Study finds link between racial factors and likelihood of getting proven diabetes treatment

Technology and commercial advancements are expected to continue to drive down the cost of wind energy, according to a survey led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) of the world's foremost wind power experts. Experts anticipate cost reductions of 17%-35% by 2035 and 37%-49% by 2050, driven by bigger and more efficient turbines, lower capital and operating costs, and other advancements. The findings are described in an article in the journal Nature Energy. The study summarizes a global survey of 140 wind experts on three wind applications - onshore (land-based) wind, fixed-bottom offshore wind, and ...

The causes of the serious muscle disease ALS still remain unknown. Now, researchers at Karolinska Institutet and KTH Royal Institute of Technology, among others, have examined a type of cell in the brain blood vessels that could explain the unpredictable disease origins and dynamics. The results indicate a hitherto unknown connection between the nervous and vascular systems. The study, which is published in Nature Medicine, has potential implications for earlier diagnoses and future treatments. ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) is a neurodegenerative disease of the motor neurons that eventually ...

PHILADELPHIA--Real-word evidence is suggesting, for the first time, the most beneficial treatment courses that could help extend the lives of patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer, according to research from the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania. In a new study published online today in JAMA Oncology, researchers show that patients harboring a KRAS gene mutation with high levels of PDL-1 lived longer when treated with immunotherapy alone, compared to patients without this mutation. This survival difference by KRAS status was not seen, however, in patients treated with both chemotherapy and immunotherapy, suggesting combination therapy for patients without the mutation may be preferred. The new findings, based off an analysis of the Flatiron ...

Inspired by the workings of a bat's ear, Rolf Mueller, a professor of mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech, has created bio-inspired technology that determines the location of a sound's origin. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buFM5KkAnEo Mueller's development works from a simpler and more accurate model of sound location than previous approaches, which have traditionally been modeled after the human ear. His work marks the first new insight for determining sound location in 50 years. The findings were published in Nature Machine Intelligence ...

There is no cheaper way to generate electricity today than with the sun. Power plants are currently being built in sunny locations that will supply solar electricity for less than two cents per kilowatt hour. Solar cells available on the market based on crystalline silicon make this possible with efficiencies of up to 23 percent. Therefore they hold a global market share of around 95 percent. With even higher efficiencies of more than 26 percent, costs could fall further. An international working group led by photovoltaics researchers from Forschungszentrum Jülich ...

More than 20 years after the launch of a landmark clinical trial, follow-up examinations and analyses found that not all patients with elevated eye pressure need pressure-lowering treatment to prevent vision loss from glaucoma. When the study was launched, it was universally accepted that all patients with elevated eye pressure should be given medication to lower that pressure. The Ocular Hypertension Treatment Study -- funded by the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and led by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine ...

Prime editing (PE), a "search-and-replace" CRISPR-based genome editing technique, has great potential for gene therapy and agriculture. It can introduce desired base conversions, deletions, insertions, and combination edits into target genomic sites. Prime editors have been successfully applied in animals and plants, but their off-target effects, which can be a major hindrance to real-life application, have not been thoroughly evaluated until now. Prof. GAO Caixia from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology (IGDB) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and her research team recently performed a comprehensive and genome-wide analysis of the off-target effects of PEs in rice plants. Off-target ...

It is an old-standing theory in evolutionary ecology: animal species on islands have the tendency to become either giants or dwarfs in comparison to mainland relatives. Since its formulation in the 1960s, however, the 'island rule' has been severely debated by scientists. In a new publication in Nature Ecology and Evolution on April 15, researchers solved this debate by analysing thousands of vertebrate species. They show that the island rule effects are widespread in mammals, birds and reptiles, but less evident in amphibians. Dwarf hippos and elephants in the Mediterranean islands are examples of large ...

Using a new single-cell technique, WEHI researchers have uncovered a way to understand the programming behind how stem cells make particular cell types. The research uncovered 30 new genes that program stem cells to make the dendritic cells that kick-start the immune response. By uncovering this process, the researchers hope they will be able to find new immunotherapy treatments for cancer, and plan to expand this technique in other areas such as discovering new drug targets in tumour initiation. At a glance WEHI researchers have developed a new single cell method to understand the programming behind what causes stem cells to make ...

El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is an irregular periodic variation in winds and sea surface temperatures (SSTs) over the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean. It may lead to extreme weather events across the globe due to its ability to change global atmospheric circulation. Thus, determining how ENSO responds to greenhouse warming is crucial in climate science. However, quantifying and understanding ENSO-related changes in a warmer climate remains challenging due to the complexity of air-sea feedbacks in the tropical Pacific Ocean and to model bias. An international team of scientists ...