Science
press releases.

Science9 Nov 2024

The refrigerator as a harbinger of a better life

To get a good sense of a country’s level of development, you need to look at the items people have in their homes, according to economists Rutger Schilpzand and Jeroen Smits from Radboud University. Research on low- and middle-income countries often focuses on income, health or education, but that doesn’t tell you the full story of a country’s situation. ‘That’s why, for the first time, we are mapping out how the material wealth of households is developing,’ Schilpzand explains. The researchers coin this material wealth growth for households the 'domestic transition'. ...

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Science8 Nov 2024

AMS Science Preview: Turbulence & thunderstorms, heat stress, future derechos

The American Meteorological Society continuously publishes research on climate, weather, and water in its 12 journals. Many of these articles are available for early online access–they are peer-reviewed, but not yet in their final published form. Below is a selection of articles published early online recently. Some articles are open-access; to view others, members of the media can contact kpflaumer@ametsoc.org for press login credentials. JOURNAL ARTICLES A New Heat Stress Index For Climate Change Assessment Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Heat Index may dramatically underestimate heat stress in extreme temperatures. This work compares the ...

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Science8 Nov 2024

Study of mountaineering mice sheds light on evolutionary adaptation

Teams of mountaineering mice are helping advance understanding into how evolutionary adaptation to localized conditions can enable a single species to thrive across diverse environments. In a study led by Naim Bautista, a postdoctoral researcher in Jay Storz’s lab at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, the team took highland deer mice and their lowland cousins on a simulated ascent to 6,000 meters. The “climb” ventured from sea level and the mice reached the simulated summit seven weeks later. Along the way, Bautista tracked how the mice responded to cold stress at progressively lower oxygen levels. “Deer ...

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Science8 Nov 2024

McCombs announces 2024 Hall of Fame inductees and rising stars

AUSTIN, Texas — Friends and distinguished alumni of the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin inducted four alumni into the school’s Hall of Fame on Nov. 7 at the AT&T Hotel and Conference Center. This year’s honorees are Christopher Bake, BBA ’88; Ray Brimble, B.A. ’74; Bennett Glazer, BBA ’68; and Brien Smith, BBA ’79, MPA '81. McCombs Dean Lillian Mills also recognized 2024 Rising Stars Simeon Bochev, MSF ’13; Michael Ginnings, BBA ’09; and Gerardo Guardado, MBA ’10. The ...

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Science8 Nov 2024

Grant to support new research to address alcohol-related partner violence among sexual minorities

Navigating the intersection of alcohol use and intimate partner violence amongst young couples is not an easy journey, and for bisexual+ couples, the road may be even more winding. “No study has examined the extent to which alcohol use increases intimate personal violence among bisexual+ young adults or daily experiences unique to them. Our study will look at factors such as minority stressors that may lead to alcohol-related partner violence,” said Meagan Brem, director of the Research for Alcohol and Couple’s Health Lab at Virginia Tech. Alcohol use and intimate partner violence - defined as any action in a ...

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Science8 Nov 2024

Watch this elephant turn a hose into a sophisticated showering tool

Tool use isn’t unique to humans. Chimpanzees use sticks as tools. Dolphins, crows, and elephants are known for their tool-use abilities, too. Now a report in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on November 8, 2024, highlights elephants’ remarkable skill in using a hose as a flexible shower head. As an unexpected bonus, researchers say they also have evidence that a fellow elephant knows how to turn the water off, perhaps as a kind of “prank.” “Elephants are amazing with hoses,” says Michael Brecht ...

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Science8 Nov 2024

State divorce laws, reproductive care policies, and pregnancy-associated homicide rates

About The Study: In this cross-sectional study of pregnancy-associated homicide rates, barriers to divorce were associated with higher homicide rates and access to reproductive health care was associated with lower homicide rates. This study highlights the association between state legislation and pregnancy-associated homicide in the U.S., which is important information for policymakers. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Kaitlin M. Boyle, PhD, email kb49@mailbox.sc.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.44199) Editor’s ...

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Science8 Nov 2024

Scarlet Macaw parents ‘play favorites,’ purposefully neglect younger chicks

Scarlet macaws are a symbol of fidelity and virtue to many people because they are thought to mate for life — but it turns out that they also “play favorites” when feeding their young, making them excellent mates, but neglectful parents. Fortunately, Texas A&M scientists have developed a way to ensure the birds’ bad parenting results in fewer chick deaths. Researchers at the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences have discovered that scarlet macaws purposefully neglect feeding the youngest chicks ...

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Science8 Nov 2024

A promising future in pancreatic incidentaloma detection

In recent research published in eGastroenterology, Dr. J-Matthias Löhr and colleagues provide an in-depth review of diagnostic methods for pancreatic incidentaloma—incidental findings often detected during imaging scans intended for other conditions. These pancreatic lesions, which vary in severity, can occasionally signal pancreatic cancer in its earliest stages. However, traditional methods, including MRI and CT scans, are limited by invasiveness, cost, and variable sensitivity to early pancreatic changes. The research highlights ...

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Science8 Nov 2024

Innovative approaches to the surgical challenges in the management of gastroschisis

Gastroschisis, a congenital abdominal wall defect, has transformed from a uniformly fatal condition to one with a 95% survival rate through surgical advancements over the past six decades. The primary goal of managing gastroschisis is to mitigate fetal and postnatal risks, including damage from herniated bowel loops and ensuring effective decompression of the gastrointestinal tract during recovery. This review focuses on both preventative and corrective aspects of gastroschisis management, highlighting innovations in neonatal surgery that improve quality of life and long-term health outcomes. Definition ...

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Science8 Nov 2024

Mouse models for the study of liver fibrosis regression in vivo and ex vivo

Liver fibrosis is a progressive and potentially reversible condition that results from chronic liver damage, which can be caused by a variety of factors, including metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), alcohol abuse, and viral hepatitis. MASLD affects a significant portion of the global population and can progress to metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH), leading to liver cirrhosis if left untreated. Given the prevalence of MASLD and its related conditions, the study of fibrosis and its regression ...

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Science8 Nov 2024

CIDEC as a novel player in abdominal aortic aneurysm formation

Abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) is a degenerative lesion characterized by structural disruption of the abdominal aortic wall and progressive dilatation into a pulsatile mass. AAA is strongly associated with obesity, partly due to abnormal dilatation of perivascular adipose tissue (PVAT) in the abdomen, however, direct evidence is still lacking. Cell death-inducing DNA fragmentation factor-like effector C (CIDEC), also known as fat-specific protein 27 (FSP27) in rodents, is a lipid droplet (LD)-associated protein that plays an important role in lipid storage. It has been reported that CIDEC/FSP27 promotes the growth of LDs by mediating the exchange and transfer of lipids ...

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Science8 Nov 2024

A graph transformer with boundary-aware attention for semantic segmentation

The transformer-based semantic segmentation approaches, which divide the image into different regions by sliding windows and model the relation inside each window, have achieved outstanding success. However, since the relation modeling between windows was not the primary emphasis of previous work, it was not fully utilized. To solve the problems, a research team led by Zizhang Wu published their new research on 15 October 2024 in Frontiers of Computer Science co-published by Higher Education Press and Springer ...

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Science8 Nov 2024

Exercise programs help cut new mums’ ‘baby blues’ severity and major depression risk

Exercise-only programmes help cut the severity of the ‘baby blues’ and the risk of major clinical depression in new mums, finds a pooled data analysis of the available evidence, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. But at least 80 weekly minutes of moderate intensity exercise, such as brisk walking, water aerobics, stationary cycling, and resistance training with bands, weights, or body weight are needed to achieve the effects, the findings show. Maternal depression and anxiety are relatively common after giving birth and associated with reduced self-care and compromised infant caregiving and bonding, ...

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Science7 Nov 2024

Someone flirts with your spouse. Does that make your partner appear more attractive?

Picture this: You’re at a bar when someone starts hitting shamelessly on your spouse or significant other, who doesn’t flirt back. As the scene unfolds, your base instincts kick in—annoyance, anger, jealousy—followed by a heightened sexual desire for your partner. You’re ready to reclaim the attention that should be rightfully yours, correct? Not necessarily, according to a new study in the Journal of Sex Research by researchers at Reichman University in Herzliya, Israel, and ...

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Science7 Nov 2024

United Nations ratifies framework to protect people on cash app

As mobile-money services were growing at a rapid clip in the developing world 10 years ago, University of Florida computer scientists and cybersecurity experts Kevin Butler and Patrick Traynor were early sentinels, raising concerns about the lack of security that could lead to real problems for the user. In a 2014 study, the two professors from UF’s Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering, uncovered security vulnerabilities of mobile cash apps, especially in the Global South, where such technologies were becoming essential in the absence of robust banking systems. “Our early work uncovered ...

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Science7 Nov 2024

Oklahoma State basketball team joins the Nation of Lifesavers

http://newsroom.heart.org/news/oklahoma-state-basketball-team-joins-the-nation-of-lifesavers?preview=8409af5e5a5f3127f6aec7e122cc9673STILLWATER, Okla., October 28, 2024 — The Oklahoma State University (OSU) men’s basketball team participated in an American Heart Association Hands-Only CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) training to learn the correct rate and depth of CPR compressions to be confident and capable when faced with a cardiac emergency. Learning Hands-Only CPR is the skill needed to join the Association’s Nation of Lifesavers™ movement, which is focused on doubling survival rates ...

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Science7 Nov 2024

Presenting a Janus channel of membranes for complete oil-and-water separation

Named after the two-faced Roman god Janus to reflect its dual-purpose design, researchers present a novel membrane system – a Janus channel of membranes (JCM) – capable of simultaneously separating oil and water from complex emulsions. The system addresses a critical challenge for sustainable water and oil reclamation across various industries. Separating oil and water from complex mixtures is essential for many scientific and industrial applications, such as wastewater treatment and biological sorting. Membrane ...

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Science7 Nov 2024

Defense or growth – How plants allocate resources

The more a plant species invests in defense, the less potential it has for growth, according to a new study. Research made possible by open science provides new insights into plant adaptation and interspecies variation. Pathogens can significantly weaken the fitness of their hosts, sometimes even causing host mortality. Yet considerable variation is found between species in their investment in disease defense. Evolutionary theory predicts that allocation costs regulate this investment, but testing this hypothesis ...

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Science7 Nov 2024

Study reveals how plants grow thicker, not just taller

Most research on plant stem cells focuses on the tips of roots and shoots, where growth occurs in height. But Ten Tusscher explains that thickness growth is just as essential. “Plants can’t grow endlessly in height. They also need to grow in thickness, or they would simply fall over,” she says. The growth in thickness, is what makes older trees visibly thicker and more robust over time. This growth is essential for structural strength, particularly in trees. Stem cells in the plant’s cambium layer control this width growth, producing wood to support the plant’s structure. However, which genes enable these cambium stem cells to become active ...

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Science7 Nov 2024

Insect-killing fungi find unexpected harmony in war

University of Maryland entomologists uncovered a unique relationship between two species of fungi known for their ability to invade, parasitize and kill insects efficiently. Instead of violently competing for the spoils of war, the two fungi peacefully cooperate and share their victims. The findings, published in the journal Public Library of Science (PLOS) Pathogens on November 7, 2024, offer insight into some of the biggest evolutionary successes in nature’s history, according to study co-authors Raymond St. Leger, a Distinguished University Professor of Entomology, and entomology Ph.D. candidate Huiyu Sheng. “It’s not survival ...

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Science7 Nov 2024

Does more virtual care mean more low-value care? Study suggests no

Before 2024 ends, Congress will decide whether to keep or change rules about telehealth, or let them expire. And even though the decision will focus on Medicare’s payment for virtual patient care, it will likely impact telehealth access for people with other kinds of health insurance too. Now, a new University of Michigan study suggests that policymakers can rest easier about one of the top worries about telehealth: that virtual care will drive up the use of tests and scans that patients don’t need, wasting money and resources. In fact, the study shows that low-value care didn’t rise faster at primary care practices that used telehealth the most, compared with those ...

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Science7 Nov 2024

City of Hope Research Spotlight, October 2024

City of Hope® Research Spotlight offers a glimpse at groundbreaking scientific and clinical discoveries advancing lifesaving cures for patients with cancer, diabetes and other chronic, life-threatening diseases. Each spotlight features research-related news such as recognitions, collaborations and the latest research defining the future of medical treatment. This roundup highlights the biology behind our sense of smell, real-world data that can be used to refine esophageal cancer treatment guidelines, a potential new approach to treating patients with type 2 diabetes, a new way to target pancreatic cancer ...

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Science7 Nov 2024

Elite coaches see compassion as a path to better performance

It may sound like a contradiction to talk about compassion in the competitive world of elite sport. After all, isn't elite sport all about becoming hardened to resistance and adversity? But this is a false dichotomy, according to a new study that analysed the views of 12 Danish high-performance coaches on the use of compassion in their work with elite athletes. In fact, there is a broad consensus among the coaches, most of whom are head of national teams, about the benefits of using compassion, says the study's lead author, Emilia Backman from the Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen. "All of the high-performance ...

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Science7 Nov 2024

ECOG-ACRIN and PrECOG announce multiple presentations at ASH 2024

Researchers with the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group (ECOG-ACRIN) and PrECOG, LLC, will present a variety of abstracts that aim to improve treatments for patients with lymphoma and acute leukemias at the 66th American Society of Hematology (ASH) Meeting & Exposition. The meeting is set to occur in San Diego, California, and virtually December 7 - 10, 2024. Promising results from a phase 2 study (PrE0905) in patients with acute myeloid leukemia and new data from the practice-changing E1910 phase ...

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