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 ...

In 1961, physicist Ugo Fano provided the first theoretical explanation to an anomalous asymmetry observed in the spectral profiles of noble gases. He put forth an impactful interpretation of this phenomenon, now called "Fano resonance," stating that if a discrete excited state of a system falls within the energy range of a continuum of other possible states, these two can interfere with each other and give rise to abnormal peaks and dips in the system's frequency response. Though Fano resonance can occur in various physical systems, recent progress in metasurfaces and nanotechnology has drawn attention to this phenomenon as a potentially powerful tool in optics. ...

The Research Group on Synthetic Biology for Biomedical Applications at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain, has designed a cellular device capable of computing by printing cells on paper. For the first time, they have developed a living device that could be used outside the laboratory without a specialist, and it could be produced on an industrial scale at low cost. The study is published in Nature Communications and was carried out by Sira Mogas-Díez, Eva Gonzalez-Flo and Javier Macía. We currently have many electronic devices available to us such as computers and tablets whose computing power is highly efficient. But, despite their ...

DALLAS, March 19, 2021 -- Mechanical removal of blood clots causing a stroke is increasing, yet racial differences in treatment persist, according to late-breaking science presented today at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2021. The virtual meeting is March 17-19, 2021 and is a world premier meeting for researchers and clinicians dedicated to the science of stroke and brain health. Mechanical clot-removal or endovascular therapy is a non-surgical treatment that uses tiny tubes, or catheters, to remove a blood clot. In 2015, several major clinical trials confirmed that endovascular therapy ...

In Brazil, researchers affiliated with the Center for Nuclear Energy in Agriculture (CENA) and the Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture (ESALQ), both part of the University of São Paulo (USP), have developed a methodology based on artificial intelligence to automate and streamline seed quality analysis, a process required by law and currently done manually by analysts accredited with the Ministry of Agriculture. The group used light-based technology like that deployed in plant and cosmetics analysis to acquire images of the seeds. They then turned to machine learning to automate the image interpretation ...

DALLAS, March 19, 2021 -- New research found patients hospitalized with COVID-19 had a higher risk of stroke, compared with patients who had similar infectious conditions such as influenza and sepsis in prior studies. Those who had an ischemic stroke were more likely to be older, male, Black race, or have high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes or an irregular heartbeat (atrial fibrillation) compared with other COVID-19 patients, according to late-breaking science presented today at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2021. The meeting is being held virtually, March 17-19, 2021 and is a world premier meeting for researchers and clinicians dedicated ...

Schizophrenia and personality disorders are the most disabling mental health conditions to live with, according to scientists from The University of Queensland. A Danish-Australian research team studied a cohort of 6.9 million Danish residents in the Danish Psychiatric Central Research Register to understand the burden of disability associated with 18 mental and substance use disorders. Professor John McGrath from UQ Queensland Brain Institute's and the Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research said the data was used to develop a new method for measuring disability that took comorbidities into account. "Traditionally the impact of mental disorders has been presented for an entire nation, ...

Key takeaways Nearly half of gastrointestinal cancer operations in this study were performed at 42 U.S. News & World Report "Best Hospitals." These top-ranked hospitals performed more than four times the annual case volume of unranked hospitals. Higher hospital case volume was associated with better outcomes, even after accounting for patient characteristics and complicating factors. Patients with complex gastrointestinal (GI) cancers may fare better by seeking surgical care at high-volume, top-ranked hospitals. CHICAGO (March 19, 2021, 9 a.m. CDT): A new study reinforces the principle that "practice makes perfect" ...

The combination of cancer therapy lenalidomide plus the steroid dexamethasone (together called Rd) is considered standard treatment for elderly patients with multiple myeloma. However, prolonged steroid use can be harmful for some older adults. A new study published in Blood found that switching select older patients to a lower dose of lenalidomide and discontinuing dexamethasone after nine months was not only safe, but it also yielded similar outcomes as compared with patients who received continuous Rd. Multiple myeloma, a cancer affecting the blood plasma cells (a type of white blood cell in the bone marrow), most commonly ...