Deep in the Brazilian Amazon River basin, scientists led by the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History fish research associate C. David de Santana discovered a small, river-fed lake filled with more than 100 adult electric eels, many of which were upwards of 4 feet long. On its own, this was an intriguing discovery, electric eels--a type of knifefish rather than true eels--were thought to be solitary creatures. But in this lake along the banks of the Iriri River in Brazil's state of Pará, the researchers witnessed the eels working together to herd small fish called tetras into tightly packed balls. Then groups of up to ...

Underwater seagrass meadows may trap, extract and carry marine plastic debris to shore, thereby helping to remove plastic litter from the sea, according to a study published in Scientific Reports. Previous research suggested that most plastics end up in the seafloor and that some are washed back to shore; however, how this occurs was unclear. Seagrass meadows are widespread in shallow coastal waters and are involved in trapping and binding sediment particles that form the seabed. To assess the role that seagrass may have in trapping and removing marine plastic, Anna Sanchez-Vidal and colleagues measured the amount of plastic debris collected from seagrass litter ...

Advancements in energy technologies, healthcare, semiconductors and food production all have one thing in common: they rely on developing new materials--new combinations of atoms--that have specific properties enabling them to perform a needed function. In the not-too-distant past, the only way to know what properties a material had was by performing experimental measurements or using very expensive computations. More recently, scientists have been using machine learning algorithms to rapidly predict the properties that certain arrangements of atoms would have. The challenge with this approach is it requires a lot of highly accurate data to train the model, which often does not exist. By combining large ...

Retinal cells derived from adult human eye stem cells survived when transplanted into the eyes of monkeys, an important early step in the validation of this approach for treating blindness, according to a study by Liu, et al recently published in Stem Cell Reports. The retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), a layer of pigmented cells in the retina, is essential for sustaining normal vision. Blindness due to RPE dysfunction, such as macular degeneration, affects about 200 million people worldwide. To restore this population of cells, researchers extracted retinal stem cells from donated cadaver adult eyes, grew them into RPE cells and transplanted them into the eyes of monkeys. ...

Retinal cells derived from a cadaver human eye survived when transplanted into the eyes of primate models, an important advance in the development of cell therapy to treat blindness, according to a study published on January 14 in Stem Cell Reports. The retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), a layer of pigmented cells in the retina, functions as a barrier and regulator in the eye to maintain normal vision. RPE dysfunction can lead to eye disorders including macular degeneration and can cause blindness, which affects about 200 million people worldwide. To restore this population of cells, ...

A major roadblock to computational design of high-entropy alloys has been removed, according to scientists at Iowa State University and Lehigh University. Engineers from the Ames Lab and Lehigh University's Department of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics have developed a process that reduces search time used for predictive design 13,000-fold. According to Ganesh Balasubramanian, an associate professor at Lehigh, the goal of the team's research was to accelerate the computational modeling of complex alloys. The tools available for creating random distribution of atoms in materials simulation models, he says, have been used for many, many years now and are limited in ...

What The Study Did: The number of patients undergoing cancer screening tests and of subsequent cancer diagnoses during the COVID-19 pandemic in the largest health care system in the northeastern United States was assessed in this study. Authors: Toni K. Choueiri, M.D., of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Quoc-Dien Trinh, M.D., of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, are the corresponding authors. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/  (doi:10.1001/jamaoncol.2020.7600) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict ...

What The Study Did: Which demographic and socioeconomic factors were associated with patient participation in telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic surge was examined in this observational study. Authors: Ilaaf Darrat, M.D., M.B.A., of the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, 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/jamaoto.2020.5161) Editor's Note: 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 investigated the association of home confinement during the COVID-19 outbreak with myopia (nearsightedness) development in school-age children in China. Authors: Xuehan Qian, M.D., Ph.D., of Tianjin Medical University Eye Hospital in Tianjin, China, is the corresponding author. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC-BY License. © 2021 Wang J et al. JAMA Ophthalmology.  To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2020.6239) Editor's Note: The ...

Cardiac rehabilitation is a therapy that combines guided exercise along with heart-healthy lifestyle education that can be life-saving for the majority of people who have had a major cardiac event, such as a heart attack. However, it is underutilized in the United States, with many hospitals referring just 20 percent or fewer of their eligible patients, largely because the referral process can be cumbersome. But new research shows that implementing a simple, easy to use "opt-out" pathway in the electronic health record drastically increased the rate of referrals, which could lead to fewer rehospitalizations and even lowered mortality. Led by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine ...

What The Study Did: Researchers in this randomized clinical trial compared injection-site pain and other reactions among adults age 65 and older who received flu vaccines. Author: Kenneth E. Schmader, M.D., of the Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina, 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.2020.31266) 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, and funding and ...

Tsukuba, Japan - Bacteria have the ability to form membrane vesicles to communicate with each other, but also to defend themselves against antibiotics. In a new study, researchers from the University of Tsukuba discovered a novel mechanism by which mycolic acid-containing bacteria, a specific group of bacteria with a special type of cell membrane, form membrane vesicles. Bacteria have traditionally been classified on the basis of the composition of their cell envelopes. For example, microbiologists employ Gram staining to differentiate between bacteria that have a thick (Gram-positive) or thin (Gram-negative) cell wall. While bacterial membranes mostly act as protective barriers, they can also form protrusions to make membrane vesicles with diverse biological functions. ...

Food allergies have been increasing dramatically across the developed world for more than 30 years. For instance, as many as 8% of children in the U.S. now experience potentially lethal immune system responses to such foods as milk, tree nuts, fish and shellfish. But scientists have struggled to explain why that is. A prevailing theory has been that food allergies arise because of an absence of natural pathogens such as parasites in the modern environment, which in turn makes the part of the immune system that evolved to deal with such natural threats hypersensitive to certain foods. In a paper published Jan. 14 in the journal Cell, four Yale immunobiologists propose an expanded explanation for the rise of food allergies -- the exaggerated ...

Focusing on the largest health care system in the Northeast, the study is among the first to document the pandemic's impact on cancer screening and diagnosis. Screening and diagnoses rebounded in the months following the first surge of the pandemic. The authors urge those who delayed screenings during the height of the pandemic to contact their health care provider to discuss the potential need to reschedule one. BOSTON - In one of the first studies to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cancer diagnoses, researchers at Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women's ...

HOUSTON - (Jan. 14, 2021) - Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine have discovered how therapeutics targeting RNA splicing can activate antiviral immune pathways in triple negative breast cancers (TNBC) to trigger tumor cell death and signal the body's immune response. A new study published in Cell shows that endogenous mis-spliced RNA in tumor cells mimics an RNA virus, leading tumor cells to self-destruct as if fighting an infection. Researchers suggest this mechanism could open new avenues for turning on the immune system in aggressive cancers like TNBC. "We know therapeutics that partially interfere with RNA splicing can have a very strong impact on tumor growth and progression, but the mechanisms of tumor killing are largely ...

A vector refers to an organism that carries and transmits an infectious disease, as mosquitoes do malaria. Lead compounds are chemical compounds that show promise as treatment for a disease and may lead to the development of a new drug. Antiplasmodial lead compounds are those that counter parasites of the genus Plasmodium, which is the parasite that infects mosquitoes and causes malaria in people. The study findings were published in Nature Communications on 11 January 2021, at a time when malaria incidence generally peaks after the holiday season. MOSQUITO INFECTION EXPERIMENT CENTRE Professor Lizette Koekemoer, co-director of the WRIM and the National Research ...

Recently, the innovation project watermelon and melon cultivation and physiology team of Zhengzhou Fruit Research Institute has made new progress in the metabolism regulation of sugar and organic acid in watermelon fruit. The changes of sugar and organic acid during the fruit development were analyzed and the key gene networks controlling the metabolism of sugar and organic acid during the fruit development were identified. These results provided a theoretical basis for watermelon quality breeding, which had important scientific significance for the development of watermelon industry and the improvement of watermelon breeding level in China. The related research results were published in the journals of Horticulture Research and Scientia Horticulturae. The ...

Research led by the University of Birmingham and Birmingham Women's and Children's NHS Foundation Trust has revealed new insight into the biological mechanisms of the long-term positive health effects of breastfeeding in preventing disorders of the immune system in later life. Breastfeeding is known to be associated with better health outcomes in infancy and throughout adulthood, and previous research has shown that babies receiving breastmilk are less likely to develop asthma, obesity, and autoimmune diseases later in life compared to those who are exclusively formula fed. However, up until now, the immunological mechanisms responsible for these effects have been very poorly understood. In this new study, ...

Aerosols are suspensions of fine solid particles or liquid droplets in a gas. Clouds, for example, are aerosols because they consist of water droplets dispersed in the air. Such droplets are produced in a two-step process: first, a condensation nucleus forms, and then volatile molecules condense onto this nucleus, producing a droplet. Nuclei frequently consist of molecules different to those that condense onto them. In the case of clouds, the nuclei often contain sulphuric acids and organic substances. Water vapour from the atmosphere subsequently condenses onto these nuclei. Scientists led by Ruth Signorell, Professor at the Department of Chemistry and Applied ...

Leading cancer experts at the University of Birmingham have solved a long-standing question of how various types of mutations in just one gene cause different types of diseases. A team of scientists at the University's Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences, led by Professor Constanze Bonifer, studied a gene known as RUNX1, which is responsible for providing instructions for the development of all blood cells and is frequently mutated in blood cancers. The results of their research has shown that the balance of cells types in the blood is affected much earlier than previously thought, which is particularly important for families that carry ...

Adaptability explains why insects spread so widely and why they are the most abundant animal group on earth. Insects exhibit resilient and flexible locomotion, even with drastic changes in their body structure such as losing a limb. A research group now understands more about adaptive locomotion in insects and the mechanisms underpinning it. This knowledge not only reveals intriguing information about the biology of the insects, but it can also help to design more robust and resilient multi-legged robots that are able to adapt to similar physical damage. The insect nervous system is comprised of approximately 105 to 106 neurons. Understanding ...

Posidonia oceanica seagrass -an endemic marine phanerogam with an important ecological role in the marine environment- can take and remove plastic materials that have been left at the sea, according to a study published in the journal Scientific Reports. The article's first author is the tenure-track 2 lecturer Anna Sànchez-Vidal, from the Research Group on Marine Geosciences of the Faculty of Earth Sciences of the University of Barcelona (UB). The study describes for the first time the outstanding role of the Posidonia as a filter and trap for plastics in the coastal areas, and it is pioneer ...

Both past and present-day scientists have suspected the intestines of playing a role in various diseases. Present-day studies focus on the intestinal flora's role in physical diseases such as diabetes and overweight, while others seek to establish a connection between the intestinal flora and e.g. autism, schizophrenia and depression. But even modern-day scientists have difficulties studying the around 500-1000 different species among the approx. 100 billion active bacteria in our intestines. Therefore, researchers from the University of Copenhagen have developed a ground-breaking technique that ...

Roughly 8,200 years ago, the island of Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov in Lake Onega in the Republic of Karelia, Russia, housed a large burial ground where men, women and children of varying ages were buried. Many of the graves contain an abundance of objects and red ochre, signifying the wish to ensure the comfort of the buried also after death. Pendants made of elk incisors were apparently attached to clothing and accessories, such as dresses, coats, cloaks, headdresses and belts. Although no clothing material has been preserved, the location of the elk teeth sheds light on the possible type of these outfits. A people of grooved elk tooth pendants A study headed by archaeologist Kristiina Mannermaa, University of Helsinki, aimed to determine who ...

Bacteria are likely triggering greater melting on the Greenland ice sheet, possibly increasing the island's contribution to sea-level rise, according to Rutgers scientists. That's because the microbes cause sunlight-absorbing sediment to clump together and accumulate in the meltwater streams, according to a Rutgers-led study - the first of its kind - in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The findings can be incorporated in climate models, leading to more accurate predictions of melting, scientists say. "These streams can be seen all over Greenland ...