AUGUSTA, Ga. (January 25, 2021) - Immediately after a traumatic brain injury and as long as one year later, there are increased levels of immune cells called ILCs in the brain promoting inflammation, which can worsen brain damage, scientists report. They also report for the first time that the cell energy sensor AMPK is a brake that can stop what becomes a chronic state of destructive inflammation driven by these ILCs, or innate lymphoid cells. "We think ILCs are kind of a master regulator of all that inflammation happening within the brain," says Dr. Krishnan Dhandapani, neuroscientist in the Department of Neurosurgery at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University. "It's like the ...

These results were published in the prestigious journal ChemSusChem and thanks to the remarkable reviews, the paper was ranked among the top five percent publications in the field, thus earning a Very Important Paper (VIP) status. Furthermore, the editorial board featured this study on its cover. Plastic pollution has become one of the most complex environmental issues, especially in the context of increasing production and demand for plastic materials. While innovations in polymer chemistry have radically changed our lives in the mid-20th century, the outstanding properties of plastics such as durability, chemical stability, strength and many other pose a serious problem ...

PULLMAN, Wash. - Man's best friend might actually belong to a woman. In a cross-cultural analysis, Washington State University researchers found several factors may have played a role in building the mutually beneficial relationship between humans and dogs, including temperature, hunting and surprisingly - gender. "We found that dogs' relationships with women might have had a greater impact on the dog-human bond than relationships with men," said Jaime Chambers, a WSU anthropology Ph.D. student and first author on the paper published in the Journal of Ethnobiology. "Humans were more likely to regard dogs as a type of person if the dogs had a special ...

Arctic sea ice is rapidly diminishing due to global warming, and scientists have found that sea ice dynamics have a big impact on circulation and precipitation patterns in Arctic Alaska, which lies at a climatological crossroads between the Arctic and North Pacific Oceans. Recent studies--most of which focus on current trends in the region and on what will happen in the future--have shown that circulation patterns in the Arctic and North Pacific Oceans influence one another. Doctoral candidate Ellie Broadman of Northern Arizona University's School of Earth and Sustainability wanted to learn about this relationship on a longer timescale, so she developed and led a ...

A group of scientists is calling on governments to consider the continued use of strict control measures as the only way to reduce the evolution and spread of new COVID-19 variants. The experts in evolution, virology, infectious disease and genomics - at the University of East Anglia (UEA), Earlham Institute and University of Minnesota - warn that while governments are negotiating a "precarious balance" between saving the economy and preventing COVID-19 fatalities, stronger action now is the best way to mitigate against more serious outcomes from such virulent strains later. While COVID-19 vaccine deployment is now underway, a threat to vaccine effectiveness comes from other emerging strains, both existing - such as the UK, South Africa and Brazil variants ...

New estimates reveal extent of the health burden of armed conflict--affecting at least 630 million women and children worldwide in 2017, and contributing to more than 10 million deaths among children under 5 years of age over 20 years. Changing nature of war is a growing threat to humanitarian access and the provision of essential health services for women and children, but responses in countries like Syria, Pakistan, and Colombia may provide context-specific innovative ways forward. Armed conflicts are becoming increasingly complex and protracted and a growing threat to humanitarian access and the delivery of essential health services, affecting at least 630 million women and ...

Dramatic changes were seen in the delivery of radiotherapy treatments for cancer during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic in England. Much shorter radiotherapy courses were delivered, treatments were delayed where it was safe to do so and some increases were seen in order to compensate for reduced surgical capacity. Experts believe the changes reflect an impressive adaption of services by the NHS, and that the overall impact on cancer outcomes is likely to be modest. The new research, led by the University of Leeds, with Public Health England and the Royal College of Radiologists, reveals that there was a decrease in radiotherapy treatment courses of 19.9% in April, 6.2% in May, and 11.6% in June 2020, compared with the same months the previous year. These decreases equated ...

GALVESTON, Texas - The results of a study by researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch may pave the way for a new medicine delivery system that could reduce the incidence of pre-term labor and premature birth by allowing physicians to treat the 'fetus as the patient'. The study has been published in Science Advances. It has long been suspected that pre-term labor is triggered by inflammation caused by a sick fetus. A new study by scientists at UTMB has proved the hypothesis by studying several important assumptions about the relationship between the health of a mother and her unborn child. According to Dr. Ramkumar Menon, ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- Metallurgists have all kinds of ways to make a chunk of metal harder. They can bend it, twist it, run it between two rollers or pound it with a hammer. These methods work by breaking up the metal's grain structure -- the microscopic crystalline domains that form a bulk piece of metal. Smaller grains make for harder metals. Now, a group of Brown University researchers has found a way to customize metallic grain structures from the bottom up. In a paper published in the journal Chem, the researchers show a method for smashing individual metal nanoclusters together to form solid macro-scale hunks of solid metal. Mechanical testing of the metals manufactured ...

The enzyme that makes RNA from a DNA template is altered to slow the production of ribosomal RNA (rRNA), the most abundant type of RNA within cells, when resources are scarce and the bacteria Escherichia coli needs to slow its growth. Researchers used cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) to capture the structures of the RNA polymerase while in complex with DNA and showed how its activity is changed in response to poor-growth conditions. A paper describing the research led by Penn State scientists appears January 22, 2020 in the journal Nature Communications. "RNA polymerase is an enzyme that produces a variety of RNAs using information encoded in DNA," said Katsuhiko Murakami, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State and the leader of the research ...

In a new publication from Cardiovascular Innovations and Applications; DOI https://doi.org/10.15212/CVIA.2019.1267, Hai Zou and Shengqing Li from the Institute of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China consider ECMO/CRRT combined support in the treatment of critically ill SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia patients. The authors of this article explored the experience with, and complications of, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) combined with continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT) for treatment of critically ill patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pneumonia. The survival rate of patients with cardiopulmonary failure treated with ECMO/CRRT in whom conventional ...

In a new publication from Cardiovascular Innovations and Applications; DOI https://doi.org/10.15212/CVIA.2019.1263, Yao Dong, Jun-E Liu and Ling Song from the Capital Medical University, Beijing, China consider risk factors for intraoperative pressure injury in aortic surgery. Intraoperative pressure injuries are some of the most significant health problems in clinical practice. Patients undergoing aortic surgery are at high risk of developing an intraoperative pressure injury, with an incidence much higher than that associated with other types of cardiac surgery. In this article the authors identify risk factors associated with an increased risk of intraoperative pressure injury in patients undergoing aortic ...

In a new publication from Cardiovascular Innovations and Applications; DOI https://doi.org/10.15212/CVIA.2019.1266, Zhuzhi Wen, Jingying Hou, Zun Mai, Huifen Huang, Yangxin Chen, Dengfeng Geng and Jingfeng Wang from Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China and Guandong Province Key Laboratory of Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology, Guangzhou, China consider predictive value of blood pressure, heart rate, and blood pressure/heart rate ratio in a Chinese subpopulation with vasovagal syncope. Blood pressure, heart rate and ratios of blood pressure to heart rate in the titled position during the simplistic tilt test had predictive value with regard ...

A professor from RUDN University together with his colleagues from Saratov Chernyshevsky State University and D. Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia developed a method for calculating the parameters of diffraction optical elements used in LCDs. In particular, the new technology can be used to expand the angle of view while preserving high resolution and color rendition. The results of the study were published in the Journal of The Society for Information Display. Each pixel on a display corresponds to a group of three light sources: red, green, and blue. When the brightness of all three diodes is the same, white light is produced; and by changing the share of each respective ...

Blood draws are no fun. They hurt. Veins can burst, or even roll -- like they're trying to avoid the needle, too. Oftentimes, doctors use blood samples to check for biomarkers of disease: antibodies that signal a viral or bacterial infection, such as SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19; or cytokines indicative of inflammation seen in conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and sepsis. These biomarkers aren't just in blood, though. They can also be found in the dense liquid medium that surrounds our cells, but in a low abundance that makes it difficult to be detected. Until now. Engineers at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis have developed a microneedle patch that can be applied to the skin, capture a biomarker of interest ...

A professor from RUDN University together with his Indian colleagues synthesized and studied new dibenzophenazine-based liquid crystals that could potentially be used in optoelectronics and solar panels. The results of the study were published in the Journal of Molecular Liquids. Liquid crystals are an intermediate phase between a liquid and a solid body. They are ordered like regular chrystals but at the same time have a flow like liquids. It is this duality that allows them to be used in organic LEDs and LCDs. Unlike other liquid crystals, discotic ones (DLC) are capable of self-assembly into ordered structures. This makes them a promising material for industrial electronics, namely, for the production of displays. ...

There isn't much in Kamchatka, a remote peninsula in northeastern Russia just across the Bering Sea from Alaska, besides an impressive population of brown bears and the most explosive volcano in the world. Kamchatka's Shiveluch volcano has had more than 40 violent eruptions over the last 10,000 years. The last gigantic blast occurred in 1964, creating a new crater and covering an area of nearly 100 square kilometers with pyroclastic flows. But Shiveluch is actually currently erupting, as it has been for over 20 years. So why would anyone risk venturing too close? Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis, including Michael Krawczynski, assistant professor of earth ...

DURHAM, N.C. - Biomedical engineers at Duke University have demonstrated that human muscle has an innate ability to ward off the damaging effects of chronic inflammation when exercised. The discovery was made possible through the use of lab-grown, engineered human muscle, demonstrating the potential power of the first-of-its-kind platform in such research endeavors. The results appear online on January 22 in the journal Science Advances. "Lots of processes are taking place throughout the human body during exercise, and it is difficult to tease apart which systems and cells are doing what inside an active person," said Nenad Bursac, professor of biomedical engineering at Duke. "Our engineered muscle ...

When tetrapods (four-limbed vertebrates) began to move from water to land roughly 390 million years ago it set in motion the rise of lizards, birds, mammals, and all land animals that exist today, including humans and some aquatic vertebrates such as whales and dolphins. The earliest tetrapods originated from their fish ancestors in the Devonian period and are more than twice as old as the oldest dinosaur fossils. They resembled a cross between a giant salamander and a crocodile and were about 1-2 meters long, had gills, webbed feet and tail fins, and ...

New research suggests the majority of people in the UK are willing to use privacy-encroaching tracking technology and support the introduction of 'immunity passports' to protect themselves and others in the COVID-19 pandemic. The study, published today in the journal PLOS ONE, found more than two thirds of respondents overall would accept some form of smartphone tracking app to help manage social distancing and the relaxation of a full public lockdown. However, its findings are not reflected in the number of people who have downloaded the NHS Test and Trace app, prompting calls for this issue to be addressed. Lead author Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, Chair in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Bristol, said: "Attitudes were surprisingly permissive and this ...

Predictions of future climate change require a clear and nuanced understanding of Earth's past climate. In a study published today in Science Advances, University of Hawai'i (UH) at Mānoa oceanographers fully reconciled climate and carbon cycle trends of the past 50 million years--solving a controversy debated in the scientific literature for decades. Throughout Earth's history, global climate and the global carbon cycle have undergone significant changes, some of which challenge the current understanding of carbon cycle dynamics. Less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere cools Earth and decreases weathering of rocks and minerals on land over long time scales. Less weathering should lead to a shallower calcite compensation depth (CCD), which is the depth in the ocean where ...

Laser beams can be used to change the properties of materials in an extremely precise way. This principle is already widely used in technologies such as rewritable DVDs. However, the underlying processes generally take place at such unimaginably fast speeds and at such a small scale that they have so far eluded direct observation. Researchers at the University of Göttingen and the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen have now managed to film, for the first time, the laser transformation of a crystal structure with nanometre resolution and in slow motion in an electron microscope. The results have been published in the journal Science. The ...

Head and neck cancer is the sixth most common cancer worldwide, and while effective treatments exist, sadly, the cancer often returns. Researchers at the University of Cincinnati have tested a new combination therapy in animal models to see if they could find a way to make an already effective treatment even better. Since they're using a Food and Drug Administration-approved drug to do it, this could help humans sooner than later. These findings are published in the journal END ...

Washington, DC - January 22, 2021 - New research shows that non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) reduced both antibody and inflammatory responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection in mice. The study appears this week in the Journal of Virology, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology. The research is important because "NSAIDs are arguably the most commonly used anti-inflammatory medications," said principal investigator Craig B. Wilen, Assistant Professor of Laboratory Medicine and Immunology, Yale University School of Medicine. In addition to taking NSAIDs for chronic conditions such as arthritis, people take them "for shorter periods of time during infections, and [during] ...

UPTON, NY - New results from an atmospheric study over the Eastern North Atlantic reveal that tiny aerosol particles that seed the formation of clouds can form out of next to nothingness over the open ocean. This "new particle formation" occurs when sunlight reacts with molecules of trace gases in the marine boundary layer, the atmosphere within about the first kilometer above Earth's surface. The findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, will improve how aerosols and clouds are represented in models that describe Earth's climate so scientists can understand how the particles--and the processes that control them--might ...