Working in preclinical models, researchers report that plitidepsin, a drug with limited clinical approval for the treatment of multiple myeloma, is more potent against SARS-CoV-2 than remdesivir, an antiviral that received FDA emergency use authorization for the treatment of COVID-19 in 2020. The results suggest plitidepsin should be further evaluated as a COVID-19 therapy, the authors say; because it targets a host protein rather than a viral protein, if treatment proves successful in humans, the SARS-CoV-2 virus won't be easily able to gain resistance ...

A new approach to mapping viral mutations that "escape" leading clinical antibodies has revealed mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 virus that allow it to evade treatments, including a single amino-acid mutation that fully escapes Regeneron's antibody cocktail. These maps, say the authors, demonstrate that prior characterization of escape mutations was incomplete. They will also help to enable immediate interpretation of the effects of the mutations cataloged by viral genomic surveillance, say the authors. Several antibodies are in use or under development as therapies to treat COVID-19. As new SARS-CoV-2 variants emerge, it ...

Researchers have engineered an antibody that neutralizes SARS-CoV-2 with a potency that "rivals" current lead SARS-CoV-2 clinical neutralizing antibodies, and that also broadly neutralizes a range of clade 1 sarbecoviruses. Their antibody, ADG-2, studied in mice, represents a "promising candidate" for the prevention and treatment of not only COVID-19, they say, but also of future respiratory diseases caused by SARS-related coronaviruses. Although two vaccines and two monoclonal antibody (mAb) therapies have been authorized for emergency use by the FDA, it is unknown whether these vaccines and treatments will provide broad protection against new emerging SARS-CoV-2 strains that originate in humans or animal reservoirs; this is partly ...

During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly one in four families responded that they would be unlikely to bring their child to the Emergency Department if they had an emergency condition, according to a survey from Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago published in the journal Academic Emergency Medicine. Greater hesitancy to seek emergency care was found in families living in under-resourced communities, those who rely on public insurance and in families who are Black, Latinx or Asian. "We observed greater hesitancy to use the Emergency Department among more vulnerable demographic groups who historically showed high utilization of emergency care for their children," ...

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the world. The number of deaths and incidences is increasing each year. The metal-based anticancer drugs were used clinically worldwide, but suffer from poor selectivity, serious side effects and drug resistance. Tumor-targeting drug development is the basis for precise cancer treatment. Recently, Professor Hongke Liu of Nanjing Normal University, Professor Jing Zhao and Academician Zijian Guo of Nanjing University have made breakthrough achievements in anticancer drug development. They proposed a "bio-orthogonally catalyzed lethality" (BCL) strategy ...

Hernias are one of the most common soft tissue injuries. Hernias form when intra-abdominal content, such as a loop of the intestine, squeezes through weak, defective or injured areas of the abdominal wall. The condition may develop serious complications, therefore hernia repair may be recommended. Repair consists of surgically implanting a prosthetic mesh to support and reinforce the damaged abdominal wall and facilitate the healing process. However, currently used mesh implants are associated with potentially adverse postsurgical complications. "Although hernia mesh implants are mechanically strong and support abdominal tissue, making the patient feel comfortable initially, ...

Musical notes that sound pleasant together can form a harmony. These notes are usually in a special relationship with each other: when expressed as frequencies, their ratios result in simple fractions, such as four-thirds or three-halves. Similarly, a planetary system can also form a kind of harmony when planets, whose orbital period ratios form simple fractions, regularly attract each other with their gravity. When one planet takes three days to orbit its star and its neighbor takes two days, for example. Using the CHEOPS space telescope, scientists, led by astrophysicist Adrien Leleu of the Center for Space and Habitability of the University of Bern, the University of Geneva and ...

HOUSTON - (Jan. 25, 2021) - A new theory that could explain how unconventional superconductivity arises in a diverse set of compounds might never have happened if physicists Qimiao Si and Emilian Nica had chosen a different name for their 2017 model of orbital-selective superconductivity. In a study published this month in npj Quantum Materials, Si of Rice University and Nica of Arizona State University argue that unconventional superconductivity in some iron-based and heavy-fermion materials arises from a general phenomenon called "multiorbital singlet pairing." In superconductors, electrons form pairs and flow without resistance. Physicists cannot fully explain how ...

Coastal Blue Carbon (BC), which includes mangrove and saltmarsh tidal wetlands, of which was first coined a decade ago to describe the disproportionately large contribution of coastal vegetated ecosystems to global carbon sequestration. The role of BC in climate change mitigation and adaptation has now reached international prominence. Recent studies have reported BC's unique role in mitigating climate change, projected coastal wetlands area change, carbon stocks in response to historical sea level rise fluctuations, and the future roadmap relative to carbon sequestration studies. However, several questions remain unanswered: Q1. What is the global extent and spatial distribution ...

Solar-driven photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting is an attractive approach to convert solar energy into chemical energy. Among many photoelectrode materials, crystalline silicon (c-Si) has drawn considerable attention because of its earth abundance, narrow bandgap, and suitable band edge position for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). However, c-Si suffers from low photovoltage generated from the solid-liquid junction. Various strategies, such as the construction of p-n homojunctions, metal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) junctions and p-n heterojunctions, have been adopted to obtain high photovoltage. The MIS junctions have been the focus of attention in PEC water splitting due to their simple fabrication and the potential to achieve higher efficiencies than p-n ...

January 25, 2021 -- In a study to gain understanding of the future public health workforce, researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH), conducted a large-scale analysis of the first employment outcomes of public health graduates and found that 78 percent were employed including 5 percent employed in fellowships and internships. Fifteen percent were continuing their studies; only 5 percent were not employed and job seeking. These indicators may ultimately expand public health's reach and lead to healthier communities overall. The study is the first national analysis of employment outcomes of public health graduates, and one of the only such analyses ...

Systems for capturing and converting carbon dioxide from power plant emissions could be important tools for curbing climate change, but most are relatively inefficient and expensive. Now, researchers at MIT have developed a method that could significantly boost the performance of systems that use catalytic surfaces to enhance the rates of carbon-sequestering electrochemical reactions. Such catalytic systems are an attractive option for carbon capture because they can produce useful, valuable products, such as transportation fuels or chemical feedstocks. This output can help to subsidize the process, offsetting the costs of reducing greenhouse ...

For many years, clinicians have been hesitant to diagnose adolescents with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), believing it was a mental health "death sentence" for a patient because there was no clear treatment. Carla Sharp, professor of psychology and director of the Developmental Psychopathology Lab at the University of Houston, begs to differ. And her new research, published in Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology backs her up. "Like adult BPD, adolescent BPD appears to be not as intractable and treatment resistant as previously thought," reports Sharp. "That means we should not shy away from identifying BPD in adolescents and we shouldn't ...

Halogen atoms (Cl and Br) strongly influence the atmospheric chemical composition. Since 1970s, scientists discovered that these atoms were responsible for depletion of ozone in the stratosphere and ground-level ozone of the Arctic. In the past decade, there is emerging recognition that halogen atoms also play important roles in tropospheric chemistry and air quality. However, the knowledge of halogen atoms in continental regions is still incomplete. "In the troposphere, halogen atoms can kick start hydrocarbon oxidation that makes ozone, modify the oxidative capacity, perturb ...

A survey of dog owners from across the U.S. shows that when it comes to seeking veterinary care for dogs, barriers to access - including a lack of trust - have more effect on the decision-making process than differences in race, gender or socioeconomic status. The results could aid veterinarians in developing outreach strategies for underserved communities. "I was interested in how different demographic groups viewed health care and how those views might affect relationships between veterinarians and their clients," says Rachel Park, a Ph.D. student at North Carolina State University and first author of a paper describing the work. "The existing literature wasn't national in scope and hadn't accounted for multiple identities held, such as one's socioeconomic status or ...

In the past 20 years, humans have suffered several serious epidemics from emerging viruses, such as SARS, swine flu, Ebola, MERS and (most recently) SARS-CoV-2. During each epidemic, an accurate, rapid, and accessible molecular diagnostic test is highly essential for the control and prevention of viral diseases. In particular, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is spreading rapidly in most countries, resulting in a severe global pandemic, which has a profound impact on the world economy and people's normal life. Accurate and rapid diagnosis of COVID-19 has been the most crucial measure for controlling the ...

FINDINGS A study led by researchers at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center found shortening a traditional 45-day course of radiation to a five-day course delivered in larger doses is safe and as effective as conventional radiation for men with high-risk forms of prostate cancer. The findings show the five-day regimen of stereotactic body radiotherapy, a form of external beam radiation therapy that uses a higher dose of radiation, had a four-year cure rate of 82%. Severe side effects were also rare. Around 2% experienced urinary issues and less than 1% had bowel side effects. BACKGROUND Building on previous UCLA research that provided significant evidence that a shortened regimen of radiation could be ...

(Boston)--Atrial fibrillation (AF) is associated with a higher risk of complications including ischemic stroke, cognitive decline, heart failure, myocardial infarction and death. AF frequently is undetected until complications such as stroke or heart failure occur. While the public and clinicians have an intense interest in detecting AF earlier, the most appropriate strategies to detect undiagnosed AF and medical prognosis and therapeutic implications of AF detected by screening are uncertain. A new report led by Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) researcher Emelia J. Benjamin, MD, ScM, builds upon a recently conducted National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute's virtual workshop that focused on identifying key research priorities related to AF screening. Global experts reviewed ...

The brains of musicians have stronger structural and functional connections compared to those of non-musicians, regardless of innate pitch ability, according to new research from JNeurosci. Years of musical training shape the brain in dramatic ways. A minority of musicians -- with Mozart and Michael Jackson in their ranks -- also possess absolute pitch, the ability to identify a tone without a reference. But, it remains unclear how this ability impacts the brain. In the biggest sample to date, Leipold et al. compared the brains of professional musicians, some with absolute pitch and some without, to non-musicians. To the team's surprise, there were no strong differences ...

An extensive review of cephalopod fauna from the Northwest African Atlantic coast was performed by researchers from the University of Vigo (Spain) and the Spanish Institute of Oceanography ( END ...

A team led by plant biologists at the Universities of Freiburg and Göttingen in Germany has shown for the first time that mosses have a mechanism to protect them against cold that was previously known only in flowering plants. Professor Ralf Reski at the Cluster of Excellence Centre for Integrative Biological Signalling Studies (CIBSS) at the University of Freiburg and Professor Ivo Feussner at the Center for Molecular Biosciences (GZMB) at the University of Göttingen have also demonstrated that this mechanism has an evolutionarily independent origin - mosses and flowering ...

Every living organism has DNA, and every living organism engages in DNA replication, the process by which DNA makes an exact copy of itself during cell division. While it's a tried-and-true process, problems can arise. Break-induced replication (BIR) is a way to solve those problems. In humans, it is employed chiefly to repair breaks in DNA that cannot be fixed otherwise. Yet BIR itself, through its repairs to DNA and how it conducts those repairs, can introduce or cause genomic rearrangements and mutations contributing to cancer development. "It's kind of a double-edged sword," says Anna Malkova, professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Iowa, who has studied ...

Quantum physics allows to make statements about the behaviour of a wide variety of many-particle systems at the atomic level, from salt crystals to neutron stars. In quantum systems, many parameters do not have concrete values, but are distributed over various values with certain probabilities. Often this distribution takes the form of a simple Gaussian bell curve that is encountered also in classical systems for example the distribution of balls in the Galton box experiment. However, not all quantum systems follow this simple behavior and some might deviate from the Gaussian distribution due to interactions. Prof. Dr. Jens Eisert, who heads a joint research group on theoretical physics at the Freie Universität Berlin and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, argues that once interactions ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Employees feel significantly less job distress if they work at companies that are open and transparent about the firm's finances, including budgets and profits, a new study found. Researchers examining data from the U.K. found that at companies with more financial transparency, workers felt more secure in their jobs, more committed to their employers and - most significantly - said they had better relationships with their managers. The link between greater transparency and lower job distress was strong and stood up even after accounting ...

January 25, 2021 - What care do veterans need when recovering after suicide attempts? The answer may be different for women compared to men veterans, reports a qualitative study in Medical Care, part of a special issue devoted to new research on suicide risk and prevention in women. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer. "The paths to recovery after a suicide attempt may vary by gender, especially among veterans," according to the new research by Lauren M. Denneson, PhD, of the HSR&D Center to Improve Veteran Involvement in Care (CIVIC) at VA Portland (Ore.) Health Care System. "Our data suggest that women emphasize relatedness whereas men emphasize competence." ...