Science
press releases.

Science3 Oct 2023

Surgical scorecards may cut cost of surgical procedures without impacting outcomes

Key takeaways A tool for evaluating the overall cost of a surgical procedure, called a scorecard, helps reduce costs of surgical procedures between 5% and 20% without adversely affecting clinical outcomes. Further implementation of scorecards may move surgeons toward energy-efficient operating rooms, which are the largest hospital producer of emissions and waste. CHICAGO (October 3, 2023): Surgical scorecards, a tool that gives direct feedback ...

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Science3 Oct 2023

SwRI study suggests large mound structures on Kuiper belt object Arrokoth may have common origin

SAN ANTONIO — October 3, 2023 —A new study led by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) Planetary Scientist and Associate Vice President Dr. Alan Stern posits that the large, approximately 5-kilometer-long mounds that dominate the appearance of the larger lobe of the pristine Kuiper Belt object Arrokoth are similar enough to suggest a common origin. The SwRI study suggests that these “building blocks” could guide further work on planetesimal formational models. Stern presented these findings this week ...

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Science3 Oct 2023

Globally, consumption of sugary drinks increased at least 16% since 1990

The decision to reach for a sugary beverage is heavily influenced by where you live, Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy researchers report in a new study published October 3 in the journal Nature Communications. While an analysis of the Global Dietary Database for the years 1990, 2005, and 2018 found overall consumption of sweetened drinks increased—by nearly 16% worldwide over the 28-year period studied—regional intake widely varied. Sugary drinks are a public health concern because they have been widely associated ...

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Science2 Oct 2023

UC Riverside startup company wins prestigious NIH grant

Soon after he joined UC Riverside in 2015, Maurizio Pellecchia, a professor of biomedical sciences in the UCR School of Medicine, began working with the UCR Research and Economic Development office to create on campus an incubator space. He envisioned that space as a home for UCR scientists to create startup companies to prove the commercial potential of their technologies. That multi-year effort helped create in the Multidisciplinary Research Building the EPIC Life Sciences Incubator that currently houses young companies in agricultural technology, biomedical technologies, bioengineering, and medicinal chemistry. One of the tenant companies in the incubator ...

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Science2 Oct 2023

How the hippocampus distinguishes true and false memories

Let’s say you typically eat eggs for breakfast but were running late and ate cereal. As you crunched on a spoonful of Raisin Bran, other contextual similarities remained: You ate at the same table, at the same time, preparing to go to the same job. When someone asks later what you had for breakfast, you incorrectly remember eating eggs. This would be a real-world example of a false memory. But what happens in your brain before recalling eggs, compared to what would happen if you correctly recalled cereal? In a paper published in Proceedings ...

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Science2 Oct 2023

Ancient architecture inspires a window to the future

A centuries-old technique for constructing arched stone windows has inspired a new way to form tailored nanoscale windows in porous functional materials called metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). The method uses a molecular version of an architectural arch-forming “centring formwork“ template to direct the formation of MOFs with pore windows of predetermined shape and size.[1]. New MOFs designed and made in this way range from narrow-windowed materials with gas separation potential to larger-windowed structures with potential medical applications due to their excellent oxygen-adsorption capacity. “One of the most challenging ...

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Science2 Oct 2023

Not the usual suspects: New interactive lineup boosts eyewitness accuracy

Allowing eyewitnesses to dynamically explore digital faces using a new interactive procedure can significantly improve identification accuracy compared to the video lineup and photo array procedures used by police worldwide, a new study reveals. Interactive lineups present digital 3D faces that witnesses can rotate and view from different angles using a computer mouse - enabling witnesses to actively explore and match faces to their recollection. Publishing their findings today (2 Oct) in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, psychologists found that the interactive procedure enhanced people’s ability to correctly identify perpetrators and avoid misidentifications. Lead ...

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Science2 Oct 2023

Yang developing training dataset labeling tool

Chaowei Yang, Professor, Director, NSF Spatiotemporal Innovation Center, Geography and Geoinformation Science, received funding from the National Science Foundation for the project: "I-Corps: An automatic training dataset labeling tool for producing large amount of quality training datasets." He and his collaborators are interviewing more than 100 potential customers to: a) identify a customer sector that has the potential to show early success, b) define from a customer perspective a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), c) explore the potential and plan to create a startup by a team composed of ...

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Science2 Oct 2023

Smooth avatar-user synchronization for the metaverse

Mobile phones, smartwatches and earbuds are some gadgets that we carry around physically without much thought. The increasingly digitalised world sees a shrinking gap between human and technology, and many researchers and companies are interested in how technology can be further integrated into our lives. What if, instead of incorporating technology into our physical world, we assimilate ourselves into a virtual environment? This is what Assistant Professor Xiong Zehui from the Singapore University of Technology ...

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Science2 Oct 2023

Defense against the enemy within

The research teams of Professor René Ketting at the Institute of Molecular Biology (IMB) in Mainz, Germany, and Dr. Sebastian Falk at the Max Perutz Labs in Vienna, Austria, have identified a new enzyme called PUCH, which plays a key role in preventing the spread of parasitic DNA in our genomes. These findings may reveal new insights into how our bodies detect and fight bacteria and viruses to prevent infections. Our cells are under constant attack from millions of foreign intruders, such as viruses and bacteria. To keep us from getting sick, ...

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Science2 Oct 2023

A surprising way to disrupt sleep

Osaka, Japan - Circadian rhythms, the internal biological clocks that regulate our daily activities, are essential for maintaining health and well-being. While the role of transcription in these rhythms is well-established, a new study sheds light on the critical importance of post-transcriptional processes. The research, titled “Circadian ribosome profiling reveals a role for the Period2 upstream open reading frame in sleep,” to be published in PNAS, redefines our understanding of how translation and post-transcriptional processes influence the body’s internal clock and its impact on sleep patterns. Timing Is Everything: ...

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Science2 Oct 2023

Genetics of attraction: mate choice in fruit flies

Genetic quality or genetic compatibility? What do female fruit flies prioritize when mating? Researchers at the University of Zurich show that both factors are important at different stages of the reproductive process and that females use targeted strategies to optimize the fitness of their offspring. Breeding female fruit flies face a difficult decision: do they mate with the male that has the best genes, or with the one whose genes best match their own? Evolutionary biologists from the University of Zurich and Concordia University have now investigated ...

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Science2 Oct 2023

Dense measurement network revealed high level of PM2.5 in Punjab due to crop residue burning and its transport to Haryana and Delhi NCR

A group of international collaborators led by the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN) team performed the first quantitative study of air pollution in the north-western India region using 29 low-cost and reliable instruments, demonstrating the advantages of source region observations to link crop residue burning (CRB) and air pollution at local to regional scales. Exposure to particulate matter less than 2.5 µm in diameter (popularly known as PM2.5) causes health hazards in cities and major emission regions of the world. Although the major sources ...

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Science2 Oct 2023

Researchers studied thousands of fertility attempts hoping to improve IVF

By genetically testing nearly one thousand embryos, scientists have provided the most detailed analysis of embryo fate following human in vitro fertilization. Nearly half the embryos studied underwent developmental arrest because of genetic mishaps in early development — a revealing insight that suggests more IVF babies could come to term with changes in the fertility treatment process. The unique combination of data from arrested embryos also sheds new light on the still largely mysterious earliest stages of pregnancy through natural ...

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Science2 Oct 2023

Breastfeeding is associated with lower levels of body fat at the age of nine

New research being presented at the Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) in Hamburg, Germany (2-6 Oct) has linked infant formula and the early introduction of fizzy drinks with higher levels of body fat later in childhood. Youngsters who were breastfed for at least six months or longer had a lower percentage of body fat by age nine compared to those who did not receive breast milk for six months (a group that includes children who were never breastfed or received breast milk for less than 6 months). Children ...

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Science1 Oct 2023

Metaphors for human fertilization are evolving, study shows

New Haven, Conn. — In a common metaphor used to describe human fertilization, sperm cells are competitors racing to penetrate a passive egg. But as critics have noted, the description is also a “fairy tale,” rooted in cultural beliefs about masculinity and femininity. A new study by Yale sociologist Rene Almeling provides evidence that this metaphor remains widely used despite the profound shift in recent decades in social and scientific views about gender, sex, and sexuality. But her findings, based ...

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Science30 Sep 2023

Reducing fishing gear could save whales with low impacts to California’s crab fishermen

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Sometimes simple solutions are better. It all depends on the nature of the problem. For humpback whales, the problem is the rope connecting a crab trap on the seafloor to the buoy on the surface. And for fishermen, it’s fishery closures caused by whale entanglements. Managing this issue is currently a major item on California’s agenda, and it appears less fishing gear may be the optimal solution. So says a team of researchers led by Christopher Free, at UC Santa Barbara, after modeling the benefits and impacts that several management strategies would have on whales and fishermen. ...

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Science29 Sep 2023

Neural activity associated with motor commands changes depending on context

Standing at a crosswalk, the signal changes from “don’t walk,” to “walk.” You might step out into the street straight away, or you might look both ways before you cross. In either scenario, you see the light change, you cross the street. But the context is different; in one case, you didn’t think twice. In the other, you waited; looked to the left and right; saw the coast was clear; then stepped into the street. Researchers have known that certain brain activity when you see the light change and certain brain activity when you step out into the street are the same no matter the context -- there’s a known “pathway” ...

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Science29 Sep 2023

MD Anderson Research Highlights: ASTRO 2023 Special Edition

SAN DIEGO ― The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Research Highlights showcases the latest breakthroughs in cancer care, research and prevention. These advances are made possible through seamless collaboration between MD Anderson’s world-leading clinicians and scientists, bringing discoveries from the lab to the clinic and back. This special edition features presentations by MD Anderson researchers at the 2023 American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Annual Meeting. Information on all MD Anderson ASTRO Annual Meeting content can be found at MDAnderson.org/ASTRO. Read ...

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Science29 Sep 2023

Research Highlights for September 2023

Huntsman Cancer Institute shines the spotlight on new discoveries and cutting-edge cancer research. This month, researchers found that increasing access for Black people with prostate cancer may save lives. Also, the first patient in a new small cell lung cancer clinical trial has been enrolled, researchers are using an app to help adolescents and young adults manage cancer symptoms, and investigators are trying to reduce cognitive side-effects after chemotherapy. Increasing access to Black people with prostate cancer may decrease mortality rate In a study published ...

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Science29 Sep 2023

JMIR Publications places No, 348 on The Globe and Mail's annual ranking of Canada's Top Growing Companies

(Toronto, September 29, 2023) JMIR Publications is pleased to announce it placed No. 348 on the 2023 Report on Business ranking of Canada’s Top Growing Companies, making the ranking over the past three consecutive years. Canada’s Top Growing Companies ranks Canadian companies on three-year revenue growth. JMIR Publications earned its spot with three-year growth of 105%. “Being ranked on this list, year over year, showcases JMIR Publications’ national and global leadership in publishing high-quality open access ...

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Science29 Sep 2023

Allergy study on 'wild' mice challenges the hygiene hypothesis

The notion that some level of microbial exposure might reduce our risk of developing allergies has arisen over the last few decades and has been termed the hygiene hypothesis. Now, an article published in Science Immunology by researchers from Karolinska Institutet challenges this hypothesis by showing that mice with high infectious exposures from birth have the same, if not an even greater ability to develop allergic immune responses than 'clean' laboratory mice. How microbes may prevent allergy has been a topic of great interest in recent times. Studies have suggested that certain infections might reduce the production of inflammatory antibodies to ...

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Science29 Sep 2023

Larger lymph node threshold optimizes nasopharyngeal carcinoma outcomes

Leesburg, VA, September 29, 2023—According to the American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), using a 6-mm threshold, rather than a 5-mm threshold, helps facilitate better risk stratification and treatment decisions in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). “Future American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) staging updates should consider incorporation of the 6-mm threshold for N-category and tumor-stage determinations,” wrote corresponding author Zhiying Liang, MD, from the radiology department at China’s Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center. This AJR accepted manuscript by Liang et al. included ...

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Science29 Sep 2023

BPS celebrates Max Planck-Humboldt medal awardee Kandice Tanner

ROCKVILLE, MD – The Biophysical Society is honored to celebrate Kandice Tanner, a physicist and Senior Investigator at the Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. Tanner is being recognized for her pioneering work on the biophysics of the metastatic spread of cancer. Using 3D organoid models of cancer progression, Tanner discovered a novel type of cell migration and cell generated forces associated with the formation of microtissues and tumors. This discovery demonstrated that physical forces are important in the establishment ...

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Science29 Sep 2023

American Academy of Arts and Sciences to induct UVA's Garcia-Blanco

The University of Virginia School of Medicine’s Mariano A. Garcia-Blanco, MD, PhD, will be inducted this weekend into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS), one of the country’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies, in recognition of his exceptional scientific contributions. The AAAS was founded in 1780 – during the Revolutionary War – by John Adams, John Hancock and other founding fathers who wanted to “cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity and ...

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