When confronted with an antibiotic, toxic substance, or other source of considerable stress, bacteria are able to activate a defence mechanism using cell-to-cell communication to ‘warn’ unaffected bacteria, which can then anticipate, shield themselves and spread the warning signal. This mechanism1 has just been described for the first time by a team of scientists2 from CNRS and Université de Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier. It paves the way for the development of new, more effective antibiotic treatments that can target this bacterial communication system. When they perceive a source of stress, bacteria spring into action, inducing changes in the expression of certain ...

The capacity of Mozambican woodlands to capture and store carbon is underestimated and potentially undervalued for their protection and restoration, finds new research from an international team of scientists including UCL researchers and led by carbon data provider Sylvera. The research, published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment, found that miombo woodlands, which span large areas of Sub-Saharan Africa, store 1.5 to 2.2 times more carbon than had previously been estimated by standard methods. Named for the miombo trees found in the region, these biomes (geographical areas defined by their local species and ...

Cutting farm nitrous oxide emissions helps climate and ozone layer   Adding crushed basalt rocks and special fertilisers can reduce potent nitrous oxide (N2O) greenhouse gas emissions and safeguard the stratospheric ozone layer, which protects us from harmful UV light and reduces nitrate leaching into water bodies protecting ecosystems and human health The new study, led by researchers at the University of Sheffield, highlights methods for reducing  N2O emissions, such as enhanced weathering of agricultural soils with ...

Drugs developed to fight blood and other cancers could also help improve the efficiency of radiotherapy in the most commonly diagnosed low-grade brain tumour in adults, a new study has found. Meningioma account for approximately 36% of all primary brain tumours. The majority are successfully treated by surgery, but some which can’t easily be accessed need to be treated with radiotherapy. That can cause significant side effects and radiation damage to the brain, while resistance to radiotherapy can also result in tumour growth. A new study by researchers at the Brain Tumour Research ...

New research published in Arthritis & Rheumatology indicates that chronic exposure to air pollutants may increase the risk of developing lupus, an autoimmune disease that affects multiple organs. For the study, investigators analyzed data on 459,815 participants from the UK Biobank. A total of 399 lupus cases were identified during a median follow-up of 11.77 years. Air pollutant exposure was linked with a greater likelihood of developing lupus. Individuals with a high genetic risk and high air pollution exposure had the highest risk of developing ...

Anthracnose, a severe disease caused by the Colletotrichum spinaciae plant pathogen, often occurs in common vetch, a widely grown legume. Chemicals are not recommended for disease management because the plants are used as livestock feed. A new study published in Grassland Research reveals that treating common vetch with certain bacteria or fungi that promote plant growth may be effective for combating anthracnose. Treating common vetch with these bacteria or fungi increased the activity of plant defense enzymes and promoted the presence of healthy bacteria that could keep Colletotrichum spinaciae at bay. “The combined use of plant growth‐promoting rhizobacteria such as Bacillus ...

In a study in the Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology that included 60 individuals with mild to moderate acne, following the Mediterranean diet and taking omega-3 fatty acid supplements led to significant reductions in inflammatory and non-inflammatory skin lesions, as well as improved quality of life. Notably, 98.3% of participants had omega-3 fatty acid deficits at the start of the study. Acne severity lessened significantly in those who reached target omega-3 fatty acid levels during the study. “Lifestyle interventions, including dietary recommendations, should ...

Unaccompanied children entering the United States without adult legal guardians and legal status account for a growing share of U.S. Border Patrol encounters along the southern border, with most fleeing extreme violence, poverty, and food insecurity. In response, emergency intake sites and influx care facilities (surge facilities) were used to promptly house unaccompanied children. A new analysis published in Economic Inquiry finds that the emergency shelters expedited the reunification of children with their families. By analyzing data on unaccompanied minors encountered ...

In people with a rare condition called light chain amyloidosis, light chain proteins—which are a component of antibodies—mutate and build up in different organs. In new research published in The FEBS Journal, investigators have identified and characterized an antibody fragment that can bind to abnormal light chains to stabilize them and prevent their aggregation. The findings could have an important clinical impact because the current prognosis for individuals with light chain amyloidosis is extremely poor, and current treatments, ...

A new paper in Molecular Biology and Evolution, published by Oxford University Press, indicates that while the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has collected annual data on areas of coca cultivation in South America for decades – to monitor the establishment of illegal plantations and associated deforestation – scientists can’t reliably distinguish between different types of coca plants. While identification often relies on leaf shape and size, this does not reflect differences between coca varieties grown for extracting the alkaloid cocaine (the active ingredient in the recreational drug), coca cultivated for traditional purposes, ...

Osaka, Japan — In one of the first studies of its kind in Japan, Osaka Metropolitan University-led researchers uncovered the incidence and prevalence of the chronic allergic disorder eosinophilic esophagitis, or EoE. EoE can cause difficulty in swallowing with tissue inflammation and fibrosis as eosinophils, a type of white blood cell, build up in the esophagus. EoE cases have been increasing in North America and Western Europe since the 1990s, but little has been known about the situation in Asia including Japan. Dr. Akinari Sawada, Associate Professor Fumio Tanaka, and Professor Yasuhiro Fujiwara of OMU’s Graduate School of Medicine and colleagues analyzed a ...

HERNDON, Va., July 10, 2024 -- One of the privileges the wealthiest Americans enjoy is living wherever they want. But new research published in Risk Analysis suggests they should be cautious when choosing their Shangri-La.   In their nationwide analysis, Rutgers University geographers Michael Greenberg and Dona Schneider compared the concentration of hazards and associated risks impacting the richest and poorest counties and the richest and poorest municipalities in all 50 states (200 locations).   When ...

Auroras have inspired myths and portents for millennia — but only now, with modern technology dependent on electricity, are we appreciating their true power. The same forces which cause auroras also cause currents that can damage infrastructure which conducts electricity, like pipelines. Now scientists writing in Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences have demonstrated that the impact angle of interplanetary shocks is key to the currents’ strength, offering an opportunity to forecast dangerous shocks and shield critical infrastructure. “Auroras and geomagnetically induced currents are ...

Face attribute classification (FAC) is a high-profile problem in biometric verification and face retrieval. Although recent research has been devoted to extracting more delicate image attribute features and exploiting the inter-attribute correlations, significant challenges still remain.  To solve the problems, a research team led by Na LIU published their new research on 15 June 2024 in Frontiers of Computer Science co-published by Higher Education Press and Springer Nature. The team proposed a scattering-based hybrid block, termed WS-SE, to incorporate frequency-domain (WST) and image-domain (CNN) features in a channel attention manner. Compared with CNN, WS-SE achieved ...

10 July 2024      Risky drinkers most at risk: Ads from sports broadcasts significantly increase alcohol urges    New Edith Cowan University (ECU) research shows exposure to alcohol advertisements during national sports broadcasts, particularly those that feature a preferred beverage, significantly increases cravings in people with risky drinking behaviours.    The ECU study, led by Dr Ross Hollett, analysed nationally televised finals matches from the Australian Football League (AFL) and the National Rugby League (NRL) ...

Quality is the core characteristic of cultivated land and is crucial for ensuring sustainable resource utilization and national food security. To meet the increasing demand for food driven by rapid population growth and the continual optimization of dietary structures, the intensity of cultivated land utilization has been steadily increasing. This trend has resulted in degradation issues such as deterioration of black soil, thinning of the cultivated land layer, reduction in organic matter content, soil salinization, acidification, and contamination by heavy metals, all of which threaten national food security. Currently, China has entered a critical period of agricultural ...

New research led by UCLA Health revealed that Black patients with Huntington's disease in the U.S. and Canada received their diagnoses, on average, one year later compared to White patients after symptoms first appear. Huntington’s disease is a rare, incurable genetic disease that causes a gradual death of nerve cells, resulting in a variety of symptoms affecting movement, emotions and cognition. About 41,000 Americans have the disease and 200,000 are at risk of inheriting it, according to the Huntington’s Disease Society of America. Children of a parent with ...

A trove of ancient plant remains excavated in Kenya helps explain the history of plant farming in equatorial eastern Africa, a region long thought to be important for early farming but where scant evidence from actual physical crops has been previously uncovered. In a new study published July 10 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, archaeologists from Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Pittsburgh and their colleagues report the largest and most extensively dated archaeobotanical record from interior east Africa. Up until now, scientists have ...

A longitudinal study by University of Queensland researchers has found high-intensity interval exercise improves brain function in older adults for up to 5 years. Emeritus Professor Perry Bartlett and Dr Daniel Blackmore from UQ’s Queensland Brain Institute led the study in which volunteers did physical exercise and had brain scans.  Emeritus Professor Perry Bartlett and Dr Daniel Blackmore have shown high intensity exercise boosts cognition in healthy older adults and the improvement was retained for up to 5 years.  Emeritus Professor Bartlett said it is the first ...

LA JOLLA, CA—Even years after they have recovered, a person who once struggled with alcohol or opioid addiction can relapse—and that relapse is more likely to occur during particularly stressful times. Now, Scripps Research scientists have identified an area of the brain that plays a key role in stress-induced oxycodone relapse. Their findings explain why the drug suvorexant, which they previously found to reduce alcohol and oxycodone relapse when administered orally, works so well. “Having a better understanding of the region(s) in the brain responsible for this kind of relapse is incredibly important as we develop treatments for alcohol use disorder and opioid ...

Daily sugar intake fell by around 5 g in children and by around 11 g in adults in the 12 months following the introduction of the UK’s ‘sugar tax’, formally known as the Soft Drinks Industry Levy, finds an analysis of 11 years of survey data, published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.   The sugar from soft drinks alone made up over half this total, the estimates suggest. But overall daily energy intake from free sugars levels are still higher than the updated recommendation from the World Health Organisation (WHO) of 5%---equivalent to 30 g/day for adults, 24 g for 7–10 year olds, and 19 g for 4–6 year olds—point ...

Osteoarthritis—a condition in which the protective cartilage on the ends of bones breaks down—may more than double the risk of speedy progression to accumulating severe long term conditions (multimorbidity), finds a 20 year study published in the open access journal RMD Open. And there seem to be 4 different speeds of progression to multimorbidity, the findings indicate. Persistently low levels of physical activity, a high calorie diet, plus chronic low grade inflammation may help to explain the link between osteoarthritis and the risk of accumulating other long term conditions, suggest the researchers. Although the exact causes aren’t known, injury, age, family ...

Researchers from Konstanz have measured the heart rate of bats over several days in the wild, including complete flights—the first time this has been done for a bat species. To record the heart rate of male common noctule bats during flight, the scientists attached heart rate transmitters weighing less than one gram to the animals, which they then accompanied in an airplane while the bats flew, sometimes for more than an hour, in search of food. Their results, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, show how much energy bats consume over the course of a day and what energy-saving strategies they ...

Women who have close family members with endocrine diseases, including type 2 diabetes, thyroid diseases and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), are at higher risk of pregnancy loss, a new study has found [1]. The research, presented today at the ESHRE 40th Annual Meeting in Amsterdam, examined the association between various endocrine diseases and the incidence of pregnancy loss. The study investigated 366,539 women in Denmark between 1973 and 2022. The study found that women with parents diagnosed with endocrine diseases faced a 6% higher risk of pregnancy loss ...

The Buck Institute for Research on Aging announces the appointment of Nathan Price, PhD, to Professor and Co-Director of the Center for Human Healthspan.  Price specializes in systems biology, artificial intelligence, and bioengineering. He has published more than 200 scientific papers and is co-author, with Buck Chief Innovation Officer and Distinguished Professor Lee Hood, of “The Age of Scientific Wellness.” Price has been named one of 10 Emerging Leaders in Health and Medicine by the National Academy of Medicine and is a member of the Board on Life Sciences of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Dr. Price is Chief Scientific Officer ...