Daily Research

In a new study, scans of people who had a brain hemisphere removed as children show how the organ adapted. In severe cases of epilepsy, a patient’s seizures can become so incessant, and other treatments so ineffective, that doctors will remove half of the brain during childhood to stop them. It's a procedure known as a hemispherectomy. Yet, incredibly, these patients still have intact motor, language and thinking skills. In a study published  Tuesday in  Cell Reports ,  scientists studied six of these patients to see how the human brain rewires itself to adapt after major surgery. After performing brain scans on the patients, the researchers found that the remaining hemisphere formed even stronger connections between different brain networks — regions that control things like walking, talking and memory — than in healthy control subjects. And the researchers suggest that these connections enable the brain, essentially, to function as if it were still whole. S...

A new VCU study identifies “a distinctly American phenomenon” as mortality among 25 to 64 year-olds increases and U.S. life expectancy continues to fall. Mortality rates among working-age Americans continue to climb, causing a decrease in U.S. life expectancy that is severely impacting certain regions of the United States, according to a  Virginia Commonwealth University  study set to publish Tuesday in JAMA. The report, “ Life Expectancy and Mortality Rates in the United States, 1959-2017, ” is one of the most comprehensive 50-state analyses of U.S. mortality. Deaths among Americans ages 25 to 64 are increasing, particularly in Rust Belt states and Appalachia. These deaths, which have fueled a decline in U.S. life expectancy since 2014, are linked to several major causes of death. Compared to the 1990s, working-age adults are now more likely to die before age 65 from drug overdoses, alcohol abuse and suicides — sometimes referred to as “deaths of despair”— but also f...

Researchers traced neural connections in a newly discovered brain region of mantis shrimp, gaining new insights into how the fierce predators are able to make sense of a breathtaking amount of visual input. A study involving scientists at the University of Arizona and the University of Queensland provides new insight into how the small brains of mantis shrimp - fierce predators with keen vision that are among the fastest strikers in the animal kingdom - are able to make sense of a breathtaking amount of visual input. The researchers examined the neuronal organization of mantis shrimp, which are among the top predatory animals of coral reefs and other shallow warm water environments. The research team discovered a region of the mantis shrimp brain they called the reniform ("kidney-shaped") body. The discovery sheds new light on how the crustaceans may process and integrate visual information with other sensory input. Mantis shrimp sport the most complex visual syst...

El Ninos have become more intense in the industrial age, which stands to worsen storms, drought, and coral bleaching in El Nino years. A new study has found compelling evidence in the Pacific Ocean that the stronger El Ninos are part of a climate pattern that is new and strange. It is the first known time that enough physical evidence spanning millennia has come together to allow researchers to say definitively that: El Ninos, La Ninas, and the climate phenomenon that drives them have become more extreme in the times of human-induced climate change. "What we're seeing in the last 50 years is outside any natural variability. It leaps off the baseline. Actually, we even see this for the entire period of the industrial age," said Kim Cobb, the study's principal investigator and professor in the Georgia Institute of Technology's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. "There were three extremely strong El Nino-La Nina events in the 50-year period, but i...

Vaccinated rabbits produce antibodies to at least two vulnerable sites on HIV. LA JOLLA, CA –  An experimental HIV vaccine developed by scientists at  Scripps Research  and the nonprofit vaccine research organization  IAVI  has reached an important milestone by eliciting antibodies that can neutralize a wide variety of HIV strains. The tests, in rabbits, showed that these “broadly neutralizing” antibodies, or bnAbs, targeted at least two critical sites on the virus. Researchers widely assume that a vaccine must elicit bnAbs to multiple sites on HIV if it is to provide robust protection against this ever-changing virus. The promising results,  which appear in  Immunity , suggest that researchers are one step closer  to developing an effective HIV vaccine—a major goal of medical science ever since the virus was identified in 1983. “It’s an initial proof of principle but an important one, and we’re now working to optimize this vaccine de...

Abstract Objective  The global impact of artemisinin-based combination therapies on malaria-associated mortality and their origins in ancient Chinese medicine has heightened interest in the natural discovery of future antimalarials. Methods  A double-blind study to identify potential ingredients with antimalarial activity from traditional remedies with reported antipyretic properties. Recipes of clear broths, passed down by tradition in families of diverse ethnic origin, were sourced by school children. Broths were then tested for their ability to arrest malaria parasite asexual growth or sexual stage development in vitro. Clear broth extract was incubated with in vitro cultures of  Plasmodium falciparum  asexual or mature sexual stage cultures and assayed for parasite viability after 72 hours. Results  Of the 56 broths tested, 5 were found to give >50% in vitro growth inhibition against  P. falciparum  asexual blood stages, with...

New research raises hopes of oral vaccine for dogs, the chief source of transmission to humans Researchers have discovered a way to stop rabies from shutting down critical responses in the immune system, a breakthrough that could pave the way for new tools to fight the deadly disease. Rabies kills almost  60,000 people each year , mostly affecting poor and rural communities. It is hoped that the discovery could lead to new and improved vaccines, including oral vaccines for dogs – which are responsible for the vast majority of transmissions to humans. The study,  published in Cell Reports  and carried out by teams at Monash University and the University of Melbourne, provides crucial information about how the rabies virus targets the body. The researchers believe they are the first to observe how a particular protein made by the rabies virus binds to a critical cellular protein known as Stat1, halting key parts of the immune response. The discovery has allowe...