Earth

Foreign language teaching in primary schools literally opens up new worlds for primary school children: with a large portion of curiosity, willingness to learn and impartiality, they encounter not only new languages but also new cultures. Early foreign language teaching takes advantage of the special learning conditions at this age. It is therefore all the more important that the learned content is permanently anchored in the children's memory and not only available for a short time.

Cancer cells remain clumped together via a sort of 'Velcro' which allows them to adhere to each other wherever they appear. In order for cancer cells to leave a tumour and spread throughout the body during metastatic processes, cancer cells must reduce their adhesion and increase their ability to migrate. They can do this by changing the amount and type of proteins on their surface.

An international collaboration, which included the involvement of the research team from the Institut de Neurociències of the UAB (INC-UAB), has shown that neurons expressing dopamine D2 receptors have different molecular features and functions, depending on their anatomical localization within the striatum. This research, conducted with mouse models and published in Nature Communications, opens the door to develop better treatments for diseases in which dopamine is altered, such as schizophrenia, addictions and Parkinson's disease.

Dyslexia is a specific learning disorder that affects 5 - 15% of the world population.

They are in the shape of a tadpole and interact with each other by harpooning between head and tail, thus presenting interesting and unexpected physical properties. Tadpoles are the large molecules at the centre of the new research just published on the journal ACS Macro Letters, and the result of an international collaboration between SISSA and the Universities of Vienna, Warwick and Edinburgh.

Bottom Line: An analysis of nearly 16,000 young patients with cancer in Utah revealed that exposure to fine particulate matter was associated with increased mortality at five and 10 years after diagnosis of certain cancers.

Journal in Which the Study was Published: Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research; this paper will be featured in a forthcoming Environmental Carcinogenesis Focus section in the journal.

Prague, 15 May 2020 - Researchers led by Jiri Kaleta of IOCB Prague have synthesized regular 2D assemblies of isotopically labelled molecular switches and measured the properties of their isomerization, revealing that formation of such an assembly doesn't hamper the photochemical switching properties of the embedded molecules. The isotopic labels came into use when measuring the switching properties using an analytic technique dependent on the labels. The team published the results in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

There are immune cells in our bodies that directly destroy infected or cancer cells - they are called natural killer cells. Recently, a POSTECH research team has developed an integrative cancer therapy using adoptive natural killer cell therapy and chemotherapy.

To assess the degree to which early stone tool using hominins modified their tool manufacturing behaviours in Eastern Asia, Shixia Yang and colleagues examined three well-known archaeological sites from the Nihewan Basin in North China. Stone tool comparisons between the archaeological sites of Xiaochangliang, Cenjiawan and Donggutuo indicate that technological skills increase at ca. 1.1-1.0 million years ago.

There is currently a strong demand to replace organic liquid electrolytes used in conventional rechargeable batteries, with solid-state ionic conductors which will enable the batteries to be safer and have higher energy density.

Rates of neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) have plateaued after 20 years of increasing frequency across the country, according to a new study published in Health Affairs. NAS is a withdrawal syndrome experienced by some opioid-exposed newborns after birth.

The National Institutes of Health-funded study led by Ashley Leech, PhD, assistant professor of Health Policy at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), finds that rates of NAS per 1,000 live births stabilized in 2016 after peaking in 2014 at the beginning of a surge in opioid-related deaths in the United States.

Underwater sound devices called "pingers" could be an effective, long-term way to prevent porpoises getting caught in fishing nets with no negative behavioural effects, newly published research suggests.

The study of harbour porpoises off Cornwall found they were 37% less likely to be found close to an active pinger.

Concerns have been raised about porpoises becoming used to pingers and learning to ignore them, but the eight-month study - by the University of Exeter and Cornwall Wildlife Trust - found no decrease in effectiveness.

What The Study Did: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data were used to examine changes in rates of deaths attributed to cardiovascular disease from 1999 to 2017 in urban and rural areas of the U.S. overall and by age, sex and race/ethnicity.

Authors: Haider J. Warraich, M.D., of the VA Boston Healthcare System in Boston, is the corresponding author.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ 

What The Study Did: Researchers looked at the association between prenatal alcohol and tobacco smoking exposure and brain activity in 1,700 newborns measured during sleep.

Authors: William P. Fifer, Ph.D., of Columbia University Medical Center in New York, is the corresponding author.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.4714)

Scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute and Loma Linda University Health have demonstrated the promise of applying magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to predict the efficacy of using human neural stem cells to treat a brain injury--a first-ever "biomarker" for regenerative medicine that could help personalize stem cell treatments for neurological disorders and improve efficacy.