What The Study Did: Severe COVID-19 is characterized by the intense formation of neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs), leading to the blockage of microvessels, as shown in pulmonary samples. The occurrence of ST-elevated myocardial infarction (STEMI) is a serious cardiac manifestation of COVID-19; the intrinsic mechanism of coronary thrombosis appears to still be unknown. This case series report of five patients sought to determine the role of NETs in coronary thrombosis in patients with COVID-19. Authors: Ana Blasco, M.D., Ph.D., of the Hospital Universitario Puerta de Hierro-Majadahonda in Madrid, Spain, is the corresponding ...

In 1986, cellular biochemist Kazumitsu Ueda, currently at Kyoto University's Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS), discovered that a protein called ABCB1 could transport multiple chemotherapeutics out of some cancer cells, making them resistant to treatment. How it did this has remained a mystery for the past 35 years. Now, his team has published a review in the journal FEBS Letters, summarizing what they have learned following years of research on this and other ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporter proteins. ABC transporter proteins are very similar across species and have various ...

Scientists have suspected mutations in a cellular cholesterol transport protein are associated with psychiatric disorders, but have found it difficult to prove this and to pinpoint how it happens. Now, Kazumitsu Ueda of Kyoto University's Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS) and colleagues in Japan have provided evidence that mice with disrupted ABCA13 protein demonstrate a hallmark behaviour of schizophrenia. The team investigated ABCA13's functions and published their findings in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. ABCA13 belongs to a family of cellular transporter proteins called ATP-binding ...

Philadelphia, December 29, 2020 - Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a complex psychiatric disorder brought on by physical and/or psychological trauma. How its symptoms, including anxiety, depression and cognitive disturbances arise remains incompletely understood and unpredictable. Treatments and outcomes could potentially be improved if doctors could better predict who would develop PTSD. Now, researchers using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have found potential brain biomarkers of PTSD in people with traumatic brain injury (TBI). The study appears in ...

What happens in the brain when our conscious awareness fades during general anesthesia and normal sleep? Finnish scientists studied this question with novel experimental designs and functional brain imaging. They succeeded in separating the specific changes related to consciousness from the more widespread overall effects, and discovered that the effects of anesthesia and sleep on brain activity were surprisingly similar. These novel findings point to a common central core brain network fundamental for human consciousness. Explaining the biological basis of human ...

A fascinating substance with unique properties, ice has intrigued humans since time immemorial. Unlike most other materials, ice at very low temperature is not as ordered as it could be. A collaboration between the Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA), the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), the Institute of Physics Rosario (IFIR-UNR), with the support of the Istituto Officina dei Materiali of the Italian National Research Council (CNR-IOM), made new theoretical inroads on the reasons why this happens and on the way in which some of the missing order can be recovered. In that ordered state the team ...

Small studies have suggested that a group of medications called RAS inhibitors may be harmful in persons with advanced chronic kidney disease, and physicians therefore often stop the treatment in such patients. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet now show that although stopping the treatment is linked to a lower risk of requiring dialysis, it is also linked to a higher risk of cardiovascular events and death. The results are published in The Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. Chronic kidney disease (CKD) affects approximately ten percent of the global population. Hypertension is ...

Scientific articles in the field of physics are mostly very short and deal with a very restricted topic. A remarkable exception to this is an article published recently by physicists from the Universities of Münster and Düsseldorf. The article is 127 pages long, cites a total of 1075 sources and deals with a wide range of branches of physics - from biophysics to quantum mechanics. The article is a so-called review article and was written by physicists Michael te Vrugt and Prof. Raphael Wittkowski from the Institute of Theoretical Physics and the Center for Soft Nanoscience at the University of Münster, together with ...

Although plants are anchored to the ground, they spend most of their lifetime swinging in the wind. Like animals, plants have 'molecular switches' on the surface of their cells that transduce a mechanical signal into an electrical one in milliseconds. In animals, sound vibrations activate 'molecular switches' located in the ear. Scientists from the CNRS, INRAE, Ecole Polytechnique, Université Paris-Saclay and Université Clermont-Auvergne (1) have found that in plants, rapid oscillations of stems and leaves ...

How can cells adhere to surfaces and move on them? This is a question which was investigated by an international team of researchers headed by Prof. Michael Hippler from the University of Münster and Prof. Kaiyao Huang from the Institute of Hydrobiology (Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China). The researchers used the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii as their model organism. They manipulated the alga by altering the sugar modifications in proteins on the cell surface. As a result, they were able to alter the cellular surface adhesion, also known as adhesion force. The results have now been published in the ...

Thanks to the marine worm Platynereis dumerilii, an animal whose genes have evolved very slowly, scientists from CNRS, Université de Paris and Sorbonne Université, in association with others at the University of Saint Petersburg and the University of Rio de Janeiro, have shown that while haemoglobin appeared independently in several species, it actually descends from a single gene transmitted to all by their last common ancestor. These findings were published on 29 December 2020 in BMC Evolutionary Biology. Having red blood is not peculiar to humans or mammals. ...

Osaka, Japan - Researchers at Osaka University synthesized twisted molecular wires just one molecule thick that can conduct electricity with less resistance compared with previous devices. This work may lead to carbon-based electronic devices that require fewer toxic materials or harsh processing methods. Organic conductors, which are carbon-based materials that can conduct electricity, are an exciting new technology. Compared with conventional silicon electronics, organic conductors can be synthesized more easily, and can even be made into molecular wires. However, these structures suffer from reduced electrical conductivity, which prevents ...

After "COVID-19," the term that most people will remember best from 2020 is likely to be "social distancing." While it most commonly applied to social gatherings with family and friends, it has impacted the way many receive medical care. Historically, the United States has been relatively slow to broadly adopt telemedicine, largely emphasizing in-person visits. However, the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in the spring of 2020, necessitated increased use of virtual or phone call visits, even prompting the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to relax some of its regulations, primarily for video-based ...

N-Aryl-C-nitroazoles are an important class of heterocyclic compounds. They are used as pesticides and fungicides. However, these substances could be toxic to humans and cause mutations. As they are not frequently used, there is little data about them in the medicinal chemistry literature. However, it has been suggested recently that the groups of compounds that are traditionally avoided can help to fight pathogenic bacteria. Yet, to reduce toxic effects, a great amount of work must be carried out at the molecular level, ...

The flag leaf is the last to emerge, indicating the transition from crop growth to grain production. Photosynthesis in this leaf provides the majority of the carbohydrates needed for grain filling--so it is the most important leaf for yield potential. A team from the University of Illinois and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) found that some flag leaves of different varieties of rice transform light and carbon dioxide into carbohydrates better than others. This finding could potentially open new opportunities for breeding higher yielding rice varieties.  Published ...

In a study that looked at suicide deaths during 2020's first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Maryland, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers found that, contrary to general predictions of suicides skyrocketing, suicides in the overall population actually dropped, relative to previous years. However, the researchers also discovered that suicide deaths increased dramatically among Black Marylanders during the same period. The researchers say that their findings, published Dec. 16, 2020, in JAMA Psychiatry, highlight the importance of timely identification of high-risk groups and vulnerable populations to reduce suicide numbers. Black Americans have been ...

LOS ANGELES -- Scientists from the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center have developed a simple, high-throughput method for transferring isolated mitochondria and their associated mitochondrial DNA into mammalian cells. This approach enables researchers to tailor a key genetic component of cells, to study and potentially treat debilitating diseases such as cancer, diabetes and metabolic disorders. A study, published today in the journal Cell Reports, describes how the new UCLA-developed device, called MitoPunch, transfers mitochondria into 100,000 or more recipient cells simultaneously, which is a significant improvement from existing mitochondrial transfer technologies. The device is ...

AURORA, Colo. (Dec. 29, 2020) - College football players may underestimate their risk of injury and concussion, according to a new study published today in JAMA Network Open. Christine Baugh, PhD, MPH, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and member of the CU Center for Bioethics and Humanities, is the corresponding author of the article, "Accuracy of US College Football Players' Estimates of Their Risk of Concussion or Injury." Baugh and co-authors report on survey results of 296 college football players from four teams in the Power 5 Conferences of ...

People have puzzled for years why pathogen Phytophthora infestens causes the devastating late blight disease, source of the Irish Potato famine, on potatoes, but has no effect at all on plants like apple or cucumber. How are apple trees and cucumber plants able to completely shake off this devastating pathogen? Agricultural scientists have wondered for years: if this resistance is so complete and persists over so many generations, is there some way we could transfer it to susceptible plants like wheat and thereby stop disease? Why is it so important to determine the molecular basis of nonhost resistance? ...

Toronto - With the arrival of effective vaccines for the COVID-19 virus, the end of the pandemic is on the horizon but in the short term the virus continues to spread. A timely new study published today by PLOS ONE examines the effectiveness of COVID-19 control policies in 40 jurisdictions including countries and U.S. states. Among the conclusions is that significant social costs must be incurred to reduce the growth of the virus below zero. In most jurisdictions examined, policies with a lesser social impact including cancellation of public events, restrictions of gatherings ...

The Grain Chain, a farm to fork coalition of stakeholders in the grain industry sector and chaired by the American Bakers Association (ABA), celebrates the recommendation published today in the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs) to "consume half of your grains from whole grain sources" and the remainder from enriched grains. A foundational piece of the DGAs, the guidelines recognize whole grains are "one of the three food groups that are fundamental constituents of a healthy dietary pattern." The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Health and Human Services (HHS) oversee and publish the Dietary Guidelines, ...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - COVID-19, which has killed 1.7 million people worldwide, does not follow a uniform path. Many infected patients remain asymptomatic or have mild symptoms. Others, especially those with comorbidities, can develop severe clinical disease with atypical pneumonia and multiple system organ failure. Since the first cases were reported in December 2019, the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 has surged into a pandemic, with cases and deaths still mounting. Ongoing observational clinical research has become a priority to better understand how this previously unknown virus acts, and findings from this research can better inform treatment and vaccine design. University ...

Carrageenans, biologically active polysaccharides isolated from red algae and widely used in the food industry as stabilizers, thickeners, or jelly agents have an express effect on the immune systems of mice, a study reports. The research was carried out by scientists from the School of Biomedicine of Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU), Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Vilnius University. A related article appears in the Journal of Biomedical Materials Research. "The fact that carrageenan demonstrates immunosuppressive properties in a particular case does not make it generally dangerous or toxic though", says Aleksandra ...

Leesburg, VA, December 29, 2020--According to an article in ARRS' American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), because patients with ballistic embedded fragments are frequently denied MRI (due to indeterminate bullet composition sans shell casings), radiography and CT can be used to identify nonferromagnetic projectiles that are safe for MRI. "Commercially available handgun and shotgun ammunition representing projectiles commonly encountered in a clinical setting was fired into ballistic gelatin as a surrogate for human tissue," explained first author Arthur J. Fountain from the department of radiology and imaging sciences at Emory ...

While the world has its eyes on vaccines to stop the spread of coronavirus, therapeutics are still necessary to treat hospitalized patients. One of these treatments, remdesivir, is the first and only antiviral agent of its kind that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved so far for COVID-19. Research at the University of Cincinnati, however, contends that this antiviral drug is being used too indiscriminately when treating patients hospitalized with the virus. The study is published in the journal Fundamental & Clinical Pharmacology. The FDA approved remdesivir, marketed as Veklury, for emergency use authorization in May 2020 to treat COVID-19 and granted full approval ...