Chronic, low-level lead poisoning is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease in adults and cognitive deficits in children, even at levels previously thought to be safe, according to a new paper by Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Simon Fraser University in Canada, and Harvard Medical School, and Boston Children’s Hospital. Low-level lead poisoning is a risk factor for preterm Birth, cognitive deficits and attention deficit–hyperactivity disorder, (ADHD), as well as increased blood pressure and reduced heart rate variability. The findings ...

Biologgers allow us to see with unprecedented precision how animals move and behave in the wild. But that's only part of the picture, according to a UC Santa Cruz ecologist renowned for using biologging data to tell the deeper story about the lives of marine mammals in a changing world. In a new opinion piece published on October 30 in Trends in Ecology and Evolution, researchers present a framework intended to underscore the value of biologging data for testing important questions about the natural world. They urge that now is the time to build upon "discovery-based science," where observations are presented ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Doctors at Mayo Clinic used a new catheter-based approach to draw out resistant pockets of infection that settle in the heart, known as right-sided infective endocarditis, without surgery. Unless treated quickly, the walled-off infections can grow, severely damaging heart valves and potentially affecting other organs as well. In a recent study, over 90% of the participants had their infection cleared, and they had lower in-hospital mortality compared to those whose infections remained. The research is part of a Mayo Clinic-led study ...

 Rapid side-to-side eye movements can help stabilize posture, avoid falls and maintain balance for people with Parkinson’s disease, just as they can for healthy people. This seemingly counterintuitive conclusion was reached by researchers at São Paulo State University (UNESP) in Brazil and the University of Lille in France in a study supported by FAPESP. An article on the study is published in the journal Biomechanics. Ten individuals diagnosed with Parkinson’s and 11 neurologically healthy individuals participated in the study. All participants were over 60 and were submitted to tests that ...

PHILADELPHIA (October 30, 2024) – A new study – published in Nursing Research – has found that the COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted patient safety indicators in U.S. hospitals. The study, from Penn Nursing’s Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research (CHOPR), examined data from the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators to assess trends in nursing-sensitive quality indicators  from 2019 to 2022. The prevention of these very distressing, uncomfortable conditions is considered to be under the nurse’s purview and directly influenced by nursing care. The investigation found that rates of falls, bloodstream infections from ...

MINNEAPOLIS – The amount of money people pay out-of-pocket for branded drugs to treat neurological diseases like multiple sclerosis (MS), Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s disease continues to rise, especially for MS drugs, according to a study published in the October 30, 2024, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study found that average out-of-pocket costs for drugs for MS increased by 217% over a nine-year period. Costs have dropped for medications where generic versions have been introduced. “In some ...

Large herbivores like bison or elk have continuously lived in the Yellowstone National Park region for about 2,300 years according to a new analysis of chemicals preserved in lake sediments. John Wendt of Oklahoma State University, U.S., and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on October 30, 2024. The near-extinction of bison in North America in the 19th and 20th centuries was a major ecological catastrophe and little is known about where and how these animals lived before European colonization. In the new study, researchers attempted to determine the dominant large herbivores that lived in the northern Yellowstone National Park ...

Antarctic penguin colonies can be identified and tracked from tourists' photos, using a computer model to reconstruct the 3D scene ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0311038 Article Title: Penguin colony georegistration using camera pose estimation and phototourism Author Countries: U.S.A. Funding: This work was supported in part by the NASA Biodiversity Program (Award 317 80NSSC21K1027), and NSF Grant IIS-2212046. The funders had no say in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. END ...

For patients with alcohol use disorder, exercise not only reduces alcohol dependence, but also improves mental and physical health, per systematic review ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0311166 Article Title: Effectiveness of exercise intervention in improving physical and mental status of patients with alcohol use disorders: A systematic review and meta-analysis Author Countries: China Funding: This study was funded by a grant from the National ...

Editor's Note: Please do not include the image originally uploaded with this release in any of your coverage as the licensing information has now changed. Please contact onepress@plos.org for any questions. Updated: October 30, 2024 A new study of human skeletal remains from the wreck of the 16th century English warship Mary Rose suggests that whether a person is right- versus left-handed may influence how their clavicle bone chemistry changes as they age. Dr. Sheona Shankland of Lancaster University, U.K., and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on October 30, 2024. The ...

Someday, people might finally say goodbye to defrosting the freezer or scraping frost off slippery surfaces. Northwestern University engineers have developed a new strategy that prevents frost formation before it begins.  In a new study, the researchers discovered that tweaking the texture of any surface and adding a thin layer of graphene oxide prevents 100% of frost from forming on surfaces for one week or potentially even longer. This is 1,000 times longer than current, state-of-the-art anti-frosting surfaces. As an added bonus, ...

The development of primate brains is shaped by various inputs. However, these inputs differ between independent breeders, such as great apes, and cooperative breeders, such as the common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus) and humans. In these species, group members other than the parents contribute substantially to raising the infants from birth onwards.   A group of international researchers led by Paola Cerrito from the University of Zurich’s Department of Evolutionary Anthropology studied how such social interactions map onto brain development in common marmosets. The study provides new insights into the relationship between the timing of brain development ...

LEUVEN October 31st  - Alzheimer’s disease is characterized by a progressive loss of nerve cells leading to a decline in memory and cognition. A team of researchers at KU Leuven and VIB explored the molecular sequence of events in this cellular demise and identified specific inhibitors that could prevent the loss of nerve cells in different mouse models of the disease. The findings open up new research avenues in the search for therapies that could halt or prevent the accumulation of brain damage occurring in ...

Unlike oceans, lakes are significant emitters of CO₂. But why is this the case, and what mechanisms are at play? For the first time, UNIL scientists have successfully explained the complete carbon cycle in Lake Geneva, creating a model that can be applied to several of the world's largest lakes. Contrary to previous beliefs, it is the natural erosion of rocks that is responsible for the significant CO2 emissions from Lake Geneva and many of the world's large lakes. This study provides the missing piece for understanding the carbon cycle in lakes. The LéXPLORE lake platform in Switzerland played a major role in this discovery of international ...

Unseen and ongoing, thousands of times every second: to keep a complex organism like humans alive, an immense number of new cells must be continuously produced. Up close, each of these cell divisions is nothing short of a miracle. Within just a few hours, not only must the entire genome – billions of “letters” long – be replicated, but most other cellular structures must be doubled so that, in the end, two complete daughter cells can emerge. Just before division, two complex protein structures, known as centrosomes, emerge, forming two opposing poles in the mother cell. These centrosomes grow long protein filaments, the spindle apparatus, ...

As we age, it becomes more difficult to remember where things are—whether it’s recalling where we left the keys or where we parked the car. This spatial memory deteriorates further with the onset of dementia, a condition that someone in the world develops every three seconds, according to Alzheimer’s Disease International. Researchers at two EPFL labs have joined forces to give a boost to spatial memory by creating a unique experimental setup that combines non-invasive deep-brain stimulation,  virtual reality training, and fMRI imaging—all housed within Campus Biotech in Geneva. Published in Science Advances, the study demonstrates that targeted, ...

An international research team led by QuTech has demonstrated a network connection between quantum processors over metropolitan distances. Their result marks a key advance from early research networks in the lab towards a future quantum internet. The team developed fully independently operating nodes and integrated these with deployed optical internet fibre, enabling a 25 km quantum link. The researchers published their findings in Science Advances. The internet allows people to share information (bits) globally. A future quantum internet will enable sharing quantum information (qubits) over a new type of network. Such qubits ...

Black patients are less likely than white patients to receive medical tests that doctors use to diagnose severe disease, such as sepsis, researchers at the University of Michigan have shown.   Because of the bias, some sick Black patients are assumed to be healthy in data used to train AI, and the resulting models likely underestimate illness in Black patients. But that doesn't mean the data is unusable—the same group developed a way to correct for this bias in data sets used to train AI.   These new insights are reported in a pair of studies: one published ...

HOUSTON ― The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Research Highlights showcases the latest breakthroughs in cancer care, research and prevention. These advances are made possible through seamless collaboration between MD Anderson’s world-leading clinicians and scientists, bringing discoveries from the lab to the clinic and back. Epigenetic targets and genomic stem cell pathways drive adult hair regeneration Retrotransposons are interspersed repeating sequences that make up over 40% of the human genome. Proper tissue regeneration requires ...

Toronto, ON, October 30, 2024 – Three Baycrest leaders are among those named winners of Women Executive Network’s (WXN) prestigious 2024 Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 Awards, celebrating exceptional leadership and groundbreaking achievements that have meaningfully transformed their industries, companies, communities and country. Dr. Allison Sekuler, President and Chief Scientist, Baycrest Academy for Research and Education and President and Chief Scientist, Centre for Aging + Brain Health Innovation, powered by Baycrest (CABHI) Dr. ...

Cold damage is a major challenge in rice production, and identifying key gene modules in signaling pathways is a crucial means of addressing this issue. A Chinese research team has recently discovered a part of the plant’s cell membrane that helps plants sense when it's cold. This cell membrane component, known as the COLD6-OSM1 module, triggers the production of a special molecule, 2',3'-cAMP, which helps plants sense and respond to low temperatures. This secondary messenger is a key upstream component that mediates the signaling pathway by directly responding to signals ...

A new study in Nature finds that up to 215 million hectares of land (an area larger than Mexico) in humid tropical regions around the world has the potential to naturally regrow. That much forest could store 23.4 gigatons of carbon over 30 years and also have a significant impact on concerns like biodiversity loss and water quality. The study showed that more than half of the area with strong potential for regrowth was in five countries: Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, China, and Colombia.  “Tree planting in degraded landscapes can be costly. By leveraging natural regeneration techniques, nations can meet their ...

A heart attack can trigger a desire to get more sleep, allowing the heart to heal and reduce inflammation—and this happens because the heart sends special signals to the brain, according to a new Mount Sinai study. This research is the first to demonstrate how the heart and brain communicate with each other through the immune system to promote sleep and recovery after a major cardiovascular event. The novel findings, published October 30 in Nature, emphasize the importance of increased sleep after a heart attack, and suggest that sufficient sleep should be a focus of post-heart-attack clinical management ...

A new analysis led by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has revealed detailed 3D maps of the internal structures of multiple tumor types. These cancer atlases reveal how different tumor cells — and the cells of a tumor’s surrounding environment — are organized, in 3D, and how that organization changes when a tumor spreads to other organs. The detailed findings offer scientists valuable blueprints of tumors that could lead to new approaches to therapy and spark a new era in the field of cancer biology, according to the researchers. The study is part of a group of 12 papers published Oct. 30 in the Nature suite of journals by members ...

The wider Caucasus region, between the Black and the Caspian Seas, connects Europe, the Near East and Asia. It displays a huge geographic, ecological, economic, cultural, and linguistic range today, from the steppe zone in the north, the Caucasus mountains in the center, to the highlands of today’s Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Iran in the south. This diversity was no different in the past, where the archaeological record attests to many different influences from many surrounding regions. “It is precisely this interface of different eco-geographic features ...