A research team led by Dr Xiaoyu LI from the Research Division for Chemistry, Faculty of Science, in collaboration with Professor Yizhou LI from School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chongqing University and Professor Yan CAO from School of Pharmacy, Second Military Medical University in Shanghai has developed a new drug discovery method targeting membrane proteins on live cells. Membrane proteins play important roles in biology, and many of them are high-value targets that are being intensively pursued in the pharmaceutical ...

New research produced jointly by The Swire Institute of Marine Science (SWIMS), Faculty of Science, The University of Hong Kong (HKU), and The Nature Conservancy (TNC), published recently in the scientific journal Restoration Ecology, shows the enormous potential of restoring lost oyster reefs, bringing significant environmental benefits. Benefits of oyster reefs Hong Kong was once home to thriving shellfish reefs, but due to a combination of factors including over-exploitation, coastal reclamation and pollution, shellfish populations have declined drastically. Restoring oyster reefs along urbanized ...

Angiosarcomas are clinically aggressive tumours that are more prevalent in Asian populations Study led by Singapore clinician-scientists has found a way to classify angiosarcomas into three subtypes, allowing for more targeted treatment, better outcomes for patients and the development of new therapies Findings were published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation in October this year Singapore, 29 December 2020 - A new study led by clinician-scientists from the National Cancer Centre Singapore (NCCS), with collaborators from research institutions worldwide, has found that angiosarcomas have unique genomic and immune profiles which allow them ...

A fast, green and one-step method for producing porous carbon spheres, which are a vital component for carbon capture technology and for new ways of storing renewable energy, has been developed by Swansea University researchers. The method produces spheres that have good capacity for carbon capture, and it works effectively at a large scale. Carbon spheres range in size from nanometers to micrometers. Over the past decade they have begun to play an important role in areas such as energy storage and conversion, catalysis, gas adsorption and storage, drug and enzyme delivery, and water treatment. They are also at the heart of carbon capture technology, ...

Researchers at the University of Turku have discovered what type of neural mechanisms are the basis for emotional responses to music. Altogether 102 research subjects listened to music that evokes emotions while their brain function was scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The study was carried out in the national PET Centre. The researchers used a machine learning algorithm to map which brain regions are activated when the different music-induced emotions are separated from each other. - Based on the activation of the auditory and motor cortex, we were able to accurately predict whether the research subject was listening ...

In a series of commissions awarded by the Federal Joint Committee (G-BA) to the Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG), the question is whether for certain surgical procedures, a correlation can be shown between the volume of services provided per hospital and the quality of treatment results. IQWiG's rapid report on heart transplantations is now available. According to the findings, a positive correlation can be inferred between the volume of services and the quality of treatment results for heart transplantations in adults: In hospitals with larger case volumes, fewer of the transplanted patients die, both in timely association with the intervention ...

Quantum computer: One of the obstacles for progress in the quest for a working quantum computer has been that the working devices that go into a quantum computer and perform the actual calculations, the qubits, have hitherto been made by universities and in small numbers. But in recent years, a pan-European collaboration, in partnership with French microelectronics leader CEA-Leti, has been exploring everyday transistors--that are present in billions in all our mobile phones--for their use as qubits. The French company Leti makes giant ...

Imaging techniques enable a detailed look inside an organism. But interpreting the data is time-consuming and requires a great deal of experience. Artificial neural networks open up new possibilities: They require just seconds to interpret whole-body scans of mice and to segment and depict the organs in colors, instead of in various shades of gray. This facilitates the analysis considerably. How big is the liver? Does it change if medication is taken? Is the kidney inflamed? Is there a tumor in the brain and did metastases already develop? ...

December 28, 2020 - Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) treatment, which involves injecting a small amount of a patient's own blood to release various growth factors from platelets, continues to increase in popularity. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons has tracked the procedure since 2015 and reports a 25 percent increase in cosmetic PRP use in the last four years. That increase in popularity could in part trace back to celebrities extolling the procedure's cosmetic benefits. Yet with so much information coming from so many different sources about the treatment's ...

Cells, the basic unit of life, are surrounded by a limiting membrane called the plasma membrane. Inside cells, there are various membrane-bounded organelles, each of which has various and distinctive functions. How these organelles, which individually boast different functions, have been developed during evolution remains unknown. This phenomenon has fascinated many researchers. In the study published in Nature Communications, the evolutionary relationship between two different organelles in liverwort cells has been revealed: the cell plate, which divides ...

Two new studies from the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) have uncovered an association between vaping and mental fog. Both adults and kids who vape were more likely to report difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions than their non-vaping, non-smoking peers. It also appeared that kids were more likely to experience mental fog if they started vaping before the age of 14. While other studies have found an association between vaping and mental impairment in animals, the URMC team is the first ...

Researchers from Yokohama National University in Japan have developed a prototype microprocessor using superconductor devices that are about 80 times more energy efficient than the state-of-the-art semiconductor devices found in the microprocessors of today's high-performance computing systems. As today's technologies become more and more integrated in our daily lives, the need for more computational power is ever increasing. Because of this increase, the energy use of that increasing computational power is growing immensely. For example, so much energy is used by modern day data centers that some are built near rivers so that the flowing water ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A single positive experience on a psychedelic drug may help reduce stress, depression and anxiety symptoms in Black, Indigenous and people of color whose encounters with racism have had lasting harm, a new study suggests. The participants in the retrospective study reported that their trauma-related symptoms linked to racist acts were lowered in the 30 days after an experience with either psilocybin (Magic Mushrooms), LSD or MDMA (Ecstasy). "Their experience with psychedelic drugs was so powerful that they could recall and report on changes in symptoms from racial trauma that they had experienced in their lives, and they ...

Cancer cells are known for spreading genetic chaos. As cancer cells divide, DNA segments and even whole chromosomes can be duplicated, mutated, or lost altogether. This is called chromosomal instability, and scientists at Memorial Sloan Kettering have learned that it is associated with cancer's aggressiveness. The more unstable chromosomes are, the more likely that bits of DNA from these chromosomes will end up where they don't belong: outside of a cell's central nucleus and floating in the cytoplasm. Cells interpret these rogue bits of DNA as evidence ...

BOSTON - Some police departments in the United States continue to teach officers that neck restraints are a safe method for controlling agitated or aggressive people, but that's a dangerous myth, according to a Viewpoint written by three neurologists at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in JAMA Neurology. The killing of George Floyd, a Black man who died while being arrested in May 2020 after a police officer pressed a knee to his neck for more than eight minutes, helped spark a national conversation about racial ...

Certain bacteria, known as plant-growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB), can improve plant health or protect them from pathogens and are used commercially to help crops. To further improve agricultural yields, it is helpful to identify factors that can improve PGPB behavior. Many PGPB form sticky communities of cells, known as biofilms, that help them adhere to plant roots. A group of scientists in North Carolina and Massachusetts were interested in finding other plant-associated bacteria that could help PGPB better adhere to plant roots, with the hope that increasing the number of PGPB cells attached to roots would increase their beneficial activities. ...

Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego researchers have uncovered how rain and waves act on different parts of coastal cliffs. Following three years of cliff surveys in and near the coastal city of Del Mar, Calif., they determined that wave impacts directly affect the base, and rain mostly impacts the upper region of the cliffs. The study appears in the journal Geomorphology and was funded by California State Parks. California's State Parks Oceanography program supports climate adaptation and resilience efforts through coastal and cliff erosion observations and modeling, ...

Below please find a summary and link(s) of new coronavirus-related content published today in Annals of Internal Medicine. The summary below is not intended to substitute for the full article as a source of information. A collection of coronavirus-related content is free to the public at http://go.annals.org/coronavirus. 1. Review concludes universal mask use by lay persons reduces the spread of viral infections including SARS-CoV-2 Findings affirm policy promised by President-Elect Biden, who will ...

What The Study Did: This study identified racial/ ethnic, sex, age, language, and socioeconomic differences in accessing telemedicine for primary care and specialty ambulatory care; if not addressed, these differences may compound existing inequities in care among vulnerable populations. Authors: Srinath Adusumalli, M.D., M.Sc., of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website ...

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 ...