Culture
Dublin, Ireland - 9 June 2018: Loneliness is bad for the heart and a strong predictor of premature death, according to a study presented today at EuroHeartCare 2018, the European Society of Cardiology's annual nursing congress.1 The study found that feeling lonely was a stronger predictor of poor outcomes than living alone, in both men and women.
A breakthrough new technique enables scientists to image 10,421 genes at once within individual cells.
The work was done in the laboratory of Long Cai, research professor in biology and an affiliated faculty member of the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience at Caltech. A paper describing the research appears in the June 7 issue of the journal Cell.
Nestled deep in each of your cells is what seems like a magic trick: Six feet of DNA is packaged into a tiny space 50 times smaller than the width of a human hair. Like a long, thin string of genetic spaghetti, this DNA blueprint for your whole body is folded, twisted, and compacted to fit into the nucleus of each cell.
Scientists are gaining a better understanding of Pierce's disease and how it affects grapevines. The disease, which annually costs California more than $100 million, comes from a bacterium called Xylella fastidiosa. While the bacterium has been present in the state for more than 100 years, Pierce's disease became a more serious threat to agriculture with the arrival of the glassy-winged sharpshooter insect, which can carry the bacterium from plant to plant.
White supremacist marches and xenophobic Twitter rants have brought overt racism to the center of public attention in recent months. Even still, subtle, structural, and systemic forms of racism continue to lurk in what is becoming an increasingly racially diverse United States. In a new collection of scholarly articles, psychological scientists describe research on the enduring and often hidden presence of racism at both the interpersonal and societal levels.
Even with a highly skilled neurosurgeon, the most effective anesthesia, and all the other advances of modern medicine, most of us would cringe at the thought of undergoing cranial surgery today.
After all, who needs a hole in the head? Yet for thousands of years, trepanation--the act of scraping, cutting, or drilling an opening into the cranium--was practiced around the world, primarily to treat head trauma, but possibly to quell headaches, seizures and mental illnesses, or even to expel perceived demons.
WASHINGTON, June 7, 2018 -- Seashells are made mostly of calcium carbonate, also known as chalk, a mineral soft and crumbly enough to use for sidewalk doodles. Yet seashells are tough and resilient. In this video, Reactions explains why seashells are so different, and why you can't use them to draw on your driveway: https://youtu.be/iUeMxjkSPyM.
June 8, 2018 - Thirteen years after the first successful face transplant, US trauma surgeons should be aware of the current role of facial transplantation for patients with severe facial disfigurement - including evidence that the final appearance and functioning are superior to that provided by conventional reconstructive surgery.
New research has shown that the rapid decline in insulin production that causes type 1 diabetes continues to fall over seven years and then stabilises.
A team at the University of Exeter Medical School found evidence that the amount of insulin produced declines by almost 50% each year for seven years. At that point, the insulin levels stabilise.
A USC research team identified 150 proteins affecting cell activity and brain development that contribute to mental disorders, including schizophrenia, bipolar condition and depression.
It's the first time these molecules, which are associated with the disrupted-in-schizophrenia 1 (DISC1) protein linked to mental disorders, have been identified. The scientists developed new tools involving stem cells to determine chemical reactions the proteins use to influence cell functions and nerve growth in people.
In regions where malaria illness is widespread, it is common to find many individuals who are infected with malaria parasites (Plasmodium falciparum), but without symptoms. New research conducted by the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) shows that treating these silent malaria cases could help stop the spread of malaria to others.
Washington DC (June 7, 2018) - The average pre-approval cost of research and development for a successful drug is estimated to be US$2.6 billion and the number of new drugs approved per billion US dollars spent has halved roughly every 9 years since 1950. More than 90% of drug candidates entering clinical trials fail to gain regulatory approval, mainly as a result of insufficient efficacy and/or unacceptable toxicity, because of the limited predictive value of preclinical, animal-based studies.
June 7, 2018 - Patients who take prescription opioids for a longer period before spinal surgery are more likely to continue using opioids several months after surgery, reports a study in the June 6, 2018, issue of The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery.
Washington, DC-- NASA's Curiosity rover has discovered new "tough" organic molecules in three-billion-year-old sedimentary rocks on Mars, increasing the chances that the record of habitability and potential life could have been preserved on the Red Planet, despite extremely harsh conditions on the surface that can easily break down organic molecules.
Although the discipline of public health has recently recognized racism as a social determinant of health, little research examines the issue related to systems and structures.
University of Louisville School of Public Health and Information Sciences researcher Billie Castle, Ph.D., a post-doctoral associate in the Department of Health Promotion and Behavioral Sciences, conducted a literature review on the terms racism and systemic racism and found 85 published articles on the topic.