A new American Heart Association scientific statement recently published in the journal Circulation highlights the potential benefits and risks of using complementary and alternative medicines (CAM) for managing symptoms of heart failure. The statement estimates that over 30% of people with heart failure in the United States use CAMs. The statement emphasizes the importance of involving the healthcare team in the use of CAMs for safety reasons. The American Heart Association estimates that 6 million people in the United States ages 20 and older have heart failure, which occurs when the heart is not functioning normally....

Converting the tough fibers and complex sugars in plants into biofuels and other products could be humanity’s ticket to smarter materials, better medicines, and a petroleum-free, sustainable future. But harnessing the chemical commodities stored in these molecules is no simple task. We may take it for granted because our bodies seem to do it automatically, but in reality, every time we eat a vegetable or leafy green, the microbial communities living inside of us are performing an elaborate disassembly line of coordinated chemical reactions to break the plant matter into simple sugars that human cells can use....

With the global pandemic still in full swing, scientists are working to develop a vaccine in record time. While everyone wants an effective vaccine, they don’t all agree on how to get there and what “effective” really means. Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, spoke with researchers, doctors and business leaders to shed light on some of the challenges vaccine developers are facing. As of mid-July, the World Health Organization reported that over 160 vaccine programs were in progress, an unprecedented effort toward a common goal, writes Associate Editor Ryan Cross....

A multidisciplinary analysis by a group of Brazilian scientists, published online in the journal Scientific Reports on June 21, 2021, revealed that three major factors accounted for the geographic spread of SARS-COV-2 across Brazil, as well as the massive flow of people in search of hospital care throughout the country, during the first wave of the pandemic in 2020. SARS-CoV-2 entered Brazil at the end of February 2020 through the country’s international airports....

Teams review options for the next Artemis I launch attempt … The National Space Council meets in Houston … And Webb captures a new image of a cosmic tarantula … A few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA! Teams Review Options for Next Artemis I Launch Attempt After standing down on the Artemis I launch attempt on September 3 due to a hydrogen leak, teams have decided to make the necessary repairs while the Space Launch System rocket, or SLS, remains at Launch Pad 39B....

Cilia, microscopic hairlike structures found along the bronchi (air passages throughout the lungs), are the first line of defense against environmental pollutants, viruses and bacteria. But we know little about how they are arranged, how they move or even how they are oriented—all factors which likely impact how well they defend and protect our airways. With support from the National Institutes of Health, researchers from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and the Keck School of Medicine of USC are working to bridge mathematical models of cilia behavior to biological and pathological (disease-causing) consequences....

The great flavor of your favorite beverage may be enough to persuade you to continue drinking it. However, it can’t hurt to recognize that you also benefit from these eight health-inducing perks. Your daily cups of coffee can help you live longer. They might also stave off several severe illnesses and improve your functioning. Longevity Studies show drinking coffee can prolong lifespan. Over 10 years, researchers looked at the connection between coffee consumption and death risk....

A new approach to monitoring the novel coronavirus, (as well as other dangerous pathogens and chemical agents), is being developed and refined. Known as wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE), the method mines sewage samples for vital clues about human health. It can potentially identify levels of coronavirus infection at both a local and global scale. Ultimately, WBE holds the promise of near real-time monitoring of disease outbreaks, resistant microbes, levels of drug use or health indicators of diabetes, obesity, and other maladies....

Hearing Tones, Elements Through Atomic Music Data about the structure of atoms can be transformed into sounds, giving each element its own unique musical scale. With each atom assigned a tonal signature based on its spectral signature, music can be a powerful tool for helping students understand atomic structure. Jill Linz, at Skidmore College, is working toward synthesizing unique tones for each element to create an acoustic version of the periodic table....

A recent study has added to the growing evidence connecting sleep disturbances with cognitive impairment. The research found substantial correlations between three measures of sleep disturbance and the likelihood of developing dementia over the course of 10 years According to a study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine by Elsevier, individuals who experience sleep-initiation insomnia (the inability to fall asleep within 30 minutes) and use sleep medication may be at a heightened risk for developing dementia....

Canadian researchers at The Ottawa Hospital, the University of Ottawa, the Bruyère Research Institute and ICES have built and validated an online calculator that empowers individuals 55 and over to better understand the health of their brain and how they can reduce their risk of being diagnosed with dementia in the next five years. Their process will be published today (June 25, 2021) in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, and the calculator is available at projectbiglife....

The study, which was led by Guoping Fan, professor of human genetics at David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), was published in the October edition of the journal Cell Stem Cell. Pluripotent stem cells are cells that can transform into almost any cell in the human body. Scientists have long cultured them in the laboratory (in vitro) using different methods and under a variety of conditions....

The process, published in the August 23 issue of the journal Science, uses an ultrafast pulsed laser to melt ceramic materials along the interface and fuse them together. It works in ambient conditions and uses less than 50 watts of laser power, making it more practical than current ceramic welding methods that require heating the parts in a furnace. Ceramics have been fundamentally challenging to weld together because they need extremely high temperatures to melt, exposing them to extreme temperature gradients that cause cracking, explained senior author Javier E....

In a paper published in Current Biology, the researchers used cutting-edge computational methods to uncover genetic traces of adaptation to coronaviruses, the family of viruses responsible for three major outbreaks in the last 20 years, including the ongoing pandemic. “Modern human genomes contain evolutionary information tracing back hundreds of thousands of years, however, it’s only in the past few decades geneticists have learned how to decode the extensive information captured within our genomes,” said lead author Dr....

During an exploratory survey, researchers drilled through 900 meters of ice in the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf, situated on the south eastern Weddell Sea. At a distance of 260km away from the open ocean, under complete darkness and with temperatures of -2.2°C, very few animals have ever been observed in these conditions. But this study is the first to discover the existence of stationary animals — similar to sponges and potentially several previously unknown species — attached to a boulder on the seafloor....

Antibodies are a natural and important part of our immune system. They protect us against foreign intruders in the body, such as viruses or bacteria. Additionally, in the past couple of years, researchers have been developing antibodies in the lab to use as a treatment for infectious diseases or cancer, among others. Most immune therapies, for example, use antibodies. However, their production requires industrial bioreactors that can hold tens of thousands of liters of material....

A collaboration with major participation by physicists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has made a precise measurement of elusive, nearly massless particles, and obtained a crucial hint as to why the universe is dominated by matter, not by its close relative, anti-matter. The particles, called anti-neutrinos, were detected at the underground Daya Bay experiment, located near a nuclear reactor in China, 55 kilometers north of Hong Kong. For the measurement of anti-neutrinos it made in 2012, the Daya Bay collaboration has been named runner-up for breakthrough of the year from Science magazine....

The new result from ESO’s Very Large Telescope shows that the object appears not to have been significantly stretched and that it is very compact. It is most likely to be a young star with a massive core that is still accreting material. The black hole itself has not yet shown any increase in activity. A supermassive black hole with a mass four million times that of the Sun lies at the heart of the Milky Way galaxy....

The Klebsiella oxytoca bacterium was increasingly detected during routine hygiene screenings in the neonatal ward of a children’s hospital in Germany. The bacterium can lead to gastrointestinal and respiratory infections and in the worst case result in fatal sepsis. In this particular case, common antibiotics could only be used against this pathogen to a limited extent or not at all. After newborns were repeatedly colonized with the pathogen and intensive hygiene intervention measures were unsuccessful, the hospital called in the Institute for Hygiene and Public Health (IHPH) of the University Hospital Bonn....

Study shows cats are fighting off the virus with naturally developed antibodies — however they could be at risk of reinfection. A newly published study looking at cats in Wuhan, where the first known outbreak of COVID-19 began, shows more cats might be contracting the disease than first believed. Researchers from Huazhong Agricultural University, in the Chinese city, took blood samples from 102 cats between January and March 2020, following the first outbreak....