People with paranormal beliefs spooked by science and the COVID-19 vaccine

The largest supermoon appearance of 2022, identified as the Buck Moon, rises above the mountain line in Morgantown, July 13. New WVU sociological research shows people who believe in witchcraft, telekinesis and other forms of paranormal phenomenon are more likely to mistrust science and vaccines.
Photo Credit:David Malecki | West Virginia University

The number 13, telekinesis and witchcraft play a part in a person’s mistrust of science and vaccines, including the COVID-19 shot, according to research from West Virginia University sociologists.

Previous research has shown that people with conservative religious beliefs are more likely to lack confidence in the COVID-19 vaccine, but most studies have observed only mainstream or institutionalized religious forms. WVU researchers Katie Corcoran, Chris Scheitle and Bernard DiGregorio were curious whether paranormal beliefs — beliefs in astrology and spirits, for instance — would be associated with a similar lack of confidence.

“We were interested in looking at how religion, science and what we call ‘the enchanted worldview’ relate to each other,” said Corcoran, associate professor of sociology in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, explaining that the enchanted worldview incorporates traditional religious beliefs, like beliefs in angels, God, demons and spirits.

“It also incorporates the belief that crystals can heal, belief in astrology and belief that the world is enchanted, that there’s more than the empirical world, beyond just religion. So, this particular project looks at what we call paranormal beliefs, which cut across several different areas.”

Autistic women have increased risk of mental illness

Photo credit: Alexander Grey

Young men and women with autism are more affected by psychiatric conditions and are at increased risk of being threatened as a result of their mental illness, compared to people without autism. Practically vulnerable are autistic women. This is shown by researchers from the Karolinska Institutet in a study published in JAMA Psychiatry.

People with autism have an increased risk of suffering from mental illness. Current data indicates that women with autism are more vulnerable than autistic but are, but few studies have been able to establish that there are gender differences.

Researchers from Karolinska Institutet have now done a register-based cohort study with just over 1.3 million people in Sweden, which was followed from 16 to 24 years between 2001 and 2013. More than 20,000 of these were diagnosed with autism.

The researchers could see that by the age of 25, 77 out of 100 women with autism, compared to 62 out of 100 but with autism, had received at least one psychiatric diagnosis.

We saw an increased risk of eleven different psychiatric conditions, including depression, anxiety syndrome, self-harm behavior and insomnia, says Miriam Martini, PhD student in psychiatric epidemiology at Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatics at Karolinska Institutet and first author of the study.

A key regulator of cell growth deciphered

The SEA complex is composed of a cage-like core (SEACAT, blue) that regulates the activity of the wings (SEACIT, white and bright).
Credit: Ciencia Graficada

The mTOR protein plays a central role in cell growth, proliferation and survival. Its activity varies according to the availability of nutrients and some growth factors, including hormones. This protein is implicated in several diseases, including cancer, where its activity frequently increases. To better understand its regulation, a team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), in collaboration with researchers from the Martin Luther University (MLU) of HalleWittenberg in Germany, and the recently inaugurated Dubochet Center for Imaging (UNIGE-UNIL-EPFL), has identified the structure of the SEA complex - an interdependent set of proteins - responsible for controlling mTOR. The discovery of this structure allows a better understanding of how cells perceive nutrient levels to regulate their growth. This work can be read in the journal Nature.

From yeast to humans, the mTOR protein (mammalian target of rapamycin) is the central controller of cell growth. This protein responds to various signals in the cell’s environment, such as nutrients and hormones, and regulates many fundamental cellular functions, such as protein and lipid synthesis, energy production by mitochondria and the organization of the cell’s structure. Disruptions in mTOR activity are the cause of several diseases, including diabetes, obesity, epilepsy and various types of cancer

Awareness of one’s own body is based on uncertainty and guesses

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have found that the perception of one's own body is very based on the brain making guesses based on probability theory. It shows a study recently published in the journal eLife.

How we perceive our own body is largely based on probability assessments based on past experiences, in combination with sensory information such as vision and feeling, for example.

You could say that the experience of your own body is a statistical estimate of reality based on sensory information, sensorory uncertainty, and past experiences that can be summed up in the mathematical model explain Henrik Ehrsson, professor at the Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet.

Nestling birds recognize their local song ‘dialect’

The researchers discovered that the juvenile flycatchers clear response to their own song dialect helped them avoid learning songs from other species in the environment.
Photo credit: Tom Wallis

A recent study, published in Current Biology, led by researchers at Stockholm University and Uppsala University, has shown that juvenile songbirds react to hearing the songs they will eventually produce as adults, even when they are as young as 12 days old. Experiments conducted on nestling pied flycatchers across Europe demonstrate that they preferentially respond to songs from their own species and, remarkably, their own population.

Like human children learning language, juvenile songbirds learn their songs by listening to those produced by their parents and other adults. In both human language and songbird song, the learning process gives rise to small changes from one generation to the next, which leads to characteristic differences among populations, called dialects.

Metabolite product from pomegranate: Researchers identify way to boost tumor-fighting immune cells

A metabolite from pomegranates boosts tumor-fighting T cells, according to a study by Georg-Speyer-Haus, Goethe University Frankfurt and the LOEWE Centre Frankfurt Cancer Institute (FCI).
Photo credit: Markus Bernards

As part of an interdisciplinary project of the LOEWE Centre Frankfurt Cancer Institute (FCI), researchers from the Georg-Speyer-Haus in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and Goethe University Frankfurt have succeeded in identifying a new approach for the therapy of colorectal cancer. In preclinical models and studies on human immune cells, they found that urolithin A, a metabolite product from pomegranate, sustainably improves the function of immune cells in their fight against cancer. After treatment with urolithin A, tumor-fighting immune cells become T memory stem cells which, due to their ability to divide, constantly supply the immune system with rejuvenated, non-exhausted T cells.

Colorectal cancer remains a disease with high mortality rates in advanced stages. In recent years, numerous research findings have improved early diagnosis and therapy, although unfortunately not all patients respond adequately to novel therapeutic approaches. Current research suggests that one characteristic of tumor diseases is immune dysfunction: immune cells that are supposed to fight the tumor are systematically suppressed by the tissue surrounding the tumor, the tumor microenvironment. As a result, T cells, which are our body's natural immune response against cancer, are restricted in their function, allowing the tumor to grow and spread uncontrollably.

Tree rings offer insight into devastating radiation storms

A University of Queensland study has shed new light on a mysterious, unpredictable and potentially devastating kind of astrophysical event.

A team led by Dr Benjamin Pope from UQ’s School of Mathematics and Physics applied cutting edge statistics to data from millennia-old trees, to find out more about radiation ‘storms.

“These huge bursts of cosmic radiation, known as Miyake Events, have occurred approximately once every thousand years but what causes them is unclear,” Dr Pope said. “The leading theory is that they are huge solar flares.

“We need to know more, because if one of these happened today, it would destroy technology including satellites, internet cables, long-distance power lines and transformers.

“The effect on global infrastructure would be unimaginable.”

Enter the humble tree ring.

First author UQ undergraduate math student Qingyuan Zhang developed software to analyze every available piece of data on tree rings.

Study Identifies Key T Cells for Immunity Against Fungal Pneumonia

 GM-CSF+ and IL-17A+ lineages of T cells are instrumental in controlling many fungal and bacterial infections and implicated in autoimmune pathology. This study shows that GM-CSF expressing Tc17 cells are necessary for mediating fungal vaccine immunity without augmenting pathology.
Credit: Som Nanjappa

Researchers at the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine have demonstrated in a mouse model that a specific type of T cell, one of the body’s potent immune defenses, produces cytokines that are necessary for the body to acquire immunity against fungal pathogens. This finding could be instrumental in developing novel, effective fungal vaccines.

Despite vaccines being hailed as one of the greatest achievements of medicine, responsible for controlling or eradicating numerous life-threatening infectious diseases, no vaccines have been licensed to prevent or control human fungal infections.

This lack proved especially deadly during the COVID-19 pandemic. In countries where steroids were widely used to suppress inflammation of the lungs, COVID-19 patients with preexisting conditions such as uncontrolled diabetes showed a greater likelihood of developing lethal fungal infections.

Researchers create the first quasiparticle Bose-Einstein condensate

Observation of Bose-Einstein condensates of excitons in a bulk semiconductor using mid-infrared induced absorption imaging realized in a dilution refrigerator A close-up picture of the apparatus in a cryogen-free dilution refrigerator. A dark red-colored cubic crystal in the center of the picture is cuprous oxide. A zinc selenide meniscus lens placed behind the crystal is an objective lens. A rod and a stage below the crystal is used for generation of an inhomogeneous strain field in the crystal that acts as a trap potential for excitons.
Credit: ©2022 Yusuke Morita, Kosuke Yoshioka and Makoto Kuwata-Gonokami, The University of Tokyo

Physicists have created the first Bose-Einstein condensate — the mysterious “fifth state” of matter — made from quasiparticles, entities that do not count as elementary particles but that can still have elementary-particle properties like charge and spin. For decades, it was unknown whether they could undergo Bose-Einstein condensation in the same way as real particles, and it now appears that they can. The finding is set to have a significant impact on the development of quantum technologies including quantum computing.

A paper describing the process of creation of the substance, achieved at temperatures a hair’s breadth from absolute zero, was published in the journal Nature Communications.

Bose-Einstein condensates are sometimes described as the fifth state of matter, alongside solids, liquids, gases and plasmas. Theoretically predicted in the early 20th century, Bose-Einstein condensates, or BECs, were only created in a lab as recently as 1995. They are also perhaps the oddest state of matter, with a great deal about them remaining unknown to science.

Autistic people are more likely to experience depression and anxiety during pregnancy

Credit: PetraSolajova

Autistic people are more vulnerable to depression and anxiety during pregnancy, according to new research from the University of Cambridge. The results are published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders and have important implications for supporting autistic people during pregnancy.

In the study, led by researchers at the Autism Research Centre, 524 non-autistic people and 417 autistic people completed an online survey about their experience of pregnancy. Anyone who was pregnant at the time of responding or had previously given birth was eligible to take part.

The study revealed that autistic parents were around three times more likely than non-autistic parents to report having experienced prenatal depression (9% of non-autistic parents and 24% of autistic parents) and anxiety (14% of non-autistic parents and 48% of autistic parents).

Autistic respondents also experienced lower satisfaction with pregnancy healthcare. Autistic respondents were less likely to trust professionals, feel that professionals took their questions and concerns seriously, feel that professionals treated them respectfully, and be satisfied with how information was presented to them in appointments. Furthermore, autistic respondents were more likely to experience sensory issues during pregnancy and more likely to feel overwhelmed by the sensory environment of prenatal appointments.