Culture
Bacteria living symbiotically within the Hawaiian bobtail squid can direct the host squid to change its normal gene-expression program to make a more inviting home, according to a new study published in PLoS Biology by researchers at the University of Hawai'i (UH) at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST).
WASHINGTON, DC and SAN DIEGO, CA - Nov. 19, 2020 - More than 1.1 million Medicare patients could die over the next decade because they cannot afford to pay for their prescription medications, according to a new study released today by the West Health Policy Center, a nonprofit and nonpartisan policy research group and Xcenda, the research arm of the drug distributor AmerisourceBergen.
Afro-Caribbean people with end stage kidney disease (ESKD) are more likely to be hospitalised with COVID-19 than other ethnicities, a study has found.
Research published today in Nephrology by King's College London and Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust investigated the link between ethnicity and ESKD. They found patients of Afro-Caribbean ethnicity have a four-fold increased risk of being hospitalised with COVID-19 when compared to kidney transplant patients attending for routine care.
Feeding truffles to wallabies may sound like a madcap whim of the jet-setting elite, but it may give researchers clues to preserving remnant forest systems.
Dr Melissa Danks from Edith Cowan University in Western Australia led an investigation into how swamp wallabies spread truffle spores around the environment. Results demonstrate the importance of these animals to the survival of the forest.
"There are thousands of truffle species in Australia and they play a critical role in helping our trees and woody plants to survive," she said.
Research into Alzheimer's disease has long focused on understanding the role of two key proteins, beta amyloid and the tau protein. Found in tangles in patients' brain tissue, a pathological form of the tau protein contributes to propagating the disease in the brain.
In new research from their joint laboratory, Judith Steen, PhD, and Hanno Steen, PhD show for the first time that this pathological tau protein changes its forms over time, which could mean it will take multiple drugs to target it effectively.
New Haven, Conn. -- A drug once used to treat high blood pressure can help alcoholics with withdrawal symptoms reduce or eliminate their drinking, Yale University researchers report Nov. 19 in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
In a double-blind study, researchers gave the drug prazosin or a placebo to 100 people entering outpatient treatment after being diagnosed with alcohol use disorder. All of the patients had experienced varying degrees of withdrawal symptoms prior to entering treatment.
Montréal and Québec City, November 19, 2020 - Using the Advanced Laser Light Source (ALLS) facility, the research team of Professor François Légaré of the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) has pushed back the boundaries of high-energy pulse propagation in a nonlinear medium through the observation of high-energy multidimensional solitary states (MDSS). This breakthrough allows the direct generation of extremely short and intense, laser pulses that are highly-stable in time and space. The results of this work were published in Nature Photonics.
Implicit racial attitudes within a community can effectively explain racial disparities seen in rates of COVID-19 in the United States, according to a new study published this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by George Cunningham and Lisa Wigfall of Texas A&M University, USA.
Inspired by muscle-powered acceleration in biological jumpers, scientists have designed an elastic-driven strong contractile hydrogel that works by storing and releasing elastic potential energy in a polymer network.
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a molecule that protects mice from brain infections caused by Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus (VEEV), a mosquito-borne virus notorious for causing fast-spreading, deadly outbreaks in Mexico, Central America and northern South America. As the climate changes, the virus is likely to expand its range and threaten more countries in the Americas, including the U.S.
Skoltech researchers and their colleagues from Russia, the US, and Sweden have described an unusual RNA polymerase that helps a poorly studied crAss-like bacteriophage transcribe its genes. They "caught" this enzyme by a tiny -- less than 3% of its size -- portion of the amino acid sequence that was similar to other RNA polymerases. The paper detailing the discovery has been published in the journal Nature.
BOSTON (Nov. 18, 2020, 2:00 p.m. ET)--Researchers at Tufts University School of Medicine have discovered a molecular mechanism that causes a "traffic jam" of enzymes traveling up and down neuronal axons, leading to the accumulation of amyloid beta - a key feature and cause of Alzheimer's disease. The enzyme, BACE1, gets backed up, causing the axons to clog and swell because of the increased production of the toxic amyloid protein.
A high concentration of salt or sugar in the environment will dehydrate microorganisms and stop them from growing. To counter this, bacteria can increase their internal solute concentration. Scientists from the University of Groningen elucidated the structure of a transport protein OpuA, that imports glycine betaine to counter osmotic stress. The protein belongs to the well-known family of ABC transporters, but it has a unique structure and working mechanism. The results were published in Science Advances on 18 November.
For many years, investigators have been trying to pin down the tantalizing connection between vitamin D and cancer. Epidemiological studies have found that people who live near the equator, where exposure to sunlight produces more vitamin D, have lower incidence and death rates from certain cancers. In cancer cells in the lab and in mouse models, vitamin D has also been found to slow cancer progression. But the results of randomized clinical trials in humans haven't yielded a clear answer.
Human females have two X chromosomes, and males only one. This chromosome imbalance also extends to other branches of the animal kingdom. Interestingly, the humble fruit fly has devised a different way to "equalize" these differences. Whereas human and mouse females shut down one of their X chromosomes, in fruit flies it instead the male doing the work.