Leesburg, VA, September 29, 2023—According to the American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), using a 6-mm threshold, rather than a 5-mm threshold, helps facilitate better risk stratification and treatment decisions in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). “Future American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) staging updates should consider incorporation of the 6-mm threshold for N-category and tumor-stage determinations,” wrote corresponding author Zhiying Liang, MD, from the radiology department at China’s Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center. This AJR accepted manuscript by Liang et al. included ...

ROCKVILLE, MD – The Biophysical Society is honored to celebrate Kandice Tanner, a physicist and Senior Investigator at the Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. Tanner is being recognized for her pioneering work on the biophysics of the metastatic spread of cancer. Using 3D organoid models of cancer progression, Tanner discovered a novel type of cell migration and cell generated forces associated with the formation of microtissues and tumors. This discovery demonstrated that physical forces are important in the establishment ...

September 29, 2023, CLEVELAND: A team from Cleveland Clinic has developed a new model for prioritizing patients waiting for a lung transplant, aimed at improving outcomes and reducing deaths among those in need of donor lungs. The new method offers an improved strategy for organ allocation by taking into account how the time a patient has spent on the waiting list could impact the severity of their disease and the urgency of their need for a transplant. The results of a study looking at this new method were published today in The American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. Currently, ...

The University of Virginia School of Medicine’s Mariano A. Garcia-Blanco, MD, PhD, will be inducted this weekend into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS), one of the country’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies, in recognition of his exceptional scientific contributions. The AAAS was founded in 1780 – during the Revolutionary War – by John Adams, John Hancock and other founding fathers who wanted to “cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity and ...

URBANA, Ill. — As we hurtle toward crucial tipping points on a warming planet, an international team of scientists is recruiting a surprising ally to make a powerful dent in greenhouse gas emissions: the cow. Animal sciences researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign are driving a new project to reduce methane production resulting from rumen fermentation in beef and dairy cattle. The 3-year, $3.2-million project is part of the Greener Cattle Initiative, led by the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR). According to the researchers, aggressively targeting methane could help course-correct our climate trajectory on a quicker timeline ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced $264 million in funding for 29 projects to develop solutions for the scientific challenges underlying DOE’s Energy Earthshots™ Initiative to advance clean energy technologies within the decade. The funding will support 11 new Energy Earthshot Research Centers led by DOE National Laboratories and 18 university research teams addressing one or more of the Energy Earthshots™ that are focused on six different areas, including industrial decarbonization, carbon storage, and offshore wind. The Department launched the Energy Earthshots ...

A top UVA Health cancer expert is highlighting how a new drug could transform how doctors treat a brain tumor that typically strikes younger people. David Schiff, MD, the co-director of UVA Cancer Center’s Neuro-Oncology Center, has authored an editorial in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine describing the potential significance of the drug vorasidenib for patients with tumors known as “grade 2 IDH-mutant gliomas.” The drug, when tested in the INDIGO clinical trial, was found to slow tumor growth significantly and extended the average time until the tumor started growing from 11.1 months ...

An international team of researchers has released a landmark study on contemporary evolutionary change in natural populations. Their study uses one of the largest genomic datasets ever produced for animals in their natural environment, comprising nearly 4,000 Darwin’s finches. The study has revealed the genetic basis of adaptation in this iconic group. The results are published in the journal Science. Ever since Darwin wrote about the finches of the Galápagos Islands, biologists have studied these small songbirds to understand the mechanisms of evolution. One ancestral species has evolved into 18 different species in the last million years. ...

Chemical engineering researchers have a powerful new tool at their disposal: active machine learning. In a recent perspective article published in Engineering, Kevin M. Van Geem’s research team at Ghent University explores the potential of active machine learning in revolutionizing the field of chemical engineering. By combining machine learning with the design of experiments, active machine learning promises to enhance the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of research, spanning all length scales of chemical engineering. Active machine learning algorithms ...

A new article published in PeerJ Life & Environment, authored by Camila Ferreira Leão at Universidade Federal do Pará sheds light on the effects of climate change on carnivorous mammals in the Amazon and their representation within Protected Areas (PAs). "Climate change and carnivores: shifts in the distribution and effectiveness of protected areas in the Amazon," reveals alarming findings about the vulnerable status of these animals and the effectiveness of conservation measures. Carnivorous ...

Research has shown that personal narratives—the stories we tell ourselves about our lives—can play a critical role in identity and help us make sense of the past and present. Research has also shown that by helping people reinterpret narratives, therapists can guide patients toward healthier thoughts and behaviors. Now, researchers from the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania have tested the ability of ChatGPT-4 to generate individualized personal narratives based on stream-of-consciousness thoughts and demographic details ...

A research team led by Professor Tianyou Chai from Northeastern University, China, has developed an innovative intelligent control method for the low-carbon operation of energy-intensive equipment. This groundbreaking research, published in the journal Engineering, presents a significant step towards reducing carbon emissions in the process industry. The research team’s method combines mechanism analysis with deep learning, linking control and optimization with prediction, and integrating decision-making ...

A research team from Central South University in China develops innovative control method to reduce carbon emissions from zinc oxide rotary kilns. The zinc smelting industry is facing new challenges in meeting China’s carbon peak and carbon neutrality targets. To address these challenges, researchers from Central South University in China have developed a groundbreaking control method that reduces carbon emissions from zinc oxide rotary kilns while maintaining high profits. Their findings have been published in the journal Engineering. Zinc oxide rotary kilns play a crucial role in the zinc smelting process. ...

A new CRISPR-based gene-editing tool has been developed which could lead to better treatments for patients with genetic disorders. The tool is an enzyme, AsCas12f, which has been modified to offer the same effectiveness but at one-third the size of the Cas9 enzyme commonly used for gene editing. The compact size means that more of it can be packed into carrier viruses and delivered into living cells, making it more efficient. Researchers created a library of possible AsCas12f mutations and then combined selected ones to engineer an AsCas12f ...

Using data from Mass General Brigham’s electronic health records, Brigham researchers quantified the burden of SARS-CoV-2-associated sepsis early in the pandemic New research suggests that the virus responsible for COVID-19 was a more common and deadly cause of sepsis during the initial period of the pandemic than previously assumed. The study, led by investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, used electronic health record (EHR) data from five Mass General Brigham hospitals to track the rate of SARS-CoV-2-associated ...

About The Study: The results of this study of 431,000 inpatient encounters at five Massachusetts hospitals suggest that SARS-CoV-2–associated sepsis was common and had higher mortality than presumed bacterial sepsis early in the COVID-19 pandemic. These findings highlight the high burden of SARS-CoV-2–associated sepsis and demonstrate the utility of electronic health record-based algorithms to conduct surveillance for viral and bacterial sepsis.  Authors: Claire N. Shappell, M.D., M.P.H., of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, is the corresponding author.   To access the embargoed ...

About The Study: In this 50-state survey study of 13,438 adults who reported probable or definite COVID-19 infection, endorsement of misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic, lack of trust in physicians or scientists, conspiracy-mindedness, and the nature of news sources were associated with receiving non–evidence-based treatment for COVID-19. These results suggest that the potential harms of misinformation may extend to the use of ineffective and potentially toxic treatments in addition to avoidance of health-promoting behaviors.  Authors: Roy ...

About The Study: In this study of Black and white U.S. adults ages 45 and older, neighborhood-level factors, including safety and physical and social environments, and individual-level factors, including discrimination, attenuated racial disparities in cardiovascular health. Interventional approaches to improve ideal cardiovascular health that separately target neighborhood context and discrimination by gender and race are warranted.  Authors: Anika L. Hines, Ph.D., M.P.H., of the ...

Children with mental health issues are more likely to have poor mental and physical health in their late teens and early 20s, and are at greater risk of social isolation, low educational attainment, financial difficulties and heavy substance use. That’s according to new research led by RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, which examined a wide range of data from more than 5,000 children and young adults in Ireland.  The findings, published today in JAMA Network Open, are drawn from the ‘Growing up in Ireland’* study. The researchers from Ireland, the UK, and Australia followed trends of mental health throughout childhood (ages 9-13) for 5,141 ...

Language is the most important tool for human communication and essential for life in our society. “Despite a great deal of neuroscientific research on the representation of language, little is known about the organisation of language in the human brain. Much of what we do know comes from single studies with small numbers of subjects and has not been confirmed in follow-up studies,” says Dr Sabrina Turker from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig. This meta-analysis aims to help change that. Based on more than 400 ...

Study by LMU psychologists shows that distractor objects can help the visual system develop more effective search strategies. People are continuously provided with an overwhelming stream of events flooding the sensory organs. However, while the brain has impressive processing capabilities, its capacity is strongly limited. Thus, an observer cannot consciously experience all the events and information available at any one time, but has to focus on some limited subset of the whole. For many decades, researchers have investigated the neuro-cognitive mechanisms of this selective attention through the use of visual search and have shown that contextual cueing plays ...

Diagnosis of Plasmodium falciparum malaria using rapid diagnostic tests and treatment with artemisinin derivatives, the main component of the malaria treatments recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), are under threat in the Horn of Africa. Scientists from the Laboratory of Parasitology and Medical Mycology at the University of Strasbourg and Strasbourg University Hospital, in collaboration with the Eritrean Ministry of Health, the Institut Pasteur, Columbia University in New York and WHO, have detected the emergence and spread in Eritrea of parasites with both artemisinin resistance and genome modifications ...

Tsukuba, Japan—Proteins are subject to post-translational chemical modifications that result in functional diversity. Methylation is one such modification that is generally believed to occur on lysine and arginine residues. Recently, this modification has been shown to occur on histidine residues as well. Furthermore, it has been suggested that histidine methylation occurs in a wide range of proteins. However, many details remain unknown: for example, which are the proteins that are methylated and ...

A team of researchers from China has made a significant breakthrough in biomedical engineering by developing a novel adhesive that promises to revolutionize wound management and tissue repair. The research, published in Engineering, unveils a biocomposite adhesive that exhibits robust adhesion and real-time skin healing properties. Adhesives have long been recognized as a valuable tool in biomedical engineering. However, current adhesive systems face challenges in achieving strong and durable adhesion, limiting their effectiveness in wound healing. ...

A research team led by Changjiang Wu at SINOPEC (Beijing) Research Institute of Chemical Industry Co., Ltd. in China has made important progress in understanding the polymerization behavior and thermal properties of copolymers formed through ethylene copolymerization with linear and end-cyclized olefins. The findings, published in the journal Engineering, shed light on the potential of utilizing different comonomers in olefin solution polymerization to obtain high-performance polyolefin materials. Polyolefin elastomers (POEs) are widely used in various industries due to their exceptional properties. However, the high cost ...