A new study from scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, Germany, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing shows that the potential genetic burden of mutations arising from retrogenes is significantly greater than originally thought. Genetic information is stored in DNA and transcribed as mRNA. The mRNA is usually translated into proteins. However, it has long been known that mRNA can also be reverse transcribed to DNA and integrated back into the genome. Such cases are referred to as retrogenes. In an article, a team from the Max Planck Institute for ...

When different groups of people come into contact, what's the key to motivating advantaged racial groups to join historically disadvantaged racial minority groups to strive for racial equality and social justice? It's a complex conundrum studied for years by social scientists like Linda Tropp, professor of social psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her latest research, published in the International Journal of Intercultural Relations, tested and supported Tropp and colleagues' proposition that having open communication about group differences is a crucial pathway. While greater contact between racial groups is typically associated with less ...

New drivers between the ages of 15 and 25 account for nearly half of the more than one million road deaths that occur worldwide each year, according to the World Health Organization. Educational programs often use fear-based messaging and films of crash scenes to reduce risky driving behavior among young people. But does this "scary" approach work? A new study published in the journal Risk Analysis suggests that fear-based messaging fails to reduce risky driving behavior, while fear-based Virtual Reality (VR) films depicting a violent collision may actually lead young drivers to take more chances behind the wheel. A team of psychologists led by University of Antwerp researcher Clara Alida Cutello, PhD, conducted a study of 146 students ...

Are Gut Microbes the Key to Unlocking Anxiety A mouse study suggests the genetic contribution to anxiety is partially mediated by the gut microbiome By Greta Lorge The prevalence of anxiety disorders, already the most common mental illness in many countries, including the U.S., has surged during the novel coronavirus pandemic. A study led by researchers in Berkeley Lab's Biosciences Area provides evidence that taking care of our gut microbiome may help mitigate some of that anxiety. The team used a genetically heterogeneous lineage of mice known as the Collaborative Cross (CC) to probe connections among genes, gut microbiome ...

A fascinating and crucial ability of biological tissue, such as muscle, is self-healing and self-strengthening in response to damage caused by external forces. Most human-made polymers, on the other hand, break irreversibly under enough mechanical stress, which makes them less useful for certain critical applications like manufacturing artificial organs. But what if we could design polymers that reacted chemically to mechanical stimuli and used this energy to enhance their properties? This goal, which has proven to be a big challenge, is under the spotlight in the field of mechanochemistry. In a recent study published in Angewandte Chemie ...

Tumors can be damaging to surrounding blood vessels and tissues even if they're benign. If they're malignant, they're aggressive and sneaky, and often irrevocably damaging. In the latter case, early detection is key to treatment and recovery. But such detection can sometimes require advanced imaging technology, beyond what is available commercially today. For instance, some tumors occur deep inside organs and tissues, covered by a mucosal layer, which makes it difficult for scientists to directly observe them with standard methods like endoscopy (which inserts a small camera into a patient's body via a thin ...

Telehealth use has surged during the pandemic at clinics that serve lower-income Americans, which allowed the clinics to maintain access to care at a time when many other health care organizations saw significant declines in utilization, according to a new RAND Corporation study. However, most of the telehealth appointments have been audio-only visits, which may pose challenges in the future if payers consider dropping reimbursement for such services. Studying more than 500 clinic locations across California, researchers found that while overall visit volume remained stable during the pandemic, about half of primary care medical visits from March to August 2020 ...

Nanoscience - Blowing the whistle on COVID-19 Collaborators at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center are developing a breath-sampling whistle that could make COVID-19 screening easy to do at home. The technology incorporates a unique hydrogel material to capture aerosols from exhaled breath and preserve the samples, which could either be sent to a lab for analysis or, for a fully at-home approach, transferred to an accompanying test kit that could detect the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. "Our motivation ...

Topological insulators are one of the most puzzling quantum materials - a class of materials whose electrons cooperate in surprising ways to produce unexpected properties. The edges of a TI are electron superhighways where electrons flow with no loss, ignoring any impurities or other obstacles in their path, while the bulk of the material blocks electron flow. Scientists have studied these puzzling materials since their discovery just over a decade ago with an eye to harnessing them for things like quantum computing and information processing. Now researchers at the Department ...

Ten months into COVID-19 living, people are adapting to speaking from behind, and understanding others who are wearing, a cloth face mask, University of California, Davis, researchers suggest in a new study. Researchers in the Department of Linguistics at UC Davis and University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, investigated how well speech is understood from those speaking while wearing a cloth mask. Due to social distancing measures, speakers for the study consisted of individuals from the same household, who recorded sentences while face-masked and non-face-masked. The researchers tested how well a separate group ...

New Haven, Conn. --A new study by Yale researchers found a significant association between the availability of hospital resources -- particularly ICU beds -- and patient mortality during the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. This was especially true at hospitals in the northeastern U.S. which were hardest hit by the first surge of patient cases, according to the study published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine. "There is a general narrative among people in healthcare that the more resources there are, the better we can take care of patients," said lead author Dr. Alexander Janke, a Yale Emergency Scholar in the fourth year of a five-year combined residency and health services research fellowship. "This study begs ...

Many surgeries today are performed via minimally invasive procedures, in which a small incision is made and miniature cameras and surgical tools are threaded through the body to remove tumors and repair damaged tissues and organs. The process results in less pain and shorter recovery times compared to open surgery. While many procedures can be performed in this way, surgeons can face challenges at an important step in the process: the sealing of internal wounds and tears. Taking inspiration from origami, MIT engineers have now designed a medical patch that can be folded around minimally invasive surgical tools and delivered through airways, intestines, and other narrow spaces, to patch up internal injuries. ...

Interim analysis from phase 3 trial of nearly 20,000 participants suggests efficacy of two-dose regimen of the adenovirus-based vaccine is 91.6% against symptomatic COVID-19 - trial reports 16 COVID-19 cases in the vaccine group (0.1% [16/14,964) and 62 cases (1.3% [62/4,902]) in the placebo group. No serious adverse events were deemed to be associated with vaccination, and most reported adverse events were mild, including flu-like symptoms, pain at injection site and weakness or low energy. Sub-analysis of 2,000 adults older than 60 years suggests the vaccine is similarly effective and well tolerated in this group. Trial is ongoing ...

JUPITER, FL - A collaboration led by Scripps Research has developed a way to separate the beneficial anti-inflammatory properties of a group of steroids called glucocorticoids from some of their unwanted side-effects, through an optimization process they named "ligand class analysis." Their process enabled them to engineer two new, drug-like compounds that show steroidal anti-inflammatory action and other specific traits. One boosts muscle and energy supply, while the other reduces risk of muscle-wasting and bone loss typical of such drugs. Their report, titled, "Chemical systems biology ...

TAMPA, Fla. -- Chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy, or CAR T, has been a breakthrough in the treatment of blood cancers such as acute lymphoblastic leukemia and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. Clinical studies have shown overall response rates of more than 80% with an ongoing response of nearly 40% more than two years after therapy. However, the cellular immunotherapy doesn't work for every patient. Moffitt Cancer Center, one of the leading centers for cellular immunotherapy, is researching why some patients have a better CAR T response than others and what can be done to improve the treatment's effectiveness. In a new study ...

The many different sensations our bodies experience are accompanied by deeply complex exchanges of information within the brain, and the feeling of pain is no exception. So far, research has shown how pain intensity can be directly related to specific patterns of oscillation in brain activity, which are altered by the activation and deactivation of the 'interneurons' connecting different regions of the brain. However, it remains unclear how the process is affected by 'inhibitory' interneurons, which prevent chemical messages from passing between these regions. Through new research published in EPJ ...

Researchers developing renewable plastics and exploring new processes for plastics upcycling and recycling technologies will now be able to easily baseline their efforts to current manufacturing practices to understand if their efforts will save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Benchmark data calculated and compiled at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) provide a measurement--at the supply chain level--of how much energy is required and the amount of greenhouse gases emitted from the production of a variety of plastics in the United States. "Today, we employ a predominantly linear economy for many of the materials we use, including plastics," said Gregg Beckham, a senior research fellow at NREL. "Many people ...

A soft, flexible sensor system created with electrically conductive yarns could help map problematic pressure points in the socket of an amputee's prosthetic limb, researchers from North Carolina State University report in a new study. In IEEE Sensors Journal, researchers from North Carolina State University reported on the lightweight, soft textile-based sensor prototype patch. The device incorporates a lattice of conductive yarns and is connected to a tiny computer. They tested the system on a prosthetic limb and in walking experiments with two human volunteers, finding the system could ...

An international research team from the Photobiotechnology Research Group at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) led by Professor Thomas Happe and the Laboratoire de Bioénergétique et Ingénierie des Protéines (CNRS) in Marseille has been able to get to the bottom of this unique feature. They describe the molecular mechanism in Nature Communications on 2 February 2021. Enzyme repeatedly survives the attack unharmed Representatives of the [FeFe]-hydrogenase enzyme group combine protons and electrons to form molecular hydrogen at particularly high turnover rates. Some of them even use sunlight as a primary energy source ...

DANVILLE, Pa. and GAITHERSBURG, Md. - Researchers have discovered a strong link between genetic changes known to cause neurodevelopmental disabilities and cerebral palsy. Cerebral palsy affects movement and posture and often co-occurs with other neurodevelopmental disorders, including intellectual disability, epilepsy and autism spectrum disorder. Individual cases of cerebral palsy are often attributed to birth asphyxia, although recent studies indicate that asphyxia accounts for less than 10% of cases. A growing body of research indicates that cerebral palsy may be caused by genetic changes, ...

BOSTON -- Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have typically excluded diverse and minority individuals in the search for gene variants that confer risk of disease. Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and other institutions around the world have now developed a free-access software package called Tractor that increases the discovery power of genomics in understudied populations. A study of Tractor's performance and accuracy was published in END ...

New research has found that men who have the Western world's most common genetic disorder are more likely to develop dementia, compared to those without the faulty genes. Researchers at the University of Exeter and the University of Connecticut have previously found that men with two faulty genes that cause the iron overload condition haemochromatosis are more likely to develop liver cancer, arthritis and frailty, compared to those without the faulty genes. Now, the team's new analysis of more than 335,000 people of European ancestry in UK Biobank, ...

WASHINGTON, February 2, 2021 -- Scientists are hoping advances in cancer research could lead to a day when a patient's own immune system could be used to fight and destroy a wide range of tumors. Cancer immunotherapy has some remarkable successes, but its effectiveness has been limited to a relatively small handful of cancers. In APL Bioengineering, by AIP Publishing, a team from Stanford University and Genentech describes how advances in engineering models of tumors can greatly expand cancer immunotherapy's effectiveness to a wider range of cancers. "One of the biggest breakthroughs we've had in cancer research in decades is that we can modify the cells in your own immune system to make them kill cancer cells," said author Joanna Lee. Using ...

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (Feb. 2, 2021) -- What does bile acid production in the digestive tract have to do with Parkinson's disease? Quite a lot, according to a sweeping new analysis published in the journal Metabolites. The findings reveal that changes in the gut microbiome -- the rich population of helpful microbes that call the digestive tract home -- may in turn alter bile acid production by favoring synthesis of toxic forms of the acids. These shifts were seen only in people with Parkinson's and not in healthy controls, a critical difference that suggests bile acids may be a viable biomarker for diagnosing Parkinson's early and tracking its progression. The insights also may provide new avenues for developing therapies ...

Colorectal cancer is the second most common cause of cancer-related mortality among men and women in the United States, according to the American Cancer Society. At-home tests, which measure blood in stool as a potential marker for colon cancer, are often used for colorectal cancer screening. Usage of these tests has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic as people try to avoid clinical visits. However, effectiveness of these screening tools, along with all colon cancer screenings, requires a follow-up colonoscopy if an abnormal test result occurs. The problem is ...