Culture
Cold Spring Harbor, NY -- Maize is a staple crop that came from humble beginnings. If you look at its wild ancestor, teosinte, the plant looks nearly unrecognizable. Human selection has persuaded the maize plant to grow in a way that produces higher yields and can be more efficiently harvested. But scientists and farmers are looking for ways, in the face of climate change, population growth, and other factors, to even further optimize maize yields.
Biodiversity hotspot Madagascar is one of the world's biggest islands, and home to some of its biggest insects. Now German scientists have discovered two new species of giant stick insect, living only in the dry forests of Madagascar's northernmost tip.
One giant female measures a whopping 24cm - but it is the smaller males that are most striking. At sexual maturity these daredevils abandon their stick-like camouflage for dazzling blue or many-colored shining armor.
Hamilton, ON (April 1, 2019) - The legalization of medical assistance in dying (MAID) in Canada has resulted in some people choosing to donate their bodies to anatomy programs, but it has raised profound ethical issues, says McMaster University's head of anatomy.
Bruce Wainman, director of the Education Program in Anatomy at McMaster, said the anatomical scientist community needs to establish guidelines around these donations.
Computing--Broader impacts of bullying
Using newly discovered archival materials, Igor Fedyukin of the Higher School of Economics, in collaboration with Robert Collis (Drake University) and Ernest A. Zitser (Duke University), sheds light on the significance and context surrounding a Spanish diplomat's initiative which sought to establish an informal men's club called the 'Order of the Anti-Sober' at Peter II's court. Their study was published in The International History Review.
ATLANTA -- A combination of chemotherapy and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells designed to target the protein HER2 was found to be safe and showed clinical responses in pediatric and adult patients with advanced HER2-positive sarcoma, according to results from a phase I clinical trial presented at the AACR Annual Meeting 2019, March 29-April 3.
ATLANTA -- Adding the investigational MET inhibitor savolitinib to the EGFR inhibitor osimertinib (Tagrisso) yielded clinical responses in patients who had EGFR-mutant non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) that had developed resistance to prior EGFR-targeted therapies through MET-gene amplification, according to interim results from two expansion cohorts of the phase Ib clinical trial TATTON, presented at the AACR Annual Meeting 2019, March 29-April 3.
A combination of two common immunotherapy drugs shrinks rare, aggressive neuroendocrine tumors, according to new research results presented at the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2019, held March 29-April 3 in Atlanta.
ATLANTA - A new combination of immunotherapy and chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer caused tumors to shrink in the majority of evaluable patients - 20 out of 24 as of an interim analysis of the phase 1b trial data. The early findings provide hope that this strategy involving a CD40 antibody, a checkpoint inhibitor, and standard-of-care chemotherapy could be effective for treating the nation's third deadliest type of cancer.
ORLANDO, Fla., March 31, 2019 -- The sugar maple tree yields autumn foliage, maple syrup and Tennessee whiskey. Wood from the tree is chopped into planks, stacked in piles and burned to form charcoal. Freshly distilled, un-aged whiskey is filtered over the charcoal in a mysterious, but necessary step known as the Lincoln County Process (LCP). By law, a product cannot be called Tennessee whiskey without it. Researchers now say they have some clues as to what the process imparts to the final product.
ORLANDO, Fla., March 31, 2019 -- As current antibiotics dwindle in effectiveness against multidrug-resistant pathogens, researchers are seeking potential replacements in some unlikely places. Now a team has identified bacteria with promising antibiotic activity against known pathogens -- even dangerous organisms, such as the microbe that causes MRSA infections -- in the protective mucus that coats young fish.
ORLANDO, Fla., March 31, 2019 -- The U.S. opioid epidemic is being driven by an unprecedented surge in deaths from fentanyl and other synthetic opiates. Fentanyl's powerful effects are long-lasting, and even tiny amounts of the drug can lead to an overdose. Antidotes, such as naloxone, do not last long enough in the body to fully counter the drug, requiring repeated injections. Now, scientists report that they are developing single-dose, longer-lasting opioid antidotes using polymer nanoparticles.
Yokohama, Japan 30 March 2019: Trips to the toilet at night are a sign of high blood pressure, according to results from the Watari study presented today at the 83rd Annual Scientific Meeting of the Japanese Circulation Society (JCS 2019).
Purely educating doctors about the importance of prescribing certain therapies may not be enough to make a meaningful impact, according to a new Penn Medicine study. Using acid suppression therapy--an effective method of reducing the risk of gastrointestinal bleeding in vulnerable cardiac patients--Penn researchers tested interventions that utilized both education and an electronic "dashboard" system linked to patients' electronic medical records (EMRs) which gave doctors up-to-date information on which patients would likely benefit from the therapy.
A new study published in the April 2019 issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR) considers several potential factors that might have led to disparities in follow-up imaging rates among patients with indeterminate initial abdominal imaging findings.