Being constantly hungry, no matter how much you eat - that's the daily struggle of people with genetic defects in the brain's appetite controls, and it often ends in severe obesity. In a study published in Science on April 15, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science, together with colleagues from the Queen Mary University of London and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, have revealed the mechanism of action of the master switch for hunger in the brain: the melanocortin receptor 4, or MC4 receptor for short. They have also clarified how this switch is activated by setmelanotide (Imcivree), ...

Hafnium-based thin films, with a thickness of only a few nanometres, show an unconventional form of ferroelectricity. This allows the construction of nanometre-sized memories or logic devices. However, it was not clear how ferroelectricity could occur at this scale. A study that was led by scientists from the University of Groningen showed how atoms move in a hafnium-based capacitor: migrating oxygen atoms (or vacancies) are responsible for the observed switching and storage of charge. The results, which were published online by the journal Science on 15 April, point the way to new ferroelectric materials. Ferroelectric ...

Researchers from King's College London have created 3D replicas of full-sized healthy adult hearts from Computed Tomography (CT) images and analyzed how cardiac shape relates to function. Published today in PLOS Computational Biology, the study also includes 1000 new synthetic hearts that have been made open access allowing researchers to download and use them to test new algorithms, test in-silico therapies, run more statistical analyses or generate specific shapes from the average models. Statistical shape analysis is a technique that allows the rigorous study of the anatomical changes of the heart across different subjects. Using this technique, from a cohort of 20 healthy adult hearts the researchers created an average heart and ...

PHILADELPHIA--People who have recovered from COVID-19 had a robust antibody response after the first mRNA vaccine dose, but little immune benefit after the second dose, according to new research from the Penn Institute of Immunology. The findings, published today in Science Immunology, suggest only a single vaccine dose may be needed to produce a sufficient antibody response. The team found that those who did not have COVID-19--called COVID naïve--did not have a full immune response until after receiving their second vaccine dose, reinforcing the importance of completing the two recommended doses for achieving strong levels of immunity. The study provides more insight on the underlying immunobiology of mRNA vaccines, ...

Even the mention of parasites can be enough to make some people's skin crawl. But to recent UC Santa Barbara doctoral graduate Dana Morton these creepy critters occupy important ecological niches, fulfilling roles that, in her opinion, have too often been overlooked. That's why Morton has just released the most extensive ecological food web that includes parasites. Eight years in the making, the dataset includes over 21,000 interactions between 942 species, all thoroughly annotated. The detailed description, published in the journal Scientific Data, is a boon for basic research, conservation efforts and resource management. Understanding ...

The abundant biological and mineral diversity of the Rio Grande Rise, a seamount in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean about 1,500 km from the coast of Brazil, is probably due to a great extent to little-known microscopic creatures.  Researchers affiliated with the University of São Paulo's Oceanographic Institute (IO-USP), collaborating with colleagues at the UK's National Oceanography Center, investigated the microorganisms inhabiting the seamount's ferromanganese crusts and concluded that bacteria and archaea are probably responsible for maintaining the abundant local life, ...

A new analysis of antibody and B cell responses in 44 people who received either the Pfizer or Moderna mRNA SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines shows that only one dose may be needed for previously infected patients who have since recovered. The study also supported that two doses is optimal to induce strong antibody and B cell responses in patients who are immunologically naïve for SARS-CoV-2, and antibodies induced by the vaccination could protect against the more infectious and deadly South African variant. The results build on an increasing body of research suggesting that people ...

Cancer is an insidious disease that, despite being around for centuries, is still very difficult to diagnose and treat. Thus, cancer has been the focus much research in the biomedical fields. Today, with research methods advancing rapidly and the base pool of researchers growing constantly, our fundamental understanding of the mechanisms of cancer formation and proliferation have increased, and new more promising treatment avenues have opened up. In a END ...

A new study from North Carolina State University found that, on average, voters and local leaders showed greater concern about plastic and other garbage in the ocean after watching kids' presentations. The findings, published in the journal Frontiers in Political Science, built on previous research that found educating kids about climate change was linked to an increase in concern in parents. The new findings indicate kids can have a broader impact outside of their families. "Our lab has already established that kids can have an impact across the dinner table, and it's cool to see that they can also have an impact within ...

A pair of orbiting black holes millions of times the Sun's mass perform a hypnotic pas de deux in a new NASA visualization. The movie traces how the black holes distort and redirect light emanating from the maelstrom of hot gas - called an accretion disk - that surrounds each one. Viewed from near the orbital plane, each accretion disk takes on a characteristic double-humped look. But as one passes in front of the other, the gravity of the foreground black hole transforms its partner into a rapidly changing sequence of arcs. These distortions play out as light from both disks navigates the tangled fabric of space and time near the black holes. "We're seeing two supermassive black holes, a larger ...

From cancer treatment to sunlight, radiation and toxins can severely damage DNA in both harmful and healthy cells. While the body has evolved to efficiently treat and restore damaged cells, the mechanisms that allow this natural repair remain misunderstood. In a new study, Northwestern University researchers have used cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) to visualize this process by illuminating the mysterious cycle of DNA breakage sensing and repair. The researchers believe this new information could potentially form the basis for understanding how cells respond to chemotherapy and radiation and potentially ...

The complex patterns of genetic ancestry uncovered from genomic data in health care systems can provide valuable insights into both genetic and environmental factors underlying many common and rare diseases--insights that are far more targeted and specific than those derived from traditional ethnic or racial labels like Hispanic or Black, according to a team of Mount Sinai researchers. In a study in the journal Cell, the team reported that this information could be used to better understand and predict which populations are more susceptible to certain disorders--including cancers, asthma, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease--and to potentially develop early interventions. "This is the first time researchers have shown how ...

Engaging in household chores may be beneficial for brain health in older adults. In a recent Baycrest study, older adults who spent more time on household chores showed greater brain size, which is a strong predictor of cognitive health. "Scientists already know that exercise has a positive impact on the brain, but our study is the first to show that the same may be true for household chores," says Noah Koblinsky, lead author of the study, Exercise Physiologist and Project Coordinator at Baycrest's Rotman Research Institute (RRI). "Understanding how different forms ...

LOS ANGELES (April 15, 2021) -- Researchers have discovered a new way to transform the tissues surrounding prostate tumors to help the body's immune cells fight the cancer. The discovery, made in human and mouse cells and in laboratory mice, could lead to improvements in immunotherapy treatments for prostate cancer, the second most common cancer in men in the US. Using a technique called epigenetic reprogramming, investigators altered the tumor and tumor microenvironment by inhibiting expression of a protein known as enhancer of zeste homolog2, or EZH2, which is found at high levels in prostate cancer. This protein ...

DNA ligase proteins, which facilitate the formation of bonds between separate strands of DNA, play critical roles in the replication and maintenance of DNA. The human genome encodes three different DNA ligase proteins, but only one of those proteins--DNA ligase III (LIG3)--is expressed in mitochondria. LIG3 is therefore crucial for mitochondrial health, and inactivation of the homologous protein in mice causes profound mitochondrial dysfunction and early embryonic mortality. In an article recently published in the peer-reviewed journal Brain, a team of European and Japanese scientists, led by Dr. Mariko Taniguchi-Ikeda from Fujita Health University Hospital, describes a set of seven patients with a novel ...

Infection with parasitic intestinal worms (helminths) can apparently cause sexually transmitted viral in-fections to be much more severe elsewhere in the body. This is shown by a study led by the Universities of Cape Town and Bonn. According to the study, helminth-infected mice developed significantly more severe symptoms after infection with a genital herpes viruses (Herpes Simplex Virus). The researchers suspect that these results can also be transferred to humans. The results have now appeared in the journal Cell Host & Microbe. In sub-Saharan Africa, both worm infections and sexually transmitted viral diseases are extremely com-mon. These viral infections are also often particularly severe. It is possible that these findings ...

LIBREVILLE, Gabon (April 15 2021) - A team of scientists led by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and working closely with experts from the Agence Nationale des Parcs Nationaux du Gabon (ANPN) compared methodologies to count African forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis), which were recently acknowledged by IUCN as a separate, Critically Endangered species from African savannah elephants. The study is part of a larger initiative in partnership with Vulcan Inc. to provide the first nationwide census in Gabon for more than 30 years. The results of the census are expected later this ...

Fifty-five years ago, America's death toll from automobile crashes was sky-high. Nearly 50,000 people died every year from motor vehicle crashes, at a time when the nation's population was much smaller than today. But with help from data generated by legions of researchers, the country's policymakers and industry made changes that brought the number killed and injured down dramatically. Research led to changes in everything from road construction and driver's license rules, to hospital trauma care, to laws and social norms about wearing seatbelts and driving while drunk or using a cell phone. Now, researchers at the University ...

Immune checkpoint inhibitors have transformed cancer care to the point where the popular Cox proportional-hazards model provides misleading estimates of the treatment effect, according to a new study published April 15 in JAMA Oncology. The study, "Development and Evaluation of a Method to Correct Misinterpretation of Clinical Trial Results With Long-term Survival," suggests that some of the published survival data for these immunotherapies should be re-analyzed for potential misinterpretation. The study's senior author, Yu Shyr, PhD, the Harold L. Moses Chair ...

Scientists at the University of Southampton have conducted a study that highlights the importance of studying a full range of organisms when measuring the impact of environmental change - from tiny bacteria, to mighty whales. Researchers at the University's School of Ocean and Earth Science, working with colleagues at the universities of Bangor, Sydney and Johannesburg and the UK's National Oceanography Centre, undertook a survey of marine animals, protists (single cellular organisms) and bacteria along the coastline of South Africa. Lead researcher and postgraduate student ...

The dynamics of the neural activity of a mouse brain behave in a peculiar, unexpected way that can be theoretically modeled without any fine tuning, suggests a new paper by physicists at Emory University. Physical Review Letters published the research, which adds to the evidence that theoretical physics frameworks may aid in the understanding of large-scale brain activity. "Our theoretical model agrees with previous experimental work on the brains of mice to a few percent accuracy -- a degree which is highly unusual for living systems," says Ilya Nemenman, Emory professor of physics and biology and senior author of the paper. The ...

Scientists at the Institute for Cooperative Upcycling of Plastics (iCOUP), an Energy Frontier Research Center led by Ames Laboratory, have discovered a chemical process that provides biodegradable, valuable chemicals, which are used as surfactants and detergents in a range of applications, from discarded plastics. The process has the potential to create more sustainable and economically favorable lifecycles for plastics. The researchers targeted their work on the deconstruction of polyolefins, which represents more than half of all discarded plastics, and includes nearly every kind of product imaginable-- toys, food packaging, pipe systems, water ...

A new review published in EPJ H by Clara Matteuzzi, Research Director at the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) and former tenured professor at the University of Milan, and her colleagues, examines almost three decades of the LHCb experiment - from its conception to operation at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) - documenting its achievements and future potential. The LCHb experiment was originally conceived to understand the symmetry between matter and antimatter and where this symmetry is broken - known as charge conjugation parity (CP) violation. Whilst this may seem like quite an obscure area of study, it addresses one of the Universe's most fundamental questions: how it came to be dominated ...

As the world's energy demands grow, so too does growing concern over the environmental impact of power production. The need for a safe, clean, and reliable energy source has never been clearer. Fusion power could fulfil such a need. A review paper published in EPJ H examines the 6-decade history of neutral particle analysis (NPA), developed in Ioffe Institute, Saint Petersburg, Russia, a vital diagnostic tool used in magnetic plasma confinement devices such as tokamaks that will house the nuclear fusion process and generate the clean energy of the future. As ...

Investigators in China and the United States have injected human stem cells into primate embryos and were able to grow chimeric embryos for a significant period of time--up to 20 days. The research, despite its ethical concerns, has the potential to provide new insights into developmental biology and evolution. It also has implications for developing new models of human biology and disease. The work appears April 15 in the journal Cell. "As we are unable to conduct certain types of experiments in humans, it is essential that we have better models to more accurately study and understand human biology and disease," says senior author Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a professor in the Gene Expression ...