Science
press releases.

Science11 Sep 2024

Neighborhood child opportunity and preterm birth rates by race and ethnicity

About The Study: In this cross-sectional study of neighborhood opportunity and preterm birth, elevated risk associated with exposure to a very low opportunity neighborhood, coupled with the disproportionate exposure by race and ethnicity, points to a modifiable factor that may contribute to racial and ethnic inequities in preterm birth. Future research should investigate interventions that seek to address neighborhood opportunity. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Candice Belanoff, ScD, MPH, email cbelanof@bu.edu. To ...

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Science11 Sep 2024

The Neanderthals may have become extinct because of their isolated lifestyle

Neanderthal remains recently discovered in a cave in France support well-known theory of why the Neanderthals became extinct, researchers behind a new study say. In recent years, researchers have offered different explanations for why modern humans survived and the Neanderthals became extinct some 40,000 years ago. A new study from the Globe Institute at the University of Copenhagen supports one of the main hypotheses. The researchers behind the new study discovered Neanderthal remains of a male in a cave in southern France, ...

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Science11 Sep 2024

Microorganisms can travel long distances in the troposphere

Analysis of air samples taken at altitudes of up to 3,000 metres above Japan has revealed the presence of a vast range of viable bacteria and fungi transported by air masses originating more than 2,000 kilometres away, in regions enriched with fertilisers and pesticides. The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), reveals a new way in which human, animal and plant pathogens may travel to distant geographical regions. This research has been led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by “la Caixa” Foundation, in collaboration with the Daniel ...

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Science11 Sep 2024

Oxycodone use in Australia dropped 45% after policy changes to opioid prescribing

Between 2018 and 2020, Australia implemented policy changes to improve the quality and safety of opioid prescribing, with a specific focus on oxycodone. A new study led by The University of Queensland (UQ) using wastewater analysis has determined that oxycodone consumption in Australia dropped by 45% from 2019 to 2020, coinciding with those national policy changes. In November 2019, the Australian National Prescribing Service launched a federal initiative to improve opioid prescribing. The initiative involved alerting high-prescribing clinicians that their opioid prescribing practices were outside typical ...

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Science11 Sep 2024

Hot streets, historic bias: effects on neighborhood walking in older adults

A neighborhood’s walkability is affected by many factors such as street connectivity and density; access to destinations and aesthetics; investment in walking and biking infrastructure; and the presence or absence of urban natural features, specifically tree cover. Not all neighborhoods are alike. Many neighborhoods in impoverished and minority communities lack the cooling effect of vegetation and tree cover, especially in urbanized areas. As a result, residents face the “heat island effect,” where temperatures remain higher in urban areas ...

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Science11 Sep 2024

Atypical metabolite levels at birth may increase SIDS risk

WHAT: Newborns who had an atypical pattern of metabolites were more than 14 times as likely to die of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), compared to infants who had more typical metabolic patterns, according to a study funded in part by the National Institutes of Health. Metabolites are molecules produced by the body’s various chemical reactions. Researchers found that infants who died of SIDS had a specific pattern of metabolites compared to infants who lived to their first year. The researchers believe that checking for this pattern could provide ...

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Science11 Sep 2024

Century-old experiment secures beer and whiskey’s future

Thanks to an experiment started before the Great Depression, researchers have pinpointed the genes behind the remarkable adaptability of barley, a key ingredient in beer and whiskey. These insights could ensure the crop’s continued survival amidst rapid climate change. Grown everywhere from Asia and Egypt to Norway and the Andes mountains of South America, barley is one of the world’s most important cereal crops and has been for at least 12,000 years. As it has spread across the globe, random ...

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Science11 Sep 2024

Mirror, mirror, in my tank, who’s the biggest fish of all?

What if that proverbial man in the mirror was a fish? Would it change its ways? According to an Osaka Metropolitan University-led research group, yes, it would. In what the researchers say in Scientific Reports is the first time for a non-human animal to be demonstrated to possess some mental states (e.g., mental body image, standards, intentions, goals), which are elements of private self-awareness, bluestreak cleaner wrasse (Labroides dimidiatus) checked their body size in a mirror before choosing whether to attack fish that were slightly larger or smaller than themselves. The ...

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Science11 Sep 2024

Breakthrough research sheds light on the hidden effects of stress on sperm

A groundbreaking study led by researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus reveals that stress-induced changes in sperm motility occur after a stressful event, rather than during it and improves sperm performance. The discovery is essential in understanding how stress impacts the reproductive process to improve fetal development outcomes. The study was published today in Nature Communications. Over the last five decades, there has been a notable decline in semen quality, which has coincided with environmental stressors. This new research identifies how stress affects the ability of ...

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Science11 Sep 2024

Are long stems on flowers an adaptation that encourages bat pollination?

Flowers that are pollinated by bats tend to have long stems that make them stand out from the surrounding foliage. New research published in New Phytologist reveals the evolutionary advantage that this characteristic provides to plants to ensure that they are discovered by bats. In simple backgrounds lacking foliage, bats showed no significant difference in the time it took them to find flowers with long versus short stems, but in complex backgrounds (with arrays of leaves and flowers), bats took nearly twice as much time to locate short-stemmed flowers. Investigators hypothesize that flowers located away from the surrounding foliage likely help bats to distinguish ...

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Science11 Sep 2024

Enhance and revise for better low-light image enhancement

With the development of intelligent era, information captured in low-light environments has become increasingly vital. Low-light enhancement technology is now a significant research topic in the domain of machine vision. Designing a robust low-light enhancement algorithm can not only improve the contrast of images, but also restore color and texture details, so as to obtain more distinct and accurate low-light scene information. The team led by Prof. Danhua Cao from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), ...

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Science11 Sep 2024

Multiple ways to evolve tiny knee bone could have helped humans walk upright

The evolution of bones in primates’ knees could have implications for how humans evolved to walk upright, a new study has found. Researchers from King’s College London analysed the presence of the lateral fabella, a bone in the knee the size of a sesame seed, in 93 different species of primates. They found that while most primates have these bones, they are often absent in hominoids, the group of primates that humans belong to alongside chimpanzees, gorillas, gibbons, and others. Yet ...

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Science10 Sep 2024

Abdominal fat linked to widespread chronic pain, especially in women

Excess abdominal fat is associated with widespread chronic pain, particularly in women, finds the first study of its kind, published in the open access journal Regional Anesthesia & Pain Medicine. Reducing excess fat deposits in the abdomen may help reduce chronic musculoskeletal pain, especially if it’s experienced at multiple body sites, suggest the researchers. Previously published research has shown that obesity is associated with musculoskeletal pain, but it’s not known if excess fat tissue is linked to chronic musculoskeletal pain and at multiple body sites, ...

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Science10 Sep 2024

"Cuddle hormone" oxytocin may provide pain relief and help curb harmful opioid use

In the midst of America’s growing opioid crisis, a much healthier alternative to long-term pain management is emerging — one affectionately known as “the cuddle hormone,” or oxytocin. University of Florida researchers are currently investigating whether a synthetic version of this naturally-occurring human hormone can be used in conjunction with prescription drugs to help curb opioid addictions, especially in susceptible older adults. An interdisciplinary research team is conducting the two-year study, with $414,375 in funding from the National ...

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Science10 Sep 2024

Study reveals mechanism that activates glucose production in the liver in response to stress

A study led by Brazilian researchers has produced a detailed description of the morphology of the nerves in the liver and how they control production of glucose when the organism is under stress. This process is known as hepatic gluconeogenesis. It is a key metabolic function of the liver that helps maintain a normal blood sugar level, especially when fasting and at times of high energy needs. An article on the study, which entailed experiments with mice, is published in the journal Metabolism. According to the authors, the sympathetic nerves that stimulate the release of noradrenaline in the liver helped ...

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Science10 Sep 2024

Weight loss of up to 13% achieved in three months with once-a-day tablet, phase 1 trial finds

Individuals who received a once-a-day oral weight loss drug lost up to 13% of their body weight over three months, the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) in Madrid, Spain (9-13 September) will hear. Amycretin, which is being developed by the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk A/S, mimics the action of two peptide hormones in one single molecule. Amycretin is both an amylin and glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist. Both of these play a key role in appetite regulation ...

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Science10 Sep 2024

The glug of it all

As Rohit Velankar, now a senior at Fox Chapel Area High School, poured juice into a glass, he could feel that the rhythmic glug, glug, glug was flexing the walls of the carton. Rohit pondered the sound, and wondered if a container’s elasticity influenced the way its fluid drained. He initially sought the answer to his question for his science fair project, but it spiraled into something more when he teamed up with his father, Sachin Velankar, a professor of chemical and petroleum engineering at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering. They set up an experiment ...

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Science10 Sep 2024

UT microbiologist Wilhelm honored as Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada

Steven Wilhelm joins a distinguished roster this year with his election as a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) Academy of Science. This recognition is the RSC’s highest honor in areas of arts, social sciences, humanities, and science. “The RSC inducts fellows to help them build a better future in Canada and the world. As a native Canadian, this honor is the pinnacle of what I could have hoped for in my career,” said Wilhelm, the Kenneth and Blaire Mossman Professor in UT’s Department of Microbiology. “It also provides an opportunity for me to work with my collaborators ...

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Science10 Sep 2024

Finding the right path(way) to reduce fat accumulation in the liver

Using a novel stem cell platform, a team of Medical University of South Carolina researchers has identified a pathway that could be targeted by drugs to reduce fat accumulation in patients with a common form of fatty liver disease known as metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease, or MASLD. The MUSC team was led by Stephen Duncan, Ph.D., SmartState Endowed Chair in Regenerative Medicine at MUSC, and Caren Doueiry, an M.D., Ph.D. candidate in Duncan’s laboratory. The team reports its findings in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences. Almost a quarter of Americans have MASLD, formerly known as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. It ...

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Science10 Sep 2024

Results from CARMEN-LC03 phase 3 study of tusamitamab ravtansine vs. docetaxel in previously treated advanced non-squamous NSCLC presented at WCLC 2024

(San Diego, Calif.--September 10, 2024, 10:35 a.m. PCT) A phase 3 study comparing tusamitamab ravtansine with docetaxel in patients with advanced non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) previously treated with platinum-based chemotherapy and immunotherapy (in combination or sequential), whose tumors highly expressed CEACAM5, is presented today at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer 2024 World Conference on Lung Cancer in San Diego, Calf., by Dr. Benjamin Besse of Gustave Roussy, in Paris, France. As previously announced by Sanofi in December 2023, ...

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Science10 Sep 2024

Partial knee replacements for osteoarthritis performed by trainee surgeons last as long as those performed by more experienced consultants

Partial knee replacements for osteoarthritis performed by trainee surgeons last as long as those performed by more experienced consultants, according to data from England and Wales suggesting no difference in rates of subsequent revision surgery ##### In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Medicine: http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1004445 Article Title: Association between surgeon training grade and the risk of revision following unicompartmental knee replacement: ...

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Science10 Sep 2024

New Zealand’s kākāpō developed different feather colors to evade predatory birds

Aotearoa New Zealand’s flightless parrot, the kākāpō, evolved two different color types to potentially help them avoid detection by a now-extinct apex predator, Lara Urban at Helmholtz AI, Germany and colleagues from the Aotearoa New Zealand Department of Conservation and the Māori iwi Ngāi Tahu, report in the open-access journal PLOS Biology, publishing September 10th. The kākāpō (Strigops habroptilus) is a nocturnal, flightless parrot endemic to New Zealand. It experienced severe population ...

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Science10 Sep 2024

Unaffordable food putting mums-to-be at risk

Embargoed until Tuesday September 10 at 19:00 (BST) Pregnant women who have limited access to affordable, nutritious, and healthy foods have a higher chance of developing both physical and mental health problems. New research from Newcastle University has found that women who are what is termed “food insecure” are up to four times more likely to have poor mental health - such as stress, anxiety, and depression - than those who don’t struggle to afford or access food. The mums-to-be are also at increased risk of obesity, developing diabetes during their pregnancy and dental problems, the two studies published ...

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Science10 Sep 2024

Like father, like daughter

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- When they become fathers, men who have an unhealthy, high-cholesterol diet can cause increased risk of cardiovascular disease, or CVD, in their daughters, a University of California, Riverside-led mouse study has found. The research, published in the journal JCI Insight, is the first to demonstrate this result seen only in female offspring. CVD, the leading cause of death globally, is a group of disorders that affects the heart and blood vessels. Hypertension (high blood pressure) is a leading risk factor ...

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Science10 Sep 2024

MD Anderson Research Highlights Special Edition: ESMO 2024

ABSTRACTS: 510MO, 618MO, 1821MO, 71MO, 995MO BARCELONA, Spain ― The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Research Highlights provides a glimpse into recent basic, translational and clinical cancer research from MD Anderson experts. This special edition features upcoming oral presentations by MD Anderson researchers at the 2024 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress focused on clinical advances across a variety of cancer types. In addition to the studies summarized below, forthcoming press releases will feature the following oral presentations: Initial results from a first-in-human ...

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