Boston, Mass. - As the number of COVID-19 infections continues to rise nationwide, more than 360,000 Americans have already died from the potentially deadly viral infection. But recent reports describe an increase in mortality during the pandemic that cannot be explained by COVID-19 deaths alone. In a new study from the Richard A. and Susan F. Smith Center for Outcomes Research in Cardiology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), researchers analyzed data from the National Center for Health Statistics to compare the rate of cardiovascular-related deaths before and after the onset of the pandemic in ...

Mindfulness courses can reduce anxiety, depression and stress and increase mental wellbeing within most but not all non-clinical settings, say a team of researchers at the University of Cambridge. They also found that mindfulness may be no better than other practices aimed at improving mental health and wellbeing. Mindfulness is typically defined as 'the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment'. It has become increasingly popular in recent years as a way of increasing wellbeing and ...

Deaths from ischemic heart disease and hypertensive diseases in the United States increased during the COVID-19 pandemic over the prior year, while globally, COVID-19 was associated with significant disruptions in cardiovascular disease testing. These findings are from two papers publishing in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology that examined the indirect effects of the pandemic on cardiovascular disease patients and their care. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been substantial, but there are concerns about the indirect impact of the pandemic as well, particularly for heart disease patients. Many reports have suggested that large mortality increases during the pandemic cannot be explained by COVID-19 alone. During the height of stay-at-home orders in the U.S., hospitals ...

HOUSTON - (Jan. 11, 2021) - An atypical two-dimensional sandwich has the tasty part on the outside for scientists and engineers developing multifunctional nanodevices. An atom-thin layer of semiconductor antimony paired with ferroelectric indium selenide would display unique properties depending on the side and polarization by an external electric field. The field could be used to stabilize indium selenide's polarization, a long-sought property that tends to be wrecked by internal fields in materials like perovskites but would be highly useful for solar energy applications. Calculations by Rice materials theorist Boris Yakobson, lead author and researcher Jun-Jie Zhang and graduate student Dongyang Zhu shows switching the material's polarization with an external electric field makes ...

MDC researchers have developed a new approach to CAR T-cell therapy. The team has shown in Nature Communications that the procedure is very effective, especially when it comes to fighting follicular lymphomas and chronic lymphocytic leukemia, the most common type of blood cancer in adults. The body's defense system generally does not recognize cancer cells as dangerous. To correct this sometimes fatal error, researchers are investigating a clever new idea, one that involves taking a handful of immune cells from cancer patients and "upgrading" them in the laboratory so that they recognize certain surface proteins in the malignant cells. The researchers then multiply ...

Stress on an expectant mother could affect her baby's chance of developing disease - perhaps even over the course of the child's life, UC researchers have found. Psychosocial factors creating stress -- such as lack of social support, loneliness, marriage status or bereavement -- may be mutating their child's mitochondrial DNA and could be a precursor to a host of diseases, according to a University of Cincinnati study. "There are a lot of conditions that start in childhood that have ties to mitochondrial dysfunction including asthma, obesity, attention deficit hyperactivity ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- University at Buffalo researchers are reporting an advancement of a chemical sensing chip that could lead to handheld devices that detect trace chemicals -- everything from illicit drugs to pollution -- as quickly as a breathalyzer identifies alcohol. The chip, which also may have uses in food safety monitoring, anti-counterfeiting and other fields where trace chemicals are analyzed, is described in a study that appears on the cover of the Dec. 17 edition of the journal Advanced Optical Materials. "There is a great need for portable and cost-effective chemical sensors ...

Pregnant women who exercise more during the first trimester of pregnancy may have a lower risk of developing gestational diabetes, according to a new study led by Samantha Ehrlich, an assistant professor in the Department of Public Health at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and adjunct investigator with the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research. The analysis found that lower risk was associated with at least 38 minutes of moderate intensity exercise each day--a bit more than current recommendations of at least 30 minutes a day five days a week. Gestational diabetes refers to diabetes diagnosed for the first time during pregnancy. It can pose serious health problems including pregnancy and delivery complications as well as increased future risk for diabetes ...

The cover for issue 45 of Oncotarget features Figure 3, "Representative images of whole tumor volume segmentation of the co-registered T1 post-contrast sequence and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) map, yielding the corresponding ADC histogram distribution utilized for data analysis," recently published in "Diffusion-weighted MR imaging histogram analysis in HIV positive and negative patients with primary central nervous system lymphoma as a predictor of outcome and tumor proliferation" by Khan, et al. This authors reported that the aim of this study is to investigate the correlation between ...

Face-sensitive neurons in humans employ distinct activity patterns to encode individual faces; those patterns reactivate when imagining the face, according to research recently published in JNeurosci. Human social interaction hinges on faces. In fact, faces are so important that the brain contains entire regions in the ventral temporal cortex devoted to facial recognition. In humans, the fusiform facial area activates in response to faces, and monkeys have single neurons that fire when shown a face. However, experimental limitations have prevented us from knowing how the human brain responds to and processes faces at the level of the single neuron. To close this gap, Khuvis et al. measured the electrical activity of neurons in the ventral temporal ...

HOUSTON - (Jan. 11, 2021) - Rice University engineers hope to make life better for those with replacement joints by modeling how artificial hips are likely to rub them the wrong way. The computational study by the Brown School of Engineering lab of mechanical engineer Fred Higgs simulates and tracks how hips evolve, uniquely incorporating fluid dynamics and roughness of the joint surfaces as well as factors clinicians typically use to predict how well implants will stand up over their expected 15-year lifetime. The team's immediate goal is to advance the design of more robust prostheses. Ultimately, they say the model could help clinicians personalize hip joints for patients depending on gender, ...

In most animal species, if a major artery is cut off from the heart, the animal will struggle to survive. The same can be said for many of our critical infrastructure systems, such as electric power, water and communications. They are networked systems with vulnerable connections. This vulnerability was on display in September 2017 when Hurricane Maria wrecked Puerto Rico's electric power grid, leaving almost all of the island's 3.3 million people without electricity. The months-long blackout that followed was the worst in U.S. history. Claire Trevisan, ...

Oncotarget recently published "PD-1/PD-L1 expression in anal squamous intraepithelial lesions" which reported that the presence and distribution of CD8 lymphocytes and the presence of PD-1 lymphocytes and PD-L1 epithelial cells were assessed. CD8 lymphocytes were observed more frequently in HSIL versus LSIL in the lamina propria or intra epithelial. PD-1 lymphocytes were observed more frequently in HSIL versus LSIL. There was no difference between HSIL and LSIL for PD-L1 epithelial cells. Anal dysplastic lesions are accompanied by an inflammatory lymphocytic infiltrate expressing CD8 and PD-1, more frequent in high-grade lesions. Dr. ...

A team led by University of Minnesota Twin Cities researchers has discovered a groundbreaking one-step process for creating materials with unique properties, called metamaterials. Their results show the realistic possibility of designing similar self-assembled structures with the potential of creating "built-to-order" nanostructures for wide application in electronics and optical devices. The research was published and featured on the cover of Nano Letters, a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Chemical Society. In general, metamaterials are materials made in the lab so as to provide specific physical, chemical, electrical, and optical properties otherwise impossible to find in naturally occurring materials. These materials can ...

HOUSTON - (Jan. 11, 2021) - A sweet new process is making sour more practical. Rice University engineers are turning carbon monoxide directly into acetic acid -- the widely used chemical agent that gives vinegar its tang -- with a continuous catalytic reactor that can use renewable electricity efficiently to turn out a highly purified product. The electrochemical process by the labs of chemical and biomolecular engineers Haotian Wang and Thomas Senftle of Rice's Brown School of Engineering resolves issues with previous attempts to reduce carbon monoxide (CO) into acetic acid. Those processes required additional steps to purify ...

(Boston)--Little previous research has examined the effects of Dense Breast Notifications (DBNs), but a new study suggests the legislatively required notifications have achieved partial success: women living in states in which in DBNs are mandated had higher rates of being informed about personal breast density and of having had breast density discussions with providers, though rates were low overall. DBNs are a written notification to a woman after a mammogram with information about breast density. The goal is to motivate her to speak with her doctor about her personal risk and determine if supplemental screening for breast cancer is appropriate. DBNs are mandated in more than 38 states and the Food Drug ...

Scientists from the University of Bath have made a sustainable polymer using the second most abundant sugar in nature, xylose. Not only does the new nature-inspired material reduce reliance on crude oil products, but its properties can also be easily controlled to make the material flexible or crystalline. The researchers, from the University's Centre for Sustainable and Circular Technologies, report the polymer, from the polyether family, has a variety of applications, including as a building block for polyurethane, used in mattresses and shoe soles; as a bio-derived alternative to polyethylene glycol, a chemical widely used in bio-medicine; or to polyethylene oxide, ...

An international team of researchers, including Professor END ...

PHILADELPHIA -- (Jan. 11, 2020) -- Mutations that inactivate the ARID1A gene in ovarian cancer increase utilization of the glutamine amino acid making cancer cells dependent on glutamine metabolism, according to a study by The Wistar Institute published online in Nature Cancer. Researchers also showed that pharmacologic inhibition of glutamine metabolism may represent an effective therapeutic strategy for ARID1A-mutant ovarian cancer. Up to 60% of ovarian clear cell carcinomas (OCCC) have inactivating mutations in the ARID1A tumor suppressor gene. These ...

Oncotarget recently published "Targeted lymphodepletion with a CD45-directed antibody radioconjugate as a novel conditioning regimen prior to adoptive cell therapy" which reported that Chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapies, and adoptive cell therapy in general, represent one of the most promising anti-cancer strategies. In contrast to relatively non-specific chemotherapy-derived lymphodepletion, targeted lymphodepletion with radioimmunotherapy directed to CD45 may be a safer and more effective alternative to target and deplete immune cells. Here the authors describe the results ...

For the brain to learn, retain memories, process sensory information, and coordinate body movements, its groups of nerve cells must generate coordinated electrical signals. Disorder in synchronous firing can impair these processes and, in extreme cases, lead to seizures and epilepsy. Synchrony between neighboring neurons depends on the protein connexin 36, an essential element of certain types of synaptic connections that, unlike classical chemical synapses, pass signals between neurons through direct electrical connections. For more than 15 years, scientists have debated the tie between connexin 36 and epilepsy. Now, a team of Virginia Tech scientists led by Yuchin Albert Pan, an associate professor at the Fralin Biomedical Research ...

Many policymakers and educational institutions hope to boost their economies by stimulating students' entrepreneurial intentions. To date, most research concluded that entrepreneurship education could increase these intentions by improving the image that students have of entrepreneurship as a career option, making them see how their environment can help them become entrepreneurs or increasing their self-confidence regarding their entrepreneurial skills. However, recent studies show that even if these goals are achieved, students' entrepreneurial intentions often ...

HOUSTON - (Jan. 11, 2021) - Rice University scientists have extended their technique to produce graphene in a flash to tailor the properties of other 2D materials. The labs of chemist James Tour and materials theorist Boris Yakobson reported in the American Chemical Society's ACS Nano they have successfully "flashed" bulk amounts of 2D dichalcogenides, changing them from semiconductors to metallics. Such materials are valuable for electronics, catalysis and as lubricants, among other applications. The process employs flash Joule heating -- using an electrical charge to dramatically raise the material's temperature -- to convert semiconducting molybdenum disulfide and tungsten disulfide. The duration of the pulse and select additives can also control the now-metallic products' ...

DURHAM, N.C. - A Duke-led team of scientists has developed a bio-compatible surgical patch that releases non-opioid painkillers directly to the site of a wound for days and then dissolves away. The polymer patch provides a controlled release of a drug that blocks the enzyme COX-2 (cyclooxygenase-2,) which drives pain and inflammation. The study appears Jan. 10, 2021 in the Journal of Controlled Release. When they started "We were making hernia meshes and different antimicrobial films," said Matthew Becker, the Hugo L. Blomquist professor chemistry at Duke, and last author on the paper. "We thought you could potentially put pain drugs or anesthetics in the film if you ...

A shapeshifting immune system protein called XCL1 evolved from a single-shape ancestor hundreds of millions of years ago. Now, researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) discovered the molecular basis for how this happened. In the process they uncovered principles that scientists can use to design purpose-built nanoscale transformers for use as biosensors, components of molecular machines, and even therapeutics. The findings were published today in Science. The primary and senior authors of the manuscript, respectively, are MCW researchers Acacia Dishman, MD-PhD student, and Brian Volkman, PhD, professor of biochemistry. Molecular switches can be used to detect cancer, construct nanoscale machines, and even build cellular computers. ...