Irvine, Calif., March 18, 2024 — A research team led by the University of California, Irvine has discovered the key role that the APOBEC3A and APOBEC3B enzymes play in driving cancer mutations by modifying the DNA in tumor genomes, offering potential new targets for intervention strategies. The study, published today online in the journal Nature Communications, describes how the researchers identified the process by which APOBEC3A and APOBEC3B detect specific DNA structures, resulting in mutations at distinct positions within the tumor genome. “It’s critical to understand how cancer cells accumulate mutations leading to ...

The blue whale genome was published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, and the Etruscan shrew genome was published in the journal Scientific Data. Research models using animal cell cultures can help navigate big biological questions, but these tools are only useful when following the right map. “The genome is a blueprint of an organism,” says Yury Bukhman, first author of the published research and a computational biologist in the Ron Stewart Computational Group at the Morgridge Institute, an independent research organization that works in affiliation with the University of Wisconsin–Madison in emerging fields ...

Water pollution from dyes used in textile, food, cosmetic and other manufacturing is a major ecological concern with industry and scientists seeking biocompatible and more sustainable alternatives to protect the environment. A new study led by Flinders University has discovered a novel way to degrade and potentially remove toxic organic chemicals including azo dyes from wastewater, using a chemical photocatalysis process powered by ultraviolet light. Professor Gunther Andersson, from the Flinders Institute for NanoScale Science and Technology, says the process involves creating metallic ‘clusters’ of just nine gold (Au) atoms chemically ‘anchored’ ...

*This is an early press release from the European Congress on Obesity (ECO 2024) Venice 12-15 May. Please credit the Congress if using this material* Food companies’ sponsorship of children’s sports may encourage children to buy their products, new research to be presented at the European Congress on Obesity (ECO 2024) (Venice 12-15 May), has found. The Canadian research also found that many children view food companies that sponsor or give money to children’s sports as being “generous” ...

To democratize access to lab-grown organ-like structures known as organoids and other advanced stem cell and transcriptomic technologies, USC will launch the CIRM ASCEND Center, dedicated to “Advancing Stem Cell Education and Novel Discoveries.” Funded by a $3.95 million grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), the voter-created state agency charged with distributing public funding to support stem cell research and education, ASCEND joins a network of shared resources laboratories ...

MADISON –– Scientists have been measuring global methane emissions for decades, but the boreal arctic —with a wide range of biomes including wetlands that extend across the northern parts of North America, Europe and Asia — is a key region where accurately estimating highly potent greenhouse gas emissions has been challenging. Wetlands are great at storing carbon, but as global temperatures increase, they are warming up. That causes the carbon they store to be released into the atmosphere in the form of methane, which contributes to more global warming. Now, researchers — including the University ...

The Lundquist Institute is proud to announce that Wei Yan, MD, PhD, a distinguished professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and Lundquist investigator, has been appointed by the American Society of Andrology and the European Academy of Andrology as the new Editor-in-Chief of Andrology, the highly-respected journal in the field of reproductive medicine.   Dr. Yan's appointment to Andrology is a testament to his dedication to reproductive medicine. With extensive editorial experience, including his previous roles as ...

Researchers at the Institute of Human Virology (IHV) at the University of Maryland School of Medicine published a new study in the Journal of Infectious Diseases investigating the antibody response following SARS-CoV-2 infection.   Long-lived plasma cells are responsible for durable antibody responses that persist for decades after immunization or infection.  For example, infection with measles, mumps, rubella, or immunization with vaccines against tetanus or diphtheria elicit antibody responses that can last for many decades.  By contrast, other infections and vaccines elicit short-lived antibody responses that last only a few ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- The humble peat bog conjures images of a brown, soggy expanse. But it turns out to have a superpower in the fight against climate change. For thousands of years, the world’s peatlands have absorbed and stored vast amounts of carbon dioxide, keeping this greenhouse gas in the ground and not in the air. Although peatlands occupy just 3% of the land on the planet, they play an outsized role in carbon storage -- holding twice as much as all the world’s forests do. The fate of all that carbon is uncertain in the face of climate change. And ...

New research published in Nature Human Behavior suggests that text nudges encouraging people to get the COVID-19 vaccine, which had proven effective in prior real-world field tests, are also effective at prompting people to get a booster. The key in both cases  is to include in the text a sense of ownership in the dose awaiting them. The paper, led by Hengchen Dai, an associate professor of management and organizations and behavioral decision making at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, and Silvia Saccardo, an associate professor of social and decision sciences at Carnegie Mellon University, draws on previous research published in Nature that examined the effectiveness ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – The brain is an incredibly complex and active organ that uses electricity and chemicals to transmit and receive signals between its sub-regions. Researchers have explored various technologies to directly or indirectly measure these signals to learn more about the brain. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), for example, allows them to detect brain activity via changes related to blood flow. Yen-Yu Ian Shih, PhD, professor of neurology and associate director of UNC’s Biomedical Research Imaging Center, and his fellow lab members have long been curious about how neurochemicals in the brain regulate and influence neural activity, ...

Embargoed for release until 5:00 p.m. ET on Monday 18 March 2024    Annals of Internal Medicine Tip Sheet     @Annalsofim    Below please find summaries of new articles that will be published in the next issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The summaries are not intended to substitute for the full articles as a source of information. This information is under strict embargo and by taking it into possession, media representatives are committing to the terms of the embargo not only on their own behalf, but also on behalf of the organization they represent.    ----------------------------    1. Digital reminders for flu vaccination improves ...

How confident are you in your judgments and how well can you defend your opinions? Chances are that they will change under the influence of a group of avatars in a virtual environment. Scientists from SWPS University investigated the human tendency to be influenced by the opinions of others, including virtual characters.  We usually conform to the views of others for two reasons. First, we succumb to group pressure and want to gain social acceptance. Second, we lack sufficient knowledge and perceive the group as a source of a better interpretation of the current situation, describes Dr. Konrad Bocian from the Institute of Psychology at SWPS University.  So far, only a few studies ...

Research Highlights: A study of over 20,000 adults found that those who followed an 8-hour time-restricted eating schedule, a type of intermittent fasting, had a 91% higher risk of death from cardiovascular disease. People with heart disease or cancer also had an increased risk of cardiovascular death. Compared with a standard schedule of eating across 12-16 hours per day, limiting food intake to less than 8 hours per day was not associated with living longer. Embargoed until 3 p.m. CT/4 p.m. ET, Monday, March 18, 2024 CHICAGO, March 18, 2024 — An analysis ...

Blue Carbon projects are expanding globally; however, demand for credits outweighs the available credits for purchase. Currently, only three types of wetlands are considered Blue Carbon ecosystems: mangroves, saltmarsh and seagrass. However, other tidal wetlands also comply with the characteristics of what is considered Blue Carbon, such as tidal freshwater wetlands, transitional forests and brackish marshes. In a new study, scientists from Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, South Africa, Vietnam, the US and Mexico have highlighted the increasing opportunities for Blue Carbon projects for the conservation, restoration and improved management of highly threatened ...

EMBARGOED UNTIL MARCH 18 AT 3 P.M. EST Recently, fundamental tenets of democracy have come under threat, from attempts to overturn the 2020 election to mass closures of polling places. A new study from the Polarization Research Lab, a collaboration among researchers at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth College, and Stanford University, has found that despite this surge in anti-democratic behavior by U.S. politicians, the majority of Americans oppose anti-democratic attitudes and reject partisan violence. From September 2022 to October 2023, a period which included the 2022 midterm ...

VANCOUVER, Wash. -- Some soil bacteria can acquire sets of genes that enable them to pump the heavy metal nickel out of their systems, a study has found. This enables the bacteria to not only thrive in otherwise toxic soils but help plants grow there as well. A Washington State University-led research team pinpointed a set of genes in wild soil bacteria that allows them to do this in serpentine soils which have naturally high concentrations of toxic nickel. The genetic discovery, detailed in the journal Proceedings of the National Academies ...

Heparin, the world’s most widely used blood thinner, is used during procedures ranging from kidney dialysis to open heart surgery. Currently, heparin is derived from pig intestines, but scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have discovered how to make it in the lab. They have also developed a path to a biomanufacturing process that could potentially revolutionize how the world gets its supply of this crucial medicine. “In recent years, with disease and contamination issues disrupting the global supply chain of pig heparin and potentially putting millions of patients at risk, it’s clear we need to diversify ...

Berkeley — A network of artificial streams is teaching scientists how California’s mountain waterways — and the ecosystems that depend on them — may be impacted by a warmer, drier climate. Over the next century, climate change is projected to bring less snowfall to the Sierra Nevada. Smaller snowpacks, paired with warmer conditions, will shift the annual snowmelt earlier into the year, leaving less water to feed streams and rivers during the hot summer months. By 2100, mountain streams are predicted to reach their annual base, or “low-flow,” conditions an average of six ...

“The impact of wind turbines on house prices is much smaller than generally feared: In the U.S., it’s about one percent for a house that has at least one wind turbine in a 10 km radius”, explains Maximilian Auffhammer, a Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California, Berkeley and co-author of the study. “And what really surprised me is that the house value bounces back to the original price over the years.” The study authors also found that there was no longer any ...

UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL MARCH 18, 2024 AT 3:00 PM U.S. EASTERN TIME Renewable energy sources are essential for transitioning towards a decarbonized energy system and making the electricity grid more environmentally sustainable. Clean energy alternatives like wind power can effectively replace fossil fuels, contributing to reduced air pollution and slow down climate change. Wind power has emerged as the fastest-growing non-hydro renewable energy source worldwide. However, the implementation of wind energy infrastructure, including windmills, faces significant challenges. One major obstacle is the opposition from local communities. Wind turbines, the primary ...

Farmers rely on pesticides to control agricultural pests. But insects often develop resistance to the toxins in pesticides. University of Maryland researchers have developed and successfully tested a strategy for using genomics to monitor for and identify emerging resistance to specific toxins early, well before it becomes a widespread problem. The work will enable farmers to mitigate resistance and prolong the effectiveness of pest management tools. The research was published on March 18, 2024, in the Proceedings of ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Leafhoppers, a common backyard insect, secrete and coat themselves in tiny mysterious particles that could provide both the inspiration and the instructions for next-generation technology, according to a new study led by Penn State researchers. In a first, the team precisely replicated the complex geometry of these particles, called brochosomes, and elucidated a better understanding of how they absorb both visible and ultraviolet light.  This could allow the development of bioinspired optical materials with possible applications ranging from invisible cloaking devices to coatings to more efficiently harvest ...

Following the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, many Americans have raised concerns about the future of democracy in the United States.   Yet the American public, including Democrats and Republicans alike, strongly oppose anti-democratic actions and partisan violence, according to a new study by the Polarization Research Lab.   "Democracy is under threat in America, but these data show we are not on the brink of a citizen-supported push toward authoritarianism," says the lab's ...

A new report uncovers how hydrogen gas, the energy of the future, provided energy in the past, at the origin of life 4 billion years ago. Hydrogen gas is clean fuel. It burns with oxygen in the air to provide energy with no CO2. Hydrogen is a key to sustainable energy for the future. Though humans are just now coming to realize the benefits of hydrogen gas (H2 in chemical shorthand), microbes have known that H2 is good fuel for as long as there has been life on Earth. Hydrogen is ancient energy. The very first cells on Earth lived from H2 produced in hydrothermal vents, using the reaction of H2 with CO2 to make the molecules of ...