Culture
LA JOLLA--Researchers at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) have found that people with sepsis have never-before-seen particles in their blood. The scientists are the first to show that these particles, called elongated neutrophil-derived structures (ENDS), break off of immune cells and change their shape as they course through the body.
"We actually found a new particle in the human body that had never been described before," explains LJI Instructor Alex Marki, M.D., who served as first author of the study. "That's not something that happens every day."
Boston, Mass. - Since the novel coronavirus emerged at the end of last year, scientists around the world -- including Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) immunologist Dan Barouch, MD, PhD -- have been developing vaccines to protect against COVID-19 and to put an end to the global pandemic. As of November 2020, three pharmaceutical companies released early data showing high rates of protection in Phase 3 human trials for their vaccines, but questions remain about how the body develops and maintains immunity after vaccination or infection.
HOUSTON - (Dec. 4, 2020) - In his first year of graduate school, Rice University biochemist Zachary Wright discovered something hidden inside a common piece of cellular machinery that's essential for all higher order life from yeast to humans.
What Wright saw in 2015 -- subcompartments inside organelles called peroxisomes -- is described in a study published today in Nature Communications.
Organic-inorganic hybrid lead iodide perovskites are universally recognized as very promising photovoltaic (PV) materials. While outstanding PV performance is continuously reported, manipulating these hybrid perovskites for extraordinary optoelectronic properties with a greater intrinsic structural stability becomes a growing attention. The soft nature of organic-inorganic halide perovskites renders their lattice particularly tunable to external stimuli such as pressure, undoubtedly offering an effective way to modify their structure for extraordinary optoelectronic properties.
AMHERST, MASS. - If you find yourself in a car with someone outside your household during the COVID-19 pandemic, your instinct may be to roll down your window, whether you're the driver or a back-seat passenger. But a University of Massachusetts Amherst physicist has shown in a new study that opening the car window closest to you isn't always the best option to protect yourself from coronavirus or any airborne infection.
An analysis of lung tissues from patients with different types of pulmonary fibrosis - including cases triggered by COVID-19 - has revealed a promising molecular target to ameliorate the chronic and irreversible disease. Experiments in mouse models of lung fibrosis showed that administering blockers of an epigenetic regulator called MBD2 via intratracheal inhalation protected the mice against fibrotic lung injury, highlighting a potential viable therapy.
A new series of computational fluid dynamics simulations suggests that, for two people who must travel together in the same passenger car, the safest way to prevent possible transmission of COVID-19 in such a risky, enclosed environment is to do so with all four windows down and the passenger seated as far as possible from the driver, in the rear seat on the opposite side.
When the COVID-19 lockdowns began in mid-March 2020, hospitals and clinics faced a new challenge: How could they continue to provide care to those who could not leave their homes?
The answer lay in virtual visits -- doctor visits that take place over the phone or through videoconferencing -- but for many healthcare providers, these virtual visits were a new frontier.
While multiple research studies show that Black and Hispanic patients are more likely to test positive for COVID-19, a team of investigators at NYU Langone Health has found that once hospitalized, Black patients (after controlling for other serious health conditions and neighborhood income) were less likely to have severe illness, die, or be discharged to hospice compared to White patients.
Los Robles Health System is leading the way in neurovascular clinical trials enrolling the first patient in the nation in STEM, the Squid trial for the treatment of chronic subdural hematoma (cSDH). Chronic subdural hematoma is a disease that presents as a collection of blood that positions itself between the surface of the brain and the outermost layer of the brain covering, called the dura. cSDH is a debilitating, causing many neurologist deficits and often requiring invasive surgery to open the skull.
December 4, 2020 -- Unless we take urgent action to tackle climate change, we can expect an ever-hotter world that threatens global health, disrupts lives and livelihoods and overwhelms healthcare systems, according to The Lancet's Global Countdown on Health and Climate Change, a comprehensive global analysis tracking the impact of climate change on human health across 41 key indicators.
Astronomers have caught a rare glimpse of a rapidly fading shroud of gas around an aging star. Archival data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reveal that the nebula Hen 3-1357, nicknamed the Stingray nebula, has faded precipitously over just the past two decades. Witnessing such a swift rate of change in a planetary nebula is exceedingly without precedent, researchers say.
URBANA, Ill. - An aging U.S. population is rapidly increasing the demand for nursing care. The number of U.S. citizens aged 65 and over is expected to almost double from 43.1 million in 2012 to 87.5 million by 2050, while the workforce is shrinking. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated the need for health care professionals.
For a caterpillar, a green leaf can make a nice meal. But to the plant itself, it's an attack. And very hungry caterpillars can do a lot of damage as they eat their way through life.
Plants can fight back, unleashing an array of chemical defenses to discourage wayward foragers -- from releasing chemicals that attract caterpillar predators to secreting compounds that make the plant taste so foul that desperate caterpillars resort to cannibalism. But scientists know little about how plants detect these attacks and marshal defenses.
LA JOLLA, CA--As the consumer genetics industry rapidly expands, more and more people are turning to DNA-based services to learn their risk of developing a wide range of diseases.