Tsukuba, Japan - Tomatoes are one of the most popular types of fresh produce consumed worldwide, as well as being an important ingredient in many manufactured foods. As with other cultivated crops, some potentially useful genes that were present in its South American ancestors were lost during domestication and breeding of the modern tomato, Solanum lycopersicum var. lycopersicum. Because of its importance as a crop, the tomato genome sequence was completed and published as long ago as 2012, with later additions and improvements. Now, the team at University of Tsukuba, in collaboration with TOKITA Seed Co. Ltd, have produced high-quality genome sequences of two wild ancestors of tomato from Peru, Solanum pimpinellifolium ...

Children of all ages can completely bypass age verification measures to sign-up to the world's most popular social media apps including Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, Skype and Discord by simply lying about their age, researchers at Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software have discovered. And even potential age verification solutions identified by the research team can be easily sidestepped by children, according to the team's most recent study: Digital Age of Consent and Age Verification: Can They Protect Children? Lead researcher Lero's Dr Liliana Pasquale, assistant professor at University College ...

Harpy eagles are considered by many to be among the planet's most spectacular birds. They are also among its most elusive, generally avoiding areas disturbed by human activity - therefore already having vanished from portions of its range - and listed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as being 'Near-Threatened'. However, new research led by the University of Plymouth (UK) suggests estimates of the species' current distribution are potentially overestimating range size. Using a combination of physical sightings and environmental data, they developed a spatial modelling framework which aims to estimate current and past distributions based on the birds' preferred habitat conditions. The authors then used the model to estimate a ...

Multi-disciplinary researchers at The University of Manchester have helped develop a powerful physics-based tool to map the pace of language development and human innovation over thousands of years - even stretching into pre-history before records were kept. Tobias Galla, a professor in theoretical physics, and Dr Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero, a specialist in historical linguistics, from The University of Manchester, have come together as part of an international team to share their diverse expertise to develop the new model, revealed in a paper entitled 'Geospatial distributions reflect temperatures of linguistic feature' authored by Henri Kauhanen, Deepthi Gopal, ...

(Scottsdale, Ariz. - January 27, 2021) HIRREM (the legacy research technology of Cereset - a Brain State Company) was utilized by the Wake Forest School of Medicine to study symptoms of traumatic stress in military personnel before and after use of Cereset (legacy) intervention. Whole brain, resting state magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was done pre- and post- Cereset intervention. Significant effects on brain network connectivity have been previously reported. For the current study, lateralization of brain connectivity was analyzed. Lateralization here refers to the distribution of brain connections within the right, and left side, or to the opposite side. This is important because common lobes in the ...

Montreal, January 27, 2021 - Taking cannabidiol, a chemical in the cannabis sativa plant, isn't an effective way to reduce your dependence on cocaine, researchers at the CHUM Research Centre find. In North America, close to 5.5 million people use cocaine regularly, and nearly one in five becomes addicted, developing cocaine use disorder, for which there is no clinical treatment. One solution has been touted, however: treatment with cannabidiol. Better known as CBD, it's a chemical in the cannabis sativa plant known for its protective effects on the brain and liver. But there is very little scientific evidence to support its use as a treatment for addiction. In fact, in a study published ...

Stopping the spread of COVID-19 is difficult enough. It's even more complicated and confusing when information and resources provided by governments are largely inaccessible to a variety of disabled populations. A newly-published global survey of national health authority websites in nearly 200 countries has directly quantified COVID-19 information accessibility. The survey, published on January 27, 2021 in the journal Frontiers in Medicine, was conducted by researchers and medical professionals from Bar-Ilan University's Azrieli Faculty of Medicine, the Galilee Medical Center and Tel Aviv ...

As the climate warms and Arctic sea ice retreats, research vessels and commercial ships are sailing into the Arctic Ocean more and more, but the accuracy and sensitivity of regional weather and marine forecasts for these hazardous waters still lag well behind those of their lower-latitude counterparts, with significant differences between regional models. Direct measurements of atmospheric conditions, such as cloud cover and solar radiation, can help to evaluate and improve these models. In a new study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, a research team led by the National Institute of Polar Research in Tachikawa, ...

Sophia Antipolis, 27 January 2021: Pregnancy complications and early menopause increase women's future risk of heart disease. Cardiologists, gynaecologists and endocrinologists recommend how to help middle-aged women prevent later heart problems in a European Society of Cardiology (ESC) consensus document published today in European Heart Journal, a journal of the ESC.1 "Physicians should intensify the detection of hypertension in middle-aged women," states the document. Up to 50% of women develop high blood pressure before the age of 60 but the symptoms - for example hot flushes and palpitations - are often attributed ...

Researchers from Queen Mary University of London and Zhengzhou University have developed a powerful therapeutic platform that uses a modified virus for the treatment of pancreatic cancer. By using the virus in combination with other drugs, the treatment significantly extended survival in preclinical models of pancreatic cancer. Viruses that can selectively infect and destroy cancer cells, known as oncolytic viruses, are a promising new class of therapeutics for cancer. Through various mechanisms, oncolytic viruses kill cancer cells and elicit strong anti-tumour immune responses. However, current oncolytic virotherapy is unable to produce a long-term cure in patients, and the treatment has to be delivered directly into the tumour - a route that is not feasible for deeply embedded ...

A material that can be used in technologies such as solar power has been found to self-heal, a new study shows. The findings - from the University of York - raise the prospect that it may be possible to engineer high-performance self-healing materials which could reduce costs and improve scalability, researchers say. The substance, called antimony selenide (Sb2Se3), is a solar absorber material that can be used for turning light energy into electricity. Professor Keith McKenna from the Department of Physics said: "The process by which this semi-conducting material self-heals is rather like how a salamander is able to re-grow limbs when one is severed. Antimony selenide repairs broken bonds created when it is cleaved by ...

The disproportionately high Covid-19 infection rates observed in Black Americans could be linked to their daily commuting patterns, according to a new study published today in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. The research found that increased exposure to other ethnic groups, for example as a result of an individual's job or use of public transport, can result in the emergence of an "infection gap" in the population, such as the abnormally high incidence of Covid-19 recorded in Black Americans. In some areas of the US Covid-19 incidence in Black Americans can be up to three to five times higher than would be expected based on population data. Previous studies have highlighted socio-economic factors including lower income and poorer access to healthcare facilities ...

Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) results from a degeneration of the hematopoietic stem cells (leukemia stem cells), thereby leading to the uncontrolled formation of specific white blood cells, the so-called granulocytes. Research work at the Department of Medical Oncology at the Inselspital, Bern University Hospital and the University of Bern focused therefore on identifying the signaling pathways and control mechanisms of the leukemia stem cell. A promising approach is provided by working with MPR, an anti-emetic medication commonly used to treat nausea and vomiting. Specific blocking of leukemia stem cell proliferation with metoclopramide The exact role of the surface molecule CD93 (cluster of differentiation 93) in controlling the ...

A multidisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst's Institute for Applied Life Sciences (IALS) have developed a technique to replicate bone tissue complexity and bone remodeling processes. This breakthrough could help researchers further their study of bone biology and assist in improving development of drugs for osteoporosis. Published in Science Advances, the researchers developed a new biomaterial they call demineralized bone paper. The team includes Jungwoo Lee, Yongkuk Park, Ryan Carpenter, chemical engineering; Eugene Cheong, ...

Our cells are filled with 'bones,' in a sense. Thin, flexible protein strands called actin filaments help support and move around the bulk of the cells of eukaryotes, which includes all plants and animals. Always on the go, actin filaments constantly grow, shrink, bind with other things, and branch off when cells move. Supercomputer simulations have helped solve the mystery of how actin filaments polymerize, or chain together. This fundamental research could be applied to treatments to stop cancer spread, develop self-healing materials, and more. "The major findings ...

A compound that extends lifespan in a tiny nematode worm slows bone loss in aging mice. That surprising result comes from a longitudinal and functional study of 700 aging mice at the Buck Institute, a project that provides a treasure trove of data for researchers aiming to develop therapeutics to slow aging and age-related diseases. The study is currently online in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research Plus. The project, which involved five Buck labs and took several years to complete, involved serially profiling the individual mice as they aged while testing several therapeutics that extended lifespan in simple model organisms ...

Black children have significantly higher rates of shellfish and fish allergies than white children, confirming that race plays an important role in how children are affected by food allergies, researchers at Rush University Medical Center have found. Results of the study were published in the February issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice. "Food allergy is a common condition in the U.S., and we know from our previous research that there are important differences between African-American and white children with food allergy, but there is so much we need to know to be able to help our patients from minority groups," said Dr. Mahboobeh Mahdavinia, who is lead author of the ...

A research team from the CHUM Research Centre (CRCHUM) has shown that women who have had serious complications during pregnancy are twice as likely to die up to three decades later. Serious conditions such as stroke, cardiac complications, acute kidney failure and pre-eclampsia affect just under 5 % of women during pregnancy and childbirth. In a study published in Obstetrics & Gynecology, CRCHUM researcher Dr. Nathalie Auger and postdoctoral fellow Ugochinyere Vivian Ukah examined the long-term mortality risks of women with these types of pregnancy complications by analyzing more than 1.2 million records of women who gave birth in Quebec between 1989 and 2016. Their findings? Compared to women who had no serious pregnancy complications, women ...

In 2012, four-year-old Bertrand Might became the first-ever patient diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder called N-glycanase (NGLY1) deficiency. The discovery of this condition and Bertrand's diagnosis allowed doctors to look for other children with the same genetic defect. Since then, more than 60 additional patients have been found. The disease affects every system of the body and is characterized by low muscle tone, seizures, developmental delays, and an inability to produce tears. Sadly, Bertrand passed away in October at the age of 12. Although his life was cut short, his legacy will benefit children around the world. Through ...

A recent study of drugged driving, by a team of University of Cincinnati researchers, shows that a sizable percentage of individuals reported the use of marijuana and other illicit drugs while operating behind the wheel. "We need to focus our efforts on drugged driving, in addition to drunk driving, because drugged driving causes such a high level of fatalities, says Andrew Yockey, a doctoral student in UC's College of Education, Criminal Justice and Human Services and researcher at the UC Center for Prevention Science. Yockey is lead author on the study ...

New Rochelle, NY, January 26, 2021--Hybrid closed-loop insulin therapy improved glycemic control in adolescents and young adults with type 1 diabetes. These outcomes, derived from the International Diabetes Closed-Loop (iDCL) Trial, are reported in the peer-reviewed journal Diabetes Technology & Therapeutics (DTT). Click here to read the article now. Adolescents and young adults with a mean age of 17 years were randomly assigned to a closed-loop control (CLC) insulin delivery system or a sensor augmented pump (SAP) with a continuous glucose monitoring system over a 6-month period. The Time in Range increased by 13% for the CLC group, compared to a decrease of 1% with SAP, for a group ...

Burning fossil fuels has long powered world economies while contributing to air pollution and the buildup of greenhouse gases. A new analysis of nearly two decades of satellite data shows that economic development, fossil-fuel combustion and air quality are closely linked on the continental and national scales, but can be decoupled at the national level, according to Penn State scientists. "We know air pollution and economic development are linked, but we want to know how tightly and whether our actions can change this," said Ruixue Lei, a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science. "We found they are not inherently bonded and can be decoupled under favorable policies." While previous research has explored the connections between air ...

Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and Cornell University's Ithaca campus have developed a new computational method for studying genetic and environmental interactions and how they influence disease risk. The research, published Jan. 7 in The American Journal of Human Genetics, makes the process of finding these interactions much less difficult and demonstrates their importance in determining body mass index and diabetes risk. "Our study demonstrates that your genes matter and the environment matters and that the interaction of the two can increase risk for disease," said co-senior author, Dr. Olivier ...

Heart disease is a killer threat for southern sea otters feasting on domoic acid in their food web, according to a study led by the University of California, Davis. The study, published in the journal Harmful Algae, examined the relationship between long-term exposure to domoic acid and fatal heart disease in southern sea otters, a threatened marine mammal. "Sea otters are an amazing indicator of what's happening in the coastal environment, not just to other marine animals, but to us, too, especially on the issue of domoic acid," said Christine K. Johnson, director of the EpiCenter ...

To enter the world of the fantastically small, the main currency is either a ray of light or electrons. Strong beams, which yield clearer images, are damaging to specimens. On the other hand, weak beams can give noisy, low-resolution images. In a new study published in END ...