Looking to inform the conservation of critically endangered bird species, University of Utah biologists completed an analysis identifying traits that correlate with all 216 bird extinctions since 1500. Species most likely to go extinct sooner were endemic to islands, lacked the ability to fly, had larger bodies and sharply angled wings, and occupied ecologically specific niches, according to research published this month. While some of these findings mirror previous research on extinct birds, they are the first to correlate bird traits with the timing of ...

MINNEAPOLIS – People who develop multiple sclerosis (MS) as children and grow up in less advantaged neighborhoods may have a larger volume of inflammation and brain tissue loss on imaging than those who grow up in more advantaged neighborhoods, according to a study published in the November 27, 2024, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. MS rarely develops in children. About 5% of people with MS are diagnosed before age 18. In addition to neighborhood location, worse brain imaging outcomes were also seen ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2024 MINNEAPOLIS – People who have chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) who have a family history of mental illness may have a higher risk of aggression in middle age, according to a study published in the November 27, 2024, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. CTE is a neurodegenerative disease associated with repeated head injuries, often seen in athletes and military personnel, that can lead to mood changes and dementia. “This ...

Manmade sounds such vehicle traffic can mask the positive impact of nature soundscapes on people’s stress and anxiety, according to a new study published November 27, 2024, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Paul Lintott of the University of the West of England, U.K., and Lia Gilmour of the Bat Conservation Trust, U.K. Existing research shows that natural sounds, like birdsong, can lower blood pressure, heart, and respiratory rates, as well as self-reported stress and anxiety. Conversely, anthropogenic soundscapes, like traffic or aircraft noise, are hypothesized to have negative effects on human health and wellbeing in a variety ...

Contrary to widespread concerns that global crop yields have stagnated in recent decades, a comprehensive study of worldwide food production finds yields have continued to grow at roughly the same rate since the 1960s. John Baffes of the World Bank and Xiaoli Etienne of the University of Idaho, U.S., report these findings on November 27, 2024, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.  Almost 10 billion people are expected to inhabit Earth by 2050, so agricultural production will become increasingly critical ...

Children who grow up with pets or on farms may develop allergies at lower rates because their gut microbiome develops with more anaerobic commensals, per fecal analysis in small cohort study ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0313078 Article Title: Gut microbiota markers in early childhood are linked to farm living, pets in household and allergy Author Countries: Sweden Funding: This work was supported by the Region Västra Götaland (agreement concerning medical research and education – ALF), https://www.alfvastragotaland.se [ALFGBG966243] [ALFGBG720181] ...

North American Early Paleoindians almost 13,000 years ago used the bones of canids, felids, and hares to create needles in modern-day Wyoming, potentially to make the tailored fur garments which enabled their dispersal into these colder climates ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0313610 Article Title: Early Paleoindian use of canids, felids, and hares for bone needle production at the La Prele site, Wyoming, USA Contact: Spencer Pelton, spencer.pelton@wyo.gov, Ph. +1 307 399 2827 Author Countries: U.S. Funding: Funding for this project includes the National Science Foundation (award #1947297), the ...

Higher levels of democracy and lower levels of corruption are associated with more doctors, independent of healthcare spending, per cross-sectional study of 134 countries. ### Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/globalpublichealth/article?id=10.1371/journal. pgph.0003656 Article Title: The relationship between democracy and corruption and the global physician workforce Author Countries: Canada Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. END ...

Researchers at the University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science have developed a new polymer design that appears to rewrite the textbook on polymer engineering. No longer is it dogma that the stiffer a polymeric material is, the less stretchable it has to be. “We are addressing a fundamental challenge that has been thought to be impossible to solve since the invention of vulcanized rubber in 1839,” said Liheng Cai, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering, and chemical engineering. That’s when Charles Goodyear accidentally discovered that heating natural rubber with sulfur ...

A Wyoming archaeological site where people killed or scavenged a Columbian mammoth nearly 13,000 years ago has produced yet another discovery that sheds light on the life of these early inhabitants of North America. Wyoming State Archaeologist Spencer Pelton and colleagues at the University of Wyoming and other institutions have found that these Paleolithic humans made needles from the bones of fur-bearers -- including foxes; hares or rabbits; and cats such as bobcats, mountain lions, lynx and possibly even the now-extinct ...

A new preclinical study by Mass Eye and Ear investigators showed that a novel mRNA-based therapy may be able to prevent blindness and scarring from proliferative vitreoretinopathy (PVR) following a retinal detachment repair or traumatic injury to the eye. There is no current treatment for PVR other than surgery, which itself carries a high risk of causing or exacerbating PVR. Their results, published in Science Translational Medicine, show the promise that mRNA-based therapies may one day offer patients with PVR and other retinal conditions. “This ...

Researchers at the University of Sydney Nano Institute have made a significant advance in the field of molecular robotics by developing custom-designed and programmable nanostructures using DNA origami. This innovative approach has potential across a range of applications, from targeted drug delivery systems to responsive materials and energy-efficient optical signal processing. The method uses ‘DNA origami’, so-called as it uses the natural folding power of DNA, the building blocks of human life, to create new and useful biological structures. As a proof-of-concept, the researchers made more than 50 nanoscale objects, including a ‘nano-dinosaur’, ...

Researchers have quantified for the first time the global emissions of a sulfur gas produced by marine life, revealing it cools the climate more than previously thought, especially over the Southern Ocean. The study, published in the journal Science Advances, shows that the oceans not only capture and redistribute the sun's heat, but produce gases that make particles with immediate climatic effects, for example through the brightening of clouds that reflect this heat. It broadens the climatic impact of marine sulfur because it adds a new compound, methanethiol, that had previously gone unnoticed. Researchers only detected the gas recently, because ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A tiny, four-fingered “hand” folded from a single piece of DNA can pick up the virus that causes COVID-19 for highly sensitive rapid detection and can even block viral particles from entering cells to infect them, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers report. Dubbed the NanoGripper, the nanorobotic hand also could be programmed to interact with other viruses or to recognize cell surface markers for targeted drug delivery, such as for cancer treatment.  Led by Xing Wang, a professor of bioengineering and of chemistry at the ...

In 1992, Judith Frydman, PhD, discovered a molecular complex with an essential purpose in all of our cells: folding proteins correctly. The complex, a type of “protein chaperone” known as TRiC, helps fold thousands of human proteins: It was later found that about 10% of all our proteins pass through its barrel structure. All animals have several different kinds of protein chaperones, each with its own job of helping fold proteins in the cell. TRiC binds to newborn proteins and shapes these strings of amino acids into the correct 3D structures, ...

HOUSTON – (Nov. 27, 2024) – Newly developed halide perovskite nanocrystals (HPNCs) show potential as antimicrobial agents that are stable, effective and easy to produce. After almost three years, Rice University scientist Yifan Zhu and colleagues have developed a new HPNC that is effective at killing bacteria in a biofluid under visible light without experiencing light- and moisture-driven degradation common in HPNCs. A new method using two layers of silicon dioxide that Zhu and colleagues developed over years of work was used in experiments with lead-based and bismuth-based HPNCs to test their antimicrobial efficacy and stability in water. ...

Our bodies divest themselves of 60 billion cells every day through a natural process of cell culling and turnover called apoptosis. These cells — mainly blood and gut cells — are all replaced with new ones, but the way our bodies rid themselves of material could have profound implications for cancer therapies in a new approach developed by Stanford Medicine researchers. They aim to use this natural method of cell death to trick cancer cells into disposing of themselves. Their method accomplishes this by artificially bringing together two proteins in such a way that the new compound switches on a set of cell death genes, ultimately driving tumor cells to turn on themselves. ...

Culturally appropriate women-centred interventions can help healthcare systems respond to domestic violence, research has found. HERA (Healthcare Responding to Violence and Abuse) has been co-developing and evaluating a domestic violence and abuse healthcare intervention in low- and middle-income countries for the past five years. This National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Global Research Group will report their findings, and publish a PolicyBristol report, at a conference in London today ...

The mission of IQST is to further our understanding of nature and develop innovative technologies based on quantum science by leveraging synergies between the natural sciences, engineering, and life sciences. "Many KIT scientists already successfully support IQST with their expertise as Fellows. All the more I am pleased that the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology is now joining our interdisciplinary centre as an institution," says IQST Director Prof. Stefanie Barz. "This will strengthen networking within the academic quantum community in Baden-Württemberg," emphasizes ...

***Embargoed until November 27 at 11 AM EST*** Chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes and inflammatory disorders have a huge impact on humanity. They are a leading cause of disease burden and deaths around the globe, are physically and economically taxing, and the number of people with such diseases is growing. Treating chronic disease has proven difficult because there is not one simple cause, like a single gene mutation, that a treatment could target. At least, that’s how it has appeared to scientists. However, research from Whitehead Institute Member Richard Young and colleagues, published in the journal ...

About The Study: This study found a steep decline in cervical cancer mortality among U.S. women younger than 25 years between 2016 and 2021. This cohort of women is the first to be widely protected against cervical cancer by human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines. The findings from this study in the context of other published research suggest that HPV vaccination affected the sequential decline in HPV infection prevalence, cervical cancer incidence, and cervical cancer mortality.  Corresponding ...

In an international collaboration, researchers at Uppsala University have been able to identify undigested food remains, plants and prey in the fossilised faeces of dinosaurs. These analyses of hundreds of samples provide clues about the role dinosaurs played in the ecosystem around 200 million years ago. The findings have been published in the journal Nature. “Piecing together ‘who ate whom’ in the past is true detective work,” says Martin Qvarnström, researcher at the Department of Organismal Biology and lead author of the study. “Being able to examine what animals ate and how they interacted with their environment helps us understand what enabled ...

Brain-wide association studies, which use magnetic resonance imaging to identify relationships between brain structure or function and human behavior or health, have faced criticism for producing results that often cannot be replicated by other researchers.  A new study published in Nature demonstrates that careful attention to study design can substantially improve the reliability of this type of research. For the study, Kaidi Kang, a biostatistics PhD student, Simon Vandekar, PhD, associate professor of Biostatistics, and colleagues analyzed data from more than 77,000 brain scans across 63 studies.  The ...

A decade ago, researchers introduced a new model for studying Alzheimer’s disease. Known as “Alzheimer’s in a dish,” the model uses cultures of mature brain cells suspended in a gel to recapitulate what takes place in the human brain over 10 to 13 years in just six weeks. But does the model truly produce the same changes that take place in patients? In a new study, researchers from Mass General Brigham, in collaboration with colleagues at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), created an algorithm to assess, in an unbiased manner, how well models of Alzheimer’s disease ...

About The Study: The results of this study showed an association between high ultraprocessed food intake and active psoriasis status. After adjustments for age, body mass index (BMI), alcohol intake, and comorbidities, the results remained significant, suggesting that ultraprocessed food intake has a proinflammatory action separate from high BMI. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Emilie Sbidian, MD, PhD, email emilie.sbidian@aphp.fr. To access the embargoed study: ...