Culture
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - A bout with flu virus can be hard, but when Streptococcus pneumonia enters the mix, it can turn deadly.
Now researchers have found a further reason for the severity of this dual infection by identifying a new virulence mechanism for a surface protein on the pneumonia-causing bacteria S. pneumoniae. This insight comes more than three decades after discovery of that surface protein, called pneumococcal surface protein A, or PspA.
Ultrasound can overcome some of the detrimental effects of ageing and dementia without the need to cross the blood-brain barrier, Queensland Brain Institute researchers have found.
Professor Jürgen Götz led a multidisciplinary team at QBI's Clem Jones Centre for Ageing Dementia Research who showed low-intensity ultrasound effectively restored cognition without opening the barrier in mice models.
Are the traditional practices tied to endangered species at risk of being lost? The answer is yes, according to the authors of an ethnographic study published in the University of Guam peer-reviewed journal Pacific Asia Inquiry. But the authors also say a recovery plan can protect both the species as well as the traditional CHamoru practice of consuming them.
Else Demeulenaere, lead author of the study and associate director of the UOG Center for Island Sustainability, presented on their findings during the Marianas Terrestrial Conservation Conference on June 8.
In the recent decade, scientists have paid more attention to studying light harvest for producing novel bionic materials or integrating naturally biological components into synthetic systems. Inspiration is the imitation of natural photosynthesis in green plants, algae, and cyanobacteria to convert light energy into chemical energy. Photosystem II (PSII) is a light-intervened protein complex responsible for the light harvest and water splitting to release O2, protons, and electrons.
Toxoplasma gondii, the parasite responsible for toxoplasmosis, is capable of infecting almost all cell types. It is estimated that up to 30% of the world's population is chronically infected, the vast majority asymptomatically. However, infection during pregnancy can result in severe developmental pathology in the unborn child. Like the other members of the large phylum of Apicomplexa, Toxoplasma gondii is an obligate intracellular parasite which, to survive, must absolutely penetrate its host's cells and hijack their functions to its own advantage.
Plant Protector: How plants strengthen their light-harvesting membranes against environmental stress
An international study led by Helmholtz Zentrum München has revealed the structure of a membrane-remodeling protein that builds and maintains photosynthetic membranes. These fundamental insights lay the groundwork for bioengineering efforts to strengthen plants against environmental stress, helping to sustaining human food supply and fight against climate change.
Men - more often than women - need passion to succeed at things. At the same time, boys are diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum four times as often as girls.
Both statistics may be related to dopamine, one of our body's neurotransmitters.
"This is interesting. Research shows a more active dopamine system in most men" than in women, says Hermundur Sigmundsson, a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's (NTNU)Department of Psychology.
Researchers from Skoltech and their colleagues have shown that adaptation to similar environments hardly involves similar genomic positions when species are distantly related. The team investigated recurrent adaptations of wildlife birds' mitochondria to high altitude, migration, diving, wintering, and flight. Repeatable substitutions are rather a coincidence than adaptation, which confirms the scientific opinion that distant species "choose" different ways of similar trait evolution. The paper was published in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution.
Osaka, Japan - Scientists from the Department of Physics and the Research Center for Nuclear Physics (RCNP) at Osaka University, in collaboration with Kyoto University, used alpha particle inelastic scattering to show that the theorized "5α condensed state" does exist in neon-20. This work may help us obtain a better understanding the low-density nucleon many-body systems.
When cancers metastasize, cells from the primary tumor break away, travel through the blood or lymph system,
and form new tumors in other body parts. Although metastasis are responsible for more than 90% of all cancer
deaths, limited progress has been made in treating cancers that have spread.
Discovering and engineering nanobodies with properties suitable for treating human diseases ranging from cancer to COVID-19 is a time-consuming, laborious process.
To that end, University of Michigan researchers found a simple method for identifying nanobodies with drug-like properties suitable for preventing SARS-CoV-2 infections. They demonstrated the approach by generating nanobodies that neutralized the SARS-CoV-2 virus more potently than an antibody isolated from an infected patient and a nanobody isolated from an immunized animal.
Many people don't realize that the trillions of bacteria, viruses, and fungi residing within the gastrointestinal tract--collectively called the gut microbiome-- are connected to overall health, and specifically to cancer.
Manipulating the gut microbiome to produce "beneficial" commensal microbes, which protect the host from pathogens and can boost immune responses, among other things, could potentially help patients respond better to cancer drugs called immune checkpoint inhibitors, a type of immunotherapy.
A cluster of comet fragments believed to have hit Earth nearly 13,000 years ago may have shaped the origins of human civilisation, research suggests.
Possibly the most devastating cosmic impact since the extinction of the dinosaurs, it appears to coincide with major shifts in how human societies organised themselves, researchers say.
Their analysis backs up claims that an impact occurred prior to start of the Neolithic period in the so-called Fertile Crescent of southwest Asia.
The Third Pole centered on the Tibetan Plateau is home to the headwaters of multiple rivers in Asia. Despite the importance of these rivers, scientists have not known exactly how much water flows out of the mountains of the Third Pole as river runoff.
Now, however, researchers from the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research (ITP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have quantified the total river runoff of 13 major rivers in the region.
In a new study published in Circulation Research, Chen-Yu Zhang and Xiaohong Jiang's group from Nanjing University and Dongjin Wang's group from Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital reported a critical role of PGC1α in maintaining the contractile phenotype of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) and highlighted the therapeutic potential of PGC1α for atherosclerosis.