Doctors Harness the Power of Human Connections

Last year, the V.A. started “a new social prescription program,” called Compassionate Contact Corps. Originally a home visitation program, it was restarted as a teleservice for veterans experiencing loneliness and social isolation when the pandemic hit. About 1,000 veterans are participating in the program, which involves phone or video calls with trained volunteers and requires…

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Mayo Clinic preclinical discovery triggers wound healing, skin regeneration

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Difficult-to-treat, chronic wounds in preclinical models healed with normal scar-free skin after treatment with an acellular product discovered at Mayo Clinic. Derived from platelets, the purified exosomal product, known as PEP, was used to deliver healing messages into cells of preclinical animal models of ischemic wounds. The Mayo Clinic research team documented…

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How a SARS-CoV-2 variant sacrifices tight binding for antibody evasion

The highly infectious SARS-CoV-2 variant that recently emerged in South Africa, known as B.1.351, has scientists wondering how existing COVID-19 vaccines and therapies can be improved to ensure strong protection. Now, researchers reporting in ACS’ Journal of Medicinal Chemistry have used computer modeling to reveal that one of the three mutations that make variant B.1.351…

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Driving behaviors harbor early signals of dementia

April 28, 2021 — Using naturalistic driving data and machine learning techniques, researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Columbia’s Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science have developed highly accurate algorithms for detecting mild cognitive impairment and dementia in older drivers. Naturalistic driving data refer to data captured through in-vehicle…

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Socially just population policies can mitigate climate change and advance global equity

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Socially just policies aimed at limiting the Earth’s human population hold tremendous potential for advancing equity while simultaneously helping to mitigate the effects of climate change, Oregon State University researchers say. In a paper published this week in Sustainability Science, William Ripple and Christopher Wolf of the OSU College of Forestry also…

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