Highlights: Severe cases of COVID-19 often include GI symptoms Chronic diseases associated with severe COVID-19 are also associated with altered gut microbiota A growing body of evidence suggests poor gut health adversely affects prognosis If studies do empirically demonstrate a connection between the gut microbiota and COVID-19 severity, then interventions like probiotics or fecal transplants may help patients Washington, D.C. - January 12, 2021 - People infected with COVID-19 experience a wide range of symptoms and severities, the most commonly reported including high fevers ...

PHILADELPHIA -- (Jan. 12, 2021) -- Scientists at The Wistar Institute have created an advanced humanized immune system mouse model that allows them to examine resistance to immune checkpoint blockade therapies in melanoma. It has revealed a central role for mast cells. These findings were published today in the journal Nature Communications. Checkpoint inhibitors revolutionized therapeutic options for advanced melanoma. However, only a fraction of patients respond to this treatment and some relapse due to reemergence of therapy-resistant lesions. "To better understand why some cancers do not respond or become resistant to checkpoint therapies, ...

Imagine you gave the exact same art pieces to two different groups of people and asked them to curate an art show. The art is radical and new. The groups never speak with one another, and they organize and plan all the installations independently. On opening night, imagine your surprise when the two art shows are nearly identical. How did these groups categorize and organize all the art the same way when they never spoke with one another? The dominant hypothesis is that people are born with categories already in their brains, but a study from the Network Dynamics Group (NDG) at the Annenberg School for Communication has discovered a novel explanation. In an experiment in which people were asked to categorize unfamiliar shapes, individuals and small groups created ...

New research has found as climate change causes the world's oceans to warm, baby sharks are born smaller, exhausted, undernourished and into environments that are already difficult for them to survive in. Lead author of the study Carolyn Wheeler is a PhD candidate at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University (Coral CoE at JCU) and the University of Massachusetts. She examined the effects of increased temperatures on the growth, development and physiological performance of epaulette sharks--an egg-laying species found only ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - An unfortunate truth about the use of mechanical ventilation to save the lives of patients in respiratory distress is that the pressure used to inflate the lungs is likely to cause further lung damage. In a new study, scientists identified a molecule that is produced by immune cells during mechanical ventilation to try to decrease inflammation, but isn't able to completely prevent ventilator-induced injury to the lungs. The team is working on exploiting that natural process in pursuit of a therapy that could lower the chances for lung damage in patients on ventilators. Delivering high levels of the helpful molecule with a nanoparticle was effective ...

Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, January 12, 2020: New research from NYU Abu Dhabi's Laboratory of Neural Systems and Behavior for the first time used an animal model to demonstrate how abnormal sleep architecture can be a predictor of stress vulnerability. These important findings have the potential to inform the development of sleep tests that can help identify who may be susceptible -- or resilient -- to future stress. In the study, Abnormal Sleep Signals Vulnerability to Chronic Social Defeat Stress, which appears in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience, NYUAD Assistant Professor of Biology Dipesh Chaudhury and Research Associate Basma Radwan describe their development of a mouse ...

ORLANDO, Fla. -- A new national survey by the Orlando Health Heart & Vascular Institute finds many Americans would delay doctor's appointments and even emergency care when COVID-19 rates are high. The survey found 67 percent of Americans are more concerned about going to medical appointments when COVID-19 rates are high in their area and nearly three in five (57 percent) are hesitant to go to the hospital even for an emergency. In a time when every trip out of the house and every person we come in contact with poses a threat of contracting COVID-19, ...

WASHINGTON - Computer-based artificial intelligence can function more like human intelligence when programmed to use a much faster technique for learning new objects, say two neuroscientists who designed such a model that was designed to mirror human visual learning. In the journal Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, Maximilian Riesenhuber, PhD, professor of neuroscience, at Georgetown University Medical Center, and Joshua Rule, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar at UC Berkeley, explain how the new approach vastly improves the ability of AI software to quickly learn new visual ...

The Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) has announced that the research team led by Dr. Kim Kyoung-Whan at the Center for Spintronics has proposed a new principle about spin memory devices, which are next-generation memory devices. This breakthrough presents new applicability that is different from the existing paradigm. Conventional memory devices are classified into volatile memories, such as RAM, that can read and write data quickly, and non-volatile memories, such as hard-disk, on which data are maintained even when the power is off. In recent years, related academic and industrial fields have been combining their advantages to accelerate the development of next-generation memory that is fast and capable of maintaining data even when the power is off. A spin memory ...

The leaf vasculature of plants plays a key role in transporting solutes from where they are made - for example from the plant cells driving photosynthesis - to where they are stored or used. Sugars and amino acids are transported from the leaves to the roots and the seeds via the conductive pathways of the phloem. Phloem is the part of the tissue in vascular plants that comprises the sieve elements - where actual translocation takes place - and the companion cells as well as the phloem parenchyma cells. The leaf veins consist of at least seven distinct cell types, with specific roles in transport, metabolism and signalling. Little is known about ...

A team of HIV researchers, cellular biologists, and biophysicists who banded together to support COVID-19 science determined the atomic structure of a coronavirus protein thought to help the pathogen evade and dampen response from human immune cells. The structural map - which is now published in the journal PNAS, but has been open-access for the scientific community since August - has laid the groundwork for new antiviral treatments tailored specifically to SARS-CoV-2, and enabled further investigations into how the newly emerged virus ravages the human body. "Using X-ray crystallography, we built an ...

A new study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found a 25% increase in food insufficiency during the COVID-19 pandemic. Food insufficiency, the most extreme form of food insecurity, occurs when families do not have enough food to eat. Among the nationally representative sample of 63,674 adults in the US, Black and Latino Americans had over twice the risk of food insufficiency compared to White Americans. "People of color are disproportionately affected by both food insufficiency and COVID-19," said Jason Nagata, MD, MSc, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco and lead author on the study. "Many of these individuals have experienced job loss and higher rates of poverty during the ...

During April 2020, while the UK was in full lockdown, there was a drop of more than a third in the number of people seeking help for mental illness or self-harm according to research involving 14 million people registered at general practices across the four nations of the UK which was published today in The Lancet Public Health*. The research, 'Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on primary care-recorded mental illness and self-harm episodes in the UK: a population-based cohort study', was conducted by the National Institute for Health Research Greater Manchester Patient Safety Translational Research Centre (NIHR GM PSTRC). The Centre is a partnership between The University of Manchester and Salford Royal NHS Foundation ...

In a surprising discovery, Princeton physicists have observed an unexpected quantum behavior in an insulator made from a material called tungsten ditelluride. This phenomenon, known as quantum oscillation, is typically observed in metals rather than insulators, and its discovery offers new insights into our understanding of the quantum world. The findings also hint at the existence of an entirely new type of quantum particle. The discovery challenges a long-held distinction between metals and insulators, because in the established quantum theory of materials, insulators were not thought to be able to ...

Reston, Virginia--Physicians who follow artificial intelligence (AI) advice may be considered less liable for medical malpractice than is commonly thought, according to a new study of potential jury candidates in the U.S. Published in the January issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine (JNM). The study provides the first data related to physicians' potential liability for using AI in personalized medicine, which can often deviate from standard care. "New AI tools can assist physicians in treatment recommendations and diagnostics, including the interpretation of medical images," remarked Kevin Tobia, JD, PhD, ...

TORONTO, ON - New research led by researchers at the University of Toronto (U of T) and Northwestern University employs machine learning to craft the best building blocks in the assembly of framework materials for use in a targeted application. The findings, published today in Nature Machine Intelligence, demonstrated that the use of artificial intelligence (AI) approaches can help in proposing novel materials for diverse applications. One example is the separation of carbon dioxide from industrial combustion processes. AI approaches promise the acceleration of the design cycle for materials. With the objective of improving the separation of chemicals in industrial processes, the team of researchers - including collaborators from ...

'This effort truly represents a "moonshot" in COVID-19 research' Scientists identify target to treat COVID pneumonia and reduce severity Clinical trials with new experimental drug to begin early in 2021 Goal is to develop treatments that make COVID-19 no worse than a common cold First comparison between immune mechanisms driving COVID-19 pneumonia with other pneumonias CHICAGO --- Bacteria or viruses like influenza that cause pneumonia can spread across large regions of the lung over the course of hours. In the modern intensive care unit, these bacteria or viruses are usually controlled either by antibiotics or by the body's immune system within ...

How are networks of neurons connected to make functional circuits? This has been a long standing question in neuroscience. To answer this fundamental question, researchers from Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School developed a new way to study these circuits and in the process learn more about the connections between them. "Neural networks are extensive, but the connections between them are really small," says Wei-Chung Allen Lee, PhD, of the F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center at Boston Children's and Harvard Medical School. "So, we have had to develop techniques to see them in extremely high-resolution over really large areas and volumes." ...

ORLANDO, Jan. 11, 2021 - Data from Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico has been used to help detect the first possible hints of low-frequency disturbances in the curvature of space-time. The results were presented today at the 237th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, which was held virtually, and are published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Arecibo Observatory is managed by the University of Central Florida for the National Science Foundation under a cooperative agreement. The disturbances are known as gravitational waves, which ripple through space as a result of the movement of incredibly massive objects, such as black holes orbiting one another or the collision of neutron stars. It's important to understand these waves as they provide insight into the history ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- When we experience a new event, our brain records a memory of not only what happened, but also the context, including the time and location of the event. A new study from MIT neuroscientists sheds light on how the timing of a memory is encoded in the hippocampus, and suggests that time and space are encoded separately. In a study of mice, the researchers identified a hippocampal circuit that the animals used to store information about the timing of when they should turn left or right in a maze. When this circuit was blocked, the mice were unable to remember which way they were supposed to turn next. However, disrupting the circuit ...

North Carolina State University-led researchers have developed an analytical measurement "framework" which could allow organic solar cell researchers and manufacturers to determine which materials will produce the most stable solar cells prior to manufacture. Organic solar cells have increased in efficiency over the past decades, but researchers and manufacturers still struggle with determining which material combinations work best and why, as well as with achieving stable morphology and operation. "There is still a lot of 'trial and error' guesswork involved in identifying promising materials for these solar cells," says Harald Ade, Goodnight Innovation Distinguished Professor of Physics at NC State and co-corresponding author of the research. ...

Two studies in today's Nature Neuroscience, led by researchers at Boston Children's Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), and Harvard Medical School (HMS), implicate mosaic mutations arising during embryonic development as a cause of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The findings open new areas for exploring the genetics of ASD and could eventually inform diagnostic testing. Mosaic mutations affect only a portion of a person's cells. Rather than being inherited, they arise as a "mistake" introduced when a stem cell divides. A mutation in a stem cell will only be passed to the cells that descend from it, producing the mosaic pattern. ...

Reza Shahbazian-Yassar, professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at the University of Illinois Chicago. Shahbazian-Yassar and colleagues facilitated the development of a cutting edge "Swiss Army knife" catalyst made up of 10 different elements - each of which on its own has the ability to reduce the combustion temperature of methane - plus oxygen. This unique catalyst can bring the combustion temperature of methane down by about half - from above 1400 degrees Kelvin down to 600 to 700 degrees Kelvin. Their findings are reported in the journal Nature Catalysis. In previously-published research, ...

Tales of post-apocalyptic landscapes in which few survivors emerge into a new and much different world have long been popular tales woven by screenwriters and authors. While many enjoy these stories, thinking of them as nothing but a guilty pleasure, they may not realize that immersing themselves in fiction has prepared them for the reality of 2020, according to a team of researchers. John Johnson, professor emeritus of psychology at Penn State, recently conducted research with several colleagues revealing that an individual's enjoyment of horror films could have better prepared them for the COVID-19 pandemic as opposed to others who do not enjoy frightening entertainment. Their findings are documented in Personality and Individual Differences. "My latest ...

The first-ever study of the levels of the stress hormone cortisol in the saliva of newborn white-tailed deer fawns yielded thought-provoking results that have Penn State researchers suggesting predation is not the only thing in the wild killing fawns. "We think the hormone offers a way to evaluate factors in the environment that affect fawns, such as disease, but are difficult to evaluate when just looking at a carcass that has been picked over by predators," said researcher Duane Diefenbach, adjunct professor of wildlife ecology. "By then, it's impossible to be certain what ...