Earth
A new study of 38,537 persons of European ancestry suggests that a rare variation of a gene called APOE may be protective and prolong life, in sharp contrast to a more widely studied APOE variant that increases risk of death.
Posting on social media, texting, and appearing in photos while high is prevalent among people who use drugs--and many regret these behaviors, according to a study by the Center for Drug Use and HIV/HCV Research (CDUHR) at NYU College of Global Public Health.
The research, published online August 6 in the journal Substance Abuse, points to the potential social harms associated with substance use, which are likely overlooked and go beyond well-established health risks.
Scientists who use magnetic fields to bottle up and control on Earth the fusion reactions that power the sun and stars must correct any errors in the shape of the fields that contain the reactions. Such errors produce deviations from the symmetrical form of the fields in doughnut-like tokamak fusion facilities that can have a damaging impact on the stability and confinement of the hot, charged plasma gas that fuels the reactions.
Pairing machine learning with neuroimaging can determine whether a person heard a real or made up word based on their brain activity, according to a new study published in eNeuro. These results lay the groundwork for investigating language processing in the brain and developing an imaging-based tool to assess language impairments.
WASHINGTON -- Researchers have demonstrated that an optical technique known as Raman spectroscopy can be used to differentiate between benign and cancerous thyroid cells. The new study shows Raman spectroscopy's potential as a tool to improve the diagnosis of thyroid cancer, which is the ninth most common cancer with more than 50,000 new cases diagnosed in the United States each year.
CAMDEN - Poor physical or mental health increases the chance that formerly incarcerated individuals will commit more crimes and return to prison, according to a groundbreaking new Rutgers University-Camden study.
NASA's Terra satellite found one small area of strong storms left in Tropical Depression Flossie on August 5 as it neared Hawaii.
Although Flossie is not expected to make landfall, its center will stay over the Central Pacific and pass close enough to the Hawaiian Island chain to bring ocean swells and rainfall. NOAA's National Hurricane Center (NHC) said, "Swells generated by Flossie will continue to affect portions of the main Hawaiian Islands during the next day or two, producing dangerous surf conditions along east and southeast facing shores."
NASA's Aqua satellite gazed into Tropical Storm Lekima as it moved through the Philippine Sea on August 5 and the AIRS instrument aboard took the temperature of its cloud tops to estimate storm strength.
Lekima formed early on Aug. 4 as Tropical Depression 10W and strengthened into a tropical storm on Aug. 5, when it was renamed Lekima.
What The Study Did: This study of 180 deceased former football players who had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) investigated the association of brain white matter pathologic changes and cerebrovascular disease with dementia.
Authors: Ann C. McKee, M.D., of Boston University, is the corresponding author.
(doi:10.1001/jamaneurol.2019.2244)
What The Study Did: Data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services were used to examine industry payments to physician directors of National Cancer Institute-designated cancer centers in this research letter.
Authors: David Carr, M.D., of the University of California, San Diego, is the corresponding author.
(doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2019.3098)
Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
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It can be difficult to treat malignant tumors using radical particle therapy if the tumor is too close to healthy organs. A team led by Professor Takumi Fukumoto and Professor Ryohei Sasaki (Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine) has collaborated with Alfresa Pharma Corporation to develop a new medical device "Neskeep" to separate tumors from adjacent normal organs during particle therapy. The Neskeep is designed to be placed by surgical procedure.
Neskeep received pharmaceutical approval in December 2018 and is available to purchase from June 27, 2019.
Conventional methods for in-vitro biological evaluations were mostly performed on 2D monolayer cell culture. In these systems, the intensive spatial interactions between cells were totally ignored, which might lead to information loss and incorrect results. 3D cellular spheroids culture offers a possibility to mimic physiological conditions with heterogeneous spatial distribution pattern of oxygen, nutrients metabolites and signal molecules, which is an ideal model for cell research.
Adjuvants are chemicals that are commonly added to plant protection products, such as pesticides, to help them spread, adhere to targets, disperse appropriately, or prevent drift, among other things. There was a widespread assumption that these additives would not cause a biological reaction after exposure, but a number of recent studies show that adjuvants can be toxic to ecosystems, and specific to this study, honey bees. Jinzhen Zhang and colleagues studied the effects on honey bees when adjuvants were co-applied at "normal concentration levels" with neonicotinoids.
When wildfires burn up forests, they don't just damage the trees. They destroy a key part of the global carbon cycle. Restoring those trees as quickly as possible could tip the scale in favor of mitigating severe climate change.
The arrival of humans in New Zealand, some 700 years ago, triggered a wave of extinction among native bird species. Many more species are currently under threat. Recent calculations by scientists from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and Massey University in New Zealand show that it would take at least 50 million years of evolution to restore the biodiversity that has been lost. Their results were published on 5 August in the journal Current Biology.