Culture
Opposing desires to congregate and maintain some personal space drive fruit flies to form orderly clusters, according to a study published today in eLife.
Many animals ranging from swarming insects to wildebeests form large, orderly groups. This collective behaviour is often crucial to survival. It may help animals find food, escape predators, enhance the way they sense their surroundings and augment their decision making. But the processes that enable these group gatherings are not well understood.
(Boston)--Virginity testing is a complex, culturally mediated practice that is poorly understood by Western clinicians. Although there is published literature on the ethics of 'virginity' testing and on the lack of reliability of a hymen examination to determine 'virginity', little practical guidance has been published for clinicians who may encounter requests for virginity testing in the clinical setting.
Now, a researcher from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) is providing recommendations for primary care physicians who are asked to perform this procedure.
New research by Dorothy P. Schafer, PhD, at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, reveals the molecular process in which synaptic connections in the brain are damaged in multiple sclerosis and how this contributes to neurodegenerative symptoms. The paper, published in Immunity, also shows how gene therapy may be used to preserve neural circuits and protect against vision loss in the disease.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- A team of University of Illinois researchers estimated the mortality costs associated with air pollution in the U.S. by developing and applying a novel machine learning-based method to estimate the life-years lost and cost associated with air pollution exposure.
Scholars from the Gies College of Business at Illinois studied the causal effects of acute fine particulate matter exposure on mortality, health care use and medical costs among older Americans through Medicare data and a unique way of measuring air pollution via changes in local wind direction.
For decades, there's been a widespread assumption among people with an interest in sports-related injury that youth football players are more vulnerable to concussion and other head injuries than their older, bigger counterparts.
The Virginia Tech Helmet Lab has published the first data validating that conventional wisdom, in a study released in the January issue of the Annals of Biomedical Engineering.
Many drugs are derived from natural products. But before natural products can be exploited, chemists must first determine their structure and stereochemistry. This can be a major challenge, particularly when the molecules cannot be crystallized and contain only few hydrogen atoms. A new NMR-based method, developed at the Leibniz-Forschungsinstitut für Molekulare Pharmakologie (FMP), now simplifies the analysis and produces more accurate results. The work has been published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
PITTSBURGH, Jan. 21, 2020 - Overweight and obese vitamin D-deficient children who took a relatively high dose of vitamin D every day for six months had lower blood pressure and improved insulin sensitivity than their peers who took a lower dose, according to the results of a UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh clinical trial reported in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Boston - Results of a new study show that a large number of physicians in the US may have received marketing payments from pharmaceutical companies that produce stimulant medications. Led by researchers at Boston Medical Center's (BMC) Grayken Center for Addiction, the first of its kind study found that one in 18 physicians received some form of pharmaceutical marketing about stimulants, most often in the form of food or beverage.
Treating septic shock in children with a combination of intravenous vitamin C, vitamin B1 and hydrocortisone (a commonly used steroid) is associated with lower mortality, according to a study from Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago. This is the first pediatric study of the safe and relatively inexpensive treatment for septic shock, and the preliminary data supports the promising outcomes seen in adults. Findings were published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
BEER-SHEVA...January 21, 2020 - Fully vaccinating children reduced the risk of hospitalization for complications associated with influenza by 54%, according to a new study by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) and University of Michigan researchers.
The research, published in the December, 2019 print journal Clinical Infectious Disease, is one of the few studies worldwide that has tested the effectiveness of childhood vaccination against influenza and risk of hospitalization due to the influenza complications.
DURHAM, N.C. -- A Duke University research team has identified a new function of a gene called huntingtin, a mutation of which underlies the progressive neurodegenerative disorder known as Huntington's Disease.
Using genetic mouse models, they have discovered that neurons in the striatum, a brain area involved in controlling movement, require the huntingtin gene for regulating the body's movements, maintaining cell health during aging, and developing functioning connections between cells.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- An industrial chemical -- phased out since 2002, but previously used in stain and water-repellent products and firefighting foam -- alters the gut microbiome of mice and could have implications for human health, according to an international team of researchers.
CLEVELAND--Researchers at the Case Western University School of Medicine say they have identified a previously unknown gene and associated protein which could potentially be suppressed to slow the advance of Alzheimer's disease.
"Based on the data we have, this protein can be an unrecognized new risk factor for Alzheimer's disease (AD)," said Xinglong Wang, an associate professor of pathology at the School of Medicine. "We also see this as a potential novel therapeutic target for this devastating disease."
CHAPEL HILL, NC - Starting in 2016, a two-year partnership between the North Carolina Chapter of the American College of Cardiology (NCACC) and the North Carolina Association of Free and Charitable Clinics (NCAFCC) provided free lipid lowering therapy and clopidogrel to patients at seven free clinics in North Carolina. The results of this pilot study were recently published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
When an arm snaps, a leg cracks or a wrist twists, physicians set the bone to ensure it heals properly and with as little discomfort to the patient as possible. But the same cannot be said for most rib fractures.