Feature Channels: All Journal News

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The American Society for Radiation Oncology's (ASTRO) 62nd Annual Meeting, will be held October 25-28 via an interactive virtual platform. The meeting, Global Oncology: Radiation Therapy in a Changing World, will feature reports from the latest clinical trials; panels on global oncology, health disparities and the novel coronavirus; and an immersive attendee experience in a virtual convention center. Media resources are available at www.astro.org/astro2020press.

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Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute have characterised the structure of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein as well as its most similar relative in a bat coronavirus.

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Due to border closures in the wake of the corona crisis, the arrival of refugees in Europe has temporarily dipped.

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Contrary to popular views, parental smartphone use is rarely associated with poor parenting, and more often than not, tends to be associated with warm and attached parenting.

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Fish kills are a recurring phenomenon in lakes suffering from oxygen depletion. Often the kills are triggered by factors like an algae bloom, but now a new study reports on a new, climate-related cause of fish kills.

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The soil beneath our feet is alive with electrical signals being sent from one plant to another, according to research in which a University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) distinguished professor emeritus in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering participated.

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Experts examine the serious implications of needed coronavirus prevention measures on health care practitioners and their patients with hearing loss.

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E-cigarettes are highly addictive nicotine products with unclear health impacts, particularly on young people. Instagram is a visual social media platform which is wildly popular, particularly with young people

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During the COVID-19 pandemic, Johns Hopkins Medicine Media Relations is focused on disseminating current, accurate and useful information to the public via the media. As part of that effort, we are distributing our “COVID-19 Tip Sheet: Story Ideas from Johns Hopkins” every Tuesday throughout the duration of the outbreak.

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A sweeping study of 193 countries by the UCLA WORLD Policy Analysis Center reveals critical gaps in legal protections against discrimination on the job. Nearly one in four countries continue to have no legal protection from discrimination at work based on race and ethnicity, according to the study, just published in the journal Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.

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A PhD student has produced the first digital reconstruction of the skull of a gigantic dormouse, which roamed the island of Sicily around two million years ago.

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Cornell researchers including Fenghua Hu, associate professor in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics and member of the Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology, are taking a closer look at the factors that cause Alzheimer’s, FTLD and similar diseases. Hu’s latest study, “A role of the frontotemporal lobar degeneration risk factor TMEM106B in myelination,” was published June 23 in the journal Brain.

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A new study finds that fewer women were first authors on COVID-19-related research papers published in the first half of this year. The findings suggest a worsening gender gap in academic medicine, where women were already underrepresented among authors of medical research.

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Researchers at the University of Westminster and City University of London analysing the music record choices of guests on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs programme has found that the music we listen to between the age of 10 and 30 define us for the rest of our lives.

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As education researchers’ ongoing work is interrupted by school closures, what can they do to support education and public health institutions dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic? An article published today in Educational Researcher aims to answer that question, providing recommendations based on conversations with public health officials, state and local policymakers, educational leaders, directors of national education organizations, and researchers across disciplines.

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A new study from McGill University shows that increases in the concentrations of blood sodium can have an influence on the biological clock of mice, opening new research avenues for potentially treating the negative effects associated with long distance travel or shift work.

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DOE and USDA researchers use new global models to study how environmental controllers affect soil organic carbon, changes in which can alter atmospheric carbon concentrations and affect climate. Predictions could benefit industry mitigation plans.

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Cleveland Clinic researchers have found a significant increase in patients experiencing stress cardiomyopathy, also known as broken heart syndrome, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Following U.S. students across five summers between grades 1 and 6, a little more than half (52 percent) experienced learning losses in all five summers, according to a large national study published today. Students in this group lost an average of 39 percent of their total school year gains during each summer.

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As the planet’s land-based natural resources become exhausted, the need for new sources is bringing the search to the deepest parts of the world’s oceans. And that has researchers across the globe very concerned.

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Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center investigators report they have uncovered a new mechanism by which invasive breast cancer cells evade the immune system to metastasize, or spread, to other areas of the body. They propose that therapies targeting this process could be developed to halt or prevent metastasis and reduce breast cancer deaths.

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Researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have discovered that breast cancer cells can alter the function of immune cells known as Natural killer (NK) cells so that instead of killing the cancer cells, they facilitate their spread to other parts of the body. The study, which will be published July 9 in the Journal of Cell Biology (JCB), suggests that preventing this reprogramming might stop breast cancer from metastasizing to other tissues, a major cause of death in breast cancer patients.

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A survey conducted in the U.K. suggests that social and physical distancing measures put in place during the Covid-19 pandemic significantly impacted people’s perception of how quickly time passed compared to their pre-lockdown perceptions.

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New research explains why humans register taste more quickly when food or drink moves over their tongues quickly, as compared to when they are held in their mouth steadily.

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Current research indicates that unhealthy lifestyle choices along with emotional stressors like social are important risk factors for developing upper respiratory infections. It is possible these same factors also increase the risk of contracting COVID-19.

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Results of an analysis published in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society found that Black individuals were twice as likely as White individuals to test positive for COVID-19. The average age of all participants in the study was 46. However, those infected were on average 52 years old, compared to those who tested negative, who were 45 years old on average.

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With increasing drought conditions in the Texas High Plains, researchers test sorghum and pearl millet as alternatives to corn

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A new study sheds light on proteins in particles called extracellular vesicles, which are released by tumor cells into the bloodstream and promote the spread of cancer. The findings suggest how a blood test involving these vesicles might be used to diagnose cancer in the future, avoiding the need for invasive surgical biopsies.

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COVID-19 has placed tremendous pressure on health care systems, not only for critical care but also from an anxious public looking for answers. Research from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business found that chatbots -- software applications that conduct online chats via text or text-to-speech -- working for reputable organizations can ease the burden on medical providers and offer trusted guidance to those with symptoms.

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Nature is a tool to address deeply entrenched health disparities; health systems should work to increase nature access, as they have with other social determinants of health

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In one of the first studies addressing the role of sex hormones’ impact on stem cells in the gut, scientists outline new insights showing how a steroidal sex hormone that is structurally and functionally similar to human steroid hormones drastically alters the way intestinal stem cells behave, ultimately affecting the overarching structure and function of this critical organ. The authors found that ecdysone, a steroid hormone produced by fruit flies, stimulates intestinal stem cell growth and causes the gut of the female fruit fly to grow in size, as well as other critical changes.

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A new study shows that ozone gas, a highly reactive chemical composed of three oxygen atoms, could provide a safe means for disinfecting certain types of personal protective equipment that are in high demand for shielding health care personnel from Covid-19.

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The Child Trauma Response Team, an innovative police and community-based organization partnership, demonstrated success at screening and treating children for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) immediately following incidents of intimate partner violence, according to a Rutgers-led study published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence.

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A clinical trial conducted at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and other sites has found evidence that the experimental drug tofersen lowers levels of a disease-causing protein in people with an inherited form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, caused by mutations in the gene SOD1.

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“Nurse-initiated and managed antiretroviral therapy” (NIMART) is an innovative approach to making effective medications more accessible to people living with HIV (PLWH) in low-resource countries. A new study identifies challenges and opportunities to promoting nurse- and midwife-led HIV services in eastern and southern Africa, reports the July/August issue of The Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care (JANAC). The official journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, JANAC is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.

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A blood biomarker in people who have had concussions may be just as accurate at predicting the severity of the injury and how long it will last as biomarkers that are obtained through more expensive and invasive tests, according to a study published in the July 8, 2020, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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New research published in Nature Communications uses a technology first developed at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine to enhance the oxygenation of cultured tissues that will likely be able to conduct real-time regeneration and development studies in the human pancreas.

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Navatek LLC, a contractor focused on technology research for U.S. government agencies such as the Department of Defense and NASA, is opening an office on the Wichita State University campus in fall 2020.

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Young firefighter recruits who follow a ‘Mediterranean lifestyle’ are less likely to have hypertension (high blood pressure) and more likely to have good aerobic fitness, reports a study in the July Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has quickly spread across all 50 United States. Associated recommendations that healthcare facilities defer non-urgent visits, tests, and procedures led many imaging facilities to temporarily curtail most of their non-urgent services. This new Neiman Institute study characterizes the recent declines in non-invasive imaging volumes at community practices.

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The key components of electrical connections between light receptors in the eye and the impact of these connections on the early steps of visual signal processing have been identified for the first time, according to research published today in Science Advances by The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).

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A team of researchers from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) used a new method of pinpointing potential disease-causing changes in the genome to identify two new potential therapeutic targets for lupus, while also paving the way for more accurately identifying disease-causing variations in other autoimmune disorders.

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Based on randomized control trials, the systematic review and analysis revealed that cognitive behavioural therapy that connected therapists and patients through such modes as web-based applications, video-conferencing, email and texting, improved patients’ symptoms better than face to face when measured using standardized mood symptoms scales. As well, there was no difference in the level of satisfaction or function between the two methods of delivery.

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More than a decade into the community development initiative called Healthy Neighborhoods Healthy Families, the 30-block Southern Orchards neighborhood on Columbus, Ohio’s South Side had clear, notable improvement. Home vacancy fell from 30% to under 6%. High school graduation rates increased. More than $40 million in investments were generated in the area.

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Scientists have discovered that one of the good bacteria found in the human gut has a benefit that has remained unrecognized until now: the potential to reduce the risk for heart disease.

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In a paper published in Cancer and Metastasis Reviews, a team of researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Brigham and Women’s Hospital propose that controlling the local and systemic inflammatory response in COVID-19 may be as important as anti-viral and other therapies.

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Biodiversity Research Institute announces the successful results of its long-term loon translocation and restoration project Restore the Call: A male loon chick that was translocated in 2015 from New York to Massachusetts returned in 2018 to the region from which it fledged, and now has formed a territorial pair, nested, and successfully hatched a chick in Fall River, Massachusetts.

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A rat is less likely to help a trapped companion if it is with other rats that aren’t helping, according to new research from the University of Chicago that showed the social psychological theory of the “bystander effect” in humans is present in these long-tailed rodents.

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Scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute have demonstrated the therapeutic potential of PRMT5 inhibitors to sensitize unresponsive melanoma to immune checkpoint therapy. PRMT5 inhibitors are currently in clinical trials in oncology, and this research provides a strong rationale for evaluating the drugs in tumors that are not responsive to immune checkpoint therapy. The study was published in Science Translational Medicine.

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According to a new study published in PLOS ONE, understanding how to assess who is elderly is a crucial first step for our understanding of population aging.