A Brazilian study published (http://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20217-w) in Nature Communications shows that human activities have directly or indirectly caused biodiversity and biomass losses in over 80% of the remaining Atlantic Rainforest fragments. According to the authors, in terms of carbon storage, the biomass erosion corresponds to the destruction of 70,000 square kilometers (km²) of forest - almost 10 million soccer pitches - or USD 2.3 billion-USD 2.6 billion in carbon credits. "These figures have direct implications for mechanisms of climate change mitigation," they state in the article. Atlantic Rainforest remnants ...

DALLAS - Feb. 24, 2021 - Using machine learning tools to analyze hundreds of proteins, UT Southwestern researchers have identified a group of biomarkers in blood that could lead to an earlier diagnosis of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and, in turn, more effective therapies sooner. The identification of nine serum proteins that strongly predict ASD were reported in a study published today by PLOS ONE. Earlier diagnosis, followed by prompt therapeutic support and intervention, could have a significant impact on the 1 in 59 children diagnosed with autism in the United States. Being able to identify children on the autism spectrum when they are toddlers could make a big difference, says Dwight German, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry at UT Southwestern ...

For decades, climate change researchers and activists have used dramatic forecasts to attempt to influence public perception of the problem and as a call to action on climate change. These forecasts have frequently been for events that might be called "apocalyptic," because they predict cataclysmic events resulting from climate change. In a new paper published in the International Journal of Global Warming, Carnegie Mellon University's David Rode and Paul Fischbeck argue that making such forecasts can be counterproductive. "Truly apocalyptic forecasts can only ever be observed in their failure--that is the world did not end as predicted," says Rode, adjunct research faculty with the Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center, "and observing ...

Parenthood leads to greater reductions in short-term research productivity for mothers across three disciplines than for fathers, largely explaining the publication gender gap between women and men in academia, according to an analysis of survey data from 3,064 tenure track faculty at PhD-granting universities in the U.S. and Canada. The findings suggest that policies designed to boost workplace flexibility for parents, including easily accessible lactation rooms and affordable childcare, may help to ease the impact of parenthood on mothers in academia, giving them more time for research. While a large body of previous research across academic fields has shown that men tend to publish more papers than women, the reasons for this have remained uncertain. ...

Scientists have found that comparing the ratio of two immune molecules helped predict the likelihood of transplant rejection in 339 patients who received kidney transplants, the only curative treatment for late-stage kidney failure. Their results suggest that monitoring this ratio could help distinguish high-risk patients early on, before long-term organ rejection becomes inevitable, allowing clinicians to intervene accordingly with new treatments. Kidney transplants often grant immediate benefits to patients with end-stage kidney disease, but long-term outcomes are mixed, as 35% of transplant recipients lose their new kidney within ...

Cancer cells can experience stress. They have to contend with attacks by the immune system or with anti-cancer therapeutics. If they attempt to colonize other tissues, they have to break away from the extracellular matrix, enter the bloodstream and survive during the travel through the body. Then exit and start building a new colony. The ability of cells to adapt their properties to face all the challenges they encounter is called plasticity. In epithelial solid tumors, including the very common lung, breast, colon and pancreatic cancers, tumor cells plasticity hijacks a cellular development process known as epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). EMT is commonly associated to kinases - enzymes that act like a switch, turning biochemical ...

Targeted radiation is often used to study and treat diverse cancer types. A multidisciplinary research team based at the University of Chicago Medicine has recently focused on a type of cell that releases a protein that enhances resistance to cancer therapies and promotes tumor progression. The study focused on Ter cells, which are extra medullary erythroid precursers that secrete the neuropeptide artemin. In the study, published February 24, 2020, in Science Translational Medicine, the researchers showed that local tumor radiotherapy, systemic immunotherapy or the combination of both treatments were able to deplete Ter cells in the spleen, reduce artemin production and limit tumor progression both in the locally irradiated tumors as well as outside ...

Researchers believe they have closed the case of what killed the dinosaurs, definitively linking their extinction with an asteroid that slammed into Earth 66 million years ago by finding a key piece of evidence: asteroid dust inside the impact crater. Death by asteroid rather than by a series of volcanic eruptions or some other global calamity has been the leading hypothesis since the 1980s, when scientists found asteroid dust in the geologic layer that marks the extinction of the dinosaurs. This discovery painted an apocalyptic picture of dust from the vaporized asteroid and rocks from impact circling the planet, blocking ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Politicization of the COVID-19 pandemic had a powerful influence over adherence to social distancing guidelines in the United States and why people did, or did not, comply during the lockdown days, a new study has found. The analysis boiled down to whom study participants trusted most: scientists or President Donald Trump. "People who expressed a great deal of faith in President Trump, who thought he was doing an effective job of guiding us through the pandemic, were less likely to socially distance," said Russell Fazio, senior author of the study and a professor ...

Ultra-fast, cheap LAMP-based COVID tests could be performed by non-experts at work and in public spaces, giving results in under an hour INFORMATION: Article Title: "Ultra-rapid detection of SARS-CoV-2 in public workspace environments" Funding: This project was made possible through the support of a grant from Dynamic Combinatorial Chemistry, LLC, The funder provided support in the form of salaries and supplies for authors OY, ZY, JM, and BO, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific ...

Improving road safety in cities could result in a lower rate of violent crime, according to research from UCL. Experts analysing crime and car accident data in Mexico City found a surprisingly high level of synchronicity between the two on a weekly cycle, suggesting that applying more resources to prevent road accidents would improve crime rates by enabling more efficient policing. For the paper, published today in Cities as Complex Systems special issue in PLOS ONE, experts plotted the time and locations of nearly one million car accidents and 200,000 ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Researchers at University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital (UH Rainbow) published new findings today that wearing a face mask - either a cloth mask or a surgical mask - did not impair the ability of subjects to get air in and out of their bodies. The study measured heart rate, transcutaneous carbon dioxide tension, and oxygen levels in 50 adult volunteers at the conclusion of six 10-minute phases: Sitting quietly and then walking briskly without a mask; sitting quietly and then walking briskly while wearing a cloth mask; and sitting quietly and then walking ...

WATERTOWN, Mass. - Gene therapy has traditionally been conceptualized as a one-time, curative treatment option; however, research shows that there may be a need for subsequent doses years after initial treatment. While adeno-associated viral (AAV) vectors are a core part of this powerful therapeutic approach, they present two key challenges in gene therapy. The first challenge is their immunogenicity. In gene therapy, the formation of neutralizing antibodies (Nabs) in response to AAV vector administration precludes retreatment of a patient due to the potentially dangerous immune response that would occur after a second or third administration of the therapy. The second obstacle relates to their durability. AAV vectors ...

A new study published Feb. 24 in the journal Royal Society Open Science documents the earliest-known fossil evidence of primates. A team of 10 researchers from across the U.S. analyzed several fossils of Purgatorius, the oldest genus in a group of the earliest-known primates called plesiadapiforms. These ancient mammals were small-bodied and ate specialized diets of insects and fruits that varied by species. These newly described specimens are central to understanding primate ancestry and paint a picture of how life on land recovered after the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago that wiped out all dinosaurs -- except for birds -- and led to the rise of mammals. Gregory Wilson Mantilla, a University of Washington professor of biology and curator of vertebrate ...

A research team from Skoltech and FBK (Italy) presented a methodology to derive 4D building models using historical maps and machine learning. The implemented method relies on the geometric, neighbourhood, and categorical attributes to predict building heights. The method is useful for understanding urban phenomena and changes contributing to defining our cities' actual shapes. The results were published in the MDPI Applied Sciences journal. Historical maps are the most powerful source used to analyze changes in urban development. Nevertheless, maps represent the 3D world ...

Freshwater is accumulating in the Arctic Ocean. The Beaufort Sea, which is the largest Arctic Ocean freshwater reservoir, has increased its freshwater content by 40% over the past two decades. How and where this water will flow into the Atlantic Ocean is important for local and global ocean conditions. A study from the University of Washington, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows that this freshwater travels through the Canadian Archipelago to reach the Labrador Sea, rather than through the wider marine passageways that connect to seas in Northern Europe. The open-access study was published Feb. 23 ...

Emerging smart mobile health (or mHealth) technologies are changing the way patients track information related to diagnosed conditions. A new study examined the health and economic impacts of mHealth technologies on the outcomes of diabetes patients in Asia. The study concluded that compared to patients who did not use mHealth applications, patients who used the apps had better health outcomes and were able to regulate their health behavior more effectively. They also had fewer hospital visits and lower medical costs. The study was conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and New York University ...

New Orleans, LA -- A new study of how the 2020 major hurricanes and the COVID-19 pandemic affected each other as well as disaster response found that although prior experience enabled community-based organizations to respond to the pandemic, the pandemic is also creating new challenges to preparing for and responding to natural disasters. The research is published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, available here. "Two major crises hit Louisiana and coastal communities in the Southeastern United States in 2020 - a significant increase in the frequency and severity of hurricanes, and the COVID-19 pandemic," says Benjamin Springgate, MD, MPH, Chief of Community & Population Medicine at ...

A study aiming to develop a new therapeutic technique could bring a revolution in our approach to treating rare, fatal Sanfilippo syndrome, a disorder that affects children as young as 2 years old and leads to childhood dementia and premature death. "We are using a combination of gene therapy, stem cells and small molecules to restore metabolic defects in the patient's brain cells" says Dr. Alexey Pshezhetsky, Professor at CHU Ste-Justine and lead GlycoNet Investigator on this project. "First results in the mouse models of the disease are very encouraging." Sanfilippo syndrome belongs to a group of rare diseases known as lysosomal storage disorders. The syndrome occurs in ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - During mating season, male bearded seals make loud calls to attract a mate. How loud? Well, even their "quiet" call can still be as ear-rattling as a chainsaw. These elaborate vocalizations are essential for bearded seal reproduction, and have to be loud enough to be heard over the cacophony of their equally loud brethren. But in the rapidly changing Arctic soundscape, where noise from industrial activities is predicted to dramatically increase in the next 15 years, bearded seals may need to adjust their calling behavior if they are ...

Washington, DC - February 24, 2021 - In the absence of effective treatments for COVID-19, many countries have approved the therapeutic use of blood plasma from recovering patients because it contains antibodies against the coronavirus. But not every type of antibody can neutralize the virus and render it noninfectious. New research published this week in mSphere, an open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, explores variation in virus neutralization capabilities, which can vary widely by type of antibody. "What we need for plasma therapy is not only high levels of antibodies but also high neutralization capability," said virologist Michael Schindler, Ph.D, at University Hospital Tübingen, ...

X-rays are used to study the atomic and microstructure properties of matter. Such studies are conducted with special accelerator complexes called synchrotrons. A synchrotron source generates powerful electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength equal to fractions of a nanometer. Some X-rays are reflected from the atomic planes of a crystal and some go through the crystal plane that plays the role of a beam-splitter (or the so-called semitransparent mirror). If the radiation passes through monochromators-optical devices that consist of two or more ideal crystals - its optimal exit wavelength can be regulated. ...

Researchers have developed a data transfer system that can transmit information 10 times faster than a USB. The new link pairs high-frequency silicon chips with a polymer cable as thin a strand of hair. The system may one day boost energy efficiency in data centers and lighten the loads of electronics-rich spacecraft. The research was presented at this month's IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference. The lead author is Jack Holloway '03, MNG '04, who completed his PhD in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) last fall and currently works for Raytheon. Co-authors include Ruonan Han, associate professor and Holloway's PhD adviser in EECS, and Georgios Dogiamis, ...

Korea Brain Research Institute (KBRI, Pann-Ghill Suh (President)) announced that Dr. Kea Joo Lee and Dr. You-Na Jang of the Neural Circuits Research Group have identified the mechanism causing synaptic loss in Alzheimer's disease as the aberrant expression of RAPGEF2, a synaptic protein. - The results were published on January 2021, in the online Early View of Neuropathology and Applied Neurobiology. * (Title) RAPGEF2 mediates oligomeric Aβ-induced synaptic loss and cognitive dysfunction in the 3xTg-AD mouse model of Alzheimer's disease Alzheimer's disease (AD) accounts for about 75% of dementia cases and is the most common type of degenerative brain disease. AD is a devastating because disease progression can cause ...

Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society (ACS), is celebrating Black chemists and chemical engineers with a special issue highlighting Black chemists who work across the fields of biotechnology, solar energy, pharmaceuticals and more. Guest edited by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) drug delivery pioneer Paula Hammond, Ph.D., this special issue showcases Black scientists, spotlighting their scientific passions and career accomplishments. "In bringing into focus the unique lives of this set of accomplished Black scientists in chemistry and chemical engineering, ...