A team of scientists, led by researchers at Northwestern University, Shirley Ryan AbilityLab and the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), has developed novel technology promising to increase understanding of how brains develop, and offer answers on repairing brains in the wake of neurotrauma and neurodegenerative diseases. Their research is the first to combine the most sophisticated 3-D bioelectronic systems with highly advanced 3-D human neural cultures. The goal is to enable precise studies of how human brain circuits develop and repair themselves in vitro. The study is the cover story for ...

In a world first, a cross-institutional research collaboration has used a two-photon microscope (*1) with a combination of calcium imaging (*2) and holographic stimulation (*3) to reveal that the functional connectivity between neurons located in the primary somatosensory cortex is increased in response to acute pain. Pain occurs as a result of injury, such as peripheral neuron damage or inflammation stemming from peripheral tissue violation. Research findings have been published on the involvement of central nervous system abnormalities in the onset of pain and sustained pain. The primary somatosensory cortex ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Most stroke victims don't receive treatment fast enough to prevent brain damage. Scientists at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, College of Engineering and College of Medicine have developed technology to "retrain" cells to help repair damaged brain tissue. It's an advancement that may someday help patients regain speech, cognition and motor function, even when administered days after an ischemic stroke. Engineering and medical researchers use a process created by Ohio State called tissue nanotransfection (TNT) to introduce genetic material into cells. This allows them to reprogram skin cells to become something ...

New York, NY--March 19, 2020--Columbia Engineering researchers, working with Brookhaven National Laboratory, report today that they have built designed nanoparticle-based 3D materials that can withstand a vacuum, high temperatures, high pressure, and high radiation. This new fabrication process results in robust and fully engineered nanoscale frameworks that not only can accommodate a variety of functional nanoparticle types but also can be quickly processed with conventional nanofabrication methods. "These self-assembled nanoparticles-based materials are so resilient that they could fly in space," says Oleg Gang, professor ...

PITTSBURGH, March 19, 2021 - Non-circulating memory T cells, whose main function is to provide local protection against re-infection, contribute to chronic transplant rejection, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine researchers reveal in a paper published today in Science Immunology. The scientists show that these "tissue-resident memory T cells" are harmful in situations where antigens that the cells recognize are present in the body for a long time, such as in cases of an organ or tissue transplant. This finding is an important step toward improving therapies to help prevent organ rejection in transplant recipients. "Tissue-resident memory T cells serve an important surveillance function," said co-senior author Martin Oberbarnscheidt, ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Many viruses infect their hosts through mucosal surfaces such as the lining of the respiratory tract. MIT researchers have now developed a vaccination strategy that can create an army of T cells that are ready and waiting at those surfaces, offering a quicker response to viral invaders. The researchers showed that they could induce a strong memory T cell response in the lungs of mice by giving them a vaccine modified to bind to a protein naturally present in mucus. This can help ferry the vaccine across mucosal barriers, such as the lining of the lungs. "In this paper, we specifically focused on T cell responses that would be useful against viruses or cancer, and our idea was to use this protein, albumin, as sort of a Trojan horse to ...

To understand the fundamental properties of an industrial solvent, chemists with the University of Cincinnati turned to a supercomputer. UC chemistry professor and department head Thomas Beck and UC graduate student Andrew Eisenhart ran quantum simulations to understand glycerol carbonate, a compound used in biodiesel and as a common solvent. They found that the simulation provided detail about hydrogen bonding in determining the structural and dynamic properties of the liquid that was missing from classical models. The study was published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry B. Glycerol carbonate could be a more environmentally ...

During a public health crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. hospitals need to allocate scarce medical resources in an equitable manner, according to clinicians and ethicists at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. "Significant concerns have been raised that crisis standards of care may be biased against certain patients based on race or ethnicity," said Hayley Gershengorn, M.D., associate professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine. "To examine that issue, we analyzed over a thousand medical records from two academic hospitals where University of Miami faculty see patients and found no disparities ...

In-school COVID-19 transmission is rare - even among close school contacts of those who test positive for the virus - when schools heed public health precautions such as mandatory masking, social distancing and frequent hand-washing, according to results of a pilot study in Missouri aimed at identifying ways to keep elementary and secondary schools open and safe during the pandemic. A close contact is anyone who has been within 6 feet for more than 15 minutes in a 24-hour period with someone infected with COVID-19. The study is part of a larger, ongoing collaboration involving the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, ...

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., March 19, 2021--Many machine learning algorithms on quantum computers suffer from the dreaded "barren plateau" of unsolvability, where they run into dead ends on optimization problems. This challenge had been relatively unstudied--until now. Rigorous theoretical work has established theorems that guarantee whether a given machine learning algorithm will work as it scales up on larger computers. "The work solves a key problem of useability for quantum machine learning. We rigorously proved the conditions under which certain architectures of variational quantum algorithms will or will not have barren plateaus as they are scaled up," said Marco Cerezo, lead author on the paper published in Nature Communications ...

Notwithstanding last month's cold snap in Texas and Louisiana, climate change is leading to warmer winter weather throughout the southern U.S., creating a golden opportunity for many tropical plants and animals to move north, according to a new study appearing this week in the journal Global Change Biology. Some of these species may be welcomed, such as sea turtles and the Florida manatee, which are expanding their ranges northward along the Atlantic Coast. Others, like the invasive Burmese python -- in the Florida Everglades, the largest measured 18 feet, end-to-end --maybe less so. Equally unwelcome, and among the quickest to spread into warming areas, are ...

In light of recent extreme climate events--from wildfires blazing through the western US to snowstorms sweeping Texas into a blackout--climate scientists and media outlets have repeatedly called out the urgency of tackling the climate crisis. But in a new study published March 19 in the journal One Earth, researchers found that emphasizing urgency alone is not enough to kindle public support for climate change policies. "We had the impression that policymakers shy away from enacting ambitious, stringent climate policy because they're afraid of ...

IIASA researchers worked with local stakeholders from the East African Community to explore and co-develop regional water scenarios that can enhance understanding of the up- and downstream water sector interactions in the extended Lake Victoria Basin to facilitate rational water resource planning. East Africa is the world's fastest growing region outside of Asia, with an estimated growth of 5% and above over the last decade. Part of this success can likely be attributed to the East Africa Vision 2050, which was launched in 2015 by the Heads of States of the East African Community (EAC) - an intergovernmental organization composed of six countries in the African Great Lakes ...

PITTSBURGH, March 19, 2021 - A University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine-led survey of dozens of surge capacity managers at hospitals nationwide captures the U.S. health care system's pandemic preparedness status in the months before the first COVID-19 cases were identified in China. Published today in the journal JAMA Network Open, the investigation details the strain experienced by U.S. hospitals during the 2017-18 influenza season, which was marked by severe illness and the highest infectious disease-related hospitalization rates in at least a decade. At the time, pandemic planning ...

A new research study at the University of Chicago Medicine has found that when it comes to COVID-19, having vitamin D levels above those traditionally considered sufficient may lower the risk of infection, especially for Black people. The study, published March 19 in JAMA Open Network, retrospectively examined the relationship between vitamin D levels and likelihood of testing positive for COVID-19. While levels of 30 ng/ml or more are usually considered "sufficient," the authors found that Black individuals who had levels of 30 to 40 ng/ml had a 2.64 times higher risk of testing ...

What The Study Did: This analysis examined how patients with multiple sclerosis who have COVID-19 fare and what patient and disease characteristics are associated with worse outcomes. Authors:  Amber Salter, Ph.D., of  Washington University in St Louis, 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/jamaneurol.2021.0688) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict 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, ...

What The Study Did: Researchers examined if differences in vitamin D levels greater than levels traditionally considered sufficient (30 ng/mL) are associated with having test results positive for COVID-19 in White and in Black individuals. Authors:  David O. Meltzer, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Chicago, 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.2021.4117) Editor's Note: The article includes funding/support disclosures. Please see the article ...

A multinational research team led by Dr. Adnan Sljoka (RIKEN), Prof. R. Scott Prosser (Univ. of Toronto) with collaborations with Dr. Duy Phuoc Tran and Prof. Akio Kitao (Tokyo Tech) and Prof. Roger K. Sunahara (Univ. of California San Diego) has carried out experimental and computational studies, revealing key steps associated with the activation of the human adenosine A2A receptor (A2AR). A2AR is a member of superfamily of receptors called G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) (major drug targets) which engage the G protein and initiates cell signaling. The research team discovered that A2AR is represented by at least two inactive conformations and three active conformations whose populations are dependent on ligands and activation ...

A team of researchers has found disrupting the interaction between cancer cells and certain immune cells is more effective at killing cancer cells than current immunotherapy treatments. The findings, which include studies in cell lines and animal models, appeared in JCI Insight and focus on END ...

MOSCOW, RUSSIA - Moscow Center for Diagnostics & Telemedicine and RADLogics shared the results of a large-scale study (Moscow Experiment on the Computer Vision for the Analysis of Medical Images - mosmed.ai, NCT04489992) conducted by the Research and Practical Clinical Center for Diagnostics and Telemedicine Technologies of the Moscow Health Care Department. The clinical research found that the introduction of RADLogics' AI-Powered solution into radiology workflow to analyze Chest-CT scans during the COVID-19 pandemic reduced report turnaround ...

TROY, N.Y. -- A novel form of polymerized estrogen developed at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute can provide neuroprotection when implanted at the site of a spinal cord injury -- preventing further damage. This promising result, found in a preclinical model, was recently published in ACS Chemical Neuroscience, and it lays the groundwork for further advancement of this new biomaterial. "What we saw that gives us hope is more neuroprotection, meaning we saw more spared neurons and more spared axons in the tissue," said Ryan Gilbert, a professor of biomedical engineering at Rensselaer, and co-author on this paper. "We believe that the estrogen released from our biomaterial design is providing a neuroprotective response." After a spinal cord injury, the body's inflammatory ...

The results showed that several psychological well-being measures gradually increased within participants from the beginning to the end of the course. That was especially true for life satisfaction, perceived well-being, self-awareness and emotional self-regulation. The participants in the study also reported a significant decrease in anxiety, perceived stress, negative thoughts, rumination and anger tendencies. The researchers observed, simultaneously, improvements in the positive aspects and a reduction of negative emotions, both in the short term and longitudinally ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Stress is a universal human experience that almost everyone deals with from time to time. But a new study found that not only do some people report feeling no stress at all, but that there may be downsides to not experiencing stress. The researchers found that people who reported experiencing no stressors were more likely to experience better daily well-being and fewer chronic health conditions. However, they were also more likely to have lower cognitive function, as well. David M. Almeida, professor of human development and family studies at Penn State, said the study suggests that small, daily stressors could potentially benefit the brain, despite being an inconvenience. "It's possible that experiencing stressors creates opportunities for you ...

Three University of Colorado Cancer Center researchers are part of a team that recently published a paper offering new insight into how the immune system relates to cancer. Quentin Vicens, PhD, Jeffrey Kieft, PhD, and Beat Vögeli, PhD, are authors on the paper, which looks at how an enzyme called ADAR1 operates in pathways associated with cancer. "In a cell, ADAR1 edits native RNA -- or self-RNA -- so that the cell recognizes it as its own. It's a key protection against autoimmune disorders," Kieft says. "But if a virus infects, viral RNA isn't edited by ADAR1, so the cell can recognize that and react. The cell knows it has foreign RNA, and it activates immune responses to fight off that infection." For their paper published last month in the ...

Nearly two-thirds of middle-aged and older adults in Canada report adverse childhood experiences Hamilton, ON (Mar. 19, 20121) - New research from McMaster University has found that roughly three in every five Canadian adults aged 45 to 85 have been exposed to childhood abuse, neglect, intimate partner violence or other household adversity. The research, which estimates the prevalence of a broad range of adverse childhood experiences, was published in CMAJ Open. "Our research showed that adverse childhood experiences are highly prevalent in the Canadian population, with 62% of Canadian adults aged 45 to 85 reporting at least one exposure," said Divya Joshi, the study's lead author and a postdoctoral fellow in the Department ...