Culture
The phrase 'the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau' is often used to link various phenomena (e.g. monsoon dynamics and biodiversity evolution) but in this review Spicer and colleagues bring together diverse lines of evidence to show that the concept of an extensive low-relief Tibet, rising in its entirety as a result of the India-Eurasia collision, is false, and the product of overly simplistic modelling.
Tsukuba, Japan - Allergies can significantly affect health and quality of life. While allergen immunotherapy provides long-lasting therapeutic relief to people suffering from environmental allergies, the therapy can last several years and requires large amounts of allergen. Now, researchers from the University of Tsukuba developed a novel system that enables the mass production of the major birch pollen allergen Bet v 1 in plant leaves in just a matter of days.
Anxiety-prone people can blame serotonin cleanup proteins gone awry in their amygdala, according to research in marmosets recently published in JNeurosci. Targeting the amygdala with anti-anxiety medication could provide quicker relief.
The same event or set of life circumstances could send one person into the depths of anxiety or despair while leaving another unaffected. This distinction, called trait anxiety, arises from the proteins involved in serotonin signaling, a neurotransmitter implicated in anxiety and depression.
What The Viewpoint Says: Ways in which mental health care might change as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic are described.
Authors: John Torous, M.D., of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School is Boston, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2020.1640)
What The Viewpoint Says: Questions about how the COVID-19 pandemic will alter telepsychiatry practice are examined in this article.
Authors: Jay H. Shore, M.D., M.P.H., of the Colorado School of Public Health and Anschutz Medical Campus of the University of Colorado in Aurora, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2020.1643)
What The Study Did: Nearly 14,000 current and former National Football League (NFL) players were included in an observational study that examined whether a greater amount of repeated head impacts throughout a professional football career were associated with increased risk of death.
Authors: Brittany L. Kmush, Ph.D., of Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
What The Study Did: Nearly 60 articles were reviewed to assess the rate of preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) use for HIV prevention among at-risk teens in the United States and to provide recommendations for how to improve access to and use of PrEP.
Authors: Allison L. Agwu, M.D., Sc.M., of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
After analysing organic residues from ancient pots, a team of scientists led by the University of Bristol has uncovered new evidence of dairying by hunter-gatherers in the landlocked South African country of Lesotho in the mid-late first millennium AD.
The study on organic residue analysis from South African hunter-gatherer pots is being published today in Nature Human Behaviour.
Extensive archaeological evidence shows that Early Iron Age agricultural communities settled in the coastal regions of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa from around AD 400.
Investigators at the Stanford University School of Medicine and several other institutions have shown that a new type of vaccination can substantially enhance and sustain protection from HIV.
A paper describing the vaccine, which was given to monkeys, will be published online May 11 in Nature Medicine. The findings carry broad implications for immunologists pursuing vaccines for the coronavirus and better vaccines for other diseases, said Bali Pulendran, PhD, professor of pathology and of microbiology and immunology at Stanford.
A new technique could provide vital information about a community's immunity to infectious diseases including malaria and COVID-19.
The diagnostic test analyses a blood sample to reveal immune markers that indicate whether - and when - a person was exposed to an infection. It was developed to track malaria infections in communities, to assist in the elimination of deadly 'relapsing' malaria, but is now being adapted to track immunity to COVID-19 in more detail than existing tests.
Two studies report new Homo sapiens fossils from the site of Bacho Kiro Cave in Bulgaria. "The Bacho Kiro Cave site provides evidence for the first dispersal of H. sapiens across the mid-latitudes of Eurasia. Pioneer groups brought new behaviours into Europe and interacted with local Neanderthals. This early wave largely predates that which led to their final extinction in western Europe 8,000 years later", says Jean-Jacques Hublin, director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
What The Study Did: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection in North American pediatric intensive care units is described in this observational study, including how it presented, whether there were comorbidities, the severity of disease, therapeutic interventions, clinical trajectory and early outcomes.
Authors: Lara S. Shekerdemian, M.D., M.H.A., of Texas Children's Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, is the corresponding author.
A University of Alaska Fairbanks-led research team has developed a way to use satellite images to determine the amount of methane being released from northern lakes, a technique that could help climate change modelers better account for this potent greenhouse gas.
By using synthetic aperture radar, or SAR, researchers were able to find a correlation between "brighter" satellite images of frozen lakes and the amount of methane they produce. Comparing those SAR images with ground-level methane measurements confirmed that the satellite readings were consistent with on-site data.
Most financiers of international infrastructure program, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), are falling short on biodiversity safeguards, according to University of Queensland research.
The BRI is China's ambitious regional connectivity initiative encompassing thousands of transport, energy and industrial infrastructure projects, built along eight trans-national corridors spanning 70 countries in Asia, Europe and Africa.
University of Adelaide researchers have found that South Australia's population of Grey-headed flying foxes, which took up residence in 2010, has been exposed to a number of viruses, including Hendra virus that can be transmitted to humans via horses. But they have not found evidence of exposure to Australian bat lyssavirus.