Culture
A new study of climate changes and their effects on past societies offers a sobering glimpse of social upheavals that might happen in the future.
The prehistoric groups studied lived in the Amazon Basin of South America hundreds of years ago, before European contact, but the disruptions that occurred may carry lessons for our time, says study coauthor Mitchell J. Power, curator of the Garrett Herbarium at the Natural History Museum of Utah, University of Utah.
People are living longer than ever before, but brain health isn't keeping up. To tackle this critical problem, a team of researchers has proposed a new model for studying age-related cognitive decline - one that's tailored to the individual.
Inflammation in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) can be quickly and precisely diagnosed using a new type of nuclear medicine scan, according to research published in the June issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine. Using immuno-positron emission tomography (immuno-PET) to image monoclonal antibodies directed against specific innate immune cell markers, investigators were able to effectively assess IBD in murine models. In addition, immuno-PET has high potential for theranostic diagnosis and precision treatment of IBD and other inflammatory diseases.
DALLAS - June 17, 2019 - The increasing sophistication of cancer treatments threatens to outpace the ability of health care providers to enroll patients in clinical trials to test those therapies. That's a key finding by researchers in UT Southwestern's new Department of Population and Data Sciences.
The authors of the study published this month in the Journal of Clinical Oncology investigated why many cancer clinical trials fail to enroll enough patients. The researchers sought to identify potential interventions - i.e., solutions - to improve the situation.
Engineered tissues and organs have been grown with various degrees of success in labs for many years. Many of them have used a scaffolding approach where cells are seeded onto biodegradable supportive structures that provide the underlying architecture of the organ or tissue desired.
Supplementing cattle feed with seaweed could result in a significant reduction in methane belched by livestock, according to Penn State researchers, but they caution that the practice may not be a realistic strategy to battle climate change.
The common perception that pesticides reduce or eliminate target insect species may not always hold. Jennifer Weathered and Edd Hammill report that the impacts of agricultural pesticides on assemblages of aquatic insects varied resulting in distinct ecological winners and losers within aquatic communities. While pesticides reduced many species, the evolution of pesticide resistance allowed the mosquito Wyeomyia abebala to actually benefit from the application of the pesticide-Dimenthoate.
A San Diego State University study is among the first to describe trends in cancer mortality by specific Hispanic group for the 10 leading causes of cancer deaths nationwide.
There are subtle and sometimes significant differences in food habits, cultural mores, and lifestyles among Cubans, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Central and South Americans in the U.S. This also extends to their risks of getting cancer and dying from it. Yet the subgroups tend to be bunched under the larger umbrella of Hispanic Americans, much like Asian Americans, despite the inherent diversity.
The Sun is why we're here. It's also why Martians or Venusians are not.
When the Sun was just a baby four billion years ago, it went through violent outbursts of intense radiation, spewing scorching, high-energy clouds and particles across the solar system. These growing pains helped seed life on early Earth by igniting chemical reactions that kept Earth warm and wet. Yet, these solar tantrums also may have prevented life from emerging on other worlds by stripping them of atmospheres and zapping nourishing chemicals.
Sleep patterns can predict the accumulation of Alzheimer’s pathology proteins later in life, according to a new study of older men and women published in JNeurosci. These findings could lead to new sleep-based early diagnosis and prevention measures in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.
High blood pressure may affect conditions such as Alzheimer's disease by interfering with the brain's waste management system, according to new research in rats published in JNeurosci. Maintaining blood vessel health could therefore help stave off cognitive decline.
Some dinoflagellate plankton species are bioluminescent, with a remarkable ability to produce light to make themselves and the water they swim in glow. Now, researchers reporting in Current Biology on June 17 have found that for one dinoflagellate species (Lingulodinium polyedra), this bioluminescence is also a defense mechanism that helps them ward off the copepod grazers that would like to eat them.
Most fishing communities from North Carolina to Maine are projected to face declining fishing options unless they adapt to climate change by catching different species or fishing in different areas, according to a study in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Some Maine fishing communities were at greatest risk of losing their current fishing options, according to the study by Rutgers and other scientists.
To understand our brains, scientists need to know their components. This theme underlies a growing effort in neuroscience to define the different building blocks of the brain -- its cells.
Bottom Line: Adults who had pediatric-onset of multiple sclerosis (MS) before they were 18 were more likely to have greater cognitive consequences than patients who developed MS as adults. This study used Swedish registry data and included 5,704 patients with MS (300 of whom had pediatric-onset of the disease), and it compared test scores reflective of information-processing efficiency. Researchers report scores were lower, and declined faster, among patients with pediatric-onset MS compared to patients with adult-onset MS.