The nose or the gut? For the past two decades, the scientific community has debated the wellspring of the toxic proteins at the source of Parkinson’s disease. In 2003, a German pathologist, Heiko Braak, MD, first proposed that the disease begins outside the brain. More recently, Per Borghammer, MD, with Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark, and his colleagues argue that the disease is the result of processes that start in either the brain’s smell center (brain-first) or the body’s intestinal tract (body-first).     A new hypothesis paper appearing in the Journal of Parkinson’s ...

Professor Jill Walker Rettberg, Co-Director of the Centre for Digital Narrative at the University of Bergen, is awarded an ERC Advanced Grant for the project AI STORIES.  The grant consists of 2.5 million Euro over 5 years. This is Rettberg's second ERC Grant. “The AI STORIES project builds on the premise that storytelling is central to human culture, with narratives shaping our understanding of the world. We will study artificial intelligence and how it creates new narratives,” says Rettberg. Generative AI has been dubbed ...

A major new research project will investigate how and why groups of animals from the same species fight one another. By focussing on warlike species – mongooses and termites – researchers aim to understand how evolution can lead to extreme aggression between groups, the consequences of this and the factors that can lead to peace. The results will help to explain why violence between rival groups evolves in some species but not others, or between some groups and not others – with implications for our understanding of human evolution. The research team, led by Professor ...

[Vienna, April 11, 2024] – The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded an Advanced Grant to Mirta Galesic, a resident scientist at the Complexity Science Hub (CSH), to study the intricate workings of collective adaptation. The project aims to provide insights into why collectives – from families to entire societies – can be stuck in deadlocks about important problems, such as resolving long-standing political conflicts; or why they sometimes appear incapable of finding seemingly obvious solutions, such ...

Fukuoka, Japan—Kyushu University researchers have shed new light into a critical question on how baby stars develop. Using the ALMA radio telescope in Chile, the team found that in its infancy, the protostellar disk that surrounds a baby star discharges plumes of dust, gas, and electromagnetic energy. These 'sneezes,' as the researchers describe them, release the magnetic flux within the protostellar disk, and may be a vital part of star formation. Their findings were published in The Astrophysical Journal. Stars, including our Sun, all develop from what are called stellar nurseries, large ...

Researchers have evaluated different types of pig farming – including woodland, organic, free range, RSPCA assured, and Red Tractor certified, to assess each systems’ impact across four areas: land use (representing biodiversity loss), greenhouse gas emissions, antibiotics use and animal welfare. Their study concludes that none of the farm types performed consistently well across all four areas – a finding that has important implications for increasingly climate conscious consumers, as well as farmers themselves. However, there were individual farms that did perform well ...

Ozone disrupts chemical communication crucial to mating in insects Insect pheromones are odor molecules used for chemical communication within a species. Sex pheromones play a crucial role in the mating of many insects. Species-specific odors attract males and females of the same species. At the same time, they maintain the natural boundaries between species. The research team led by Nanji Jiang, Bill Hansson and Markus Knaden from the Department of Evolutionary Neuroethology at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology has ...

Meandering ocean currents play an important role in the melting of Antarctic ice shelves, threatening a significant rise in sea levels. A new study published in Nature Communications has revealed that the interplay between meandering ocean currents and the ocean floor induces upwelling velocity, transporting warm water to shallower depths. This mechanism contributes substantially to the melting of ice shelves in the Amundsen Sea of West Antarctica. These ice shelves are destabilizing rapidly and contributing to sea level rise. Led by Taewook Park and Yoshihiro Nakayama, ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Voids, or empty spaces, exist within matter at all scales, from the astronomical to the microscopic. In a new study, researchers used high-powered microscopy and mathematical theory to unveil nanoscale voids in three dimensions. This advancement is poised to improve the performance of many materials used in the home and in the chemical, energy and medical industries — particularly in the area of filtration. Magnification of common filters used in the home shows that, while they look like a solid ...

Cloud ‘engineering’ could be more effective for climate cooling than previously thought, because of the increased cloud cover produced, new research shows.  In a study published in Nature Geoscience (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01427-z), researchers at the University of Birmingham found that marine cloud brightening (MCB), also known as marine cloud engineering, works primarily by increasing the amount of cloud cover, accounting for 60-90% of the cooling effect.  Previous models ...

Media Availability   WHAT: Researchers have adapted an artificial intelligence (AI) program to identify signs of childbirth-related post-traumatic stress disorder (CB-PTSD) by evaluating short narrative statements of patients who have given birth. The program successfully identified a large proportion of participants likely to have the disorder, and with further refinements—such as details from medical records and birth experience data from diverse populations—the model could potentially identify ...

Statement Highlights: Patient-centered care establishes a respectful partnership among the health care team, the patient and caregivers to make shared decisions about management tailored to the patients’ beliefs, preferences and values. Person-centered care can boost health equity and improve patients’ experiences and medical outcomes. Fully incorporating patient-centered care will require involvement by patients, caregivers, health care professionals, medical schools and the health care system. Embargoed until 4 a.m. CT / 5 a.m. ET Thursday, April 11, 2024 DALLAS, April 11, 2024 — Adult cardiovascular care centered on the patient can improve ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A chemical modification in the HIV-1 RNA genome whose function has been a matter of scientific debate is now confirmed to be key to the virus’s ability to survive and thrive after infecting host cells, a new study has found. This change to HIV-1 RNA, a tiny chemical modification on the adenosine building block of RNA known as m6A, is a common RNA editing process in all life forms that involves altering gene expression and protein production. The functional effect often represents a cellular solution but, in some cases, leads to disease. By developing technological advances to observe a full length ...

Key Takeaways: An artificial intelligence model combined with a trained machine learning algorithm was found by Mass General researchers and collaborators to accurately identify childbirth-related post-traumatic stress disorder (CB-PTSD). The findings could set the stage for a highly effective, low-cost, and readily accessible way to screen for the disorder, which affects up to 8M women worldwide. Interventions could then be offered to the mother to reduce the trauma associated with the birthing process. BOSTON – A generative artificial intelligence (AI) model that can ...

The microorganisms in the intestines of many overweight people produce alcohol to an increased extent, as Max Nieuwdorp, professor of Internal Medicine at Amsterdam UMC discovered a few years ago. Breaking down that excessive alcohol leads to fatty liver, which in turn increases the risk of serious diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Nieuwdorp has now received an ERC Advanced grant of 2.5 million euros for a major study into the underlying causes of excessive alcohol production. Ultimately, he hopes to find a way to prevent excess alcohol produced in the intestines, and thus the related diseases.  In 2022, Nieuwdorp ...

Embargoed until 8:30 am Thursday, 11 April, 2024 Central European Summer Time (GMT +2) 11 April, 2024, Prague, Czech Republic—While debating the pros and cons of robotically assisted lung transplantation, Albert Jauregui, MD, PhD told attendees at the Annual Meeting and Scientific Sessions of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT), today in Prague that the time for robotic surgery is now.   Although robots are commonly used to assist in surgery, robotically assisted surgery is not routinely used for lung transplants. Approximately 4,600 ...

The full power of next-generation quantum computing could soon be harnessed by millions of individuals and companies, thanks to a breakthrough by scientists at Oxford University Physics guaranteeing security and privacy. This advance promises to unlock the transformative potential of cloud-based quantum computing and is detailed in a new study published in the influential U.S. scientific journal Physical Review Letters. Quantum computing is developing rapidly, paving the way for new applications which could transform services in many ...

The pursuit of greener energy also requires efficient rechargeable batteries to store that energy. While lithium-ion batteries are currently the most widely used, all-solid-state sodium batteries are attracting attention as sodium is far more plentiful than lithium. This should make sodium batteries less expensive, and solid-state batteries are thought to be safer, but processing issues mean mass production has been difficult. Osaka Metropolitan University Associate Professor Atsushi Sakuda and Professor Akitoshi Hayashi, both of the Graduate School of Engineering, led a research team in developing ...

While Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) affects about five percent of the general pediatric population, 80 percent of children with Down syndrome experience OSA. Continual OSA results in poor health, including disruptions to cognitive development and functioning, leading physician-researchers from Mass General Brigham to investigate better methods to treat these patients as early as possible to maximize their health outcomes. In a new case study published April 11 in Pediatrics, they report on a 4-year-old boy with Down syndrome and OSA who underwent a procedure to implant a hypoglossal nerve stimulation device, and experienced improvements thereafter.  ...

Arlington, Va. — April 11, 2024 — A new study published today in the American Journal of Infection Control (AJIC) reports the infection prevention steps taken to control a months-long multispecies outbreak of carbapenemase-producing Enterobacterales that occurred in a pediatric ward at the Toho University Omori Medical Center in Tokyo in 2017. This study highlights the particular vulnerability for contamination through sinks and other water sources; indeed, even replacing all sinks in the ward did not stop this outbreak. Carbapenemase-producing Enterobacterales (CPE) are a major public health threat ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Although lung cancer is traditionally thought of as a “smoker’s disease,” a surprising 15-20% of newly diagnosed lung cancers occur in people who have never smoked, many of whom are in their 40s or 50s.  Doctors say this concerning rise in non-smoking lung cancer cases is likely linked to long-term, high exposures of radon gas. This colorless, odorless gas is emitted from the breakdown of radioactive material naturally occurring underground that then seeps through building foundations. The gas can linger and ...

With the increasing environmental and resource problems associated with agriculture, the promotion of sustainable agricultural development has been recommended in many areas of China and also beyond its borders. As a contribution to achieving sustainable development goals, the Chinese government first proposed green development in 2015 and implemented the agriculture green development (AGD) program in 2017 to address a range of issues related to the future development of agriculture in China and the well-being ...

To date, most network security architectures have used perimeter-based defense to isolate internal networks from external networks. Firewalls, virtual private networks (VPN), and demilitarized zone (DMZ) networks prevent external attacks by creating a network security perimeter. This can effectively prevent external attacks, but it is difficult to prevent internal attacks because once an intruder breaches the security perimeter, further illegal actions will not be hindered. In addition, with the rapid development of digital technologies such as 5G, the ...

This study is led by Professor Wensheng Hou (Institute of Crop Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, China). The authors engineered a novel expression vector designed to facilitate gene editing and enable visual confirmation of successful modifications. To achieve this, the authors used RUBY reporter which harnessed the ability to convert tyrosine into a vivid red betalain pigment. This breakthrough allowed to visually confirm gene expression in soybean plants without the need for specialized equipment. By utilizing this innovative color-based screening system, the authors could quickly assess whether genetic modifications ...

New evidence of one of the first cities in the Pacific shows they were established much earlier than previously thought, according to new research from The Australian National University (ANU).   The study used aerial laser scanning to map archaeological sites on the island of Tongatapu in Tonga.   Lead author, PhD scholar Phillip Parton, said the new timeline also indicates that urbanisation in the Pacific was an indigenous innovation that developed before Western influence. “Earth structures were being constructed in Tongatapu around AD 300. This is 700 years earlier than previously thought,” ...