Eurekalert

Cardiovascular disease, the most common cause of death, is the result of oxygen deprivation as blood perfusion to affected tissue is prevented. To halt the development of the disease and to promote healing, re-establishment of blood flow is crucial. Researchers at Uppsala University have now discovered that one of the most common immune cells in the human body, macrophages, play an important role in re-establishing and controlling blood flow, something that can be used to develop new drugs.

In the brain, more than a hundred molecular substances act as transmitters that control communication pathways between nerve cells via thousands of different receptor types. In a review article, an international research team discusses how the activation of certain nerve cell receptors affects neuronal networks in the brain. The authors from Bochum, Barcelona and Oxford present concepts to quantify receptor-specific modulations of brain states. They have also developed a computer model that can predict the impact of individual receptor types on brain activity.

Scientists from the Theory Department of the Fritz-Haber Institute in Berlin and Technical University of Munich use machine learning to discover suitable molecular materials. To deal with the myriad of possibilities for candidate molecules, the machine decides for itself which data it needs.

A new, freely available platform helps non-experts use artificial intelligence to analyse microscopy images. The platform has been developed at Åbo Akademi University in Finland and Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, Portugal, and will be of big help in research and diagnostics using modern day microscopes.

Networks offer a powerful way to visualize and analyze complex systems. However, many visualizations are limited. Protein interactions in the human body constitute such a complex system that can hardly be visualized. Scientists at CeMM and Max Perutz Labs developed an immersive virtual reality (VR) platform that solves this problem. With the help of VR visualization of protein interactions, it will be possible in the future to better recognize correlations and identify those genetic aberrations that are responsible for rare diseases.

A new study conducted jointly by the University of Liège (Belgium) and the École normale supérieure - PSL (France) shows that heart brain interactions, measured using electroencephalography (EEG), provide a novel diagnostic method for patients with disorders of consciousness. This study is published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Researchers realized efficient frequency conversion in microresonators via a degenerate sum-frequency process, and achieved cross-band frequency conversion and amplification of converted signal through observing the cascaded nonlinear optical effects inside the microresonator.

Dr. Sabrina Coninx from Ruhr-Universität Bochum and Dr. Peter Stilwell from McGill University, Canada, have investigated how philosophical approaches can be used to think in new ways about pain and its management. The researchers advocate not merely reducing chronic pain management to searching and treating underlying physical changes but instead adopting an approach that focuses on the person as a whole. Their work was published online in the journal "Synthese" on 15 April 2021.

Strawberry geranium (Saxifraga stolonifera) has been used in Japan as a herbal medicine to treat wounds and swelling, and continues to be an ingredient in food and cosmetics. Pharmacological studies have shown that extracts of strawberry geranium have antioxidant and antitumor activities. However, the anti-inflammatory effect of strawberry geranium on the skin had not been well characterized.

NIR fluorescence has shown great potential in bioscience, but low quantum-yield has largely impeded the research on most NIR fluorophores. Here, scientists in China use asymmetric plasmonic nano-antenna to drastically enhance NIR dye's single-molecule fluorescence intensity. The asymmetry provides an additional tuning parameter that offers new possibilities to modulate near-field and far-field properties of the plasmonic modes, thereby improving fluorescence without compromising molecule's photostability. This work provides a universal scheme for engineering NIR single-molecule fluorescence.

Researchers from the University of Tsukuba discovered how cells marked by platelet-derived growth factor receptor alpha (PDGFRa+) residing predominantly in the outermost layer of blood vessels (adventitia) respond to vascular injury and contribute to neointima formation. By inducing various forms of vessel injury and tracking PDGFRa+ cells, they found that PDGFRa+ cells respond differently to vessel injury depending on the type of injury. This study may help develop a novel treatment option for patients affected by neointima formation and vessel occlusion.

The Red Sea is a fascinating and still puzzling area of investigation for geoscientists. Controversial questions include its age and whether it represents a special case in ocean basin formation or if it has evolved similarly to other, larger ocean basins. Researchers from Germany, Saudi Arabia and Iceland have now published a new tectonic model that suggests that the Red Sea is not only a typical ocean, but more mature than thought before.

Researchers at Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) have studied a number of adults with nephronophthisis for the first time with a view to identifying clinical, genetic and histopathological characteristics. This kidney disease, usually presenting in children, is challenging to diagnose in adults. The research findings suggest that older patients are less likely to have an underlying genetic defect, and highlight histopathological changes in tubular basement membrane that may serve as a diagnostic marker.

Most infectious bacteria and viruses bind to sugars on the surface of our cells. Now researchers from the University of Copenhagen have created a library of tens of thousands of natural cells containing all the sugars found on the surface of our cells. The library may help us understand the role played by sugars and their receptors in the immune system and the brain, the researchers behind the study explain.

Efforts to prevent human exposure to asbestos may be mobilizing the cancer-causing mineral so that it can reach water supplies, based on new findings about how the fibers move through soil.

Young scientists of Tomsk Polytechnic University as a part of the team of Arctic researchers have studied pore waters in three areas of methane release on the surface. They first managed to define in details the composition of pore waters in the cold methane seeps of the Eastern Arctic seas. The research findings are published in the Water academic journal.

: A study of 2.4 million hospitalised cannabis users has found that those with an arrhythmia were 4.5 times more likely to die while in hospital than those without. The research is presented at EHRA 2021, an online scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). "People should be aware of this devastating outcome and be careful when using cannabis if they have a concomitant heart problem," said study author Dr. Sittinun Thangjui of Bassett Healthcare Network, Cooperstown, US.

Scientists have identified a new phylum of microbes found around the world that appear to be playing an important (and surprising) role in the global carbon cycle by helping break down decaying plants without producing the greenhouse gas methane. The phylum is named Brockarchaeota after Thomas Brock, a pioneer in the study of microbes that live in extreme environments who died on April 4.

A new real-time, 3D motion tracking system developed at the University of Michigan combines transparent light detectors with advanced neural network methods to create a system that could one day replace LiDAR and cameras in autonomous technologies.

Quantum systems consisting of several particles can be used to measure magnetic or electric fields more precisely. A young physicist at the University of Basel has now proposed a new scheme for such measurements that uses a particular kind of correlation between quantum particles.