Culture
Four in 10 people with advanced multiple sclerosis, or MS, are emotionally abused by someone responsible for caring for them, reports a study led by the University of California, Riverside.
Further, the study finds one quarter are financially exploited, one in six are neglected, one in nine are battered, and one in 12 are sexually assaulted by a caregiver.
NEW YORK, NY (Oct. 27, 2020)--Coronaviruses are adept at imitating human immune proteins that have been implicated in severe COVID-19 disease, a study from researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons has found.
The study was published online ahead of print in Cell Systems.
Many plants and animals use the art of mimicry to trick their prey or predators. Viruses employ a similar strategy: Viral proteins can mimic the three-dimensional shapes of their host's proteins to trick the host into helping the virus complete its life cycle.
WASHINGTON--Over 80 percent of 200 COVID-19 patients in a hospital in Spain have vitamin D deficiency, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
A new tool for analyzing tissue damage seen on MRI brain scans can detect with more than 70 percent accuracy early signs of cognitive decline, new research shows.
The findings by imaging specialists at NYU Grossman School of Medicine center on small bright spots on scans called white matter hyperintensities. Increased numbers and size of the intense-white spots seen on the mostly gray images of the brain have long been linked to memory loss and emotional problems, especially as people age.
A new paper in Behavioral Ecology, published by Oxford University Press, finds that wild vampire bats that are sick spend less time near others from their community, which slows how quickly a disease will spread. The research team had previously seen this behavior in the lab, and used a field experiment to confirm it in the wild.
Cerebrospinal fluid as liquid biopsy for the precise characterization and policing of medulloblastoma
Results from a proof-of-concept study led by Joan Seoane show the promise of
cerebrospinal fluid as liquid biopsy for the more precise characterization and real time tracking of medulloblastoma.
Circulating tumor DNA from cerebrospinal fluid reveals genomic alterations during disease evolution -even prior to surgery- to more precisely guide treatment decision making.
A National Institutes of Health study of 5,000 women has found that approximately 1 in 4 experienced high levels of depressive symptoms at some point in the three years after giving birth. The rest of the women experienced low levels of depression throughout the three-year span. The study was conducted by researchers at NIH's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). It appears in the journal Pediatrics.
Scientists from the iMolecule group at Skoltech Center for Computational and Data-Intensive Science and Engineering (CDISE) developed BiteNet, a machine learning (ML) algorithm that helps find drug binding sites, i.e. potential drug targets, in proteins. BiteNet can analyze 1,000 protein structures in 1.5 minutes and find optimal spots for drug molecules to attach. The research was published in the Communications Biology journal.
Okazaki, Japan - It is common that neurons transmit information to another group of neurons by increasing or decreasing their activity, i.e. "firing rate changes". In addition to firing rate changes, synchronized activity of a certain group of neurons, i.e. "correlated activity", has been suggested to play an important role in conveying information. This study revealed that, in the basal ganglia, information for the movement control is conveyed primarily by firing rate changes and correlated activity play only minor role in healthy conditions (Figure).
Blue mussels in the Baltic Sea are getting smaller with time but bigger in numbers, according to a new study from Stockholm University. Analyzing data from the last 24 years, the main reason for this appears to be changes in food quality. The type of phytoplankton that is available for blue mussels to eat can in turn be linked to our changing climate.
Which is more important in the initial phase of a pandemic: taking precautionary actions or responding to its severity? That is the question that researchers from the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) set out to address in an article published in BioEssays.
Kyoto, Japan -- Publishing in PNAS, biologists at Kyoto University report on a previously unknown mechanism in the retina that will perhaps lead to a better understanding of how our eyes see at night. The finding was made possible thanks to mice engineered to change fluorescence when a specific molecule -- protein kinase A, or PKA -- is activated.
These 'PKAchu' mice were developed to provide researchers with a way of visualizing the activation of one of the body's most essential and widely studied proteins.
Tsukuba, Japan - Blood stem cell transplants are an important part of treatment for a variety of serious conditions. However, adverse reactions of the host to donor cells present a significant risk. Now, researchers from the University of Tsukuba have pinpointed cell level behavior that could be used to help the host fight back, their findings are published in Journal of Investigative Dermatology.
Soil has the capacity to bind large quantities of carbon in the long term. An international team of researchers, including from the University of Bonn, is now advocating effective use of this potential. Experts estimate that this could reduce the increase of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by a third. At the same time, agricultural yields in many regions would also increase significantly. In a recent publication they present a strategy to achieve these goals. The study is published in the journal Nature Communications.
The sequencing of the genome of the cauliflower coral, Pocillopora verrucosa, by an international team, provides a resource that scientists can use to study how corals have adapted to different environmental conditions.