Culture
When researchers at Lund University in Sweden performed advanced analyses of sputum from the airways of severely ill Covid-19 patients, they found high levels of neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs). It is already a known fact that NETs can contribute to sputum thickness, severe sepsis-like inflammation and thrombosis. After being treated with an already existing drug, the NETs were dissolved and patients improved. The study has now been published in Molecular & Cellular Proteomics.
Hundreds of genetic drivers affect sexual and reproductive behaviour
Combined with social factors, these can affect longevity and health
An Oxford-led team, working with Cambridge and international scholars, has discovered hundreds of genetic markers driving two of life's most momentous milestones - the age at which people first have sex and become parents.
Researchers have developed a more efficient platform for studying proteins that play a key role in regulating gene expression. The approach uses engineered yeast cells to produce enzyme and histone proteins, conduct biochemical assays internally, and then display the results.
Near-death experiences are known from all parts of the world, various times and numerous cultural backgrounds. This universality suggests they may have a biological origin and purpose, but exactly what this could be has been largely unexplored.
A new study conducted jointly by the University of Copenhagen (Denmark) and the University of Liege (Belgium) and published in Brain Communications shows how near-death experiences in humans may have arisen from evolutionary mechanisms.
A team of scientists has devised a more accurate way to predict the effects of climate change on plants and animals -- and whether some will survive at all.
Frequently, ecologists assess an organism's fitness relative to the climate by quantifying its functional traits.
"These are physical properties you can measure -- height, diameter, the thickness of a tree," said UC Riverside biologist Tim Higham. "We believe more information is needed to understand how living things will respond to a changing world."
NEW YORK, NY (July 1, 2021)--Lowering levels of a hormone called PTHrP can prevent metastases and improve survival in mice with pancreatic cancer and could lead to a new way to treat patients, according to a study from cancer researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center and with collaborators at the University of Pennsylvania.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA--June 28, 2021--While vaccines are doing a remarkable job of slowing the COVID-19 pandemic, infected people can still die from severe illness and new medications to treat them have been slow to arise. What kills these patients in the end doesn't seem to be the virus itself, but an over-reaction of their immune system that leads to massive inflammation and tissue damage.
The adult brain is more malleable than previously thought, according to researchers from the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya. They trained a 50-year-old man, blind from birth, to "see" by ear, and found that neural circuits in his brain formed so-called topographic maps - a type of brain organization previously thought to emerge only in infancy.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- In the late 1800s, scientists were stumped by the "yellow cells" they were observing within the tissues of certain temperate marine animals, including sea anemones, corals and jellyfish. Were these cells part of the animal or separate organisms? If separate, were they parasites or did they confer a benefit to the host?
Giving women in India's Madhya Pradesh state greater digital control over their wages encouraged them to enter the labor force and liberalized their beliefs about working women, concluded a new study co-authored by Yale economists Rohini Pande and Charity Troyer Moore.
Based on fossil finds, we know that the vast majority of species that once inhabited the earth have become extinct. For example, there are about 5,500 mammal species living on the planet today, but we know of at least 160,000 fossil species, so for every mammal species living today, there are at least 30 extinct ones. We therefore know with great certainty that the lineages of living things come and go along immense time scales. But what factors cause these lineages to come into being and disappear is still an unsolved question.
Boulder, Colo., USA: The Geological Society of America regularly publishes
articles online ahead of print. GSA Bulletin topics include
multiple articles about the dynamics of China and Tibet; the end-Permian
terrestrial extinction paradigm in South Africa; prehistoric lava flows
from the urban district of Catania (Etna volcano, Italy); the debated
origins of granite, and “a tale of two Tweefonteins.” You can find these
articles at
WILMINGTON, Del.
A study by Stanford University School of Medicine investigators hints that people with COVID-19 may experience milder symptoms if certain cells of their immune systems "remember" previous encounters with seasonal coronaviruses -- the ones that cause about a quarter of the common colds kids get.
These immune cells are better equipped to mobilize quickly against SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19, if they've already met its gentler cousins, the scientists concluded.
In a new Editorial, Peter Heeger, Christian Larsen, and Dorry Segev discuss recent evidence - including a recent Science Immunology study by Hector Rincon-Arevalo and colleagues - that points to a diminished immune response to COVID-19 vaccines among organ transplant recipients and others on immunosuppressive drug regimens.