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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 12, 2022 at 5:19am

‘If it’s not on arXiv, it doesn’t exist’

On January 3, the arXiv server hit a milestone when it published its two milliont.... Since it was created in 1991 by physicist Paul Ginsparg, the repository has become indispensable for sharing research in fields such as astronomy, particle physics and mathematics. Such explosive growth is not painless: a handful of staff and volunteer moderators work to ensure that the 1,200 daily submissions meet basic quality standards. Critics worry that the full diversity of scientific thought — and of scientists themselves — is not represented among those gatekeepers. And the site has struggled with stability. “We’re an old classic car, and the rust has finally come through, and the pistons are wearing out,” says astrophysicist Steinn Sigurdsson, arXiv’s scientific director. “We are understaffed and underfunded — and have been for years.”

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 12, 2022 at 5:17am

First person receives gene-edited pig heart

A person in the United States is the first to receive a transplant of a genetically modified pig heart. Yesterday, the University of Maryland Medical Center announced that the 57-year-old patient was still doing well 3 days after the surgery. The heart came from a pig raised by Revivicor, a US firm that spun off from the UK company that helped to clone Dolly the sheep. It’s not clear exactly how the pig was gene-edited, but the company has developed pigs whose cell surfaces do not have a sugar molecule called α-1,3-galactose, or α-gal, which triggers the human immune system. The man also received an experimental drug made by Kiniksa Pharmaceuticals designed to stave off rejection.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 11, 2022 at 8:53am

Scientists uncover new information about cellular death process, previously thought to be irreversible

A study published by researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago describes a new method for analyzing pyroptosis—the process of cell death that is usually caused by infections and results in excess inflammation in the body—and shows that process, long thought to be irreversible once initiated, can in fact be halted and controlled.

The discovery, which is reported in Nature Communications, means that scientists have a new way to study diseases that are related to malfunctioning cell death processes, like some cancers, and infections that can be complicated by out-of-control inflammation caused by the process. These infections include sepsis, for example, and acute respiratory distress syndrome, which is among the major complications of COVID-19 illness.

Pyroptosis is a series of biochemical reactions that uses gasdermin, a protein, to open large pores in the cell membrane and destabilize the cell. To understand more about this process, the researchers designed an "optogenetic" gasdermin by genetically engineering the protein to respond to light.

The researchers applied the optogenetic gasdermin tool and used florescent imaging technology to precisely activate gasdermin in cell experiments and observe the pores under various circumstances. They discovered that certain conditions, like specific concentrations of calcium ions, for example, triggered the pores to close within only tens of seconds.

This automatic response to external circumstances provides evidence that pyroptosis dynamically self-regulates.

"This showed us that this form of cell death is not a one-way ticket. The process is actually programmed with a cancel button, an off-switch.

Understanding how to control this process unlocks new avenues for drug discovery, and now we can find drugs that work for both sides—it allows us to think about tuning, either boosting or limiting, this type of cell death in diseases, where we could previously only remove this important process.

Ana Beatriz Santa Cruz Garcia et al, Gasdermin D pores are dynamically regulated by local phosphoinositide circuitry, Nature Communications (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-27692-9

https://phys.org/news/2022-01-scientists-uncover-cellular-death-pre...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 11, 2022 at 8:41am

5G can use low-, mid- and high-band frequencies, each with advantages and disadvantages. Lower-frequency waves can travel farther but are slower. Higher-frequency waves travel faster but can go only limited distances. Higher-frequency 5G can achieve gigabit-per-second speeds, which promises to render ethernet and other wired connections obsolete in the future. Currently, however, the higher frequency comes at a higher cost and thus is deployed only where it's most needed: in crowded urban settings, stadiums, convention centers, airports and concert halls.

A type of 5G service, Ultra-Reliable and Low-Latency Communications, can be used where data needs to be transmitted without loss or interruption in service—for example, controlling drones in disaster areas. One day, after the technology is more robust, it could even be used for remote surgery.

https://theconversation.com/what-is-5g-an-electrical-engineer-expla...

Part 2

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 11, 2022 at 8:40am

What is 5G?

5G stands for fifth-generation cellular network technology.

It's the technology that enables wireless communication—for example, from your cellular phone to a cell tower, which channels it to the internet. 5G is a network service provided by telecommunications carriers and is not the same thing as the 5 GHz band on your Wi-Fi router.

5G offers an order of magnitude—10 times—more bandwidth than its predecessor, 4G. The greater bandwidth is possible because over and above low and medium frequency radio waves, 5G uses additional higher-frequency waves to encode and carry information.

Bandwidth is analogous to the width of a highway. The broader the highway, the more lanes it can have and the more cars it can carry at the same time. This makes 5G much faster and able to handle many more devices.

5G can deliver speeds of around 50 megabits per second, up to more than 1 gigabit per second. A gigabit per second connection allows you to download a high-definition movie in less than a minute. Does this mean no more bad cell connections in crowded places? The increased bandwidth will help, but just as increasing the number of lanes on highways does not always reduce traffic jams, as more people use the expanded highways, 5G is likely to carry a lot more traffic than 4G networks, so you still might not get a good connection sometimes.

In addition to connecting your phone and cellular-enabled laptop, 5G will be connecting many other devices ranging from photo frames to toasters as part of the Internet of Things revolution. So even though 5G can handle up to a million devices per square kilometer, all that bandwidth could be quickly used up and require more—a future 5.5G with even more bandwidth.

Part1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 10, 2022 at 10:06am

Risk of Death For Female Patients Is Much Higher if Surgeon Is a Man, Study Reveals

For female patients, operation outcomes tend to be significantly better when their surgeon is also female, recent research out of Canada has found.

No one really knows why that is just yet, but a new model comparing the sex of the surgeon, the sex of the patient, and the outcomes of the surgery have now revealed an implicit bias that could be costing patients their health and even their lives.

The data is based on more than 1.3 million patients who underwent one of 21 common elective surgeries in Ontario, Canada between 2007 and 2019.

Overall, the analysis suggests that when a male surgeon treats a female patient, that patient is 16 percent more likely to experience complications, 20 percent more likely to remain in the hospital for longer, and 32 percent more likely to die than if they were treated by a female surgeon.

On the other hand, male patients treated by a female surgeon were only 2 percent more likely to experience complications, and 13 percent less likely to die than if they had seen a male surgeon.

The underlying reason or reasons for this discrepancy in care remains unclear, but this isn't the first time a study has found a patient's sex might impact how their doctor treats them.

In 2018, female patients in Florida hospitals who were seeking care for heart attacks were found to have higher mortality when treated by male physicians.

In comparison, female physicians had more consistent outcomes no matter whether their patient was male or female.

Interestingly, male surgeons who had more exposure to female physicians and female patients had better outcomes for women.

While some past studies suggest female physicians prescribe different follow-up tests and medications compared to male doctors, or that they listen more to their patients, further research is needed to determine which factors are influencing these outcomes the most. Once we can figure that out, we can start to mend the bias.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article-abstract/2786671

https://www.sciencealert.com/female-patients-are-much-likelier-to-s...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 10, 2022 at 9:10am

Engineered nanomaterial captures off-target cancer drug to prevent tissue damage

 Standard chemotherapies may efficiently kill cancer cells, but they also pose significant risks to healthy cells, resulting in secondary illness and a diminished quality of life for patients. To prevent the previously unavoidable damage, researchers have developed a new class of nanomaterials engineered to capture chemotherapy drugs before they interact with healthy tissue.

The method, now available online prior to the March issue of Materials Today Chemistry, is based on hairy cellulose nanocrystals—nanoparticles developed from the main component of plant cell walls and engineered to have immense numbers of polymer chain "hairs" extending from each end. These hairs increase the potential drug capture capacity of the nanocrystals significantly beyond that of conventional nanoparticles and ion exchange resins.

For some organs, like the liver, chemotherapy can be locally administered through catheters. If we could place a device based on the nanocrystals to capture the excess drugs exiting the liver's inferior vena cava, a major blood vessel, clinicians could potentially administer higher doses of chemotherapy to kill the cancer more quickly without worry about damaging healthy cells. Once the treatment is finished, the device could be removed.

To produce the hairy cellulose nanocrystals capable of capturing chemotherapy drugs, the researchers chemically treated cellulose fibers found in softwood pulp and imparted a negative charge on the hairs, making them stable against the ionic composition of blood. According to the researchers this corrects a fault of conventional nanoparticles, whose charge can be rendered inert or reduced when exposed to blood, limiting the number of positively charged drug molecules with which it can bind to insignificant numbers.

The nanocrystals' binding efficacy was tested in human serum, the protein-rich portion of blood that does not contain red or white blood cells or platelets. For every gram of hairy cellulose nanocrystals, more than 6,000 milligrams of DOX were effectively removed from the serum.

The researchers also found that the nanocrystals had no harmful effect on red blood cells in whole blood or on cell growth in human umbilical vein endothelial cells.

1. Sarah A.E. Young, Joy Muthami, Mica Pitcher, Petar Antovski, Patricia Wamea, Robert Denis Murphy, Reihaneh Haghniaz, Andrew Schmidt, Samuel Clark, Ali Khademhosseini, Amir Sheikhi. Engineering hairy cellulose nanocrystals for chemotherapy drug capture. Materials Today Chemistry, 2022; 23: 100711 DOI: 10.1016/j.mtchem.2021.100711

https://researchnews.cc/news/10976/Engineered-nanomaterial-captures...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 9, 2022 at 11:42am

This long-lasting hydrogel could be used to replace damaged human tissues

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 8, 2022 at 12:29pm

How the Heart Changes with Exercise

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on January 8, 2022 at 12:25pm

 Researchershave discovered details of how proteins produced by oral epithelial cells protect humans against viruses entering the body through the mouth. They also found that oral bacteria can suppress the activity of these cells, increasing vulnerability to infection.

A family of proteins known as interferon lambdas produced by epithelial cells in the mouth serve to protect humans from viral infection, but the oral bacteria Porphyromonas gingivalis reduces the production and effectiveness of those important frontline defenders.

Researchers found that certain pathogenic bacterial species, P. gingivalis, which cause periodontal disease, can completely suppress interferon production and severely enhance susceptibility to viral infection. These resident oral plaque bacteria play a key role in regulating anti-viral responses.

he mouth often is a gateway into the body for viruses that infect the gastrointestinal tract and lungs such as SARS-CoV-2, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), herpes simplex and cancer-causing viruses such as human papillomavirus (HPV).

P. gingivalis, a common oral bacterium that causes periodontal disease, has been linked to numerous other diseases, including Alzheimer's disease and rheumatoid arthritis. Recent clinical studies have shown that immune suppression in patients with periodontitis can enhance susceptibility to HIV, herpes simplex and HPV.

Improved understanding of how interferons provide broad antiviral protection and activate antiviral genes to protect people from viruses, as well as how P. gingivalis compromises their protection, may lead researchers to clinical approaches to increase that protection. Research  has revealed connections between P. gingivalis and multiple other diseases and conditions, including rheumatoid arthritis, Alzheimer's disease and esophageal cancer.

1. Carlos J. Rodriguez-Hernandez, Kevin J. Sokoloski, Kendall S. Stocke, Himabindu Dukka, Shunying Jin, Melissa A. Metzler, Konstantin Zaitsev, Boris Shpak, Daonan Shen, Daniel P. Miller, Maxim N. Artyomov, Richard J. Lamont, Juhi Bagaitkar. Microbiome-mediated incapacitation of interferon lambda production in the oral mucosa. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2021; 118 (51): e2105170118 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2105170118

https://researchnews.cc/news/10948/Researchers-reveal-how-oral-bact...

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