Culture
Ribosomes are the complexes of ribonucleoproteins at the heart of protein synthesis in cells. However in the absence of conclusive evidence, how these complexes operate has been open to debate. Now Hirotatsu Imai and Noriyuki Kodera at Kanazawa University, alongside Toshio Uchiumi at Niigata University in Japan, show visualizations of the structural dynamics and factor pooling that take place at ribosome stalk proteins as they build new proteins.
A new computational analysis suggests that a vaccine or medication that could shorten the infectious period of COVID-19 may potentially prevent millions of cases and save billions of dollars. The study was led by Bruce Lee along with colleagues in the Public Health Informatics, Computational, and Operations Research (PHICOR) team headquartered at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy and the Lundquist Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, and publishes in the open-access journal PLOS Computational Biology.
Using stem cells to regenerate parts of the skull, scientists corrected skull shape and reversed learning and memory deficits in young mice with craniosynostosis, a condition estimated to affect 1 in every 2,500 infants born in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The only current therapy is complex surgery within the first year of life, but skull defects often return afterward.
Humans feeding leftover lean meat to wolves during harsh winters may have had a role in the early domestication of dogs, towards the end of the last ice age (14,000 to 29,000 years ago), according to a study published in Scientific Reports.
Policymakers around the world tend to reference new and highly cited COVID-19 research papers in their policy documents regarding the pandemic, Yian Yin and colleagues conclude after analyzing publications of both types from the first half of 2020. "Overall, this result shows that the coronavirus research used by policymakers aligns with what scientists heavily engage themselves," they write in a Policy Forum. Although government agencies produced more COVID-19 documents compared to think tanks and intergovernmental organizations such as the World Health Organization, Yin et al.
Social contact can transfer the feeling of pain or fear in several animal species, including humans, but the exact neural mechanisms for this transmission are still being studied. Now, Monique Smith and colleagues demonstrate that the social transmission of pain and pain relief in mice is mediated by neural projections from the brain's anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) to the nucleus accumbens. The transfer of fear, however, is mediated by the ACC's projections into a different area of the brain called the basolateral amygdala.
Richard Tyser and colleagues have mapped the origins of the embryonic mouse heart at single-cell resolution, helping to define the cell types that make up the heart in the earliest days of development. Their techniques allowed them to identify for a first time a pool of progenitor cells that contributes to the formation of heart muscle cells as well as the early epicardium, the outermost layer of the heart.
The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has released a new action agenda for a diverse genomics workforce. This ambitious set of goals, objectives, and implementation strategies details NHGRI's plans for enhancing the diversity of the genomics workforce by 2030.
Noncognitive skills -- distinct from cognitive abilities -- are important to success across the life
Noncognitive skills and cognitive abilities are both important contributors to educational attainment -- the number of years of formal schooling that a person completes -- and lead to success across the life course, according to a new study from an international team led by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, the University of Texas at Austin, and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
What The Study Did: Under a range of assumptions of presymptomatic transmission and transmission from individuals with infection who never develop symptoms, the model presented here estimated that more than half of transmission comes from asymptomatic individuals.
Author: Jay C. Butler, M.D., of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
What The Study Did: To adapt to broader public health initiatives around COVID-19, researchers developed a drive-through intraocular pressure (IOP) screening clinic to minimize COVID-19 exposure for patients and clinicians by measuring eye pressure in the unconventional setting of a clinic parking lot.
Authors: Miel Sundararajan, M.D., of the University of California, San Francisco, is the corresponding author.
What The Study Did: The outcomes of a cancer center-wide virtual care program launched in response to the COVID-19 pandemic were examined in this study.
Authors: Alejandro Berlin, M.D., M.Sc., of the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi:10.1001/jamaoncol.2020.6982)
Assessment of duplicate evidence in systematic reviews of imaging findings of children with COVID-19
What The Study Did:This cross-sectional study maps a coronavirus research question to illustrate the overlap and shortcomings of the evidence syntheses in this area.
Author: Giordano Pérez-Gaxiola, M.D., M.Sc., of Sinaloa Pediatric Hospital's Cochrane Associate Centre in Culiacan, Mexico, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.32769)
Research from life-saving charity Air Ambulance Kent Surrey Sussex (KSS) in partnership with the University of Surrey has shown the benefits of dispatching HEMS to patients with a sudden, unexplained LOC of medical origin and a high prevalence of acute neurological pathology.
(New York, NY - January 6, 2021) - Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have identified three major molecular subtypes of Alzheimer's disease (AD) using data from RNA sequencing. The study advances our understanding of the mechanisms of AD and could pave the way for developing novel, personalized therapeutics.
The work was funded by the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and published in Science Advances on January 6, 2021.