The steadily increasing prevalence and high costs of treating chronic joint pain worldwide poses a challenge for healthcare systems and healthcare payers. New research published today in END ...

The family of ENDOU enzymes is found in most organisms, yet its functions are only poorly understood. In humans, it has been connected with cancer. RNA viruses, such as SARS-CoV2, contain a gene corresponding to ENDOU, and this is important for virus replication and the suppression of the immune response. However, so far only few details of the role of these enzymes are known. The research group led by the molecular geneticist Dr. Wenjing Qi from the University of Freiburg now contributes some more details to its function in a study published by the renowned scientific journal Nature Communications. They suggest that the gene ENDU-2 could ...

Responding to artificial intelligence's exploding demands on computer networks, Princeton University researchers in recent years have radically increased the speed and slashed the energy use of specialized AI systems. Now, the researchers have moved their innovation closer to widespread use by creating co-designed hardware and software that will allow designers to blend these new types of systems into their applications. "Software is a critical part of enabling new hardware," said Naveen Verma, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Princeton and a leader of the research team. "The ...

More U.S. adults reported receiving or planning to receive an influenza vaccination during the 2020-2021 flu season than ever before, according to findings from a national survey. The survey of 1,027 adults, conducted by the University of Georgia, found that 43.5% of respondents reported having already received a flu vaccination with an additional 13.5% stating they "definitely will get one" and 9.3% stating they "probably will get one." Combined, 66.3% have received or intend to receive an influenza vaccination. By comparison, 48.4% of adults 18 and older received the vaccine during the 2019-2020 flu season, according to the Centers for Disease ...

A new analysis of education debates on both social media and in traditional media outlets suggests that the education sector is being increasingly influenced by populism and the wider social media 'culture wars'. The study also suggests that the type of populism in question is not quite the same as that used to explain large-scale political events, such as the UK's 'Brexit' from the European Union, or Donald Trump's recent presidency in the United States. Instead, the researchers - from the University of Cambridge, UK, and Queensland University of Technology, Australia - identify a phenomenon called 'micropopulism': a localised populism which spotlights an aspect of public ...

CHICAGO, February 24, 2021 -- Despite having been designated as high risk for COVID-19 by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a new study finds 3.1 percent of dental hygienists have had COVID-19 based on data collected in October 2020. This is in alignment with the cumulative infection prevalence rate among dentists and far below that of other health professionals in the U.S, although slightly higher than that of the general population. The research, published by The Journal of Dental Hygiene, is the first large-scale collection and publication of U.S. dental hygienists' infection rates and infection control practices related to COVID-19. In partnership, the American Dental Hygienists' Association (ADHA) and the American Dental Association (ADA) ...

The transition from single-celled organisms to multicellular ones was a major step in the evolution of complex life forms. Multicellular organisms arose hundreds of millions of years ago, but the forces underlying this event remain mysterious. To investigate the origins of multicellularity, Erika Pearce's group at the MPI of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg turned to the slime mold Dictyostelium discoideum, which can exist in both a unicellular and a multicellular state, lying on the cusp of this key evolutionary step. These dramatically different states depend on just one thing - food. A core question of Pearce's lab is to answer how changes in metabolism drive cell function and differentiation. Usually, they study immune cells ...

People who have had evidence of a prior infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, appear to be well protected against being reinfected with the virus, at least for a few months, according to a newly published study from the National Cancer Institute (NCI). This finding may explain why reinfection appears to be relatively rare, and it could have important public health implications, including decisions about returning to physical workplaces, school attendance, the prioritization of vaccine distribution, and other activities. For the study, researchers at NCI, part of the National Institutes of Health, collaborated with ...

The formation of a brain is one of nature's most staggeringly complex accomplishments. The intricate intermingling of neurons and a labyrinth of connections also make it a particularly difficult feat for scientists to study. Now, Yale researchers and collaborators have devised a strategy that allows them to see this previously impenetrable process unfold in a living animal -- the worm Caenorhabditis elegans, they report February 24 in the journal Nature. "Before, we were able to study single cells, or small groups of cells, in the context of the living C. elegans, and for relatively short periods of time," said Mark Moyle, an associate research scientist in neuroscience at Yale School of Medicine and first author of the study. "It has been a breathtaking experience to ...

WOODS HOLE, Mass. -- Understanding how the brain works is a paramount goal of medical science. But with its billions of tightly packed, intermingled neurons, the human brain is dauntingly difficult to visualize and map, which can provide the route to therapies for long-intractable disorders. In a major advance published next week in Nature, scientists for the first time report the structure of a fundamental type of tissue organization in brains, called neuropil, as well as the developmental pathways that lead to neuropil assembly in the roundworm C. elegans. This multidisciplinary study ...

What The Study Did: Medicare claims and clinical data were used to estimate health care costs associated with delirium in older adults one year after major elective surgery. Authors: Tammy T. Hshieh, M.D., M.P.H., of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, 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/jamasurg.2020.7260) Editor's Note: The article includes conflicts 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 support. INFORMATION: Media advisory: The full study ...

What The Study Did: Researchers use a large set of clinical laboratory data linked to other clinical information such as claims to investigate the relationship between SARS-CoV-2 antibody status and subsequent nucleic acid amplification test (NAAT) results in an effort to understand how serostatus may predict risk of reinfection. Authors: Lynne T. Penberthy, M.D., M.P.H., of the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health in Rockville, Maryland, 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/jamainternmed.2021.0366) Editor's ...

In the last 60,000 years, humans have emerged as an ecologically dominant species and have successfully colonized every terrestrial habitat. Our evolutionary success has been facilitated by a heavy reliance on an ever-advancing technology. Understanding how human technology evolves is crucial to understanding why humans have enjoyed such unprecedented evolutionary success. ASU doctoral graduate Jacob Harris, working with ASU researcher Robert Boyd and Brian Wood from the University of California Las Angeles and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, are interested in the role of causal ...

What The Study Did: This study combined the results of 12 studies with 1.8 million participants to examine the association between attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in childhood and adolescence and the subsequent risk of developing a psychotic disorder. Authors: Mikaïl Nourredine, M.D., M.Sc., of the Hospices Civils de Lyon in Lyon, France, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2020.4799) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and ...

BOSTON (February 24, 2021) - Results of a study published today in JAMA Surgery reveal the impact post-operative delirium has on health care costs in the U.S. Data from the study shows that if delirium were prevented or made less severe for patients, it could reduce health care costs by $33 billion per year, that is, $44,300 per patient per year. Severe delirium resulted in an additional $56,500 per patient per year, as compared to routine health care costs for older post-operative patients. Tammy Hshieh, M.D., M.P.H., Adjunct Scientist, and Ray Yun Gou, M.A., Data Scientist II, both with the Aging Brain Center in the Hinda and Arthur Marcus Institute for Aging Research at Hebrew SeniorLife, are co-first authors. Sharon K. Inouye, M.D., M.P.H., Director ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C.--For the last decade, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has required tobacco manufacturers and importers to report the levels of harmful and potentially harmful chemicals found in their tobacco products and tobacco smoke. The idea was to educate the public and ultimately to decrease tobacco use, but little research has demonstrated if such information can impact on people's decisions to quit smoking. A new study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has found that smokers who saw messages about tobacco chemicals with associated ...

The stem cells in our brain generate new neurons throughout life, for example in the hippocampus. This region of the brain plays a key role for a range of memory processes. With increasing age, and in patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease, the hippocampus' ability to create new neurons declines steadily - and with it, its memory functions. Distribution of age-dependent cell damage A study conducted by the research group of Sebastian Jessberger, a professor at the Brain Research Institute of the University of Zurich, shows how the formation of new neurons is impaired with advancing age. Protein structures in the nuclei of neural stem cells make sure that harmful proteins accumulating ...

The most modern light sources for research are based on particle accelerators. These are large facilities in which electrons are accelerated to almost the speed of light, and then emit light pulses of a special character. In storage-ring-based synchrotron radiation sources, the electron bunches travel in the ring for billions of revolutions, then generate a rapid succession of very bright light pulses in the deflecting magnets. In contrast, the electron bunches in free-electron lasers (FELs) are accelerated linearly and then emit a single super-bright flash of ...

Researchers have mapped the physical organization of the brain of a microscopic soil-living nematode worm called Caenorhabditis elegans, creating a new model for the architecture of the animal's brain and how it processes information. In a surprise twist, they found a large degree of variation in the structure of some neural circuits or pathways in individual worms which complemented a core set of neural circuits common to different animals. The scientists say the worms' brains might have a lot more in common with larger animals than previously thought. Created by neuroscientists at the University of Leeds in collaboration with researchers in New York's Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the brain map reveals that ...

Scientists at the Children's Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern (CRI) have identified the specialized environment, known as a niche, in the bone marrow where new bone and immune cells are produced. The study, published in Nature, also shows that movement-induced stimulation is required for the maintenance of this niche, as well as the bone and immune-forming cells that it contains. Together, these findings identify a new way that exercise strengthens bones and immune function. Researchers from the Morrison laboratory discovered that forces created from walking or running are transmitted from bone surfaces along arteriolar blood vessels into the marrow inside bones. Bone-forming ...

A study of spatial learning in mice shows that exposure to new experiences dampens established representations in the brain's hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, allowing the mice to learn new navigation strategies. The study, published in Nature, was supported by the National Institutes of Health. "The ability to flexibly learn in new situations makes it possible to adapt to an ever-changing world," noted Joshua A. Gordon, M.D., Ph.D., a senior author on the study and director of the National Institute of Mental Health, part of NIH. "Understanding the neural basis of this flexible learning in animals gives us insight into ...

Asymmetry in the proton confounds physicists, but a new discovery may bring back old theories to explain it. Symmetry -- displayed in areas ranging from mathematics and art, to living organisms and galaxies -- is an important underlying structure in nature. It characterizes our universe and enables it to be studied and understood. Because symmetry is such a pervasive theme in nature, physicists are especially intrigued when an object seems like it should be symmetric, but it isn't. When scientists are confronted with these broken symmetries, it's as if they've found an object with a strange reflection in the mirror. "Nature is leading the way for concepts in older models of the proton to get a second look." -- ...

UCLA materials scientists and their colleagues have developed a new method to make synthetic biomaterials that mimic the internal structure, stretchiness, strength and durability of tendons and other biological tissues. The researchers developed a two-pronged process to enhance the strength of existing hydrogels that could be used to create artificial tendons, ligaments, cartilage that are 10 times tougher than the natural tissues. Although the hydrogels contain mostly water with little solid content (about 10% polymer), they are more durable than Kevlar and rubber, which are both 100% polymer. This kind of breakthrough has never been achieved in water-laden polymers until this study, which was recently published in Nature. ...

With the hope of contributing to the fight against cancer, researchers in Sweden have published a new molecular mapping of proteins that regulate the cell division process - identifying 300 such proteins. The release of the data, which was published today in the scientific journal, Nature, is significant because it helps bring medical research closer to the point of being able to target specific proteins to treat cancer. Identifying and understanding what characterizes these proteins is important, says co-author Emma Lundberg, a professor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology whose research group at Science ...

What The Study Did: National COVID-19 registry data are used in this study to describe the epidemiology, clinical characteristics, complications, and hospital and postdischarge outcomes of pediatric patients with multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) and to compare each in patients with severe COVID-19. Authors: Adrienne G. Randolph, M.D., of Boston Children's Hospital, 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/jama.2021.2091) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of ...