (BS Biology, '13 and Ph.D. Biology, '20) synthesized published tree ring studies. They found that increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over the past century have caused ...

A new study suggests that differences in the expression of gene transcripts - readouts copied from DNA that help maintain and build our cells - may hold the key to understanding how mental disorders with shared genetic risk factors result in different patterns of onset, symptoms, course of illness, and treatment responses. Findings from the study, conducted by researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), part of the National Institutes of Health, appear in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology. "Major mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depressive disorder, share common genetic roots, but each disorder presents differently in each individual," said Francis J. McMahon, M.D., a senior author of the ...