Culture
The management of fungal infections in plants and humans could be transformed by a breakthrough in understanding how fungi develop resistance to drugs.
It was previously thought that only mutations in a fungi's DNA would result in antifungal drug resistance. Current diagnostic techniques rely on sequencing all of a fungi's DNA to find such mutations.
Scientists from the University of Edinburgh have discovered that fungi can develop drug resistance without changes to their DNA - their genetic code.
Dyslexia is a frequent disorder of reading acquisition that affects up to 10% of the population, and is characterised by lifelong difficulties with written material. Although several possible causes have been proposed for dyslexia, the predominant one is a phonological deficit, a difficulty in processing language sounds. The phonological deficit in dyslexia is associated with changes in rhythmic or repetitive patterns of neural activity in a sound-processing region of the brain, the left auditory cortex.
DURHAM, N.C. -- Interactive software that "reads" and analyzes footprints left by black rhinoceroses can be used to monitor the movements of the animals in the wild, giving conservationists a new way to keep watch on the endangered species and help keep it safe from poachers, according to a Duke University-led study.
The software, called the Footprint Identification Technique (FIT), runs on JMP software from SAS and uses advanced algorithms to analyze more than 100 measurements of a rhino's footprint.
RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- A new theory about the nature of dark matter helps explain why a pair of galaxies about 65 million light-years from Earth contains very little of the mysterious matter, according to a study led by a physicist at the University of California, Riverside.
Dark matter is nonluminous and cannot be seen directly. Thought to make up 85% of matter in the universe, its nature is not well understood. Unlike normal matter, it does not absorb, reflect, or emit light, making it difficult to detect.
Using innovative computer-based approaches, researchers have developed protein inhibitors that block the interaction between the SARS-CoV-2 virus and human cell receptor ACE2. In cell culture, the most potent of these inhibitors could neutralize virus infection, paving the way for their use in therapies that could be delivered more easily than antibodies. SARS-CoV-2 infection generally begins in the nasal cavity. The monoclonal antibodies in development as treatments for COVID-19 are not ideal for intranasal delivery, however, as antibodies are large and often not extremely stable.
Brazilian red propolis found in beehives along the coast and mangroves in the Northeast region contains two substances with anti-cancer properties. In laboratory tests, they considerably reduced the proliferation of ovarian, breast, and brain cancer cells.
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in April, a 14-year-old boy was admitted to the emergency department at Nemours Children's Health System in Delaware with mysterious symptoms in what would later be identified as one of the first cases of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) in the U.S. His care and retrospective diagnosis have been published in Progress in Pediatric Cardiology as a timely case study linking COVID-19 to the highly dangerous syndrome which is rare in children and causes inflammation of the heart, lungs and other vital organs.
The LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration recently announced the discovery of GW190521, the most massive gravitational wave binary observed to date, and Rochester Institute of Technology scientists played an important role in identifying and analyzing the event. They detected the signal with the National Science Foundation's Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO).
BAR HARBOR, MAINE -- Scientists have long known that chronic stress experienced early in life, or even chronic prenatal exposure to maternal stress hormones in the womb, can shorten lifespan and contribute to age-related chronic diseases like arthritis, asthma, cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and even mental illness later in life -- long after the source of stress has been removed.
But the mechanisms behind these effects are not well understood.
Adjuvants are a key ingredient of many modern vaccines, working to unleash an immune response that helps protect the body from disease. Many scientists believe that adjuvants are they key to developing new kinds of vaccines for hard-to-vaccinate viruses, like HIV.
But adjuvants can cause inflammation at the injection site, as well as side effects from an over-stimulated immune system, which prohibits many promising new adjuvant candidates from being integrated into vaccines.
What do vapers, smokers, and non-smokers with chronic conditions such as high blood pressure or diabetes have in common? They all are at higher risk for COVID-19.
The scientific explanation behind this is complex and not yet certain -- but it may boil down to an enzyme known as ACE2, that lives on the surface of many cells in the lungs and serves as the entry point for the coronavirus.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Type 1 diabetes, or T1D, is an autoimmune disease in which the body's immune cells -- led by inflammatory macrophages -- attack and destroy the beta cells of the pancreas that produce insulin.
Researchers have long tried to unravel the signaling that provokes this attack. One of the less-studied forms of signaling is inflammatory lipids.
The diabetes drug metformin--derived from a lilac plant that's been used medicinally for more than a thousand years--has been prescribed to hundreds of millions of people worldwide as the frontline treatment for type 2 diabetes. Yet scientists don't fully understand how the drug is so effective at controlling blood glucose.
Purifying specific protein molecules from complex mixtures will become easier with a simpler way to detect a molecular "tag" commonly used as a handle to grab the proteins.
Proteins, comprising many linked amino acid molecules, form the key "workforce" of molecular biology, performing a multitude of chemical tasks, including catalyzing the chemistry of life, switching genes on and off, and receiving and responding to signals between cells.
A recent study has shown that readers' eye gaze behaviors are strong indicators of words that are unexpected, new, or difficult to understand. The study by Rain Bosworth, an assistant professor and researcher in the Center for Sensory, Perceptual, and Cognitive Ecology (SPaCE Center) at Rochester Institute of Technology's National Technical Institute for the Deaf, explores the unknown qualities of gaze behavior for "sign watching" and how these are affected by a user's language expertise and intelligibility of the sign input.