Culture
The hunt for an effective treatment for COVID-19 has led one team of researchers to find an improbable ally for their work: a llama named Winter. The team -- from The University of Texas at Austin, the National Institutes of Health and Ghent University in Belgium -- reports their findings about a potential avenue for a coronavirus treatment involving llamas on May 5 in the journal Cell.
ITHACA, N.Y. - Cornell scientists have developed a new technique for imaging a zebrafish's brain at all stages of its development, which could have implications for the study of human brain disorders, including autism.
Zebrafish are translucent when young, making them good models for live imaging, but they become opaque with age, which has prevented researchers from seeing into a live adult brain.
AMHERST, Mass. - As physicians and families know too well, though Alzheimer's disease has been intensely studied for decades, too much is still not known about molecular processes in the brain that cause it. Now researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst say new insights from analytic theory and molecular simulation techniques offer a better understanding of amyloid fibril growth and brain pathology.
MINNEAPOLIS - New guidance from the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) concludes that closure of a common heart defect called a patent foramen ovale (PFO) may be recommended for some people who have had a stroke. The updated practice advisory is published in the April 29, 2020, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
The benefits of a brief "social belonging" exercise completed by black students in their first year of college followed them into adulthood, with participants reporting greater career satisfaction, well-being and community involvement almost a decade later.
Nearly 15,000 miles of new Asian roads will be built in tiger habitat by mid-century, deepening the big cat's extinction risk and highlighting the need for bold new conservation measures now, according to a new study.
University of Michigan conservation ecologist Neil Carter and his colleagues used a recently developed global roads dataset to calculate the extent and potential impacts of existing and planned road networks across the nearly 450,000-square-mile, 13-country range of the globally endangered tiger.
In a paper published today in the journal Science Translational Medicine, scientists from the Schools of Life Sciences and Chemistry at the University, have discovered that by inhibiting a molecule in patients' cells called CDK12, they can potentially develop a therapy to alleviate some of the symptoms, and help treat this incurable condition.
Myotonic dystrophy is a long-term genetic disorder that affects muscle function. It is the most common form of muscular dystrophy in adults and affects about one in 8,000 people. There is currently no treatment available.
SAN DIEGO, Calif. (April 29, 2020) -- Since there are no FDA-approved treatments for COVID-19, people may end up searching for unproven therapies. Therefore, when several high-profile figures - including President Donald Trump and Elon Musk - endorsed the use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19, it brought the issue of misinformation to the forefront of public discourse. How did these endorsements of an unproven treatment impact the public?
A team of South Korean researchers found that lactation can lower the incidence and reduce the risk of maternal postpartum diabetes. The researchers identified that lactation increases the mass and function of pancreatic beta cells through serotonin production. The team suggested that sustained improvements in pancreatic beta cells, which can last for years even after the cessation of lactation, improve mothers' metabolic health in addition to providing health benefits for infants.
A new strategy to trigger ferroptosis in target cancer cells using drug-metal coordination complexes
The fast-growing cancer incidence and mortality worldwide have raised great challenges for the currently available anticancer options, which warrants the development of new therapeutic modalities based on novel antitumor mechanisms. Ferroptosis, a recently discovered form of non-apoptotic cell death, is one such candidate and has already demonstrated immense potential in clinical oncology as it provides alternative therapeutic opportunities for the management of treatment-resistant tumors. In a research study published on Science Advances, lead author Prof.
New USC research reveals how APOE4, a genetic culprit for Alzheimer's disease, triggers leaks in the brain's plumbing system, allowing toxic substances to seep into the brain areas responsible for memory encoding and other cognitive functions.
The damage is linked to future problems in learning and memory, even when the disease's signature sticky plaques have not appeared. The findings suggest that the smallest blood vessels in the brain, which form the blood-brain barrier, might be a potential target for early treatment.
Neurobiologists at KU Leuven have discovered how the signalling molecule Neuromedin U plays a crucial role in our learning process. The protein allows the brain to recall negative memories and, as such, learn from the past. The findings of their study on roundworms have been published in the journal Nature Communications.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Several years ago, Guillermo Rougier, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Anatomical Sciences and Neurobiology at the University of Louisville, was approached by David Krause, Ph.D., curator at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, to help identify a complete, 3-D fossil he had discovered on Madagascar.
"When Dr. Krause showed it to me in a scientific meeting and asked me for my opinion, I said I had never seen anything like this," Rougier recalled. "This mammal has teeth for which we have no parallel."
An international research team led by the University of Hong Kong (HKU) developed a new method to accurately track the spread of COVID-19 using population flow data, and establishing a new risk assessment model to identify high-risk locales of COVID-19 at an early stage, which serves as a valuable toolkit to public health experts and policy makers in implementing infectious disease control during new outbreaks. The study findings have been published in the journal Nature today (April 29).
CATONSVILLE, MD, April 29, 2020 - Job performance has long been understood to be the primary equalizing factor affecting promotions for men and women in the workplace, but research shows, women don't gain as much from the same performance improvements as men do. New research in the INFORMS journal Information Systems Research shows training plays an important part in promotions for women in the field of information technology.