Culture
Men who have the Western world's most common genetic disorder, haemochromatosis, are ten times more likely to develop liver cancer, according to a major new study.
Research led by the University of Exeter and published in the internationally renowned journal JAMA has led to renewed calls for routine early testing for the iron overload condition haemochromatosis, previously thought to be a lower-level health risk. The finding could add more weight to calls for the UK National Screening Committee to recommend screening for the condition, which is currently under consultation.
Does the sight of maggots squirming in rotten food make you look away in disgust? The phrase 'makes my stomach turn' takes on a new meaning today as researchers at the University of Cambridge reveal that changes in the rhythm of our stomachs prompt us to look away from disgusting images.
Robots so tiny that they can manoeuvre through our blood vessels and deliver medications to certain points in the body - researchers have been pursuing this goal for years. Now, scientists at ETH Zurich have succeeded for the first time in building such "micromachines" out of metal and plastic, in which these two materials are interlocked as closely as links in a chain. This is possible thanks to a new manufacturing technique they have devised.
The only dinosaur bones ever found on the island of Ireland have been formally confirmed for the first time by a team of experts from the University of Portsmouth and Queen's University Belfast, led by Dr Mike Simms, a curator and palaeontologist at National Museums NI.
The two fossil bones were found by the late Roger Byrne, a schoolteacher and fossil collector, who donated them along with many other fossils to Ulster Museum. Analysis has confirmed they are from early Jurassic rocks found in Islandmagee, on the east coast of County Antrim.
Infants' brains may be shaped by levels of stress their mother experiences during pregnancy, a study has revealed.
Stress levels in mothers - measured by a hormone linked to anxiety and other health problems - is related to changes in areas of the infant brain associated with emotional development, the study suggests.
Doctors say the findings highlight the urgent need for women to be better supported with their mental and physical health before and during pregnancy, and could help them spot mums and babies who need help.
Trinity College researchers are studying how the brain re-wires itself in neurological disease. The team is building treatments for today's more common global conditions like Motor Neurone Disease (MND/ALS) and Spinal Muscular Atrophy and their findings could impact rehabilitation for patients, the discovery of effective drugs and quantifying the potential efficacy of new therapies.
The paper is published in the journal Clinical Neurophysiology here: https://bit.ly/38On53Y .
The addition and removal of methyl groups on DNA plays an important role in gene regulation. In order to study these mechanisms more precisely, a German team has developed a new method by which specific methylation sites can be blocked and then unblocked at a precise time through irradiation with light (photocaging). As reported in the journal Angewandte Chemie, the required regent is produced enzymatically, in situ.
A 'game changing' study deciphering the genetic material of the desert locust by researchers at the University of Leicester, could help combat the crop-ravaging behaviour of the notorious insect pest which currently exacerbates a hunger crisis across many developing countries.
It is hoped that the study will provide the basis for developing 'intelligent pesticides', that act with surgical precision by tapping into locust-specific signals in the nervous system, to either kill or disable their swarming behaviour, without harming other organisms.
A majority of police detectives in England and Wales investigating financial crime do not have sufficient knowledge to build a successful case.
That's the finding of new research from the Institute of Criminal Justice Studies at the University of Portsmouth, looking into why results of such investigations vary so widely, especially when the crimes account for half of all criminal activity in the UK.
Researchers at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) have worked to create methods for improving the safety of technologically complex vehicles. Now that the majority of new cars operate using sophisticated computing technology, they are vulnerable to malicious attacks on their networks that could lead to disastrous safety issues. Riadul Islam, assistant professor of computer science and electrical engineering, has worked with collaborators at UMBC and the University of Michigan-Dearborn to create a simple, easily adapted method for detecting the breaches in security.
Magic squares belong to the imagination of humanity for a long time. The oldest known magic square comes from China and is over 2000 years old. One of the most famous magic squares can be found in Albrecht Dürer's copper engraving Melencolia I. Another one is on the facade of the Sagrada Família in Barcelona. A magic square is a square of numbers such that every column and every row sums to the same number. For example, in the magic square of the Sagrada Família every row and column sums to 33.
PHILADELPHIA - Marginalized groups of people value professionalism more -- and are more likely to leave a job at an institution due to issues of professionalism -- compared to their white, male counterparts, according to a Penn Medicine study of staff, faculty, and students who were affiliated with a large, academic health system in 2015 and 2017.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Gut hormones play an important role in regulating fat production in the body. One key hormone, released a few hours after eating, turns off fat production by regulating gene expression in the liver, but this regulation is abnormal in obesity, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign found in a new study.
The study, led by molecular and integrative physiology professor Jongsook Kim Kemper and research scientist Young-Chae Kim, was published in the journal Nature Communications.
The study goals
Predi-COVID was launched with the goal of defining which patient profiles can be associated with a more severe prognosis. The study aims to identify the clinical, epidemiological and socio-demographic characteristics, as well as specific biomarkers from both the SARS CoV-2 virus and the patient, which can help predict the way the disease will evolve in a given individual, according notably to his immune profile.
Predi-COVID and Predi-COVID-H: patient recruitment and operational aspects
November 24, 2020 - Medical mistrust is one reason why African American patients are more likely to have regrets about their choice of treatment for prostate cancer, suggests a study in The Journal of Urology®, Official Journal of the American Urological Association (AUA).