To uncover this, in the November issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, Ogulur and colleagues employed in vitro methodologies and studied the effects of the dishwashing components on cultured cells, organoids, and gut-on-a-chip.

In 2018-2019, the US FDA detected cancer-causing impurities in a group of drugs that control blood pressure, prompting manufacturers and distributors to recall their products. In its most basic form, nitrosamines consist of two linked nitrogen atoms with two carbon and oxygen at the opposite end of the nitrogen bridge. With such a simple structure derived from a vulnerable amine, nitrosamines have the potential to form and stay — but how likely? Out in the Journal of Pharmaceutical Science, a group of researchers assessed the prevalence of nitrosamines formation through a computational study.

While different plants might hybridize naturally, their interactions have the potential to be drastically influenced by climate change, which might bring into contact higher numbers of disparate plant species due to the breakdown of ecological barriers. In new research upcoming at the Journal of Young Investigators, McEachern examines the interplay among hybridization events, invasive species, and climate change, and discusses whether hybridization is a true conservationist’s nightmare or might represent a potential new avenue for protecting the plant world.

Astonishingly, it has been more than 700 years since the first public dissection and almost 200 years since the first British cadaver was dissected publicly. This changed in 2022 when Toni Crews, a young British woman whom had suffered with a rare form of cancer in her lacrimal gland, audaciously waived her right to anonymity and became the first public display cadaver in the UK since records began 180 years ago as part of a groundbreaking documentary (BSMS, 2022).

Since 2020, governments and health bodies have confronted unrivalled provocations in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Initially, authorities adopted traditional strategies of contact tracing, which utilised the information from infected individuals to identify those who may have been exposed to COVID-19 as a result of close contact. Electronic methods of contact tracing swiftly emerged to supplement this practice. However, it became increasingly apparent that this medium posed a potential risk of leaking private metadata (Tiwari et al; 2019).

A new literature review upcoming at The Journal of Young Investigators, “The Relationship Between PTSD and Peer Support Among Returning War Veterans,” investigated how peer support services may aid in improving the transition back to civilian life for returning veterans, ultimately finding that pairing treatment with support groups consisting of fellow veterans can help mitigate PTSD symptoms and produce positive social feelings.

3D bioprinting of organs has become a reality, and there are thousands of publications surrounding the field. The need for 3D bioprinting can be associated with many factors, including the increase in human lifespan, with a 6-years increase in lifespan between 2000 and 2019 alone. At the root of increasing lifespan is the biological limitation of the human body. An increase in the chronological age of humans is placing pressure on the biological age and health of individuals, driving the need for regenerative strategies in medicine that focus on rebuilding lost health.

Over the past few centuries, human activities have driven a number of changes to the earth’s ecosystems, some of which have resulted in the collapse breaking down of reproductive barriers between species long considered to be separate, thus leading to the formation of hybrid organisms. In this article, I review the current literature on ways in which invasive species and climate change drive hybridization events in plants and how these events impact both the species directly involved directly and the larger ecosystems in which they live. I then explore examine some of the implications that these events have for species conservation and argue for the importance of developing a flexible research and policy framework for responding to these events when they happen.

AI’s potential is praised for its capacity to address the scarcity of mental health services and enable more widespread accessibility to healthcare while, in turn, mitigating the risk of burnout among providers. Recent developments have proven AI to be promising in the diagnosis, treatment, and therapy of mental health disorders, with many hailing it as the potential solution to our mental health epidemic. Its potential is so promising that professionals worldwide have already begun implementing it into practice. Nevertheless, there are ethical and societal implications to be considered when we start relying on technology to help us with the one thing it lacks, emotion. 

We’ve all seen lightning streak through the sky on a stormy night. What we may not know is how that lightning works. In short, the lightning that we see is the product of an electrical charge generated by the water molecules present in the fluffy, white clouds in the sky. What makes it special, though, is that these same water molecules present in humidity are now being explored to harness their conductive capabilities as a potential source of clean energy for the future.

T cells, a component of the adaptive immune system, are involved in autoimmune diseases. Accumulating evidence points to dysregulated T cell metabolism in autoimmune disorders such as systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients. In the July issue of Cell Metabolism, Jenkins and colleagues investigated the effects of SGLT2 inhibitors on T cell function by assessing the levels of inflammatory molecules released, changes in proliferation, gene expression, and metabolism of T cells.

In a groundbreaking discovery at The University of Queensland, Associate Professor Steven Zuryn and Dr. Michael Dai have uncovered a clue hidden within the intricate web of our cellular machinery in their manuscript “ATFS-1 counteracts mitochondrial DNA damage by promoting repair over transcription” published in the journal Nature Cell Biology. Meet ATSF-1, the newfound protein protagonist in the story of extending the human lifespan.

 Recently, a study conducted by researchers from UCLA, Australia, Ecuador, Germany, the Netherlands, and the U.K. examined the universality of cooperation. The study's findings, published in the scientific journal "Reports," challenge previous research that proposed cultural differences in behaviors. Contrary to the previous belief that cultures strongly influence levels of cooperation, the study suggests something unexpected—a surprising similarity in universal collaboration. The study aims to explore the human capacity for collaboration while attempting to answer the question, "to what extent are everyday cooperative events organized by common principles and to what extent do they vary across human groups?"

Our goal in this study was to examine the effects of odor on frass, or feces, production in crickets. Cricket frass contains nutrients that can serve as a fertilizer for soil, so we were interested in determining if there is a way to increase frass production. The results of our study showed that neither the sweet orange nor peppermint scent increased frass production among the crickets. The findings of this study may be significant for commercial cricket vendors, as these companies could generate income from frass converted to fertilizer instead of sending it to waste. 

Computer vision has a long history of research and development dating back to the 1960s at MIT, when pioneers of artificial intelligence sought to mimic the human visual system. The intended goal of such projects was to enable computers to “describe what they saw” from digital images or videos. However, this proved to be a much harder problem than anticipated, requiring significant strides in mathematics, physics, statistics, and learning theory that ultimately slowed interest in the field. Computer vision has since experienced a resurgence.

Thanks to new practices of applying statistical modeling to artificial intelligence via computers, disease detection has become more efficient and accurate. This has given rise to the field of computational immunology, defined as a discipline that uses mathematical models and statistical techniques to understand patterns behind immune systems and effectively develop drugs. New methods of sequencing genomes and understanding proteomics –the study of protein structures and functions– have increased the amount of data available for research, which scientists can study to glean more information about immune responses.

Aging scientists have been exploring a cell growth arrest phenomenon, cellular senescence, as a possible cause of biological aging. Senotherapeutic treatments have been discovered to reduce biological aging through the clearance of these growth-arrested “senescent” cells, resulting in mechanisms to increase biological age longevity. Could senotherapeutics be the path to human lifespan expansion? 

When you consider health conditions that can affect a large number of people, it becomes clear why diversity is so important in study. Take high blood pressure, commonly known as hypertension. It's a major deal and, for some people, even potentially fatal. Mendelian randomization, a technique that uses gene variation to assess cause and effect relationships, has revealed a relationship between high blood pressure and cardiovascular illness.

Losing a hand or an arm due to injury, disease, or congenital defect can have devastating consequences for a person’s quality of life, affecting their ability to work, play, and interact with others. But what if technology could offer a solution to this problem? What if we could create artificial limbs that could not only replace the lost functions and sensations of the natural hand, but also enhance them? What if we could utilize the power of science and medicine to transform our limitations into possibilities, and our diversity into strength?

To combat the harmful effects of stress, neuroscientists are pointing to mindfulness, defined as the practice of being fully present and aware of our external environment and our actions, while not being overly reactive or overwhelmed by external events. To shed light on this, JYI interviewed renowned neuroscientist Dr. Alexandra Fiocco, whose expertise lies at the intersection of mindfulness, stress, and cognitive aging. Dr. Fiocco currently does research at Stress and Healthy Aging Research (StAR) Lab and teaches at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Malaria has long plagued humanity, with cases (or at least what we assume are cases based on symptoms) reported as far back as 2700 BCE. Caused by a mosquito-transmitted parasite (something humanity didn’t realize until the late 1800s), malaria is a serious and sometimes fatal disease that presents with symptoms including high fevers, chills, and flu-like symptoms. It also ravaged much of the known world, with cases occurring everywhere from southern Europe to Eastern China, killing tens of millions in the process.