RICHLAND, Wash.—There’s some irony in the fact that devices that seem indispensable to modern life—mobile phones, personal computers, and anything battery-powered—depend entirely on minerals extracted from mining, one of the most ancient of human industries. Once their usefulness is spent, we typically return these objects to the Earth in landfills, by the millions. But what if we could “mine” electronic waste (e-waste), recovering the useful minerals contained within them, instead of throwing them away? A clever method of recovering valuable minerals from e-waste, developed by a research team at the Department ...

How do algorithms determine the way we interact with our memories? It’s a uniquely 21st-century kind of question, and it is far from settled. In a new paper in the journal Memory, Mind & Media, Concordia PhD candidate Chrys Vilvang argues that the way tech companies store, package and share personal content back to users is opaque. And, given one recent controversy, it’s open to important questions about selection and representation. Vilvang’s paper looks at the discussion stemming from an April 2022 article on 9to5Mac, a tech news site dedicated to all things Apple. Its journalists were given access to the iOS 15.5 beta update, and they discovered ...

Image  University of Michigan researchers have developed a new tool to better understand how chemicals like dopamine and epinephrine interact with neurons.   These chemicals are among a wide variety of signals that get processed in the brain through G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), proteins that sit on the surface of neurons to receive messages—in the forms of proteins, sugars, fats, even light—that inform cellular behavior.    GPCRs are involved in an enormous number of biological functions, making them a prime ...

Asian monsoon lofts ozone-depleting substances to stratosphere Airborne observations discover new link between pollution and climate Powerful monsoon winds, strengthened by a warming climate, are lofting unexpectedly large quantities of ozone-depleting substances high into the atmosphere over East Asia, new research shows.  The study, led by the U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR) and NASA, found that the East Asian Monsoon delivers more than twice the concentration of very short-lived ozone-depleting substances into the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere than previously reported. The research team ...

A Brigham and Women’s Hospital study of 30 people found that, in patients with MS, advanced brain imaging could identify hidden inflammation not picked up on traditional MRIs The new technique could lead to more advanced treatments for multiple sclerosis A new study from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, suggests positron emission tomography (PET) brain scans could reveal hidden inflammation in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) who are being treated with highly-effective treatments. The findings were published ...

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. – April 23, 2024) Survivors of childhood cancer are at increased risk for cardiovascular disease, for which a risk factor is their greater prevalence of type 2 diabetes, with a disproportionate impact on those of non-European heritage. St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists have identified four previously unknown genetic variants associated with diabetes risk in all survivors. Published today in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, their work also found an association between a previously ...

In today's digital age, social media platforms like TikTok have become integral parts of our lives, offering not just entertainment and catchy dances but also a wealth of information on topics ranging from home improvement to world news. According to some reports, many young people even prefer to use social media in place of traditional search engines like Google when looking for answers. Health information is no exception. Hashtags like #celiactok, #diabetestok and #sinustok have millions of views, with each tag leading to countless videos about each health issue. “Every type of ‘Tok’ exists – that’s just ...

A UC Davis Health study reveals persistent racial and social disparities preventing access to autoHCT, a common bone marrow transplant treatment to halt the progression of multiple myeloma. An analysis of data from three California health care organizations, published in Clinical Lymphoma, Myeloma & Leukemia, showed that Black myeloma patients were less likely to receive autoHCT. This was despite having a greater risk of developing the cancer than other racial or ethnic groups. Patients using Medicaid, Medicare, or no insurance in California also accessed the treatment less than those with other insurance ...

When we think of evolution, we think of a process that happens over hundreds or thousands of years. In research recently published, a team led by Rick Relyea, Ph.D., professor of biological sciences and David M. Darrin ’40 Senior Endowed Chair at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, found a species of frog that has evolved over the course of merely 25 years. The adaptation was spurred on by something many assume is innocuous: salt. “We’ve been applying de-icing salts to reduce car accidents in snowy and icy conditions in the United States for 80 years, and we currently apply four times more road salt than we did ...

A new publication from Opto-Electronic Advances; DOI  10.29026/oea.2024.230184  , discusses tailoring electron vortex beams with customizable intensity patterns by electron diffraction holography.   In recent years, the scientific community has witnessed a notable breakthrough in the study and development of electron vortices. Electron vortices are electron beams that carry orbital angular momentum, meaning the electrons move not only in their propagation direction but also rotate in a vortex-like manner. This unique characteristic offers many new physical properties and potential applications, making it a powerful ...

sychologists from Simon Fraser University (SFU) and the University of Sussex have found that people are as hesitant to reach out to an old friend as they are to strike up a conversation with a stranger, even when they had the capacity and desire to do so. The new research is published today in the journal Nature Communications Psychology. Scientific research has shown that social relationships are important to human happiness, and that the greater the number and range of friendships that we engage with, the better our wellbeing. But once relationships are formed, some ...

Even with important strides in addressing health issues across the globe, men have not benefited equally compared to women. Men’s life expectancies have not grown as steadily as women’s over the past few decades, and they are expected to live about five years less than women, according to 2021 global health data from the Human Mortality Database and the United Nations’ World Population Prospects. The discrepancy in life expectancy between men and women persists in places all over the world, and is even growing in other places. At a time when health resources are at a premium and need to be wisely allocated, health professionals ...

https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.15212/CVIA.2024.0024 Announcing a new article publication for Cardiovascular Innovations and Applications journal. This study was aimed at comparing the “late catch-up” phenomenon between the BuMA Supreme bioresorbable polymer sirolimus-eluting stent and the XIENCE stent through serial optical coherence tomography (OCT) at within 2 months and 2 year follow-ups. A total of 49 of 75 patients from the PIONEER-II study were enrolled in a 2 year OCT follow-up study; 44 patients with 50 lesions were included in the statistical ...

For hundreds of millions of years, the oceans have teemed with single-celled organisms called foraminifera, hard-shelled, microscopic creatures at the bottom of the food chain. The fossil record of these primordial specks offers clues into future changes in global biodiversity, related to our warming climate.   Using a high-resolution global dataset of planktonic foraminifera fossils that’s among the richest biological archives available to science, researchers have found that major environmental stress events leading to mass extinctions are reliably preceded by subtle changes in how a biological ...

In a new study in Issues, Dominique J. Baker, an associate professor in the College of Education and Human Development and the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy & Administration at the University of Delaware, explored the role of student loans on hopeful students striving for college degrees, particularly in STEM.  The cost of attending a public four-year college in the United States has more than doubled since the early 1990s, when inflation is factored in.  Undergraduate student loan debt has become unmanageable for a wide swath of borrowers ...

As computer programming becomes an increasingly valued skill in the workforce, there is a greater need to understand how people learn to code most effectively. Statistics show that up to 50% of students who enroll in introductory programming courses in the United States eventually drop out, suggesting a mismatch between how coding is learned and the way it’s taught. A new study from the University of Washington, published March 5 in Scientific Reports, examines that issue. The researchers recorded electrophysiological brain responses of varyingly skilled programmers as they read ...

Physicist Denis T. Keane is the 2024 recipient of the Gopal K. Shenoy Excellence in Beamline Science Award. He is a beamline scientist and director of the Dupont-Northwestern-Dow Collaborative Access Team (DND-CAT) at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Advanced Photon Source (APS) at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory. He is also a research professor in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at Northwestern University. The annual award recognizes active beamline scientists at the APS, ...

A small-scale surveillance system in Tanzania for reporting livestock abortions could help protect livelihoods and provide insights on potential livestock-to-human infections. The research, published April 16 as a Reviewed Preprint in eLife, is described by editors as an important study with convincing findings of potential interest to the fields of veterinary medicine, public health and epidemiology. Loss of livestock through abortion is a major concern for the worldwide livestock industry, resulting in significant ...

Researchers have described the optimal timing for COVID-19 patients to take the antiviral, Paxlovid, to get the most benefit from the treatment, according to a study published April 16 in eLife. The findings suggest that taking Paxlovid three to five days after COVID-19 symptoms emerge may maximise the drug’s ability to reduce viral loads, minimise viral spread and reduce viral rebound. They also indicate that broader use of Paxlovid during this window might be a powerful tool to help curb the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 ...

INDIANAPOLIS—A new $4.8 million grant will support researchers from Indiana University School of Medicine and the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology to study how human neurodegenerative diseases are affected by the misfolding of the protein TDP-43. Misfolding occurs when a protein adopts a conformation which differs from the native one. The researchers, funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, have developed an innovative approach to deciphering the role of TDP-43 misfolding in the pathology ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Science has selected 86 graduate students representing 31 states and Puerto Rico for the Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program’s 2023 Solicitation 2 cycle. Through world-class training and access to state-of-the-art facilities and resources at DOE national laboratories, SCGSR prepares graduate students to enter jobs of critical importance to the DOE mission and secures our national position at the forefront of discovery and innovation. “The Graduate Student Research program is a unique opportunity ...

Health-monitoring apps can help people manage chronic diseases or stay on track with fitness goals, using nothing more than a smartphone. However, these apps can be slow and energy-inefficient because the vast machine-learning models that power them must be shuttled between a smartphone and a central memory server. Engineers often speed things up using hardware that reduces the need to move so much data back and forth. While these machine-learning accelerators can streamline computation, they are susceptible to attackers who can steal secret ...

A rapidly spreading virus threatens the health of the cacao tree and the dried seeds from which chocolate is made, jeopardizing the global supply of the world’s most popular treat. About 50% of the world’s chocolate originates from cacao trees in the West Africa countries of Ivory Coast and Ghana. The damaging virus is attacking cacao trees in Ghana, resulting in harvest losses of between 15 and 50%. Spread by small insects called mealybugs that eat the leaves, buds and flowers of trees, the cacao swollen shoot virus disease (CSSVD) is among the most damaging threats to the root ingredient of chocolate. “This ...

Post-mitotic neurons in the brain that re-enter the cell cycle quickly succumb to senescence, and this re-entry is more common in Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new study published April 9th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Kim Hai-Man Chow and colleagues at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The phenomenon may provide an opportunity to learn more about the neurodegeneration process, and the technique used to make this discovery is readily applicable to other inquiries about unique populations of cells in the brain. Most neurons in the ...

Phage therapy is being explored to treat multidrug-resistant bacterial infections, but what are the direct effects of phages on the human host? This study shows that therapeutic phages can be detected by epithelial cells of the human respiratory tract, eliciting proinflammatory responses that depend on specific phage properties and the airway microenvironment.   ##### In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Biology:   http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002566 Article ...