Honey is humankind's oldest sweetener - and for thousands of years it was also the only one. Indirect clues about the significance of bees and bee products are provided by prehistoric petroglyphs on various continents, created between 8,000 and 40,000 years ago. Ancient Egyptian reliefs indicate the practice of beekeeping as early as 2600 year BCE. But for sub-Saharan Africa, direct archaeological evidence has been lacking until now. The analysis of the chemical residues of food in potsherds has fundamentally altered the picture. Archaeologists at Goethe University in cooperation with chemists at the University ...

The advent and increased availability of 3D printing is leading to more customizable parts at lower costs across a spectrum of applications, from wearable smart devices to autonomous vehicles. Now, a research team based at Tohoku University has 3D printed the first proton exchange membrane, a critical component of batteries, electrochemical capacitors and fuel cells. The achievement also brings the possibility of custom solid-state energy devices closer to reality, according to the researchers. The results were published on March 29 in ACS Applied Energy Materials, a journal of the American Chemical Society. "Energy storage devices whose shapes can be tailored enable entirely new possibilities for applications related, for example, to smart wearable, electronic medical ...

Researchers in the Department of Neurology at Tohoku University, which is led by professor Masashi Aoki, have developed a classification scheme for neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder, a rare autoimmune disease that until recently was thought to be a type of multiple sclerosis (MS). The new taxonomy for the disease replaces one borrowed from MS but which was inappropriate for what is in fact a distinct condition. An autoimmune disease, neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder (NMOSD), was for a long time thought to be a type of multiple sclerosis (MS), but it has recently been identified as an entirely different illness. As a result of this confusion, ...

Hamilton, ON (April 14, 2021) - Modified immune cells that ruthlessly kill cancerous tumours may prove a game-changer for people living with late-stage cancer. McMaster University researchers Ali Ashkar and Sophie Poznanski have uncovered that changing the metabolism of natural killer (NK) immune cells allows these cells to overcome the hostile conditions found inside tumours and destroy advanced ovarian and lung cancer. In the past decade cancer immunotherapy has achieved tremendous therapeutic effects in patient with blood cancers. However, the immunosuppressive conditions found inside solid tumours, whose aggressive growth starves surrounding healthy tissues of energy, have ...

BOSTON - Approximately one in four patients hospitalized for the acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) associated with severe COVID-19 infections may have a distinct phenotype (disease presentation) or biochemical profile associated with organ dysfunction, blood-clotting abnormalities and greater risk of death than patients with other, seemingly similar forms of the disease, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have found. Among 263 patients admitted to intensive care units (ICUs) at MGH for respiratory failure due to severe COVID-19 infection, 70 (26.6%) had increased ...

WASHINGTON, April 15, 2021 -- Some snake species slither across the ground, while others climb trees, dive through sand or glide across water. Today, scientists report that the surface chemistry of snake scales varies among species that negotiate these different terrains. The findings could have implications for designing durable materials, as well as robots that mimic snake locomotion to cross surfaces that would otherwise be impassable. The researchers will present their results today at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS Spring 2021 is being held online April 5-30. Live sessions will be hosted April 5-16, and on-demand and networking ...

DALLAS, April 15, 2021 - Maintenance of good oral health is more important than use of antibiotics in dental procedures for some heart patients to prevent a heart infection caused by bacteria around the teeth, according to a new American Heart Association (AHA) scientific statement published today in the association's flagship journal, Circulation. Infective endocarditis (IE), also called bacterial endocarditis, is a heart infection caused by bacteria that enter the bloodstream and settle in the heart lining, a heart valve or a blood vessel. It is uncommon, ...

Researchers at the University of Zurich show that increased sensitivity in a specific region of the brain contributes to the development of anxiety and depression in response to real-life stress. Their study establishes an objective neurobiological measure for stress resilience in humans. Some people don't seem to be too bothered when it comes to handling stress. For others, however, prolonged exposure to stress can lead to symptoms of anxiety and depression. While stress resilience is a widely discussed concept, it is still very challenging to predict people's ...

Technologies to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, such as reforestation or bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), are an indispensable part in most scenarios to limit climate change. However, excessive deployment of such technologies would carry risks such as land conflicts or enhanced water scarcity due to a high demand for bioenergy crops. To tackle this trade-off, a team of researchers from Potsdam and Berlin has now identified requirements for a dynamic, long-term carbon price pathway to reduce the demand for CO2 removal technologies and thus effectively limit long-term ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. - Though researchers have long known that several physiological and anatomical changes occur during pregnancy that can contribute to kidney stone formation, evidence of the link has been lacking. But now Mayo Clinic researchers believe they have that evidence. An observational study that reviewed the medical records for nearly 3,000 female patients from 1984 to 2012 finds that pregnancy increases the risk of a first-time symptomatic kidney stone. The risk peaks close to delivery and then improves by one year after delivery, though a modest risk of developing kidney stones continues beyond ...

The COVID-19 disease due to infection by the SARS-CoV2 virus has changed the behavior patterns of humanity by becoming a pandemic of international scope. To date, more than 136 million people have suffered from the disease and more than 2.9 million of them have lost their lives. It is important to remember that the symptoms of the infection vary widely in the population, from individuals who do not present any symptoms to those who need admission to intensive care units with emergency assisted ventilation. It is largely unknown what factors are responsible for this range of very ...

Sophia Antipolis - 15 April 2021: An observational study in nearly 20,000 individuals has found that greater intake of red and processed meat is associated with worse heart function. The research is presented at ESC Preventive Cardiology 2021, an online scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).1 "Previous studies have shown links between greater red meat consumption and increased risk of heart attacks or dying from heart disease," said study author Dr. Zahra Raisi-Estabragh of Queen Mary University of London, UK.2,3 "For the first time, we ...

More than 30 years ago, wilderness areas - natural areas that have not been considerably modified by humans - were identified as priorities of conservation and protection actions. Only recently has there been a push to define how to measure wilderness, with a focus on intact habitats. The integrity of natural ecosystems has also been recognized by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity as an important goal in the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. "We know intact habitat is increasingly being lost and the values of intact habitat have been demonstrated for both biodiversity and people," says Dr Andrew Plumptre from the Key Biodiversity Areas Secretariat in Cambridge, ...

A new study in SLEEP, published by Oxford University Press, demonstrates the significant benefits of later school start times for middle and high school students' sleep schedules. Sleep is essential to a student's overall health, social development, and academic achievement, yet lack of sleep is common among children and adolescents. Biological changes to sleep cycles during puberty make falling asleep early difficult for adolescents. This, coupled with early school start times, means that students often end up with insufficient sleep. Approximately 28,000 elementary, middle, and high school students and parents completed surveys annually, ...

Young adults must step up their exercise routines to reduce their chances of developing high blood pressure or hypertension - a condition that may lead to heart attack and stroke, as well as dementia in later life. Current guidelines indicate that adults should have a minimum of two-and-a-half hours of moderate intensity exercise each week, but a new study led by UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals reveals that boosting exercise to as much as five hours a week may protect against hypertension in midlife - particularly if it is sustained in one's thirties, forties and fifties. In the study publishing in American Journal ...

Geneva, 15th April 2021 - When it was shown launching out of the sea to snatch birds from the air in the first episode of the BBC's Blue Planet II, the Seychelles giant trevally, or 'karang ledan' as it is called in Creole, became world-famous. Typically eating fish, not birds, this reef predator is critical for maintaining healthy balanced ecosystems. 'The giant trevally is a popular, sought-after prize fish in Seychelles, particularly in the big-game sportfishing industry. Seychelles has a reputation for being one of the best trevally destinations in the world. The species is also caught in the handline fishery,' explains Helena Sims, the Save Our Seas Foundation's Seychelles ambassador. Sims, with more than a decade of conservation experience, ...

Researchers in South Korea developed a plasmonic isothermal recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA) array chip, the world's first plasmoinc isothermal PCR technology which can detect 8 types of pathogens (4 bacteria and 4 viruses) that cause acute respiratory infectious diseases in 30 minutes, led by Dr. Sung-Gyu Park and Dr. Ho Sang Jung of the Korea Institute of Materials Science (KIMS, President Jung-Hwan Lee) and by Dr. Min-Young Lee and Dr. Ayoung Woo of Samsung Medical Center. KIMS is a government-funded research institute under the Ministry of Science and ICT. * PCR(Polymerase Chain Reaction): A test method to amplify and detect nucleic acids target The current detection technology for COVID-19 is impossible ...

Despite surgery and subsequent treatment with chemotherapy and radiation, the majority of patients experience recurrence of malignant brain tumours. Researchers at Linköping University, Sweden, and the Medical University of Graz, Austria, have shown in cells in culture that an ion pump can deliver drugs more accurately, which gives less severe adverse effects in chemotherapy. The results have been published in Advanced Materials Technologies. "This is the first time an ion pump has been tested as a possible method to treat malignant brain tumours. ...

As females age, their bodies typically undergo two significant changes that generally occur during adolescence and middle age. The first, known as menarche, is the time during puberty when a girl begins having monthly menstruation cycles, which often tends to range from 8-13 years of age. She enters the second change, known as menopause, 12 months following her last menstruation cycle when her ovarian function ceases, usually sometime in her 40s or 50s. The time after menarche and prior to menopause is known as a woman's reproduction life span and marks the years when she is most able to bear children. For many women, these events occur naturally. However, women can enter menopause earlier than ...

Researchers at King's College London Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, & Neuroscience, in collaboration with King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, have found small clusters of cells in the brain that identify locations where tumours could become malignant. The study, which has been published in Neuro-Oncology Advances today, analysed pieces of living human brain tissue from 20 people undergoing brain tumour surgery at King's College Hospital, the largest neuro-oncology centre in Europe. The researchers found groups of tumour cells clustered around blood vessels and believe that these sites could be the seedbeds for malignant progression, the process by which a tumour becomes a fast growing and uncontrolled cancer. ...

- Study finds for the first time, in Africa, that mutations are associated with delayed clearance of the parasite among children with malaria treated with common Artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs). - While drug efficacy remains high so far, authors call for increased monitoring in the region. New data provide the first clinical evidence that drug-resistant mutations in the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum may be gaining a foothold in Africa. The study, conducted in Rwanda, is published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal and finds for the first time that the mutations are associated with delayed parasite clearance, as was first shown in South-East Asia when artemisinin-resistance started to emerge. The study ...

Psilocybin, the active compound in magic mushrooms, may be at least as effective as a leading antidepressant medication in a therapeutic setting. This is the finding of a study carried out by researchers at the Centre for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London. In the most rigorous trial to date assessing the therapeutic potential of a 'psychedelic' compound, researchers compared two sessions of psilocybin therapy with a six-week course of a leading antidepressant (a selective serotonin uptake inhibitor called escitalopram) in 59 people with moderate-to-severe depression. The results, published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, show that while depression ...

New research by University of Texas at Dallas scientists could help solve a major challenge in the deployment of certain COVID-19 vaccines worldwide -- the need for the vaccines to be kept at below-freezing temperatures during transport and storage. In a study published online April 13 in Nature Communications, the researchers demonstrate a new, inexpensive technique that generates crystalline exoskeletons around delicate liposomes and other lipid nanoparticles and stabilizes them at room temperature for an extended period -- up to two months -- in their proof-of-concept experiments. The Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines use lipid nanoparticles -- basically spheres of fat molecules -- to protect and deliver the messenger ...

Biomedical engineers at Duke University have developed a self-assembling nanomaterial that can help limit damage caused by inflammatory diseases by activating key cells in the immune system. In mouse models of psoriasis, the nanofiber-based drug has been shown to mitigate damaging inflammation as effectively as a gold-standard therapy. One of the hallmarks of inflammatory diseases, like rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease and psoriasis, is the overproduction of signaling proteins, called cytokines, that cause inflammation. One of the most significant ...

Current research on flexible electronics is paving the way for wireless sensors that can be worn on the body and collect a variety of medical data. But where do the data go? Without a similar flexible transmitting device, these sensors would require wired connections to transmit health data. Huanyu "Larry" Cheng, Dorothy Quiggle Career Development Assistant Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics in the Penn State College of Engineering, and two international teams of researchers are developing devices to explore the possibilities of wearable, flexible antennae. They published two papers in April in Nano-Micro Letters and Materials & Design. Wearable antenna bends, ...