PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- As NASA's Perseverance rover begins its search for ancient life on the surface of Mars, a new study suggests that the Martian subsurface might be a good place to look for possible present-day life on the Red Planet. The study, published in the journal Astrobiology, looked at the chemical composition of Martian meteorites -- rocks blasted off of the surface of Mars that eventually landed on Earth. The analysis determined that those rocks, if in consistent contact with water, would produce the chemical energy needed to support microbial communities similar to those that survive in the unlit depths of the Earth. Because these meteorites may be representative ...

The unprecedented development of COVID-19 vaccines less than a year after discovery of this virus was enabled by more than $17 billion of research on vaccine technologies funded by the NIH prior to the pandemic, according to new research from Bentley University's Center for Integration of Science and Industry. The article, titled "NIH funding for vaccine readiness before the COVID-19 pandemic," demonstrates the critical role this broad foundation of government-funded research plays in ensuring vaccine readiness. The report, published today in the journal Vaccine, ...

DALLAS - April 22, 2021 - Being Black or Hispanic, living in high-poverty neighborhoods, and having Medicaid or no insurance coverage are associated with higher mortality in men and women under 40 with cancer, a review by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers found. "Survival is not different because of biology. It's not different because of patient-level factors," says Caitlin Murphy, Ph.D., lead author of the study and an assistant professor of population and data sciences and internal medicine at UT Southwestern. "No matter which way we looked at the data, we still saw consistent and alarming differences in survival by race - and these are teens and young adults." Other findings based on an ...

Machine learning could provide up an extra hour of warning time for debris flows along the Illgraben torrent in Switzerland, researchers report at the Seismological Society of America (SSA)'s 2021 Annual Meeting. Debris flows are mixtures of water, sediment and rock that move rapidly down steep hills, triggered by heavy precipitation and often containing tens of thousands of cubic meters of material. Their destructive potential makes it important to have monitoring and warning systems in place to protect nearby people and infrastructure. In her presentation at SSA, Ma?gorzata Chmiel of ETH Zürich described a machine learning approach to detecting and alerting against debris flows for the Illgraben torrent, a site in the European Alps that experiences significant debris flows and torrential ...

It seems like a smooth slab of stainless steel, but look a little closer, and you'll see a simplified cross-section of the Los Angeles sedimentary basin. Caltech researcher Sunyoung Park and her colleagues are printing 3D models like the metal Los Angeles proxy to provide a novel platform for seismic experiments. By printing a model that replicates a basin's edge or the rise and fall of a topographic feature and directing laser light at it, Park can simulate and record how seismic waves might pass through the real Earth. In her presentation at the Seismological Society of America (SSA)'s 2021 Annual Meeting, Park explained why these physical models can address some of the drawbacks of numerical modeling of ground motion in some cases. Small-scale, complex structures in ...

Days after the 4 August 2020 massive explosion at the port of Beirut in Lebanon, researchers were on the ground mapping the impacts of the explosion in the port and surrounding city. The goal was to document and preserve data on structural and façade damage before rebuilding, said University of California, Los Angeles civil and environmental engineer Jonathan Stewart, who spoke about the effort at the Seismological Society of America (SSA)'s 2021 Annual Meeting. The effort also provided an opportunity to compare NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory satellite surveys of the blast effects with data collected from the ground surveys. Stewart and his colleagues concluded that satellite-based Damage Proxy Maps were effective at identifying severely damaged buildings and undamaged ...

Research has identified critical factors that enable dangerous bacteria to spread disease by surviving on surfaces in hospitals and kitchens. The study into the mechanisms which enable the opportunistic human pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa to survive on surfaces, could lead to new ways of targeting harmful bacteria. To survive outside their host, pathogenic bacteria must withstand various environmental stresses. One mechanism is the sugar molecule, trehalose, which is associated with a range of external stresses, particularly osmotic shock - sudden changes to the salt concentration surrounding cells. Researchers ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- April 22, 2021 -- Product marketers should be clear in their messaging to avoid customer skepticism that makes them feel duped, according to University of Oregon research. At issue in a new study, published in the Journal of Business Research, was a social-cognitive construct called theory of mind, which considers how well people assess the mental states and apparent goals of others. Developmental psychologists link it to an ability to show empathy. In business, the study, led by former UO doctoral student Elizabeth Minton, showed it also can influence a person's recognition of being persuaded. And that affects a person's evaluation and willingness to buy a product, she found. "There has been some research on adult theory of mind, particularly in understanding ...

Severity of illness, history of stroke, and being divorced or widowed were independently predictive of delirium in hospitalized patients in Zambia, according to a study published in PLOS ONE. A collaborative team of researchers from Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the University of Zambia Teaching Hospital published the risk factors as a follow-up look at the prevalence and impact of delirium, a form of acute brain dysfunction, in lower-resourced hospitals. Findings published in February showed delirium is widespread in patients admitted to the University Teaching Hospital, and the duration of delirium predicted both mortality and disability at six months after discharge. The studies represent ...

PHILADELPHIA -- (April 22, 2021) -- A synthetic DNA vaccine candidate for Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) developed at The Wistar Institute induced potent immune responses and afforded protective efficacy in non-human primate (NHP) models when given intradermally in abbreviated, low-dose immunization regimen. A similar vaccine candidate was previously shown to be safe and tolerable with a three-dose intramuscular injection regimen in a recently completed human phase 1 study and is currently in expanded studies of phase 1/2a trial. ...

Although many organisms capture and respond to sunlight, enzymes - proteins that catalyze biochemical reactions - are rarely driven by light. Scientists have identified only three types of natural photoenzymes so far. The newest one, discovered in 2017, is fatty acid photodecarboxylase (FAP). Derived from microscopic algae, it uses blue light to catalyze the conversion of fatty acids, found in fats and oils, into alkanes and alkenes. "A growing number of labs envision using FAPs for green chemistry applications, because alkanes and alkenes are important components of solvents and fuels, including gasoline ...

For reasons not yet clear, pregnant women infected with the virus that causes COVID-19 are more likely to experience preterm births, pre-eclampsia, and other neonatal problems than non-infected women. A team of Yale scientists decided to investigate whether the virus could be affecting placental tissue of infected expectant mothers. Their analysis found that while evidence of the virus in the placenta is rare, the placenta in infected mothers tended to exhibit a much higher level of immune system activity than those of non-infected pregnant women, they report April 22 in the journal Med. "The good news is the placenta is mounting a robust defense against an infection that is far distant, in lungs or nasal tissue," said Shelli Farhadian, assistant professor of internal ...

April 22, 2021--(BRONX, NY)--Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine have designed an experimental drug that reversed key symptoms of Alzheimer's disease in mice. The drug works by reinvigorating a cellular cleaning mechanism that gets rid of unwanted proteins by digesting and recycling them. The study was published online today in the journal Cell. "Discoveries in mice don't always translate to humans, especially in Alzheimer's disease," said co-study leader Ana Maria Cuervo, M.D., Ph.D., the Robert and Renée Belfer Chair for the Study of Neurodegenerative Diseases, professor of developmental and molecular biology, ...

Soldiers, athletes, and motorists could lead safer lives thanks to a new process that could lead to more efficient and re-useable protection from shock and impact, explosion, and vibration, according to a new study. Pressurised insertion of aqueous solutions into water-repellent nanoporous materials, such as zeolites and metal-organic frameworks, could help to create high-performance energy absorbing systems. An international research team experimented with hydrothermally stable zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs) with a 'hydrophobic' cage-like molecular structure - finding that such systems are remarkably effective energy absorbers at realistic, high-rate loading conditions, ...

As politics grows increasingly polarized, a new global study finds people often exaggerate political differences and negative feelings of those on the opposite side of the political divide, and this misperception can be reduced by informing them of the other side's true feelings. The study replicates earlier research in the United States, finding the phenomenon to be generalizable across 25 countries. The new study was led by Kai Ruggeri, PhD, assistant professor of health policy and management at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, and replicates a 2020 study by Jeffrey Lees and Mina Cikara at Harvard University, who were also co-authors of the new study. The new findings ...

Stars spin faster than expected as they age according to a new study led by scientists at the University of Birmingham which uses asteroseismology to shed new light on this emerging theory. All stars, like the Sun, are born spinning. As they grow older, their spin slows down due to magnetic winds in a process called 'magnetic braking'. Research published in 2016 by scientists at Carnegie Observatories delivered the first hints that stars at a similar stage of life as the Sun were spinning faster than magnetic braking theories predicted. The results from this study were based on a method in which scientists pinpoint ...

What The Study Did: This case series reports the risk factors, incidence rate and features of acute ischemic stroke experienced by a group of male patients ages 50 years or younger in the convalescent stage of COVID-19. Authors: Tian Ming Tu, M.R.C.P., of the National Neuroscience Institute in Singapore, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.7498) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, ...

What The Study Did: This study assesses the association between COVID-19 and maternal and neonatal outcomes in pregnant women with COVID-19 diagnosis compared with pregnant women without COVID-19 diagnosis. Authors: Aris T.Papageorghiou, M.D., of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2021.1050) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including ...

What The Study Did: This cohort study examines viral dynamics and transmission of infection for NBA players, staff and vendors who had clinically recovered from SARS-CoV-2 infection but continued to have positive test results following discontinuation of isolation precautions. Authors: Christina Mack, Ph.D., M.S.P.H., of IQVIA, Real World Solutions, in Durham, North Carolina, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2021.2114) Editor's ...

What The Study Did: This review of 125 U.S.-based clinical trials that investigated the management of hearing loss assessed representation in the trials by race/ethnicity and sex. Authors: Carrie Nieman M.D., M.P.H., of the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/  (doi:10.1001/jamaoto.2021.0550) Editor's Note: The article includes conflicts of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional ...

What The Study Did: Claims data were used to look at opioid use among young people (ages 10 to 21) who had been prescribed opioids for the first time. Authors: J. Deanna Wilson, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.4552) Editor's Note: The article includes conflicts of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support. #  ...

What The Study Did: Researchers investigated racial/ethnic representation in clinical trials that led to U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of ophthalmology drugs from 2000 to 2020. Authors: Shriji Patel, M.D., of Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/  (doi:10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2021.0857) Editor's Note: The article includes conflicts of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support. #  #  ...

BOSTON -- The foods people buy at a workplace cafeteria may not always be chosen to satisfy an individual craving or taste for a particular food. When co-workers are eating together, individuals are more likely to select foods that are as healthy--or unhealthy--as the food selections on their fellow employees' trays. "We found that individuals tend to mirror the food choices of others in their social circles, which may explain one way obesity spreads through social networks," says Douglas Levy, PhD, an investigator at the Mongan Institute Health Policy Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) ...

A phase 1 clinical trial led by investigators at the University of Chicago Medicine testing the effects of stereotactic body radiotherapy for treating multiple metastases has determined that treatments used for single tumors can also be safely used for treating patients with multiple metastases. The study was run through NRG Oncology and sponsored by the National Cancer Institute. The results were published on April 22 in JAMA Oncology. Cancer is traditionally treated with a combined approach, with clinicians using surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy to kill and remove cancerous tumors. Systemic ...

PHILADELPHIA--When researchers from Penn Medicine found that many patients with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) treated with the investigational chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy targeting the CD22 antigen didn't respond, they went back to the drawing board to determine why. They discovered that less is more when it comes to the length of what is known as the single-chain variable fragment -- the linker that bridges the two halves of the receptor that allows CAR T cells to latch onto tumor cells and attack them. The findings are reported online today in Nature Medicine. "A little difference of a few amino acids can make a huge difference for patients," said co-senior author Marco Ruella, MD, an ...