Robotics field aims at mimicking what natural biological entities have achieved throughout millennia of evolution - actions like moving, adapting to the environment, or sensing. Beyond traditional rigid robots, the field of soft robotics has recently emerged using compliant, flexible materials capable to adapt to their environment more efficiently than rigid ones. With this goal in mind, scientists have been working for years in the so-called biohybrid robots or biobots, generally composed of muscle tissue, either cardiac or skeletal, and an artificial scaffold, achieving crawling, ...

Vigorous and rapid air exchanges might not always be a good thing when it comes to addressing levels of coronavirus particles in a multiroom building, according to a new modeling study. The study suggests that, in a multiroom building, rapid air exchanges can spread the virus rapidly from the source room into other rooms at high concentrations. Particle levels spike in adjacent rooms within 30 minutes and can remain elevated for up to approximately 90 minutes. The findings, published online in final form April 15 in the journal Building and Environment, come from a team of researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The team includes building and HVAC experts ...

Diseases continue to be a major threat to coral reef health. For example, a relatively recent outbreak termed stony coral tissue loss disease is an apparently infectious waterborne disease known to affect at least 20 stony coral species. First discovered in 2014 in Miami-Dade County, the disease has since spread throughout the majority of the Florida's Coral Reef and into multiple countries and territories in the Caribbean. Some reefs of the northern section of Florida's Coral Reef are experiencing as much as a 60 percent loss of living coral tissue area. A new study by researchers at Florida Atlantic University's Harbor ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- A team from Regenstrief Institute leveraged OpenMRS, a global open-source electronic medical record (EMR), to create an emergency EMR for Indianapolis first responders preparing for a possible influx of COVID-19 patients. This process was completed in a week to allow Indianapolis Emergency Medical Services (IEMS) to register patients, collect basic clinical information, and send these encounters to Indiana's health information exchange, a crucial element to help the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. IEMS asked Regenstrief research scientists for help ...

Invasive Group B Streptococcus (GBS) disease, notably meningitis, during the first days and months of a baby's life can have persistent effects for children and hence their families, according to new research. Published in the Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, the study is the first evidence of long-term effects including after GBS sepsis (infection in the bloodstream). This large study analysed outcomes for nearly 25,000 children born in Denmark and The Netherlands, between 1997 and 2017. Results show that children who had invasive GBS infection are twice as likely to have neurodevelopmental impairments (NDI) and ...

BOSTON - A unique antibody drug conjugate (ADC), which delivers a high dose of a cancer-killing drug to tumor cells through a targeted antibody, has been found in a global phase 3 clinical study to nearly double the survival time of patients with refractory metastatic triple-negative breast cancer. The study of the ADC drug sacituzumab govitecan (SG), for which Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) was a lead clinical research site after serving as the lead site for the pivotal phase 1/2 trial, reported superior outcomes compared to single-agent chemotherapy, the standard for treating metastatic triple-negative breast cancer. The phase 3 results of the study, known as ASCENT, were published in the New England Journal of Medicine. "Favorable results with SG versus chemotherapy were observed ...

A new study has found up to half of all children with language difficulties and mental and physical health problems have been exposed to intimate partner violence, prompting calls for health and social care services to provide more effective identification and early intervention. The research, led by the Murdoch Children's Research Institute (MCRI) and published in The BMJ, showed children exposed to intimate partner violence from infancy were twice as likely to have a psychiatric diagnosis, emotional and behavioural difficulties, and impaired language skills at age 10. They were also more likely to have asthma and sleep problems. The study also found that ...

MINNEAPOLIS - Intracerebral hemorrhage is a life-threatening type of stroke caused by bleeding within the brain tissue. Survivors are at high risk of having another bleeding stroke. Most of these strokes are caused by changes in the narrowest blood vessels in the brain, a condition known as cerebral small vessel disease. A new study has found that differences in the extent of one type of cerebral small vessel disease may contribute to differences in people's risk for a second bleeding stroke. The research is published in the April 21, 2021, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Cerebral small vessel disease is an umbrella term for a number of conditions that involve changes in the smallest blood vessels in the ...

MINNEAPOLIS - Women who have migraine before menopause may have an increased risk of developing high blood pressure after menopause, according to a study published in the April 21, 2021, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. "Migraine is a debilitating disorder, often resulting in multiple severe headaches a month, and typically experienced more often by women than men," said study author Gianluca Severi, Ph.D. of the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Paris. "Migraine is most prevalent in women in the years before menopause. After ...

HERSHEY, Pa. -- Next time you make a salad, you might want to consider adding mushrooms to it. That's because higher mushroom consumption is associated with a lower risk of cancer, according to a new Penn State study, published on March 16 in Advances in Nutrition. The systematic review and meta-analysis examined 17 cancer studies published from 1966 to 2020. Analyzing data from more than 19,500 cancer patients, researchers explored the relationship between mushroom consumption and cancer risk. Mushrooms are rich in vitamins, nutrients and antioxidants. The team's findings show that these super foods may also help guard against cancer. Even though shiitake, oyster, ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- When marine biologist Eleanor Caves of the University of Exeter thinks back to her first scuba dives, one of the first things she recalls noticing is that colors seem off underwater. The vivid reds, oranges, purples and yellows she was used to seeing in the sunlit waters near the surface look increasingly dim and drab with depth, and before long the whole ocean loses most of its rainbow leaving nothing but shades of blue. "The thing that always got me about diving was what happens to people's faces and lips," said her former Ph.D. adviser Sönke Johnsen, a biology professor at Duke University. "Everybody has a ghastly sallow complexion." Which got the researchers to thinking: In the last half-century, some fish have been shifting ...

Researchers at GMI - Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences - and the John Innes Centre, Norwich, United Kingdom, determine that gene-regulatory mechanisms at an early embryonic stage govern the flowering behavior of Arabidopsis later in development. The paper is published in the journal PNAS. How do early life events shape the ability of organisms to respond to environmental cues later in their life? Can such phenomena be explained at the mechanistic level? GMI group leader and co-corresponding author Michael Nodine counters these questions with a clear statement: "Our research demonstrates that gene-regulatory mechanisms established in early embryos forecast events that have major ...

UC Riverside engineers are developing methods to estimate the impact of California's destructive wildfires on air quality in neighborhoods affected by the smoke from these fires. Their research, funded by NASA and the results published in Atmospheric Pollution Research, fills in the gaps in current methods by providing air quality information at the neighborhood scales required by public health officials to make health assessments and evacuation recommendations. Measurements of air quality depend largely on ground-based sensors that are typically spaced many miles apart. Determining how healthy it is to breathe air is straightforward in the vicinity of the sensors but becomes unreliable in areas in between sensors. Akula Venkatram, a professor of mechanical engineering in UC Riverside's ...

Much of common pharmaceutical development today is the product of laborious cycles of tweaking and optimization. In each drug, a carefully concocted formula of natural and synthetic enzymes and ingredients works together to catalyze a desired reaction. But in early development, much of the process is spent determining what quantities of each enzyme to use to ensure a reaction occurs at a specific speed. New collaborative research from Northwestern University could expedite, or even eliminate, the need for scientists to manually adjust bioproduction reaction conditions at all. Using ideas conceived by graduate students across three labs, Northwestern researchers developed technology that allows microbes to produce drugs with feedback control systems, dialing down or amping up ...

Cisgender sexual minority men and transgender women are aware of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), a daily pill for HIV-negative people to prevent HIV infection, but few are currently taking it, according to researchers at Rutgers. The study, published in the journal AIDS and Behavior, surveyed 202 young sexual minority men and transgender women - two high-priority populations for HIV prevention - to better understand why some were more likely than others to be taking PrEP. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, sexual minority men are the community most impacted by HIV, making ...

Skoltech scientists in collaboration with researchers from the University of Arizona and the Los Alamos National Laboratory have developed an approach that allows power grids to return to stability fast after demand response perturbation. Their research at the crossroads of demand response, smart grids, and power grid control was published in the journal Applied Energy. Power grids are complex systems that manage the generation, transmission and distribution of electrical power to consumers, also called loads. As it is not possible to store electrical energy along the transmission lines, grid operators must ensure, ideally at all times, the balance between production and consumption of electrical energy, i.e. the stability of power grids. While it is essential ...

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) have developed a new mathematical model for predicting how epidemics such as COVID-19 spread. This model not only accounts for individuals' varying biological susceptibility to infection but also their levels of social activity, which naturally change over time. Using their model, the team showed that a temporary state of collective immunity--which they termed "transient collective immunity"--emerged during the early, fast-paced stages of the epidemic. However, subsequent "waves," ...

BOSTON - Legislation currently under consideration in the U.S. Congress would increase regulatory oversight of certain diagnostic tests, and a new study by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and colleagues from several other institutions demonstrates that its potential impact will depend on key details in the bill's final language. This study, published in JCO Oncology Practice, offers the first evidence-based analysis of how new rules proposed for the regulation of laboratory-developed tests (LDTs) could affect health care costs in the United States. "The idea of having more oversight of LDTs is justified," says Jochen Lennerz, MD, PhD, medical director of the MGH Center for Integrated Diagnostics (CID) and the study's senior author. ...

April 21, 2021 - Consuming a diet high in pro-inflammatory foods - including foods that contain refined carbohydrates and sugar as well as polyunsaturated fats - may be associated with increased odds of developing testosterone deficiency among men, suggests a study in The Journal of Urology®, Official Journal of the American Urological Association (AUA). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer. The risk of testosterone deficiency is greatest in men who are obese and consume a refined diet that scores high on the dietary inflammatory index (DII), according to the new research by Qiu Shi, MD, Zhang Chichen, MD, and colleagues of ...

A national strategy to ensure that families have access to food could revolutionize Canada's farms, according to a new study from Simon Fraser University's Food Systems Lab. The study proposes implementing a "right to food" framework that would support the needed funding, infrastructure, and stability that can reduce losses of edible food at the farm, while creating better access to local foods for consumers. The study, published in the journal Resources, Conservation and Recycling, looked at the reasons for on-farm losses of edible food. Approximately 14 per cent of the world's food is lost before it ever reaches store shelves. In Canada, 35.5 million metric tonnes of food are lost or wasted annually, ...

A one-time injection of an experimental stem cell therapy can repair brain damage and improve memory function in mice with conditions that replicate human strokes and dementia, a new UCLA study finds. Dementia can arise from multiple conditions, and it is characterized by an array of symptoms including problems with memory, attention, communication and physical coordination. The two most common causes of dementia are Alzheimer's disease and white matter strokes -- small strokes that accumulate in the connecting areas of the brain. "It's a vicious cycle: ...

We've all heard the news stories of how what you eat can affect your microbiome. Changing your diet can shift your unique microbial fingerprint. This shift can cause a dramatic effect on your health. But what about the microbiome of the plants you eat? Scientists are beginning to see how shifts in plant microbiomes also impact plant health. Unlocking the factors in plant microbial assemblage can lead to innovative and sustainable solutions to increase yield and protect our crops. In a new study published in the Phytobiomes Journal, "Influence of plant host and organ, management strategy, and spore ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- In nature, many molecules possess a property called chirality, which means that they cannot be superimposed on their mirror images (like a left and right hand). Chirality can influence function, impacting a pharmaceutical or enzyme's effectiveness, for example, or a compound's perceived aroma. Now, a new study is advancing scientists' understanding of another property tied to chirality: How light interacts with chiral materials under a magnetic field. Prior research has shown that in such a system, the left- and right-handed forms of a material absorb light differently, in ...

Plenty of people struggle to make sense of a multitude of converging voices in a crowded room. Commonly known as the "cocktail party effect," people with hearing loss find it's especially difficult to understand speech in a noisy environment. New research suggests that, for some listeners, this may have less to do with actually discerning sounds. Instead, it may be a processing problem in which two ears blend different sounds together - a condition known as binaural pitch fusion. The research, co-authored by scientists at Oregon Health & Science University and VA Portland Health Care System, was published today in the Journal of the Association for Research ...

When deciding whether to have children, there are many factors to consider: finances, support systems, personal values. For a growing number of people, climate change is also being added to the list of considerations, says a University of Arizona researcher. Sabrina Helm, an associate professor in the Norton School of Family and Consumer Sciences in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, is lead author of a new peer-reviewed study that looks at how climate change is affecting people's decisions about whether to have children. "For many people, the question of whether to have children or not is one of the biggest they will face in their lives," Helm said. "If you are worried ...