Low parental socioeconomic status during pregnancy alters early fetal brain development

PHILADELPHIA -- The U.S. government's Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, usually abbreviated as WIC, saw a jump in enrollment of nearly 8 percent in states that implemented a federally mandated switch from paper vouchers to electronic benefit cards (EBTs), according to a study led by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The finding, published in JAMA Pediatrics, supports the rationale for the switch, which was to increase participation by making it easier and less stigmatizing to obtain and redeem WIC benefits. "The broad takeaway ...

Around one in 57 (1.76%) children in the UK is on the autistic spectrum, significantly higher than previously reported, according to a study of more than 7 million children carried out by researchers from the University of Cambridge's Department of Psychiatry in collaboration with researchers from Newcastle University and Maastricht University. Black and Chinese pupils were 26% and 38% more likely to be autistic respectively and autistic children were much more likely to face significant social disadvantage. The results are published today in JAMA Pediatrics. The team drew on data from the School Census from the National Pupil Database, collected by the Department for Education from individuals aged 2-21 years old in state-funded schools in England. Of more than 7 million ...

What The Study Did: This comparative effectiveness study investigates how the COVID-19 pandemic is associated with the benefits and risks of standard radiation therapy in simulated patients. Authors: Rifaquat Rahman, M.D., of the Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women's Cancer Center in Boston, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.3304) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, ...

BOSTON --Medical professionals often advise patients not to search the Internet for their symptoms before coming into the clinic, yet many people turn to "Dr. Google" when feeling sick. Concerns about "cyberchondria" -- or increased anxiety induced by the Internet -- have made the value of using Internet searches controversial. In a new study that used case vignettes, researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School Department of Health Care Policy explored the impact Internet searches have on patients' abilities to reach a correct diagnosis. They found that study outcomes suggest the Internet may not be so harmful after all. Participants ...

Younger age of first cannabis use or prescription drug misuse is associated with faster development of substance use disorders NIH analysis measures the prevalence of nine substance use disorders after first substance use or misuse in young people A new study shows that in the time after first trying cannabis or first misusing prescription drugs, the percentages of young people who develop the corresponding substance use disorder are higher among adolescents (ages 12-17) than young adults (ages 18-25). In addition, 30% of young adults develop a heroin use disorder and 25% develop a methamphetamine use disorder a year after first using heroin or methamphetamine. These findings, published in JAMA Pediatrics, emphasize the vulnerability ...

A hydrogel, a type of soft matter, developed at Hokkaido University successfully reverted cancer cells back to cancer stem cells within 24 hours, in six different human cancer types. This could lead to the development of anti-cancer stem cell drugs and personalized medicines. An innovative hydrogel - called a double network (DN) gel - can rapidly reprogram differentiated cancer cells into cancer stem cells, researchers at Hokkaido University and the National Cancer Center Research Institute have reported in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering. The hydrogel can be used to help develop ...

A new black hole breaks the record -- not for being the smallest or the biggest -- but for being right in the middle. The recently discovered 'Goldilocks' black hole is part of a missing link between two populations of black holes: small black holes made from stars and supermassive giants in the nucleus of most galaxies. In a joint effort, researchers from the University of Melbourne and Monash University have uncovered a black hole approximately 55,000 times the mass of the sun, a fabled "intermediate-mass" black hole. The discovery was published today in the paper Evidence for an intermediate mass black hole from a gravitationally lensed gamma-ray burst in the journal Nature Astronomy. Lead author and University of Melbourne PhD student, ...

In the last few years, as climate changes continues to become more severe, there has been a growing push for rich countries to pay poorer ones to preserve and protect rain forests and other tropical forests. However, according to a new study in Nature Ecology & Evolution, RIHN Associate Professor Keiichiro Kanemoto and Senior Researcher Nguyen Tien Hoang show that other financial motives, namely international trade, with these same rich countries have actually encouraged poorer countries to increase their annual deforestation levels from 2001 to 2015. Every year ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA - Using an ordinary light microscope, MIT engineers have devised a technique for imaging biological samples with accuracy at the scale of 10 nanometers -- which should enable them to image viruses and potentially even single biomolecules, the researchers say. The new technique builds on expansion microscopy, an approach that involves embedding biological samples in a hydrogel and then expanding them before imaging them with a microscope. For the latest version of the technique, the researchers developed a new type of hydrogel that maintains a more uniform configuration, allowing for greater accuracy in imaging tiny structures. This degree of accuracy ...

Simulating the interactions between atoms and molecules is important for many scientific studies. However, accurate simulations can take a long time, which limits their use. To speed up simulations without sacrificing too much detail, Siewert-Jan Marrink, Professor of Molecular Dynamics at the University of Groningen, designed a set of parameters that allow fast but accurate coarse-grained simulations. In a paper that was published on 29 March in Nature Methods, Marrink and his co-workers present a third release of what is known as the Martini forcefield. 'Our Martini forcefield typically combines four heavy atoms and any attached protons into ...