Data from a new U.K. study with the most diverse group of patients ever reported show that Parkinson’s disease symptoms — including tremors, cognitive difficulties, epilepsy, and hearing loss — can emerge up to 10 years before a diagnosis. Moreover, ethnicity or socioeconomic status were not found to be associated with Parkinson’s risk.

“This study confirms that many of the symptoms and early features of Parkinson’s can occur long before a diagnosis,” Alastair Noyce, PhD, the study’s lead investigator and a researcher at Queen Mary University of London, said in a university press release.

“We’re hoping to identify people at high risk of Parkinson’s even before obvious symptoms appear — which means that we could do more than just improve quality of life for patients, and perhaps be in the position to slow down or cure Parkinson’s in the future,” Noyce said.

Importantly, this study also identified hearing loss and seizures as early symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.

The study, “Assessment of Risk Factors and Early Presentations of Parkinson Disease in Primary Care in a Diverse UK Population,” was published in JAMA Neurology.

Source: https://www.qmul.ac.uk/

Researchers at Queen Mary University of London, University of Cambridge and Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research have discovered how a pinch of salt can be used to drastically improve the performance of batteries. Surprisingly, the salt reacted with the sponge in special ways and turned it from a homogeneous mass to an intricate structure with fibres, struts, pillars and webs. This kind of 3D hierarchically organised carbon structure has proven very difficult to grow in a laboratory but is crucial in providing unimpeded ion transport to active sites in a battery. In the study, published in JACS (Journal of the American Chemical Society), the researchers demonstrate that the use of these materials in Lithium-ion batteries not only enables the batteries to be charged-up rapidly, but also at one of the highest capacities.

Due to their intricate architecture the researchers have termed these structures ‘nano-diatoms’, and believe they could also be used in energy storage and conversion, for example as electrocatalysts for hydrogen production.

“This metamorphosis only happens when we heat the compounds to 800 degrees centigrade and was as unexpected as hatching fire-born dragons instead of getting baked eggs in the Game of Thrones. It is very satisfying that after the initial surprise, we have also discovered how to control the transformations with chemical composition,” said lead author Dr Stoyan Smoukov, from Queen Mary’s School of Engineering and Materials Science.

Source: https://www.qmul.ac.uk/