Culture
The bacterium Staphylococcus epidermidisis primarily a harmless microbe found on the skin and in the noses of humans. Yet some strains of this species can cause infections - in catheters, artificial joints, heart valves, and in the bloodstream - which are difficult to treat. These bacteria are often resistant to a particularly effective antibiotic, methicillin, and are among the most feared germs in hospitals. How these usually harmless skin microbes become deadly pathogens has been unclear up to now.
On 17 May 2021, the UK moved to step three of the Government's Roadmap out of Lockdown - which allowed for the lifting of a ban on foreign travel. Yet, travelling to amber and red list countries still carries strict regulations. UK residents can use proof of vaccination or Covid status (via the NHS app) to comply with travel restrictions in different countries - a scheme known as vaccine passports. However, issues remain to be resolved on how they will be implemented and used, and public opinion appear polarised.
DURHAM, N.C. -- Biomedical engineers at Duke University have developed an automatic process that uses streamlined artificial intelligence (AI) to identify active neurons in videos faster and more accurately than current techniques.
The technology should allow researchers to watch an animal's brain activity in real time, as they are behaving.
The work appears May 20 in Nature Machine Intelligence.
Schizophrenia is a heterogeneous psychiatric disorder characterized by positive symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions, negative symptoms such as apathy and lack of emotion, and cognitive impairment. We have reported that VB6 (pyridoxal) levels in peripheral blood of a subpopulation of patients with schizophrenia is significantly lower than that of healthy controls. More than 35% of patients with schizophrenia have low levels of VB6 (clinically defined as male:
Tsukuba, Japan - Carbonic anhydrases are essential enzymes that are present in virtually all living things; all eight classes of carbonic anhydrases that have been identified to date need a metal ion to function. But now, researchers from Japan have discovered that metal is not crucial for all carbonic anhydrases.
Tokyo, Japan - Most people don't think much about the food scraps they throw away; however, investigators from the Institute of Industrial Science at The University of Tokyo have developed a new method to reduce food waste by recycling discarded fruit and vegetable scraps into robust construction materials.
Researchers have flipped traditional 3D printing to create some of the most intricate biomedical structures yet, advancing the development of new technologies for regrowing bones and tissue.
The emerging field of tissue engineering aims to harness the human body's natural ability to heal itself, to rebuild bone and muscle lost to tumours or injuries.
A key focus for biomedical engineers has been the design and development of 3D printed scaffolds that can be implanted in the body to support cell regrowth.
Digital medicine is opening up entirely new possibilities. For example, it can detect tumors at an early stage. But the effectiveness of new AI algorithms depends on the quantity and quality of the data used to train them.
A rare mutation that causes Parkinson's disease-like symptoms interrupts the flow of dopamine in the brain, suggests a study in fruit flies published today in eLife.
The findings provide more detailed insights about why young children with this mutation develop these symptoms. This new information, as well as previous evidence that therapies helping to improve dopamine balance in the brain can alleviate some symptoms in the flies, suggests that this could be a beneficial new treatment strategy.
BUFFALO, N.Y. - To improve the development of new saliva-based diagnostic tests and personalized medicine, the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) has supported the development of the Human Salivary Proteome Wiki, the first public platform that catalogs and curates data on each of the thousands of proteins within our saliva.
Scientists from the UK's University of Bath explore racemases - an important type of enzyme that is linked to certain cancers and other life-threatening diseases while also being critical to cell function - in a paper published in the prestigious journal Chemical Society Reviews. The scientists also propose new strategies for finding drugs that neutralise these enzymes.
An international and multidisciplinary team led by researchers at the University of Oxford, University of Glasgow, and University of Heidelberg, has uncovered the interactions that SARS-CoV-2 RNA establishes with the host cell, many of which are fundamental for infection. These discoveries pave the way for the development of new therapeutic strategies for COVID-19 with broad-range antiviral potential.
Alzheimer's disease is the main cause of dementia and current therapeutic strategies cannot prevent, slow down or cure the pathology. The disease is characterized by memory loss, caused by the degeneration and death of neuronal cells in several regions of the brain, including the hippocampus, which is where memories are initially formed. Researchers from the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience (NIN) have identified a small molecule that can be used to rejuvenate the brain and counteract the memory loss.
New cells in old brains
Swedish and Danish journalists describe their role as monitorial to a greater extent than journalists from other Nordic countries. Journalists from Norway and Iceland state they have the least experience of political influence and thus differ from Finnish journalists. This is shown by a new comparative study published by Nordicom at the University of Gothenburg.
Over a year after the novel coronavirus cemented its grip on the world, much of the conversation surrounding the disease remains simple: how many people died and how many survived?
But researchers at Michigan Medicine say a devastating side effect lurks, underreported, between those extremes - the loss of ability caused by the virus.