A meta-analysis of global studies published in Anaesthesia (a journal of the Association of Anaesthetists) shows that intensive care morality from COVID-19 has continued to fall since the start of the pandemic, but the improvement is slowing and may have plateaued. The study is by Professor Tim Cook (Consultant in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine, Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust, Bath, UK, and Honorary Professor, School of Medicine, University of Bristol, UK) and colleagues. A previous meta-analysis* by Cook and colleagues, published in July, 2020, concluded that overall mortality of COVID-19 patients in intensive care units (ICUs) has fallen from almost 60% at the end of March 2020 to 42% at the end of May 2020 -- a relative decrease of around one third. This ...

New research reveals that the COVID-19 intensive care (ICU) mortality rate in Sweden was lower during the first wave of the pandemic than in many studies from other countries. And while analysis of individual underlying conditions found they were linked to mortality, an analysis looking at all these variables together found COVID-19 mortality in intensive care was not associated with underlying conditions, except for chronic lung disease. This new study did, however, find that, like previous research, mortality was driven by age, severity of COVID-19 disease and the presence and ...

Astronomers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav) and CSIRO have just observed bizarre, never-seen-before behaviour from a 'radio-loud' magnetar--a rare type of neutron star and one of the strongest magnets in the Universe. Their new findings, published today in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS), suggest magnetars have more complex magnetic fields than previously thought - which may challenge theories of how they are born and evolve over time. Magnetars are a rare type of rotating neutron star with some of the most powerful magnetic fields in the Universe. Astronomers have detected only thirty of these objects in and around the Milky ...

HOUSTON-(Feb. 1, 2021) - Houston Methodist researchers have developed a mathematical model to predict how specific cancers will respond to immunotherapy treatments, thus enhancing chances for successful treatments from a wide variety of cancer-immunotherapy drug combinations. The results were published last month in Nature Biomedical Engineering in collaboration with researchers at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Immunotherapy activates patients' immune systems to recognize and attack their cancers, leading to higher, more targeted kill rates and fewer side effects than chemotherapy, radiation and other therapies. While this technology is a significant advance in fighting cancer, it works only with some cancer ...

Oak Brook, IL - The February edition of SLAS Discovery is a Special Issue on Hit Discovery Methodologies edited by Mark Wigglesworth, Ph.D., (Medicines Discovery Catapult, Stockport, EN, UK) and Peter Hodder, Ph.D. (Amgen, Thousand Oaks, CA, USA). The focus of this Special Issue is to highlight the use of hit discovery methodologies and technologies and their usage in both small molecule and large molecule drug discovery. The February issue exemplifies how technologies, both new and existing, have been applied successfully to find hits. Additionally, the issue houses a list of the most downloaded articles from SLAS journals, many of which ...

Las Vegas, Nev. (Monday, Feb. 1, 2021) - In the summer of 2019, Desert Research Institute (DRI) scientist Rosemary Carroll, Ph.D., waited for the arrival of the North American Monsoon, which normally brings a needed dose of summer moisture to the area where she lives in Crested Butte, Colo. - but for the fourth year in a row, the rains never really came. "2019 had just a horrendous monsoon," Carroll said. "Just the weakest monsoon. And we'd had a few years of weak monsoons before that, which had really gotten me wondering, how important is the monsoon to late summer streamflow here in the Upper Colorado River basin? And how do monsoons influence the following year's streamflow?" Working in partnership with colleagues ...

Oak Brook, IL - The February edition of SLAS Technology is a special collection of articles focused on "Artificial Intelligence in Process Automation" by Guest Editor Cenk Ündey, Ph.D. (Amgen, Thousand Oaks, CA, USA). This SLAS Technology special collection targets the use of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques and technologies as applied specifically to drug discovery, automated gene editing and machine learning. As AI becomes increasingly more prevalent in research, medicine and even everyday life, laboratory automation has gone beyond hardware advancements toward new levels ...

Risk for a severe form of retinopathy of prematurity, which can cause blindness in extremely premature babies, was halved when the newborns were given a new supplement combining various fatty acids. This was shown in a Swedish study led from the University of Gothenburg. The study, now published in JAMA Pediatrics, is described as groundbreaking in its field. It documents a clear fall in retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) among extremely premature (EP) infants (born before 28 weeks' gestation), whose retinal blood vessels are not fully developed. The condition can cause ...

When the body's immune response to an infection gets out of control, the result can be sepsis, a life-threatening condition in which an overwhelming inflammatory response can lead rapidly to failure of multiple organs and death. In a new study, researchers at UC Santa Cruz have identified a long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) molecule that regulates the expression of pro-inflammatory genes in immune system cells called macrophages and affects the susceptibility of mice to septic shock. This lncRNA, called GAPLINC, was previously studied for its role in cancer, but it turns out to be the most highly expressed lncRNA in macrophages, which play a central role in inflammation. ...

A previously unknown root trait allows some cereal plants to grow deeper roots capable of punching through dry, hard, compacted soils, according to Penn State researchers, who suggest that harnessing the inherited characteristic could lead to crops better able to deal with a changing climate. "This discovery bodes well for American and global agriculture because the trait helps corn, wheat and barley grow deeper roots, which is important for drought tolerance, nitrogen efficiency and carbon sequestration," said Jonathan Lynch, distinguished professor in plant science. "Breeding for this trait should be helpful in developing new crops for climate mitigation." Called multiseriate cortical sclerenchyma by the researchers -- or MCS -- the phenotype is ...

New research from North Carolina State University reveals that probiotic Lactobacillus bacteria use enzymes situationally to manipulate bile acids and promote their own survival in the gut. These findings further elucidate the complicated relationship between bile acids and gut bacteria and could eventually enable researchers to design lactobacilli with therapeutic properties, thereby engineering a healthier human gut environment. Bile acids are key players in digestion and overall gut health. Produced in the liver and released after we eat, these acids not ...

Just as plants and animals on land are keenly attuned to the hours of sunlight in the day, life in the oceans follows the rhythms of the day, the seasons and even the moon. A University of Washington study finds the biological light switches that make this possible. Single-celled organisms in the open ocean use a diverse array of genetic tools to detect light, even in tiny amounts, and respond, according to a study published Feb. 1 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "If you look in the ocean environment, all these different organisms have this day-night cycle. They are very in tune with each other, even as they get moved around. How do they know when it's day? How do they know when it's night?" said lead ...

There are fossils, found in ancient marine sediments and made up of no more than a few magnetic nanoparticles, that can tell us a whole lot about the climate of the past, especially episodes of abrupt global warming. Now, researchers including doctoral student Courtney Wagner and associate professor Peter Lippert from the University of Utah, have found a way to glean the valuable information in those fossils without having to crush the scarce samples into a fine powder. Their results are published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "It's so fun to be a part of a discovery like this, something that can be used ...

Most snakes get from A to B by bending their bodies into S-shapes and slithering forward headfirst. A few species, however -- found in the deserts of North America, Africa and the Middle East -- have an odder way of getting around. Known as "sidewinders," these snakes lead with their mid-sections instead of their heads, slinking sideways across loose sand. Scientists took a microscopic look at the skin of sidewinders to see if it plays a role in their unique method of movement. They discovered that sidewinders' bellies are studded with tiny pits and have few, if any, of the tiny spikes found on the bellies of other snakes. The Proceedings ...

CAMBRIDGE -- The temperature of a planet is linked with the diversity of life that it can support. MIT geologists have now reconstructed a timeline of the Earth's temperature during the early Paleozoic era, between 510 and 440 million years ago -- a pivotal period when animals became abundant in a previously microbe-dominated world. In a study appearing today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers chart dips and peaks in the global temperature during the early Paleozoic. They report that these temperature variations coincide with the planet's ...

In a new study led by Yale Cancer Center, researchers have discovered a novel metabolic gatekeeper mechanism for leukemia. This mechanism depends on a molecule called PON2, which could lead to a new treatment for the disease. The findings were published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). B cells are effector cells of the adaptive immune system and are marked by low energy levels, which prevent transformation to leukemia. In this study, Yale scientists identified high expression levels of the detoxifying lactonase ...

Philadelphia, February 1, 2021 - Researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have demonstrated that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may be caused by defects in the mitochondria of brain cells. The findings were published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Multiple studies have revealed hundreds of mutations associated with autism spectrum disorder, but there is no consensus as to how these genetic changes cause the condition. Biochemical and physiological analyses have suggested that deficiencies in mitochondria, the "batteries" of the cell that produce ...

Scientists have identified a group of drugs that may help stop a leading cause of vision loss after making an unexpected discovery that overturns a fundamental belief about DNA. The drugs, known as Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors, or NRTIs, are commonly used to treat HIV. The new discovery suggests that they may be useful against dry macular degeneration as well, even though a virus does not cause that sight-stealing condition. A review of four different health insurance databases suggests that people taking these drugs have significantly reduced risk of developing dry macular degeneration, a condition that affects ...

A 15-year experiment on Arctic shrubs in Greenland lends new understanding to an enduring ecological puzzle: How do species with similar needs and life histories occur together at large scales while excluding each other at small scales? The answer to this question has important implications for how climate change might shift species' distributions across the globe. The study was published today in the journal PNAS and led by the University of California, Davis. Its findings also reveal trends related to carbon sequestration and carbon exchange as the Arctic becomes both greener and browner. EXPANSION AND EXCLUSION Like lines of traffic traveling the same roads at the same time without crashing into each ...

CLEVELAND - Evidence suggests particulate matter is the air pollutant which poses the greatest threat to global health. Studies have shown that exposure to particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns is associated with acute and chronic elevations in blood pressure (BP) as well as hypertension. In the study "The Benefits of Intensive Versus Standard Blood Pressure Treatment According to Fine Particulate Matter Air Pollution Exposure" published this week in the journal Hypertension, researchers at University Hospitals (UH) and Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) ...

A paper by a multidisciplinary team of scientists affiliated with various Brazilian institutions, including the University of São Paulo (USP) and the National Cancer Institute (INCA), shows that people of African descent are less likely to find a donor in the National Register of Voluntary Bone Marrow Donors (REDOME) than people with predominantly European ancestry. The paper is published in Frontiers in Immunology. REDOME is the world’s third-largest bone marrow bank, with more than 5 million registered voluntary donors. According to the study, having mainly African genetic ancestry can reduce a person’s chances of finding a donor by up to 60%, and having African copies of HLA genes, which must be compatible with ...

Obesity and its duration are significant risk factors for type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular events, multiple cancers and decreased quality of life. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, obesity affects 20.6% of adolescents ages 12-19 in the United States, meaning a potential lifetime of dealing with this condition. Complications from obesity can also result in a potentially decreased life expectancy of five to 20 years for these youth. In a new study published in Pediatrics, researchers at Children's Hospital Colorado (Children's Colorado) have found that both younger and older adolescents have similar weight loss, resolution of high blood pressure and high cholesterol, nutritional impacts and improvement in quality of life after bariatric surgery. These results ...

Article Title: "Game theory to enhance stock management of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) during the COVID-19 outbreak" Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0246110 INFORMATION: ...

Decoy protein intercepts spike of coronavirus Virus prevented from infecting human cells Protein may be new way to treat and prevent COVID-19 CHICAGO --- Northwestern Medicine scientists have developed a new protein that acts as a trickster to neutralize the COVID-19 infection in a human kidney organoid, a miniature organ made from stem cells in the lab. The protein is a variant of ACE2 (angiotensin converting enzyme-2), the receptor the coronavirus uses to enter and infect human cells. The modified protein intercepts the S spike of the coronavirus and fools it into binding to it rather than the real ACE2 receptor in cell membranes. ...

NEW YORK, NY (Feb. 1, 2021)--Errors in the way chromosomes are packed into antibody-producing B cells appear to play a role in the development of B cell-related blood cancers, according to a new study by researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. The findings could lead to new biomarkers for predicting the onset of these cancers and to a new class of cancer therapies that prevent or correct harmful changes in genome architecture. The study was published online Feb. 1 in the journal Nature Genetics. Antibodies are made by immune cells called ...