Carolyn Elya discovered the puppet-master on the balcony of her Berkeley apartment. It was a fungus that infects fruit flies, invading their nervous system and eating them from the inside out.
In their death throes, the infected flies - like puppets on a string - obligingly climb to a high point and spread their wings, exposing their abdomen and allowing the fungus to shoot its spores as widely as possible to infect new flies.
Like many chronic infections, visceral leishmaniasis thwarts the immune system's defenses so it can settle comfortably into its host. Responsible for tens of thousands of deaths around the world every year, visceral leishmaniasis holds the unfortunate distinction of being the second leading cause of death by parasitic infection, after malaria. But how does it slip through the host's defenses? Professor Simona Stäger's team at INRS has discovered a mechanism that Leishmania donovani takes advantage of to sustain the infection.
HAMILTON, ON, July 31, 2018 - Just two weeks without much activity can have a dramatic impact on health from which it is difficult to recover, according to researchers who studied overweight older adults at risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.
Not only did an abrupt, brief period of inactivity hasten the onset of the disease and elevate blood sugar levels among pre-diabetic patients, but researchers reported that some study participants did not fully recover when they returned to normal activity for two weeks.
Pioneering new research into the way in which cells communicate with each other could hold the key to unlocking new, improved treatment for life-threatening diseases, including cancer.
Various mechanisms exist for cells to communicate with each other, and many are essential for development. A team of international researchers looked at how one important family of signalling molecules - Wnt proteins, which orchestrate and control many cell development processes - are transported between cells.
In recent years optical fibers have served as sensors to detect changes in temperature, like a thermometer, and pressure, like an artificial nerve. This technique is particularly useful in structures such as bridges and gas pipelines.
EPFL researchers have now come up with a new method that enables optical fibers to identify whether they are in contact with a liquid or a solid. This is achieved by simply generating a sound wave with the help from a light beam within the fiber.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Seismic waves are helping researchers uncover the mysterious subsurface history of the Tibetan Plateau, possibly lending insight to future earthquake activity in the region.
Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and their colleagues are a step closer to developing a broadly effective antibody treatment against the three major Ebola viruses that cause lethal disease in humans.
Reporting July 17 in the journal Immunity, they describe the isolation of two potent monoclonal antibodies from human survivors of Ebola virus disease that, in cell culture studies, efficiently neutralized the Zaire, Sudan and Bundibugyo ebolaviruses.
Additive manufacturing, otherwise known as 3-D printing, can be used to manufacture porous electrodes for lithium-ion batteries--but because of the nature of the manufacturing process, the design of these 3-D printed electrodes is limited to just a few possible architectures. Until now, the internal geometry that produced the best porous electrodes through additive manufacturing was what's known as an interdigitated geometry--metal prongs interlocked like the fingers of two clasped hands, with the lithium shuttling between the two sides.
Diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol and borderline high blood pressure, Dana Hayes pursued bariatric surgery in hopes of living a healthier life.
"I struggled with weight my whole life, but this was a place I'd never been before," says Hayes, 30, a hairdresser and mother of four. "Diabetes was the final straw."
She waited five months for surgery after her first clinic appointment.
AUGUSTA, Ga. (July 30, 2018) - Using a manmade version of a human antibody to directly deliver a drug that inhibits a powerful driver of inflammation, can reverse a disease course that often leads to kidney failure and dialysis, investigators report.
They have additionally found that it's the powerhouses of kidney cells, called mitochondria, that are particularly impacted by the acute or chronic inflammation called nephritis, and that, at least in their animal model and cell cultures, the treatment restores their function.