Humans can make abstract choices independent of motor actions, but in lab tasks, choices are typically reported with an associated action

BATON ROUGE – Five Pennington Biomedical Research Center faculty members and one adjunct professor rank among the most cited researchers in the world, according to the Google Scholar Citations database. The database shows 5,882 scholars across the world have an h-index at or above 100. The h-index is a gauge of productivity and the impact of published papers. The index takes into account the researcher’s total number of papers and how many times each was cited by other scholars. An h-index over 100 means that at least ...

In a University of Massachusetts Amherst study recently published in PLOS ONE, researchers explored and described gender differences in HIV-related stigma and social support among people living with HIV (PLHIV) experiencing food insecurity in the Dominican Republic. “Men’s experience of stigma were subtler and women described outright rejection and instances of physical violence, including intimate partner violence,” says lead author and postdoctoral researcher Alane Celeste-Villalvir. For people living with HIV, stigma associated with the disease continues to be a significant ...

Over the past 15 years, the Chinese government has made significant efforts to promote innovation-driven growth through industrial policy and corporate subsidies. In a new study, researchers examined government subsidies to businesses in China to determine whether they are making firms more productive. The study found that China’s rising wave of subsidizing businesses has had limited effect on promoting the firms’ productivity. The study, by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and ShanghaiTech University, appears in the Journal of Comparative Economics. “Many countries have criticized China ...

In September 2023, extreme rains struck South Africa’s Western Cape province, flooding villages and leaving a trail of destruction. The catastrophic devastation is just one recent example in a string of extreme weather events that are growing more common around the world. Fueled by rising sea surface temperatures from global warming, torrential storms are increasing both in frequency and magnitude. Concurrently, global warming is also producing the opposite effect in other instances, as a mega-drought recently threatened the water supply of Cape Town in southwestern Africa to the point where residents were at risk of running out of water. This one-two punch of weather extremes ...

INDIANAPOLIS— The Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center was awarded a prestigious grant to train the next generation of cancer drug discovery and development researchers. Known as a T32 grant, the five-year, $794,000 National Cancer Institute award will establish the Pediatric and Adult Translational Cancer Drug Discovery and Development Training Program (PACT-D3). The award supports three graduate fellows annually, with the cancer center adding to the grant to support an additional two students. “This training ...

The University of North Florida College of Education and Human Services is pleased to announce a gift of $1.3 million from Gilchrist Berg, local philanthropist and president/founder of Water Street Capital. The gift will support current and future teachers in the region and provide highly trained and high-quality educators to address the critical teacher shortage. Berg’s gift funds 20 scholarships annually for the next two years to help launch the Osprey Teacher Residency and Accelerated Program for aspiring educators attending UNF. Education majors from Florida can apply for the scholarships and choose a variety of pathways under the program. “Gilchrist Berg is an inspiration ...

Transgender women and Black gay and bisexual men in Chicago are nearly twice as likely to contract syphilis at some point in their lives as white gay men, according to a new study conducted by scientists at Northwestern University. The study, “Syphilis prevalence, incidence, and demographic differences in a longitudinal study of young sexual and gender minority adults assigned male at birth,” is the first to examine syphilis over time among young sexual and gender minorities — a category which encompasses gay and bisexual men, trans women and non-binary individuals. They found meaningful demographic differences ...

WASHINGTON (October 10, 2023) – Alliance for Pediatric Device Innovation (APDI), the federally funded consortium led by Children’s National Hospital, is joining with MedTech Color for a special edition of the “Make Your Medical Device Pitch for Kids!”™  competition focused on supporting African-American and Hispanic innovators.     With the aim of making pediatric medical device innovation more inclusive, organizers are accepting applications for pediatric medical devices from innovators ...

HOUSTON – (Oct. 10, 2023) – Researchers have long recognized the therapeutic potential of using magnetoelectrics ⎯ materials that can turn magnetic fields into electric fields ⎯ to stimulate neural tissue in a minimally invasive way and help treat neurological disorders or nerve damage. The problem, however, is that neurons have a hard time responding to the shape and frequency of the electric signal resulting from this conversion. Rice University neuroengineer Jacob Robinson and his team designed ...

The U.S. Department of Energy recently announced a $10 million investment in three projects to develop novel technologies to manufacture high-performance superconducting tapes in the United States. Two of the projects are built on the foundations of cutting-edge research from the University of Houston. The DOE values superconductivity because it means zero wasted electricity. Superconductivity, found only in certain materials, allows direct electric current to be conducted with zero resistance and without energy loss. Widely available low cost, high-temperature superconducting (HTS) tapes are used for a broad range ...