Brain
Bottom Line: This study looked at changes in overweight and obesity among low-income young children enrolled in the food assistance Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) from 2010 to 2016. The analysis included 12.4 million children 2 to 4 years old. Obesity declined between 2010 and 2016 to 13.9% from 15.9%; overweight and obesity combined declined to 29.1% from 32.5%. Declines were seen overall and in all age, sex and racial/ethnic subgroups.
Tsukuba, Japan - Protein cages--capsule-like structures made up of numerous protein molecules--perform roles in nature that have inspired their application in areas such as drug delivery. Their controlled assembly is therefore of particular research interest; however, the stimuli responsive disassembly of protein cages has not yet been reported. Now, an international research team has reported gold-directed reversible assembly of 3D protein cages. Their findings are published in Nature Research.
Oncologists have had great success with cancer immunotherapy in recent years, especially with the approach known as immune checkpoint inhibition, which was recognised with last year's Nobel prize for medicine. Tumour cells have the ability to curb the activity of patients' own T cells, causing the T cells to leave the tumour alone. To do this, they use a molecular "handshake", where molecules on the surface of tumour cells interact with checkpoint molecules, as they are known, on the surface of T cells.
White phosphorus is well-known for being a highly toxic compound with suffocating scent. Its high reactivity is the reason for it to be stored with oxygen access in inert media. It's also infamous for its military use in bombs and grenades.
Combining research-oriented teaching and interdisciplinary collaboration pays off: Researchers at the University of Konstanz develop a novel spectroscopic approach to investigate hitherto difficult-to-observe protein structures. On "campus.kn", the online magazine of the University of Konstanz, we report on the new approach and its origin at the interface between chemistry and biology.
Plants in the Brazilian savanna, the Cerrado, have evolved to deal with fire. When fire is used intelligently as part of a carefully planned land management method, it is indispensable to the conservation of this superb ecosystem, the world's most biodiverse savanna.
Within hours after fertilization, a unique genome forms from chromosomes contributed by the egg and sperm. However, this new genome is initially inactive and must be "awakened" to begin the transcription of its DNA and start embryonic development. How life's first step happens has long fascinated developmental biologists.
Sequencing the first human genome was a herculean effort that took 13 years, hundreds of researchers around the globe and billions of dollars.
But recent advances in technology have transformed genome sequencing into a fairly mundane affair with millions of people having sequenced at least parts of their genomes using DNA collection kits available at drug stores.
Bottom Line: This study, called a systematic review and meta-analysis, combined the results of 23 studies with nearly 42,000 participants to summarize associations between sexting by adolescents, sexual behavior and mental health risk factors. The results suggest sexting was associated with sexual activity, multiple sex partners, a lack of contraception use, delinquent behavior, anxiety/depression, alcohol and drug use, and smoking. Some associations between sexting, sexual behaviors and mental health factors were stronger in younger compared with older adolescents.
For aging men, prostate enlargement is almost as common as graying hair, and yet scientists know very little about why the prostate increases in size or how the process occurs on a molecular level.
In a new study, scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine have discovered a molecular pattern that flags prostate enlargement, also called benign prostatic hyperplasia, and have even identified two genes that likely play a role in the development of the condition.
Paris, France --June 14, 2019- A study conducted by Marc Teichmann and Carole Azuar at the Brain and Spine Institute in Paris (France) and at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital shows a particularly marked impairment of moral emotions in patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD). The results, published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, open a new approach for early, sensitive and specific diagnosis of FTD.
BUFFALO, N.Y. - People faced with more options than they can effectively consider want to make a good decision, but feel they're unable to do so, according to the results of a novel study from the University at Buffalo that used cardiovascular measures and fictional dating profiles to reach its conclusions.
In 2015, a group of researchers hypothesized that our collective love of Facebook surveys could be harnessed for serious genetic studies. Today, the Genes for Good project (@genesforgood) has engaged more than 80,000 Facebook users, collected 27,000 DNA spit-kits, and amassed a trove of health survey data on a more diverse group of participants than has previously been possible. Researchers say their app could work as a model for studies on an even larger scale. Their work appears June 13 in The American Journal of Human Genetics.
Migratory hoverflies are "key" to pollination and controlling crop pests amid the decline of many other insect species, new research shows.
University of Exeter scientists studied the movements of migratory hoverflies and were surprised to find up to four billion migrate to and from Britain each year.
The study shows these numbers have been relatively stable over the last decade, and such abundance means migratory hoverflies pollinate many billions of flowers and produce larvae that eat up to ten trillion aphids.
Thanks to fruitful collaboration between language scholars and machine learning specialists, a new application developed by researchers at the University of Eastern Finland and Linnaeus University in Sweden can detect Twitter bots independent of the language used.