Researchers who studied antibody and immune cell responses in more than 180 men and women who had recovered from COVID-19 report these patients' immune memory to the virus - across all immune cell types studied - was measurable for up to 8 months after symptoms appeared. The results indicate "that durable immunity against secondary COVID-19 disease is a possibility in most individuals," the authors say. As the number of daily COVID-19 cases worldwide continues to mount, whether an initial infection with SARS-CoV-2 leads to long-lasting protective immunity against COVID-19 remains a question. Studying the nature of the humoral response to the virus, which ...

Scientists have uncovered why a food-ingredient-based pesticide made from safflower and cottonseed oils is effective against two-spotted spider mites that attack over a thousand species of plants while sparing the mites' natural predators. An international team of scientists has uncovered how a bio-pesticide works against spider mites while sparing their natural predators. The findings, published in the journal Engineering in Life Sciences on October 7, 2020, could present farmers and gardeners with an eco-friendly alternative to synthetic pesticides. Food ingredients have long been used as alternative pesticides against arthropod pests, such as insects, ticks, and mites, because they tend to be less toxic to mammals and pose less impact to the environment. The ...

Analysis from a workshop convened by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) in 2017 reveals gaps in and opportunities for research to improve understanding of the effects of traumatic brain injury (TBI) in women. A new paper in the Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation summarizes and updates the findings presented during the "Understanding Traumatic Brain Injury in Women" workshop and provides strategies for advancing research efforts in this area. NINDS is part of the National Institutes of Health. "We are making advances in understanding ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (January 5, 2021)--Sexual dysfunction often accompanies the menopause transition. Yet, not all women experience it the same. A new study identified the determinants that affect a woman's risk of sexual dysfunction and sought to determine the effectiveness of hormone therapy in decreasing that risk and modifying sexual behavior. Study results are published online in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS). Although hot flashes easily rank as the most common symptom of menopause, the transition is often accompanied by other issues, including changes that affect a woman's ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (January 5, 2021)--Fiber is a commonly recommended part of a healthy diet. That's because it's good for your health in so many ways--from weight management to reducing the risk of diabetes, heart disease, and some types of cancer. A new study also finds that it might be linked with a reduced risk of depression, especially in premenopausal women. Study results are published online in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS). Depression is a common and serious mental health condition that not only affects a person's ability to perform daily activities but can also lead to suicide. ...

Most forms of life -- species of mammals, birds, plants, reptiles, amphibians, etc. -- are most diverse at Earth's equator and least diverse at the poles. This distribution is called the latitudinal gradient of biodiversity. A group of Santa Fe Institute collaborators was intrigued by the fact that human cultural diversity shows exactly the same distribution with latitude: human cultures are more diverse near the equator and least at the poles. Their big question was: why? Life is more diverse within richer environments, but it's not clear why human cultural diversity would show this pattern too. To find answers, the group conducted a biogeographic and macroecological study of the distribution of mammal species ...

A systematic review and meta-analysis of international COVID-19 literature, led by UNSW Sydney, has confirmed that while children under five years old were likely to recover from the infection, half of those infected were infants and almost half of the infected under-fives were asymptomatic. These findings will help to inform future policy and decision-making about potential COVID-19 vaccination for young children and maternal immunisation programs during pregnancy - but the scientists say future research is needed to explore the potential risk of transmission from infants to their mothers, families and other caregivers, and to find out more about whether asymptomatic under-fives can spread the disease. The collaborative study between researchers from UNSW Sydney, Telethon ...

Memphis, Tenn. (January 5, 2021) - A paper written by Arash Shaban-Nejad, PhD, MPH, an assistant professor, and Nariman Ammar, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow, both at the Center for Biomedical Informatics in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, was recently published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research - Medical Informatics. The paper discussed how an artificial intelligence system developed by the researchers was used to diagnose and treat children and adults who suffer from Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). Their research study was named among the Top Milestones on Explainable AI In 2020. Adverse ...

A new SFU-led study finds that less than half of media stories in early 2020 featuring COVID-19 "preprint" research--research that has not yet been peer-reviewed--accurately framed the studies as being preprints or unverified research. SFU PhD student Alice Fleerackers, a researcher in the Scholarly Communications Lab, and publishing program professor Juan Pablo Alperin collaborated with an international team of researchers to analyze more than 500 mentions in over 450 stories from digital news outlets covering preprint COVID-19 research. The study was published this week in Health Communication. Their analysis ...

As the largest orogenic plateau on earth, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau was caused by a complex crustal deformation process during the continuous collision and compression process between the Indian and Eurasian continents starting at least 60-50 Ma ago. The formation of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau records the collision of the two continents and the deformation process and mechanism within the continents. Therefore, Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is considered as a natural ideal laboratory for the study of continent-continent collision and dynamics. At present, the continuous collision between Eurasia and Indian continents is still ongoing, ...

Osaka, Japan - Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), frequently seen in patients with liver cirrhosis caused by alcohol abuse or chronic viral hepatitis, is the most common form of liver cancer worldwide. As such, it is the third-most common cause of cancer-related death and has a notoriously poor prognosis. At present, surgery is the most effective treatment for HCC, but is only successful in the 10%-20% of cases where cancer cells have not spread beyond the liver. Given the lack of treatment options for HCC, a group of researchers led by Osaka University decided to focus on specific cells and processes that occur in the area around liver tumors in the hope of finding a novel target for drug development. The results of their study were published in a recent issue of Gastroenterology. "Hepatic ...

Given a list of cities and the distances between each pair of cities, how do you determine the shortest route that visits each city exactly once and returns to the starting location? This famous problem is called the "traveling salesman problem" and is an example of a combinatorial optimization problem. Solving these problems using conventional computers can be very time-consuming, and special devices called "quantum annealers" have been created for this purpose. Quantum annealers are designed to find the lowest energy state (or "ground state") of what's known as an "Ising model." Such models are abstract representations of a quantum mechanical system involving interacting spins that are also influenced by external magnetic ...

The world has experienced dramatic urbanization in recent decades. According to the latest report from the United Nations (UN), the global population in 2018 was 7.6 billion and the urban population was 4.2 billion. By 2050, the global population is expected to soar to 9.7 billion, with 68% of the population living in urban areas. (Note 1) In the first-ever study on the characteristics of urbanization in large cities around the world, researchers at the Department of Civil Engineering of the University of Hong Kong (HKU) analyzed cities' urban built-up areas (BUAs) expansion, population growth and greening BUA changes, and revealed a hugely uneven ...

A new advanced computing technique using routine medical scans to enable doctors to take fewer, more accurate tumour biopsies, has been developed by cancer researchers at the University of Cambridge. This is an important step towards precision tissue sampling for cancer patients to help select the best treatment. In future the technique could even replace clinical biopsies with 'virtual biopsies', sparing patients invasive procedures. The research published in European Radiology shows that combining computed tomography (CT) scans with ultrasound images creates a visual guide for doctors to ensure they sample the full complexity of ...

In the future, the Antarctic could become a greener place and be colonised by new species. At the same time, some species will likely disappear. 25 researchers recently presented these and many other findings in a major international project, in which they analysed hundreds of articles on the Antarctic published in the past ten years. By doing so, the team have provided an exceptionally comprehensive assessment of the status quo and future of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean that surrounds it. Never before have researchers arrived at so many new findings on the biological and biochemical processes at work in the Antarctic than in the past ten years. Now 25 experts, led by the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), have analysed and compiled these ...

Smoking is associated with an increased risk of COVID-19 symptoms and smokers are more likely to attend hospital than non-smokers, a study has found. The study published today in Thorax, by researchers from King's College London, investigates the association between smoking and the severity of the COVID-19. Researchers analysed data from the ZOE COVID Symptom Study App. Of the participants of the app, 11% were smokers. This is a lower proportion than the overall UK population of 14.7%, however, it reflects the demographics of the self-selected sample of the ZOE COVID Symptom Study. While more than a third of users reported not feeling physically well during the period of study (24th March and April 2020), current smokers were 14% more likely to develop the classic triad of ...

DALLAS, Jan. 6, 2021 -- Statins, common cholesterol-lowering medications, may protect women's hearts from damage caused during chemotherapy for early-stage breast cancer, according to new research published today in the Journal of the American Heart Association, an open access journal of the American Heart Association. "Two types of cancer medications, anthracyclines and trastuzumab, are effective treatments for many women with breast cancer, however, the risk of heart muscle damage has limited their use, particularly in women who are at higher risk for heart problems because of their age or other medical issues," said Husam Abdel-Qadir, M.D., Ph.D., lead author of the study, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Toronto's ...

Toronto - New research from UHN's Peter Munk Cardiac Centre (PMCC) shows statins, commonly prescribed to lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke, may also protect the heart from damaging side-effects of early breast cancer treatment. Published Jan. 6, 2021 in the Journal of the American Heart Association, an observational study found women already taking statins and treated with either anthracyclines or trastuzumab were half as likely to be hospitalized or visit an Emergency Department for heart failure within five years after chemotherapy. "Our job is to protect the heart and ensure it has the greatest fighting chance to get through chemotherapy," says Dr. Husam Abdel-Qadir, lead author of the paper and a cardiologist at the PMCC and Women's College ...

Separating infants and their mothers after a Caesarean section delivery is common. A new study published in END ...

A reduced sense of smell, or olfactory dysfunction, is one of the most common symptoms of COVID-19. A recent study published the END ...

As children undergo treatment for cancer, they may miss school and risk falling behind in their education. An analysis published in END ...

From 2007 to 2016, food insecurity--or limited access to nutritious foods because of a lack of financial resources--increased significantly from 5.5% to 12.4% among older US adults, and the increase was more pronounced among individuals with lower income. The findings come from a study published in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society. The study, which drew from data from National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys, also found that older adults who had food insecurity tended to have lower quality diets. "Our results provide further evidence that food insecurity is a serious health concern among older adults. Continued investment in public health programs and policies are needed to simultaneously ...

The antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine is frequently prescribed to treat symptoms of the autoimmune disease lupus. In addition to decreasing disease flares, the drug can also prevent blood clots, which are a major problem in individuals with lupus. A new study in Arthritis & Rheumatology shows that monitoring patients' blood levels of hydroxychloroquine can predict their clotting risk. In 739 patients, clotting occurred in 38 patients (5.1%). Average hydroxychloroquine blood levels were lower in patients who developed clots, and clotting rates were reduced by 12% for every 200 ng/mL increase in the most recent hydroxychloroquine blood level. The finding may help clinicians determine the optimal dosing of hydroxychloroquine ...

Individuals face a higher risk of dying following hip fractures. A new study published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research has found that living alone after experiencing a hip fracture may further elevate this risk. For the study, researchers examined information on hip fractures from all hospitals in Norway from 2002 to 2013, and they combined the data with the 2001 National Population and Housing Census. During 12.8 years of follow-up in 12,770 men and 22,067 women with hip fractures at ages 50 to 79 years, higher rates of death were seen in both men and women living alone versus those living with a partner (a 37% higher risk in men and a 23% higher risk in women). INFORMATION: ...

Findings from a recent study of individuals with depression suggest that Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) can improve how patients feel about themselves in difficult situations in ways that may help protect against relapse of depressive symptoms. The findings are published in Counselling and Psychotherapy Research. For the study, 68 individuals were randomized the MBCT or a waiting list. Patients who received MBCT were more likely to experience reductions in feelings of self-inadequacy and improvements in self-reassurance. Also, individuals with improvements in self-reassurance were less likely to experience depressive relapse within 2 years after the MBCT intervention. "Self-criticism makes people vulnerable to depression. This study ...