PULLMAN, Wash. - Biomarkers in human sperm have been identified that can indicate a propensity to father children with autism spectrum disorder. These biomarkers are epigenetic, meaning they involve changes to molecular factors that regulate genome activity such as gene expression independent of DNA sequence, and can be passed down to future generations. In a study published in the journal Clinical Epigenetics on Jan. 7, researchers identified a set of genomic features, called DNA methylation regions, in sperm samples from men who were known to have autistic children. Then in a set of blind tests, the researchers were able to use the presence of these features to determine whether other men had fathered autistic children with 90% ...

New research shows people who pursue meaningful activities - things they enjoy doing - during lockdown feel more satisfied than those who simply keep themselves busy. The study, published in PLOS ONE, shows you're better off doing what you love and adapting it to suit social distancing, like swapping your regular morning walk with friends for a zoom exercise session. Simply increasing your level of activity by doing mindless busywork will leave you unsettled and unsatisfied. Co-lead researcher Dr Lauren Saling from RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia said while novelty lockdown activities - like baking or painting - have their place, trying to continue what you enjoyed before lockdown can be more rewarding. "Busyness might be distracting but it won't necessarily be fulfilling," ...

COVID-19 infections are once again rising at an alarming rate in San Francisco's Latinx community, predominantly among low-income essential workers, according to results of a massive community-based testing blitz conducted before and after the Thanksgiving holiday by Unidos En Salud -- a volunteer-led partnership between the Latino Task Force for COVID-19 (LTF), UC San Francisco , the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub (CZ Biohub), and the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH). Unidos En Salud launched their "Healthy Holidays" initiative the weekend before Thanksgiving (Nov. 22-24) in San Francisco's Mission District, where they have been perfecting their community-based surveillance testing ...

The genetic material of plants, animals and humans is well protected in the nucleus of each cell and stores all the information that forms an organism. For example, information about the size or color of flowers, hair or fur is predefined here. In addition, cells contain small organelles that contain their own genetic material. These include chloroplasts in plants, which play a key role in photosynthesis, and mitochondria, which are found in all living organisms and represent the power plants of every cell. But is the genetic material actually permanently stored within one cell? No! As so far known, the genetic material can migrate from cell to cell and thus even be exchanged between different organisms. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology (MPI-MP) ...

We are fascinated by machines that can control cars, compose symphonies, or defeat people at chess, Go, or Jeopardy! While more progress is being made all the time in Artificial Intelligence (AI), some scientists and philosophers warn of the dangers of an uncontrollable superintelligent AI. Using theoretical calculations, an international team of researchers, including scientists from the Center for Humans and Machines at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, shows that it would not be possible to control a superintelligent AI. The study was published in the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research. Suppose someone ...

When an accident occurs, the reactions of bystanders are important. Researchers have studied whether laypeople realise the severity of the situation when someone in their proximity begins to bleed, and whether they can estimate how much the person is bleeding. The results show a discrepancy related to the victim's gender: for a woman losing blood, both blood loss and life-threatening injuries were underestimated. The study has been published in the scientific journal PLoS One. Researchers from Linköping University and Old Dominion University in the United States wanted to study the ability of laypeople to visually assess blood loss, and what influences them when judging the severity of an injury. "Laypeople's ...

Recent years have provided substantial research displaying the effect of genetic mu-tations on the development of autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. Based on those studies, researchers have focused attention on the commonalities be-hind those mutations and how they impact on the functioning of the brain. A study conducted by Professor Sagiv Shifman from the Life Sciences Institute at the He-brew University of Jerusalem and the Center for Autism Research has found that genes associated with autism tend to be involved in the regulation of other genes and to operate preferentially in three areas of the brain; the cortex, the striatum, and the cerebellum. The cerebellum ...

Rice is the staple food of about half the world's population. The cultivation of the rice plant is very water-intensive and, according to the German aid organization Welthungerhilfe, around 15 per cent of rice is grown in areas with a high risk of drought. Global warming is therefore becoming increasingly problematic for rice cultivation, leading more and more often to small harvests and hunger crises. Crop failures caused by plant pathogens further aggravate the situation. Here, conventional agriculture is trying to counteract this with pesticides, which are mostly used as a precautionary measure in rice cultivation. The breeding of resistant plants is the only alternative to these environmentally harmful ...

Seeking to understand why COVID-19 is able to suppress the body's immune response, new research from the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology suggests that mitochondria are one of the first lines of defense against COVID-19 and identifies key differences in how SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, interacts with mitochondrial genes when compared to other viruses. These differences offer possible explanations as to why older adults and people with metabolic dysfunction have more severe responses to COVID-19 than other individuals, and they also provide a starting point for more targeted experiments that may help identify therapeutics, said senior author Pinchas Cohen, professor of gerontology, ...

Our bodies often dispatch stem cells to mend or replace biological damage, but how these repair agents make their way through dense tissue to arrive at the scene had been a mystery. "How stem cells squeeze through tissue openings a hundred to a thousand times smaller than themselves had been a perplexing question," says Ovijit Chaudhuri, professor of mechanical engineering. In an article published in the Jan. 8 edition of Science Advances, Chaudhuri and colleagues reveal that stem cells use their nucleus - a large, stiff organelle within the cell - as a means of propulsion. Their discovery was surprising because scientists had thought cells would have particular ...

(St. Louis) - A new study by investigators at the Shriners Hospital for Children -- St. Louis suggests the damaging effects of obesity are not due to body weight but rather come from something much smaller - biochemical signals released by fat cells. The study focuses on the link between overweight or obesity and the development of osteoarthritis, a painful disease of the joints. The investigation was led by Dr. Farshid Guilak, director of the St. Louis Shriners Hospital Research Center. "We've shown here that it's not overloading of the joints that is responsible for osteoarthritis, but, more likely, a factor given off by fat cells that makes cartilage susceptible to degeneration," ...

ATLANTA AND TAMPA, FLA. - JANUARY 11, 2021 - A new study suggests a link between toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) infection and the risk of glioma, a type of brain cancer, in adults. The report, appearing in the International Journal of Cancer, finds that people who have glioma are more likely to have antibodies to T. gondii (indicating that they have had a previous infection) than a similar group that was cancer free. For the study, investigators led by James Hodge, JD, MPH and Anna Coghill, PhD examined the association between T. gondii antibodies measured several years before the cancer ...

Scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have uncovered new evidence of the potential health risks of chemicals in tobacco and marijuana smoke. In a study published online today by END ...

Around 1085 AD, along the southern rim of Northern Arizona's elevated Colorado Plateau, a volcano erupted, forever changing ancient Puebloan fortunes and all nearby life. Among the 600 or so volcanoes that dot the landscape of the San Francisco volcanic fields, this one blew. It was the very first (and last) eruption for what came to be known as Sunset Crater, aptly named for its multi-hued, 1,000-foot-tall cinder cone. Today, ASU School of Earth and Space Exploration scientist Amanda Clarke and her team have been working to solve the mysterious root cause of the Sunset Crater eruption and any lessons learned to better understand the threats similar ...

Fieldwork led by Dr Eleanor Scerri, head of the Pan-African Evolution Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany and Dr Khady Niang of the University of Cheikh Anta Diop in Senegal, has documented the youngest known occurrence of the Middle Stone Age. This repertoire of stone flaking methods and the resulting tools includes distinctive ways of producing sharp flakes by carefully preparing nodules of rock, some of which were sometimes further shaped into tool forms known as 'scrapers' and 'points.' Middle Stone Age finds most commonly occur in the African record between around 300 thousand and 30 thousand years ago, after which point ...

Researchers have taken an important step forward in developing a controlled human infection model to test leishmaniasis vaccines. The University of York-led study identified and characterised a new strain of Leishmania parasite that will form the basis of a new controlled human infection model for the disease which is transmitted by the bite of sand flies. The team then produced the parasite to the standards required for use in human clinical studies. The use of controlled human infection models has already proved invaluable in accelerating vaccine development for cholera, malaria, typhoid, ...

Conditions are ripe for transforming the U.S. mental health care system, with scientific advances, the growth of Medicaid and political consensus on the importance of improving mental health creating the possibility that goals once thought out of reach may be possible, according to a new RAND Corporation study. Broad changes will be needed to improve how Americans receive mental health care, such as integrating behavioral health care into general health care settings, providing supportive housing to the homeless and promoting comprehensive mental health education. Federal mental health parity legislation is one recent promising development that aims to put ...

Human papillomavirus (HPV) can infect the mouth and throat to cause cancers of the oropharynx. A new study published early online in END ...

Canada must dismantle anti-Black racism in health care to address its harmful effects on people's health, argue authors of a commentary in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) http://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.201579 Racism has significant negative effects on the physical and mental health of Black people and people of nondominant racial groups. For example, there have been significantly higher death rates from COVID-19 among Black people in North America and the United Kingdom. Anti-Black racism also exists in the medical system, with stereotyping and bias by health care providers and an underrepresentation of Black physicians. "First, we who work in health care must acknowledge the existence of anti-Black racism in ...

An analysis of a large nationally representative longitudinal study by University of California San Diego Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science report that starting tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, before the age of 18 is a major risk factor for people becoming daily cigarette smokers. Reporting in the January 11, 2021 online edition of Pediatrics, researchers found that in 2014 people age 12 to 24 who used e-cigarettes were three times as likely to become daily cigarette smokers in the future. Among those who reported using a tobacco product, daily use increased with age through age 28. Daily cigarette smoking nearly doubled between 18 to 21 year olds (12 percent) and 25 to 28 year ...

Marijuana use increases throughout the calendar year, with use up 13 percent on average at the end of each year (2015-2019) compared to the beginning, according to a new study published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence. "We found that marijuana use is consistently higher among those surveyed later in the year, peaking during late fall or early winter before dropping at the beginning of the following year. We think this may be due, in part, to a 'Dry January' in which some people stop drinking alcohol or even stop using marijuana as part of a New Year's ...

The gut plays a central role in the regulation of the body's metabolism and its dysfunction is associated with a variety of diseases, such as obesity, diabetes, colitis and colorectal cancer that affect millions of people worldwide. Targeting endocrine dysfunction at an early stage by stimulating the formation of specific enteroendocrine cells from intestinal stem cells could be a promising regenerative approach for diabetes therapy. For this, however, a detailed understanding of the intestinal stem cell lineage hierarchy and the signals regulating the recruitment of the different intestinal cell types is critical. Heiko Lickert ...

How the larvae of colorful clownfish that live among coral reefs in the Philippines are dispersed varies widely, depending on the year and seasons - a Rutgers-led finding that could help scientists improve conservation of species. Right after most coral reef fish hatch, they join a swirling sea of plankton as tiny, transparent larvae. Then currents, winds and waves disperse them, frequently to different reefs. During seven years of surveys of coral reef-dwelling clownfish, scientists measured how the dispersal of larvae varied over the years and seasonally, including during monsoons, according Rutgers-led research in the journal Molecular Ecology. They found that larvae dispersal varied a lot on both timescales. Their research suggests that when scientists ...

A new study shows that the gigantic Megalodon or megatooth shark, which lived nearly worldwide roughly 15-3.6 million years ago and reached at least 50 feet (15 meters) in length, gave birth to babies larger than most adult humans. This latest research shedding light on the reproductive biology, growth and life expectancy of Megalodon (formally called Otodus megalodon) appears in the international journal Historical Biology. Although Otodus megalodon is typically portrayed as a super-sized, monstrous shark in novels and films such as the 2018 sci-fi film "The Meg," scientific data support a more modest but still impressive estimate of about 50 feet (15 meters) for the presently known largest individuals. The ...

Positive "tipping points" could spark cascading changes that accelerate action on climate change, experts say. A tipping point is a moment when a small change triggers a large, often irreversible, response. Professor Tim Lenton, Director of the Global Systems Institute (GSI) at the University of Exeter, has previously warned the world is "dangerously close" to several tipping points that could accelerate climate change. But in a new paper in the journal Climate Policy, Professor Lenton and Simon Sharpe, a Deputy Director in the UK Cabinet Office COP 26 unit, identify tipping points in human societies that could rapidly ...