Curated News: PLOS

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Building lab instruments for chemistry and biology experiments used to be an expensive, time consuming process only done by scientists with specialized training. A 3D printed, Lego-like system of blocks designed by a UC Riverside team is changing that. As well as real research applications, the system can be used for STEM education, where students gain both an engineering experience by building the instruments and a science experience as they use them.

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A new species of megaraptorid dinosaur discovered in Sierra Barrosa in northwest Patagonia may help discern the evolutionary origins of the megaraptorid group, according to a study published July 20, 2016, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Philip Currie from the University of Alberta and Rodolfo Coria from the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas in Argentina.

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Tree-ring dating and radiocarbon research led by Cornell University archaeologist Sturt Manning has established an absolute timeline for the archaeological, historical and environmental record in Mesopotamia from the early second millennium B.C.

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Eating more unsaturated fats in place of either dietary carbohydrate or saturated fat reduces blood sugar, insulin levels, and other metrics related to type 2 diabetes, according to a new meta-analysis of data from 102 randomised feeding trials in adults.

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Peregrine Falcons, in their normal habitat on isolated cliffs, mate for life. But some 25 pairs now nest on Chicago skyscrapers and bridges, and city living has them in much closer quarters than they used before humans dominated the landscape. A group of Field Museum and University of Illinois, Chicago scientists investigated whether typical breeding patterns hold true for these new city-dwellers and, in a paper published in PLOS ONE, confirmed that even in the big city, the birds that prey together, stay together.

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The discovery of a theropod dinosaur with Tyrannosaurus rex-like arms suggests that these unusual forelimbs may have evolved multiple times, according to a study published July 13, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Sebastián Apesteguía from the Universidad Maimónides, Argentina, and colleagues.

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The discovery of a theropod dinosaur with Tyrannosaurus rex-like arms suggests that these unusual forelimbs may have evolved multiple times, according to a study published July 13, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Sebastián Apesteguía from the Universidad Maimónides, Argentina, and colleagues.

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Dietary restriction, or limited food intake without malnutrition, has beneficial effects on longevity in many species, including humans. A new study from the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP), published today in PLoS Genetics, represents a major advance in understanding how dietary restriction leads to these advantages. Using the small roundworm C. elegans as a model, scientists showed that autophagy in the intestine is critical for lifespan extension.

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Researchers identify bat species most likely to carry filoviruses and map hotspots for disease surveillance and virus discovery efforts.

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Indiana University researchers have created a virtual tissue model of diabetes in the eye that shows precisely how a small protein that can both damage or grow blood vessels in the eye causes vision loss and blindness in people with diabetes. The study, reported in the journal PLOS Computational Biology, could also lead to better treatment for diabetic retinopathy, which currently requires multiple, invasive procedures that aren’t always effective in the long term.

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Fecal transplants are increasingly being used to treat certain human illnesses and there is a major upsurge in animal experiments involving fecal material.

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New research led by the University of Adelaide has confirmed that boy babies are much more likely to experience potentially life-threatening outcomes at birth than girls.

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Whether at school, in car accidents, on the sports field or the battlefield, mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) is a common part of our lives. It is especially frequent among children, athletes, and the elderly. Now, scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have shown that a single dose of a new molecule they developed can effectively protect the brain from inflammation, cell death, and cognitive impairments that often follow a mild traumatic brain injury.

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Scientists at The Wistar Institute have identified a specific network of proteins present in mitochondria of tumor cells that is essential for maintaining a clean function of mitochondria, enabling not only the proliferation of tumor cells but also their ability to move and invade distant organs. By understanding the players involved, Wistar scientists were able to turn off individual subunits within the network, which greatly reduced the ability of cancer cells to grow and spread, suggesting an attractive new therapeutic target.

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The University of Wisconsin-Madison's Chris Todd Hittinger and colleagues conclude in the July 6, 2016 edition of the journal Public Library of Science Genetics that the story of hybridization that produced the lager yeast is far more complex and potentially richer than first imagined.

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NIBIB-funded scientists used computers to model the formation of tuberculosis granulomas in the lung -- the non-active (latent) form of infection found in 2 billion individuals worldwide (11 million in the U.S.) that can activate to become a life-threatening infection. Employing a computer model aims to speed analysis of TB’s complex life-cycle and to identify potential new antibiotics, antibiotic targets, and biomarkers that can predict transition to active infection.

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An epidemiological study analyzing the association of butter consumption with chronic disease and mortality finds that butter was only weakly associated with total mortality, not associated with heart disease, and slightly inversely associated (protective) with diabetes.

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Vision loss due to glaucoma or optic nerve damage is generally considered irreversible. Now a new prospective, randomized, multi-center clinical trial demonstrates significant vision improvement in partially blind patients after 10 days of noninvasive, transorbital alternating current stimulation (ACS). In addition to activation of their residual vision, patients also experienced improvement in vision-related quality of life such as acuity, reading, mobility or orientation. The results are reported in PLOS ONE.

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Der Verlust der Sehkraft durch Glaukom oder Schädigung des Sehnervs gilt als irreversibel. Jetzt zeigt eine prospektive, randomisierte, multizentrische, klinische Studie signifikante Verbesserungen des Sehvermögens in teilweise erblindeten Patienten nach 10 Tagen Behandlung mit nicht-invasiver, transorbitaler Wechselstromstimulation (alternating current stimulation, ACS). Die Behandlung führte zu der Aktivierung von Restsehleistungen und sehbezogenen Verbesserungen der Lebensqualität wie Sehschärfe, Lesen, Mobilität und Orientierung. Diese aktuellen Ergebnisse wurden in PLOS ONE berichtet.

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Big data has a bright future in personalized medicine, as demonstrated by an international competition centered at Rice University that suggested ways forward for treatment of patients with leukemia.