Researchers from the Butantan Institute and collaborators are developing a more potent version of the BCG vaccine that protects against tuberculosis. While the conventional immunizer reduced infection by 90% in experiments with mice, the so-called recombinant BCG increased the protection rate to 99%. In addition, the new formulation protected the animals for a significantly longer period of time. “BCG is the first vaccine we receive at birth, and it’s indeed effective in protecting children. But immunity against the disease tends to wane in adulthood, and as bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics, no ...

URBANA, Ill. – Urban agriculture has the potential to improve food security through local, efficient, and sustainable food production. Examples of urban food systems include hydroponics, where plants grow in a nutrient solution without soil, and aquaponics, which combines hydroponics with raising fish in tanks. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign examines the use of aquaponics wastewater as a growth medium for lettuce in a hydroponic system. This practice can potentially ...

Every living cell transcribes DNA into RNA. This process begins when an enzyme called RNA polymerase (RNAP) clamps onto DNA. Within a few hundred milliseconds, the DNA double helix unwinds to form a node known as the transcription bubble, so that one exposed DNA strand can be copied into a complementary RNA strand. How RNAP accomplishes this feat is largely unknown. A snapshot of RNAP in the act of opening that bubble would provide a wealth of information, but the process happens too quickly for current technology to easily capture visualizations ...

A new study led by Rice University’s Peter Wolynes offers new insights into the evolution of foldable proteins. The research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers at Rice and the University of Buenos Aires used energy landscape theory to distinguish between foldable and nonfoldable parts of protein sequences. Their study illuminates the ongoing debate about whether the pieces of DNA that code for only part of a protein during their origins can fold on their own.   The researchers focused on the extensive relationship between exons in protein structures and the evolution of protein foldability. They highlighted ...

MINNEAPOLIS – Having higher levels of inflammation in your 20s and 30s may be linked to having memory and thinking problems at middle age, according to a study published in the July 3, 2024, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study looked at levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) in the blood. CRP is produced by the liver and increases when there is inflammation in the body. The study does not prove that having higher levels of this protein causes dementia. It only shows an association. There are two kinds of inflammation. Acute inflammation happens when the body’s immune response jumps into action to fight off infection or ...

Higher inflammation in young adulthood linked to lower performance in skills testing in midlife.  Young adults who have higher levels of inflammation, which is associated with obesity, physical inactivity, chronic illness, stress and smoking, may experience reduced cognitive function in midlife, a new study out of UC San Francisco has found.    Researchers previously linked higher inflammation in older adults to dementia, but this is one of the first studies to connect inflammation in early adulthood with lower cognitive abilities in midlife.    “We know from long-term studies that brain changes leading to Alzheimer’s ...

Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), a mysterious and deadly neurological disorder, usually goes undiagnosed until after a patient dies and an autopsy is performed. But now, UC San Francisco researchers have found a way to identify the condition while patients are still alive.     A study appearing in Neurology on July 3 has found a pattern in the spinal fluid of PSP patients, using a new high-throughput technology that can measure thousands of proteins in a tiny drop of fluid.    Researchers ...

The cerebellum is a region of the brain that helps us refine our movements and learn new motor skills. Patients and mouse models experience many kinds of abnormal movements when their cerebellum is damaged. They can have uncoordinated and unbalanced movements, called ataxia. They can have atypical positioning of body parts or uncontrolled movements because their muscles are working against each other, called dystonia. Or they can have disruptive shaky movements, called tremors. Understanding how changes in a single brain region ...

https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.15212/bioi-2024-0018 Announcing a new article publication for BIO Integration journal. Esomeprazole (ESO) gastro-resistant tablets (40 mg) are sold under the brand name, Zosa, which effectively manages conditions associated with the overproduction of gastric acid, including peptic ulcer disease and Zollinger-Ellison syndrome. This article quantifies impurities in esomeprazole using advanced analytical techniques known as analytical quality by design with high-performance liquid chromatography. Buffer selection ...

https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.15212/CVIA.2024.0038 Announcing a new article publication for Cardiovascular Innovations and Applications journal. Atrial septal aneurysm (ASA) is defined as excursion of the atrial septum exceeding 10 mm beyond the atrial septum into the right or left atrium, or a combined total excursion of 15 mm on the right and left sides during the cardiac cycle. According to previous studies, 20–40% of patent foramen ovale (PFO) cases are accompanied by ASAs. ASA is associated with the presence of PFO, left atrial dysfunction, cryptogenic stroke, migraine, and arterial embolism, thus making ...

Owning cryptocurrency may be associated with certain personality and demographic characteristics as well as a reliance on alternative or fringe social media sources, according to a study published July 3, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Shane Littrell from the University of Toronto, Canada, along with colleagues from the University of Miami, USA.  Anonymous trading and unregulated markets hallmark cryptocurrency’s unique subculture. While some consider the digital currency to be financially unreliable, hundreds of millions of global investors think otherwise. This study identified various political, psychological, and social characteristics ...

Cigarette smokers, cigar smokers, and non-smokers each have distinct personality profiles, according to a study published July 3, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Dritjon Gruda from Universidade Catolica Portuguesa, Portugal, and Jim McCleskey from Western Governors University, USA. Tobacco use remains a formidable global public health challenge, responsible for more than 8 million deaths annually, including those attributed to second-hand smoke exposure. Emerging research underscores the critical role of psychological factors, including personality traits, in shaping ...

A new study done in more than 14,000 ninth graders in Germany has revealed that students experience grading bias based on their gender, body size, ethnicity and parental socio-economic status. These negative biases stack on each other, meaning that students with multiple intersectional identities get significantly lower grades than their peers regardless of their true abilities. Richard Nennstiel and Sandra Gilgen of the University of Bern and University of Zurich in Switzerland present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on July 3, ...

Analysis of the medical records of nearly 50,000 people who experienced dengue fever in Taiwan suggests that this disease is associated with elevated short- and long-term risk of depression. Hsin-I Shih and colleagues of National Cheng Kung University and National Health Research Institutes, Taiwan present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. People may develop dengue fever after being bitten by a mosquito carrying the dengue virus. Dengue fever can be mild, but it can also progress ...

Twelve years ago, cancer researchers at University of California San Diego identified a molecule that helps cancer cells survive by shuttling damaging inflammatory cells into tumor tissue. In new research, they show that the same molecule does the same thing in lung tissue infected with COVID-19 — and that the molecule can be suppressed with a repurposed cancer drug. The work, published in Science Translational Medicine, represents a new approach to preventing irreversible organ damage in infectious diseases like COVID-19 and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).  The two key players in this scenario are inflammatory cells called myeloid ...

Many vaccines are only partially effective, have waning efficacy, or do not work well in the very young or the very old. For more than a decade, Ofer Levy, MD, PhD, and David Dowling, PhD, in the Precision Vaccines Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, have tried improving vaccines by adding compounds known as adjuvants to boost vaccine recipients’ immune responses.   Now, under a large Adjuvant Discovery Program contract from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases ...

Childhood home temperature and community connectedness can help predict how U.S. residents set their thermostats, offering new ways to encourage energy conservation and combat climate change, according to a study published July 3 in the open-access journal PLOS Climate by Dritjon Gruda from the National University of Ireland Maynooth and Paul Hanges from the University of Maryland. Half of U.S. households’ annual electricity use goes to heating and cooling, but less than half of homeowners tweak their thermostats to save energy ...

The Texas A&M Center for Environmental Health (TiCER), a National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Environmental Health Sciences Core Center, will be returning to the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences (VMBS) with a $7.6 million grant for the center’s new funding cycle. Under the new leadership of Dr. Weston Porter, a VMBS professor in the Department of Veterinary Physiology and Pharmacology, the center will promote research in four areas of environmental health — climate ...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Drosophila — commonly known as fruit flies — are a valuable model for human heart pathophysiology, including cardiac aging and cardiomyopathy. However, a choke point in evaluating fruit fly hearts is the need for human intervention to measure the heart at moments of its largest expansion or its greatest contraction, measurements that allow calculations of cardiac dynamics. Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham now show a way to significantly cut the time needed ...

Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the issuance of a Request for Proposals (RFPs) for the competitive selection of a management and operating contractor for  the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (TJNAF). TJNAF is a DOE national laboratory and DOE-sponsored Federally Funded Research and Development Center that has a mission focused on delivering breakthrough science and technology in nuclear physics.   DOE expects to award the contract before the current agreement with Jefferson Science Associates, LLC expires on May 31, 2025, allowing for an anticipated three-month transition. DOE expects the selected ...

Key Takeaways More people are surviving cancer than ever before and living longer. This growing population of adult cancer survivors requires distinct survivorship services focused on long-term well-being. Survey study demonstrates the value of American College of Surgeons’ survivorship accreditation standards, though specialized services in fertility and sexual health are less accessible. CHICAGO — With the number of adult cancer survivors in the United States expected to reach 23 million by 2032,* the long-term needs of this ...

Summary Global warming as well as recent droughts and floods threaten large populations along the Nile Valley. Understanding how such a large river will respond to an invigorated hydrological cycle is therefore a pressing issue. Insights can be gained by studying past periods with wetter and warmer conditions, such as the North African Humid Period eleven to six thousand years ago. A research team of the German Research Centre for Geosciences GFZ, led by Cécile Blanchet, together with colleagues ...

A new study led by investigators from Mass Eye and Ear found that patients prescribed semaglutide (as Ozempic or Wegovy) for diabetes or weight loss had a higher risk of having a potentially blinding eye condition called NAION than similar patients who had not been prescribed these drugs. Notably, the study found people with diabetes who had been prescribed semaglutide by their physician and then filled the prescription were more than four times more likely to be diagnosed with NAION. Those who were overweight or had obesity and prescribed this drug were more than seven times more likely to get the diagnosis. The study, which ...

About The Study: Researchers found that higher COVID-19 vaccination rates may confer protection against symptomatic asthma in children. COVID-19 vaccination yields prophylactic benefits against SARS-CoV-2 infection for individual children and may also protect against other human coronaviruses through cross-reactive antibody responses. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Matthew M. Davis, M.D., M.A.P.P., email matthew.davis@nemours.org. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.19979) Editor’s ...

The ongoing opioid epidemic in the U.S. kills tens of thousands of people every year. Naloxone, sold under the brand name Narcan, has saved countless lives by reversing opioid overdoses. But new and more powerful opioids keep appearing, and first responders are finding it increasingly difficult to revive people who overdose. Now, researchers have found an approach that could extend naloxone’s lifesaving power, even in the face of ever-more-dangerous opioids. A team of researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Stanford University and the University of Florida have identified potential ...