The discovery of new drugs is vital to achieving the eradication of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) in Africa and around the world. Now, researchers reporting in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases have identified traditional Ghanaian medicines which work in the lab against schistosomiasis, onchocerciasis and lymphatic filariasis, three diseases endemic to Ghana. The major intervention for NTDs in Ghana is currently mass drug administration of a few repeatedly recycled drugs, which can lead to reduced efficacy and the emergence of drug resistance. Chronic infections of schistosomiasis, onchocerciasis and lymphatic filariasis ...

In the ongoing arms race between humans and the parasite that causes malaria, Taane Clark and colleagues at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) report that new mutations that enhance resistance to a drug used to prevent malaria in pregnant women and children are already common in countries fighting the disease. The new results are published December 31 in PLOS Genetics. Malaria causes about 435,000 deaths each year, primarily in young children in sub-Saharan Africa. Despite a long-term global response, efforts to control the disease are hampered by the rise of drug-resistant strains of the parasite species that cause malaria. Sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP), ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- A desalination membrane acts as a filter for salty water: push the water through the membrane, get clean water suitable for agriculture, energy production and even drinking. The process seems simple enough, but it contains complex intricacies that have baffled scientists for decades -- until now. Researchers from Penn State, The University of Texas at Austin, Iowa State University, Dow Chemical Company and DuPont Water Solutions published a key finding in understanding how membranes actually filter minerals from water, online today (Dec. 31) in Science. The article will be featured on the print edition's cover, to be issued tomorrow (Jan. ...

Predicting when and how collections of particles, robots, or animals become orderly remains a challenge across science and engineering. In the 19th century, scientists and engineers developed the discipline of statistical mechanics, which predicts how groups of simple particles transition between order and disorder, as when a collection of randomly colliding atoms freezes to form a uniform crystal lattice. More challenging to predict are the collective behaviors that can be achieved when the particles ...

High in the clouds, atmospheric aerosols, including anthropogenic air pollutants, increase updraft speeds in storm clouds by making the surrounding air more humid, a new study finds. The results offer a new mechanism explaining the widely observed - but poorly understood - atmospheric phenomenon and provide a physical basis for predicting increasing thunderstorm intensity, particularly in the high-aerosol regions of the tropics. Observations worldwide have highlighted aerosols' impact on weather, including their ability to strengthen convection in deep convective clouds, like those ...

A new analysis suggests that, by 2040, 19% of the world's population - accounting for 21% of the global Gross Domestic Product - will be impacted by subsidence, the sinking of the ground's surface, a phenomenon often caused by human activities such as groundwater removal, and by natural causes as well. The results, reported in a Policy Forum, represent "a key first step toward formulating effective land-subsidence policies that are lacking in most countries worldwide," the authors say. Gerardo Herrera Garcia et al. performed a large-scale ...

When the COVID-19 pandemic reached Africa, the continent was already struggling to deal with another public health crisis - a growing cancer epidemic characterized by more than one million new cancer cases and nearly 700,000 deaths per year. In a Perspective, Beatrice Wiafe Addai and Wilfred Ngwa discuss the significant challenges COVID-19 imposed on cancer prevention and control in Africa and how the efforts to address these challenges highlight key opportunities where greater investment could improve cancer care globally. At the start of the pandemic, many African ...

Overcoming a key obstacle in achieving diamond-based electronic and optoelectronic devices, researchers have presented a new way to fabricate micrometer-sized diamonds that can elastically stretch. Elastic diamonds could pave the way for advanced electronics, including semiconductors and quantum information technologies. In addition to being the hardest materials in nature, diamonds have exceptional electronic and photonic properties, featuring both ultrahigh thermal and electric conductivity. Not only would diamond-based electronics dissipate heat more quickly, reducing the need for ...

CHAPEL HILL, NC--Boosting immune system T cells to effectively attack solid tumors, such as breast cancers, can be done by adding a small molecule to a treatment procedure called chimeric antigen receptor-T (CAR-T) cell therapy, according to a study by researchers at the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. The boost helps recruit more immune cells into battle at the tumor site. The findings are published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine. CAR-T immunotherapy, in which T cells are modified in the laboratory to express chimeric antigen receptors, CARs, that in turn target surface proteins ...

Producing clean water at a lower cost could be on the horizon after researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and Penn State solved a complex problem that has baffled scientists for decades, until now. Desalination membranes remove salt and other chemicals from water, a process critical to the health of society, cleaning billions of gallons of water for agriculture, energy production and drinking. The idea seems simple -- push salty water through and clean water comes out the other side -- but it contains complex intricacies that scientists ...

Diamond is the hardest material in nature. But out of many expectations, it also has great potential as an excellent electronic material. A joint research team led by City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has demonstrated for the first time the large, uniform tensile elastic straining of microfabricated diamond arrays through the nanomechanical approach. Their findings have shown the potential of strained diamonds as prime candidates for advanced functional devices in microelectronics, photonics, and quantum information technologies. The research was co-led by Dr Lu Yang, Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering (MNE) at CityU and ...

AMES, Iowa - Nature has figured out how to make great membranes. Biological membranes let the right stuff into cells while keeping the wrong stuff out. And, as researchers noted in a paper just published by the journal Science, they are remarkable and ideal for their job. But they're not necessarily ideal for high-volume, industrial jobs such as pushing saltwater through a membrane to remove salt and make fresh water for drinking, irrigating crops, watering livestock or creating energy. Can we learn from those high-performing biological membranes? Can we ...

Countries led by women have not fared significantly better in the COVID-19 pandemic than those led by men- it may be just our Western media bias that makes us think they have! INFORMATION: Article Title: "Gender in the time of COVID-19: Evaluating national leadership and COVID-19 fatalities" Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0244531 ...

Very low birthweight infants are at a high risk for anemia and often need blood transfusions to survive. Some doctors use a higher level and some use a lower level of red blood cells to order a transfusion. A National Institutes of Health-funded study suggests that providing a higher threshold of red cells within clinically accepted limits (i.e., using a higher level of red blood cells when ordering a transfusion) offers no advantage in survival or reduction in neurological impairment over a lower threshold. This large, multi-center randomized clinical trial was conducted ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- When using social media to nudge people toward safe and healthy behaviors, it's critical to make sure the words match the pictures, according to a new study. After looking at social media posts, parents of young children were better able to recall safety messages such as how to put a baby safely to sleep when the images in the posts aligned with the messages in the text, the researchers found. The study appears in the Journal of Health Communication. "Many times, scientists and safety experts aren't involved in decisions about social media for health agencies and other organizations, and we end up seeing images that have nothing to do with the safety message ...

The scientists from St Petersburg University began to study the geology of Central Asia in the middle of the 20th century. Multi-year research and rich field experience have made it possible to create the world's leading school of thought in the geology of the Tien Shan at the University. At present, work continues with active collaboration with scientists throughout the world. One of the recent discoveries of the international research team is the discovery of this specific rock assemblage that is characteristic of ...

BOSTON - Reports of possible allergic reactions to the COVID-19 vaccines produced by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, both recently approved for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), have raised public concern. A team of experts led by allergists at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has now examined all relevant information to offer reassurance that the vaccines can be administered safely even to people with food or medication allergies. The group's review is published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice. In response to accounts of potential allergic reactions in some people following COVID-19 ...

People with certain genetic conditions are likely to have significant symptoms of autism, even if they do not meet all diagnostic criteria, a study concludes. Researchers at Cardiff University say their findings show clinical services need to adapt so that people diagnosed with autism-linked genetic conditions are not denied access to vital support and interventions. Published in The American Journal of Psychiatry, the international study analysed data from 547 people who had been diagnosed with ...

ADELPHI, Md. -- Multi-domain operations, the Army's future operating concept, requires autonomous agents with learning components to operate alongside the warfighter. New Army research reduces the unpredictability of current training reinforcement learning policies so that they are more practically applicable to physical systems, especially ground robots. These learning components will permit autonomous agents to reason and adapt to changing battlefield conditions, said Army researcher Dr. Alec Koppel from the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, ...

Gallium is a highly useful element that has accompanied the advancement of human civilization throughout the 20th century. Gallium is designated as a technologically critical element, as it is essential for the fabrication of semiconductors and transistors. Notably, gallium nitride and related compounds allowed for the discovery of the blue LED, which was the final key in the development of an energy-efficient and long-lasting white LED lighting system. This discovery has led to the awarding of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics. It is estimated that up to 98% of the demand for gallium originates from the semiconductor ...

About one in 100 children has a common brain disorder called Chiari 1 malformation, but most of the time such children grow up normally and no one suspects a problem. But in about one in 10 of those children, the condition causes headaches, neck pain, hearing, vision and balance disturbances, or other neurological symptoms. In some cases, the disorder may run in families, but scientists have understood little about the genetic alterations that contribute to the condition. In new research, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown that Chiari 1 malformation can be caused by variations ...

Use of the delivery system in mouse models results in unprecedented siRNA penetration across the intact blood brain barrier Technology could offer potential for a variety of human neurological disorders In the past few decades, researchers have identified biological pathways leading to neurodegenerative diseases and developed promising molecular agents to target them. However, the translation of these findings into clinically approved treatments has progressed at a much slower rate, in part because ...

Fluorescence microscopy is widely used in biochemistry and life sciences because it allows scientists to directly observe cells and certain compounds in and around them. Fluorescent molecules absorb light within a specific wavelength range and then re-emit it at the longer wavelength range. However, the major limitation of conventional fluorescence microscopy techniques is that the results are very difficult to evaluate quantitatively; fluorescence intensity is significantly affected by both experimental conditions and the concentration of the fluorescent substance. Now, a new study by scientists from Japan is set to revolutionize the field of fluorescence lifetime ...

LOS ANGELES (Dec. 30, 2020) -- People who move due to unaffordable housing are at increased risk of failing to receive the medical care they need, according to a new study from Cedars-Sinai and the University of California, Los Angeles. The study, published online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, concludes that the result could be long-term health problems. The findings were based on 146,417 adults who responded from 2011 to 2017 to the California Health Interview Survey, the largest such state survey in the U.S. ...

One of the physiopathological characteristics of COVID-19 that has most baffled the scientific and medical community is what is known as "silent hypoxemia" or "happy hypoxia". Patients suffering this phenomenon, the causes of which are still unknown, have severe pneumonia with markedly decreased arterial blood oxygen levels (known as hypoxemia). However, they do not report dyspnea (subjective feeling of shortness of breath) or increased breathing rates, which are usually characteristic symptoms of people with hypoxemia from pneumonia or any other cause. Patients with "silent hypoxemia" often suffer ...