Earth
All life is challenged by oxidants -- reactive molecules or compounds that remove electrons from other molecules -- often with adverse effect, commonly referred to as oxidative stress. Consequently, all organisms have evolved specialized antioxidant defenses. In humans and other multicellular animals, that defense depends upon a protein called NRF2 and its inhibitor, KEAP1.
Oak Brook, IL - The March edition of SLAS Discovery features the cover article, "CRISPR: A Screener's Guide," by Carlos le Sage, Ph.D., Steffen Lawo, Ph.D., and Benedict C.S. Cross, Ph.D., (Horizon Discovery, United Kingdom). In their review, the authors discuss how CRISPR-Cas9 systems are being used widely throughout the drug discovery process and the development of new precision medicines.
Coral reefs are not doomed. Although human activities threaten the iconic ecosystems in many different ways, scientists maintain that reefs can continue to thrive with the right assistance.
A study by researchers at UC Santa Barbara details how reducing nutrient pollution can help prevent coral from bleaching during moderate heatwaves. The results, which appear in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offer new strategies for managing these highly threatened yet important ecosystems.
SASKATOON--University of Saskatchewan (USask) researchers have used a novel combination of techniques to compare the effects of two families of pesticides used in agriculture, and found that at low dosages the newer pesticide is less toxic than a currently used neonicotinoid one.
Targeting overactive immune cells and dampening their chronic neurotoxic effects may offer new therapeutic strategies for traumatic brain injury (TBI), according to new preclinical research in mice, which has been published today [Monday 24th February 2020] in the Journal of Neuroscience.
A new study of the genetic history of Sardinia, a Mediterranean island off the western coast of Italy, tells how genetic ancestry on the island was relatively stable through the end of the Bronze Age, even as mainland Europe saw new ancestries arrive. The study further details how the island's genetic ancestry became more diverse and interconnected with the Mediterranean starting in the Iron Age, as Phoenician, Punic, and eventually Roman peoples began arriving to the island.
A new study reported in the journal Current Biology on February 24 offers some of the first evidence that gray whales might depend on a magnetic sense to find their way through the ocean. This evidence comes from the discovery that whales are more likely to strand on days when there are more sunspots.
Virginia Tech paleontologists have made a remarkable discovery in China: 1 billion-year-old micro-fossils of green seaweeds that could be related to the ancestor of the earliest land plants and trees that first developed 450 million years ago.
New York, NY--February 24, 2020--Optical manipulation on the nano-scale, or nanophotonics, has become a critical research area, as researchers seek ways to meet the ever-increasing demand for information processing and communications. The ability to control and manipulate light on the nanometer scale will lead to numerous applications including data communication, imaging, ranging, sensing, spectroscopy, and quantum and neural circuits (think LIDAR--light detection and ranging--for self-driving cars and faster video-on-demand, for example).
We do not have to look as far away as the glaciers in Norway, the fires in Australia or the floods in Brazil to see the effects of climate change. In Spain, changes are also starting to show and they will multiply in the following years. And not only will the climate be affected, but also social and economic aspects as well.
A computational analysis of language used by the writer Edgar Allan Poe has revealed that his mysterious death was unlikely to have been suicide.
The author, poet, editor, and literary critic died in 1849 after spending several days in hospital while in a state of delirium. To date, Poe's death remains an unsolved enigma, with his contemporary, poet Charles Baudelaire even speculating that the incident was "almost a suicide, a suicide prepared for a long time".
Researchers identified a group of small molecules that may open the door to developing new therapies for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), an as-yet-uncured disease that results in devastating muscle weakening and loss. The molecules tested by the team from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania eased repression of a specific gene, utrophin, in mouse muscle cells, allowing the body to produce more utrophin protein, which can be subbed in for dystrophin, a protein whose absence causes DMD.
DURHAM, N.C. -- When our sun belches out a hot stream of charged particles in Earth's general direction, it doesn't just mess up communications satellites. It might also be scrambling the navigational sense of California gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus), causing them to strand on land, according to a Duke University graduate student.
All print, broadcast and online journalists who receive the Obesity embargo alert agree to abide by the embargo and may not publish, post, broadcast or distribute embargoed news releases or details of the embargoed studies before the embargo date and time.
When writing about these studies, journalists are asked to attribute the source as the journal Obesity and to include the online link to the Obesity articles as provided below. Links become active when articles post at 3:00 a.m. on Feb. 24, 2020, unless indicated differently below.
Researchers at the UC Davis MIND Institute have updated and validated a series of tests delivered on an iPad to accurately assess cognitive processing in people with intellectual disability. The validation opens new opportunities for more rigorous and sensitive studies in this population, historically difficult to evaluate.