Your daily habits may influence more than just your physical health—they could shape how you plan, monitor, and reflect on your own thinking, according to a new study in PLOS One.
Category: health – Page 34
Planarian worms can regenerate into a more youthful version of themselves
As you age you naturally lose neurons and muscle mass and experience a decline in fertility and wound healing ability. Previous research in animals has offered several potential techniques for turning back the biological clock in specific tissues, including exercise and calorie restriction. However, age reversal of blood cells or at whole organism level has so far been elusive.
Quantum statistical approach quiets big, noisy data
Big data has gotten too big. Now, a research team with statisticians from Cornell has developed a data representation method inspired by quantum mechanics that handles large data sets more efficiently than traditional methods by simplifying them and filtering out noise.
This method could spur innovation in data-rich but statistically intimidating fields, like health care and epigenetics, where traditional data methods have thus far proved insufficient.
The paper is published in the journal Scientific Reports.
VEXAS syndrome: More common, variable, and severe than expected
A recently discovered inflammatory disease known as VEXAS syndrome is more common, variable, and dangerous than previously understood, according to results of a retrospective observational study of a large health care system database. The findings, published in JAMA, found that it struck 1 in 4,269 men over the age of 50 in a largely White population and caused a wide variety of symptoms.
“The disease is quite severe,” study lead author David Beck, MD, PhD, of the department of medicine at NYU Langone Health, said in an interview. Patients with the condition “have a variety of clinical symptoms affecting different parts of the body and are being managed by different medical specialties.”
Dr. Beck and colleagues first described VEXAS (vacuoles, E1-ubiquitin-activating enzyme, X-linked, autoinflammatory, somatic) syndrome in 2020. They linked it to mutations in the UBA1 (ubiquitin-like modifier activating enzyme 1) gene. The enzyme initiates a process that identifies misfolded proteins as targets for degradation.
Key brain differences can explain why Ritalin helps improve focus in some more than others
Nearly 16 million American adults have been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but evidence suggests that more than 30% of them don’t respond well to stimulant medications like Ritalin and Adderall.
A new clinical trial provides a surprising explanation for why this may be the case: There are individual differences in how our brain circuits are wired, including the chemical circuits responsible for memory and concentration, according to a new study co-led by the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) and performed at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center.
Our brain cells have different types of chemical receptors that work together to produce optimal performance of brain function. Differences in the balance of these receptors can help explain who is likely to benefit from Ritalin and other stimulant medications. That is the finding of the new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Sean Tucker, Ph.D. — Founder and CSO, Vaxart Inc. — Oral Pill Vaccines For Global Health
Dr. Sean Tucker, Ph.D. is the Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Vaxart Inc. ( https://vaxart.com/ ), a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing…
Scientists develop ultraprecise, efficient and flexible technique for counting and analyzing nanoplastics
While the threat that microplastics pose to human and ecological health has been richly documented and is well known, nanoplastics, which are smaller than one micrometer (1/50th the thickness of an average human hair), are far more reactive, far more mobile and vastly more capable of crossing biological membranes. Yet, because they are so tiny and so mobile, researchers don’t yet have an accurate understanding of just how toxic these particles are.
The first step to understanding the toxicology of nanoplastics is to build a reliable, efficient and flexible tool that can not only quantify their concentration in a given sample, but also analyze which specific plastics that sample contains.
An international team of scientists led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst reports in Nature Water on the development of a new tool, known as the OM-SERS setup, which can do all of these things and can furthermore be used to detect particular nanoplastic concentrations and polymer types in solid samples, such as soils, body tissues and plants.
Real-time analysis reveals a much higher proportion of harmful substances in particulate matter than assumed
People breathing contaminated air over the course of years are at greater risk of developing numerous diseases. This is thought to be due to highly reactive components in particulate matter, which affect biological processes in the body. However, researchers from the University of Basel, Switzerland, have now shown that precisely these components disappear within hours and that previous measurements therefore completely underestimate the quantities in which they are present.
From chronic respiratory problems to cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and dementia, health damage caused by particulate matter air pollution is wide-ranging and serious. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that over six million deaths a year are caused by increased exposure to particulate matter.
The chemical composition of these tiny particles in the air, which come from a wide range of both anthropogenic and natural sources, is highly complex. Which particles trigger which reactions and long-term diseases in the body is the subject of intensive research.
