Science
press releases.

Science7 Aug 2024

Current challenges evaluated for measuring and treating fatigue in multiple sclerosis

East Hanover, NJ – August 7, 2024 – Kessler Foundation research scientist John DeLuca, PhD, has published a significant clinical article in Journal of Neurology, shedding light on the elusive nature of fatigue in multiple sclerosis (MS) and its implications for treatment. The study provides a comprehensive review of current challenges in defining, measuring, and treating MS-related fatigue, offering new insights and directions for future research. The open access article, “Fatigue in multiple sclerosis: can we measure it and can we treat it?” (Doi: 10.1007/s00415-024-12524-9), was published on July ...

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Science7 Aug 2024

Disparities found in survival benefits for people receiving bystander CPR for cardiac arrest

A National Institutes of Health (NIH)-supported study has found race- and sex-based differences in the increased chances of survival from people who received bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Average survival benefits for cardiac arrest, when the heart suddenly stops beating, could be three times as high for white adults compared to Black adults and twice as high for men compared to women. The findings published in Circulation. “CPR saves lives — that, we know,” said Paula Einhorn, M.D., a program officer at NIH’s National, Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute ...

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Science7 Aug 2024

Fishing is causing frightened fish to flee when they should flirt

Populations of squaretail grouper face an uncertain future as new research shows fishing that targets their spawning sites is causing males to be repeatedly scared away from their territories during their short mating meet-ups. By fleeing for safety, individuals are losing valuable time to catch the eye and court female fish. A study, led by scientists at Lancaster University and published today in Biology Letters, shows that the impacts of fishing that targets squaretail grouper spawning sites goes beyond those fish that are caught, causing widespread behavioural change in those left behind. These changes impact ability to reproduce. With disrupted mating, fewer offspring ...

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Science7 Aug 2024

Dozing at the wheel? Not with these fatigue-detecting earbuds

Everyone gets sleepy at work from time to time, especially after a big lunch. But for people whose jobs involve driving or working with heavy machinery, drowsiness can be extremely dangerous — if not outright deadly. Drowsy driving contributes to hundreds of fatal vehicle accidents in the U.S. each year, and the National Safety Council has cited drowsiness as a critical hazard in construction and mining. To help protect drivers and machine operators from the dangers of drifting off, engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, have created prototype earbuds that can detect the signs of drowsiness ...

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Science7 Aug 2024

Domestication causes smaller brian size in dogs than in the wolf, but such an evolutionary change is not unusual in wild animals

A recent study by László Zsolt Garamszegi from the Institute of Ecology and Botany, Centre for Ecological Research, Hungary, and Niclas Kolm from the Department of Zoology, Stockholm University, Sweden, challenges the long-held notion that domestication is the primary driver of reduced brain size in domesticated animals, specifically dogs. The study employs a phylogenetic comparative method to analyze whether the domesticated dog (Canis familiaris) exhibits a uniquely small brain relative to its body size compared to other canid species. The prevailing belief has been that domestication leads to a significant ...

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Science6 Aug 2024

Attitudes such as distrust of government can cause swine farmers to resist animal biosecurity: UVM study finds

A new University of Vermont study published today in Nature: Scientific Reports examines the social and psychological aspects of farmers’ decisions about whether or not to implement biosecurity measures on pig farms. This is the first study to look at human behavior in biosecurity adoption among swine producers. Through survey data and simulations, the scientists found that it is largely farmers’ attitudes, which have the biggest impact on farmers’ decision-making strategies regarding implementing farm biosecurity. Farmer’s attitudes ...

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Science6 Aug 2024

Scientists reach consensus for fasting terminology

Dr. Eric Ravussin of Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge was one of 38 scientists from five continents to present the first international consensus on fasting terminology and key definitions. Published in Cell Metabolism, the recent study reflects the increasing popularity of diets tied to fasting and a significant increase in scientific studies of fasting. While the application of fasting is rapidly growing, there was previously no globally established terminology. The panel was the first to bring ...

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Science6 Aug 2024

C-Path welcomes new advisory members to Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency consortium

TUCSON, Ariz., August 6, 2024 — Critical Path Institute’s (C-Path) Critical Path for Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency (CPA-1) consortium today announced the addition of several key advisory members. The new members, recognized experts in their respective fields and patient advocacy organizations, will contribute their significant expertise to the consortium’s mission to accelerate drug development for Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency (AATD), a rare genetic disorder. Joining the consortium are: Alpha-1 Foundation COPD Foundation Global ...

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Science6 Aug 2024

Living with a killer: How an unlikely mantis shrimp-clam association violates a biological principle

Media When clams gamble on living with a killer, sometimes their luck may run out, according to a University of Michigan study. A longstanding question in ecology asks how can so many different species co-occur, or live together, at the same time and at the same place. One influential theory called the competitive exclusion principle suggests that only one species can occupy a particular niche in a biological community at any one time. But out in the wild, researchers find many instances of different species that appear to occupy the same ...

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Science6 Aug 2024

Researchers urge united nations to reject growth-driven framework in favor of lower population and consumption

In a new peer-reviewed article in The Journal of Population and Sustainability, demographic experts are urging the United Nations to reject the current “‘growth’ paradigm which treats Earth and its nonhuman inhabitants as mere resources” and to take the lead in “contracting the large-scale variables of the human enterprise” in order to “forge a path out of multiple environmental and social crises,” and “reverse our advanced state of ecological overshoot.” Earth Overshoot Day, the date when humanity’s demand on nature’s resources surpasses Earth’s capacity ...

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Science6 Aug 2024

Study explores effects of racial discrimination on Black parents and children

URBANA, Ill. – Black Americans experience racial discrimination on a regular basis, and it is a cause of chronic and pervasive stress. It is known to contribute to elevated risk for poor mental health outcomes, but most research has focused on individuals. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign looks at the interpersonal effects of discrimination on parents and their adolescent children. “A person’s experiences with racial discrimination are not just their own but may spill over into the ...

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Science6 Aug 2024

Elephants on the move: Mapping connections across African landscapes

URBANA, Ill. -- Elephant conservation is a major priority in southern Africa, but habitat loss and urbanization mean the far-ranging pachyderms are increasingly restricted to protected areas like game reserves. The risk? Contained populations could become genetically isolated over time, making elephants more vulnerable to disease and environmental change. A recent study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Pretoria in South Africa demonstrates how African conservation managers could create and optimize elephant movement corridors across a seven-country ...

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Science6 Aug 2024

How plants become bushy, or not

or many plants, more branches means more fruit. But what causes a plant to grow branches? New research from the University of California, Davis shows how plants break down the hormone strigolactone, which suppresses branching, to become more “bushy.” Understanding how strigolactone is regulated could have big implications for many crop plants. The study was published August 1 in Nature Communications. “Being able to manipulate strigolactone could also have implications beyond plant architecture, including on a plant’s resilience to drought and pathogens,” said senior author Nitzan Shabek, an associate professor in the UC Davis Department of ...

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Science6 Aug 2024

Do your supplements contain potentially hepatoxic botanicals?

Millions of Americans consume supplements that contain potentially hepatoxic botanical ingredients, according to a study from University of Michigan researchers. Over a 30-day period, 4.7% of the adults surveyed in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey conducted from 2017 to 2020 took herbal and dietary supplements containing at least one of the botanicals of interest: turmeric; green tea; ashwagandha; black cohosh; garcinia cambogia; and red yeast rice containing products. The resulting paper, “Estimated Exposure ...

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Science6 Aug 2024

People's moral values change with the seasons

A new UBC study has revealed regular seasonal shifts in people’s moral values. The finding has potential implications for politics, law and health—including the timing of elections and court cases, as well as public response to a health crisis. The research published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) analyzed survey responses from more than 230,000 people in the U.S. over 10 years and revealed that people’s embrace of certain moral ...

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Science6 Aug 2024

New open-source platform for high-resolution spatial transcriptomics

Leuven, 6 August 2024 - A team of researchers from the lab of Prof. Stein Aerts (VIB-KU Leuven) presents Nova-ST, a new spatial transcriptomics technique that promises to transform gene expression profiling in tissue samples. Nova-ST will make large-scale, high-resolution spatial tissue analysis more accessible and affordable, offering significant benefits for researchers. The research was published in Cell Reports Methods. Transcriptomics is the study of gene expression in a cell or a population of cells, but it usually does not include spatial information about where those genes were active. This hurdle limited our understanding of complex ...

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Science6 Aug 2024

Nudges fail to motivate vaccination

One popular strategy to motivate people to get vaccinated is the nudge—a message designed to take advantage of human tendencies to conform to social norms, seek to protect loved ones or community, and to prefer treatments with high efficacy rates. Jiseon Chang and colleagues sought to assess the efficacy of such nudges in real world contexts during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors paid for ads to appear on Facebook between October 2021 and January 2022, reaching almost 15 million users in Brazil, Russia, South Africa, Taiwan, ...

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Science6 Aug 2024

Caregiving: Poll reveals who’s providing care and who they’re caring for

More than 1 in 4 people age 50 and older helps take care of at least one family member or friend who has a health problem or disability, a new poll finds. And among those caregivers, the new results from the University of Michigan National Poll on Healthy Aging reveal a lot about who they are and who they’re caring for. In all, 30% of all people in their 50s and early 60s provide care to at least one person with a health issue or disability, compared with 23% of people over 65. And 1 in 10 caregivers in their 50s and early 60s are juggling taking care of three or more people. In ...

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Science6 Aug 2024

To predict tax revenue, look at corporate earnings

To Predict Tax Revenue, Look at Corporate Earnings States can make more accurate budget forecasts and avoid midyear cuts if they include growth in corporate earnings AUSTIN, Texas -- In the complex task of building a state budget, much rides on the accuracy of its fiscal crystal ball: its forecast of how much tax revenue will come in to fund services during the year ahead. Forecasting errors have increased since 2001 due to revenue volatility, such as wider swings in personal income and consumer spending. New research from Texas ...

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Science6 Aug 2024

Anxiety reframed can make business pitches more effective

PULLMAN, Wash. – It may be possible to turn anxiety into a superpower in some scenarios, recent research with entrepreneurs indicates. A Washington State University-led study found that if entrepreneurs preparing to make a funding pitch connected their pitch anxiety to their passion for their venture, judges ranked their performance higher. Perhaps even more importantly, the judges were also more likely to recommend them for funding. This emotion reframing involved the entrepreneurs recognizing that they were feeling anxious partly because the project means so much to them. Entrepreneurs who tried other strategies ...

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Science6 Aug 2024

Study finds refined corn flour with added corn bran can lower cholesterol

The findings of the randomized crossover clinical trial, available online now and slated to appear in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Nutrition, reveal simply swapping in foods made from refined corn flour + corn bran can lower LDL cholesterol concentrations by anywhere from 5% - 13.3% in just four weeks. The trial compared the impact of whole-grain corn meal, refined corn meal, and a blend (refined corn meal plus corn bran) and found that 70% of the participants saw significant reductions in LDL cholesterol concentrations when consuming the blend. For the other corn flours, participants did not see a decrease in their LDL or total cholesterol ...

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Science6 Aug 2024

Carvings at ancient monument may be world’s oldest calendar

Markings on a stone pillar at a 12,000 year-old archaeological site in Turkey likely represent the world’s oldest solar calendar, created as a memorial to a devastating comet strike, experts suggest. The markings at Göbekli Tepe in southern Turkey – an ancient complex of temple-like enclosures adorned with intricately carved symbols – could record an astronomical event that triggered a key shift in human civilisation, researchers say. The research suggests ancient people were able to record their observations of the sun, moon and constellations in ...

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Science6 Aug 2024

18th Annual Q-Bio Conference: Global scholars explore new Frontiers in quantitative biology

The 18th Q-Bio Conference on Quantitative Biology was held at the Guangming Yungu International Conference Center in Shenzhen from July 26 to 29, 2024. Organized by the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the Shenzhen Institute of Synthetic Biology (iSynBio), and Peking University, the conference drew over 230 global researchers from countries including the U.S., U.K., France, India, Japan, Chile, and China. Themed "Predictive Modeling and Quantitative Principles in Complex Biological Systems," the event explored future prospects in quantitative and synthetic biology. Under ...

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Science6 Aug 2024

Rising toll of serious injuries linked to expanded Mexico-US border wall crossing

The expansion of the Mexico-US border wall crossing has been accompanied by a rising toll of serious injuries, with poor discharge care and a lack of appropriate interpreting facilities adding up to a “humanitarian and health crisis,” suggest researchers in the open access journal Trauma Surgery & Acute Care Open. Thirty eight different nationalities and 21 languages other than Spanish were represented among those attempting to cross one segment of the wall in 2021 and 2022, say the researchers. The Mexico-US border wall was extended by 50 miles and raised to a height of 30 feet in Southern California, construction ...

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Science5 Aug 2024

Association between osteoporosis and telomere shortening

“We sought to identify an association between osteoporosis and LTL shortening in an independent prospective cohort.” BUFFALO, NY- August 5, 2024 – A new research paper was published on the cover of Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 16, Issue 14, entitled, “Association between osteoporosis and the rate of telomere shortening.” A shorter leukocyte telomere length (LTL) is reported to be associated with age-related diseases, including osteoporosis. Many studies ...

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