Tech
Surprisingly, the antiviral cytokine type I interferon (IFN-I) was found to be a master regulator of metabolic pathways in liver cells. The researchers focused on the urea cycle, a central metabolic node, and found that it is disrupted by IFN-I during viral infection. This led to altered serum metabolite concentrations which regulated antiviral immunity and reduced liver pathology.
A move towards a more sustainable bio-based economy has been given a new boost by researchers who have been able to simplify a process to transform waste materials into high value chemicals.
A collaboration between the UK and Brazil has shown that waste sugar cane and wheat straw from agricultural processes can be made directly into valuable chemicals with an increase in value of 5000-fold.
Marine fog brings more than cooler temperatures to coastal areas. Researchers at UC Santa Cruz have discovered elevated levels of mercury in mountain lions, the latest indication that the neurotoxin is being carried in fog, deposited on the land, and making its way up the food chain.
Concentrations of mercury in pumas in the Santa Cruz Mountains were three times higher than lions who live outside the fog zone. Similarly, mercury levels in lichen and deer were significantly higher inside the fog belt than beyond it.
The neuropeptide αCGRP (α calcitonin gene-related peptide) works in two different ways. It leads to inflammation and dilates the blood vessels right at the release point of the nerve cells, for example in the meninges, which can trigger migraine attacks. However, it has a completely different effect on the heart, as has now been discovered by a team of researchers at the University of Zurich (UZH).
Bad for the meninges, good for the heart
Half as many diagnosed with depression, a delayed manifestation of Parkinson's, a reduced risk of developing vascular dementia - but not Alzheimer's. These connections were discovered by researchers when they compared 200 000 people who had participated in a long-distance cross-country ski race between 1989 and 2010 with a matched cohort of the general population. The results of the population register study, led by researchers at Lund University in Sweden together with Uppsala University, were recently published in three scientific articles.
While the emergence of precision medicine and immunotherapy has greatly improved outcomes for patients with colorectal cancer, new approaches are still needed for patients with late-stage disease who do not respond to these therapies. According to the American Cancer Society, patients who present with stage 4 colorectal cancer have a five-year survival rate of only 14%. Therefore, researchers are interested in finding new ways to try to inhibit colorectal tumor growth.
BOSTON - Even after resolving a problem with alcohol and other drugs, adults in recovery report experiencing both minor or "micro" forms of discrimination such as personal slights, and major or "macro" discrimination such as violation of their personal rights. These experiences are associated with increased distress and lead to both diminished quality of life and a decrease in resources needed to successfully sustain recovery, investigators from the Recovery Research Institute and Center for Addiction Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School (HMS) report.
December's SLAS Technology Cover Article Features University of Wisconsin Research, "Automated System for Small-Population Single-Particle Processing Enabled by Exclusive Liquid Repellency"
NASA analyzed the cloud top temperatures in Tropical Storm Rita using infrared light to determine the strength of the storm. Rita has triggered warnings in the island nation of Vanuatu.
One of the ways NASA researches tropical cyclones is using infrared data that provides temperature information. Cloud top temperatures identify where the strongest storms are located. The stronger the storms, the higher they extend into the troposphere, and the colder the cloud top temperatures.
It is the the dream of every molecular geneticist: an easy-to-use program that compares data sets from different cellular conditions, identifies enhancer regions and then assigns them to their target genes. A research team led by Martin Vingron at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin has now developed a program that masters all of this.
The National Weather Service in Guam has posted warnings as Tropical Storm Kammuri lingers nearby. The NOAA-20 satellite provided forecasters with an image of the storm.
Tropical Depression 29W formed on Nov. 25, and when it strengthened into a tropical storm on Nov. 26 it was renamed Kammuri.
Many of the technologies we rely on, from smartphones to wearable devices and more, utilize fast wireless communications. What might we accomplish if those devices transmitted information even faster?
A new study, by researchers Drs. Boers, Afzali and Conrod who are affiliated with CHU Sainte-Justine Research Center and the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Montreal, reveals that social media use, television viewing and computer use, but not video gaming, are linked to an increase in anxiety symptoms among adolescents.
People with visual impairments use social media like everyone else, often with the help of screen reader software. But that technology falls short when it encounters memes, which don't include alternate text, or alt text, to describe what's depicted in the image.
To counter this, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a method to automatically identify memes and apply prewritten templates to add descriptive alt text, making them intelligible via existing assistive technologies.
One way of increasing sustainability is to reduce carbon fuel emissions within transportation. In 2017 greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from this sector surpassed all others in the U.S., accounting for nearly 30% of total GHG emissions, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency.