Science
press releases.

Science21 Sep 2023

UW team’s shape-changing smart speaker lets users mute different areas of a room

In virtual meetings, it’s easy to keep people from talking over each other. Someone just hits mute. But for the most part, this ability doesn’t translate easily to recording in-person gatherings. In a bustling cafe, there are no buttons to silence the table beside you. The ability to locate and control sound — isolating one person talking from a specific location in a crowded room, for instance — has challenged researchers, especially without visual cues from cameras. A team led by ...

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Science21 Sep 2023

ETRI sets global standard for NFC-based internet communication

South Korean researchers have achieved a landmark feat by setting international standards for short-range wireless communication technology, commonly used within a 10 cm range, to enable internet communication. ETRI(Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute) announced on the 21st July that the international standard “IETF RFC 9428(Transmission of IPv6 Packets over Near Field Communication)” was formally adopted by the Internet Engineering Task Force(IETF), a semi-private international standardization organization under the Internet Architecture Board(IAB). Near ...

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Science21 Sep 2023

Unveiling the science of ultrasound-driven microbubble desorption

Injecting drugs into the bloodstream can often harm healthy tissues as well. Drug delivery systems (DDSs) are an innovative solution designed to target specific cells and minimize such side effects. One strategy for drug delivery that has steadily gained traction involves a combination of microbubbles and ultrasound. Microbubbles are small gas-filled bubbles that can be loaded with drugs or other therapeutic agents on their surface. When exposed to ultrasound waves, these microbubbles begin to oscillate, with the ensuing ...

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Science21 Sep 2023

Uromodulin levels may indicate risk for kidney failure

Prior studies of uromodulin, the most abundant protein in urine, and kidney disease have focused primarily on urinary uromodulin levels. The current study evaluated associations of serum uromodulin levels with risk of end-stage kidney disease and mortality in a cohort of African American adults with hypertension and chronic kidney disease. The research, recently published in the American Journal of Kidney Diseases (AJKD), found that participants with lower levels of uromodulin at baseline were more likely to develop end-stage kidney disease, even after accounting for baseline kidney ...

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Science21 Sep 2023

Long-lasting La Niña events more common over past century

Multiyear La Niña events have become more common over the last 100 years, according to a new study led by University of Hawai‘i (UH) at Mānoa atmospheric scientist Bin Wang. Five out of six La Niña events since 1998 have lasted more than one year, including an unprecedented triple-year event. The study was published this week in Nature Climate Change. “The clustering of multiyear La Niña events is phenomenal given that only ten such events have occurred since 1920,” said Wang, emeritus professor of atmospheric sciences in the UH Mānoa School of Ocean ...

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Science21 Sep 2023

Monkeys cause a stink in response to human noise

New research has found that monkeys increase their use of scent markings to compensate for human noise pollution. Pied tamarins (Saguinus bicolor) use both vocal calls and scent markings to communicate, and the new study – published in the journal Ethology Ecology & Evolution – is the first to investigate how primates change their communication strategies in response to noise pollution. The pied tamarin has an extremely narrow geographic range in central Brazil, much of which now lies within the city of ...

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Science20 Sep 2023

New research findings: Understanding the sex life of coral gives hope of clawing it back from the path to extinction

For the first time, scientists have mapped the reproductive strategies and life cycle of an endangered coral species, offering hope it can be clawed back from the path to extinction. The purple cauliflower soft coral, Dendronephthya australis, is endemic to south-eastern Australia, with the largest populations historically found in the Port Stephens estuary in New South Wales. It is one of the 100 priority species on the Federal Government’s Threatened Species Strategy. Not only is the future ...

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Science20 Sep 2023

College athletes experience worse post-injury outcomes for concussions suffered outside of sports

Philadelphia, September 20, 2023 – Researchers from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) found that college athletes had worse post-injury outcomes related to concussions they experienced outside of sports than those they experienced while playing sports. Additionally, female athletes who sustained their injury outside of sports had more severe symptoms and more days in sports lost to injury relative to male athletes. These findings suggest the need for improved concussion recognition, reporting, and monitoring outside of sports. The study was recently published online by the Journal of Athletic Training. Concussions have the potential to ...

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Science20 Sep 2023

LSU receives $5M from NOAA to build high-frequency radar systems on the coast

From energy production to recreational fishing, Louisiana’s coastal waters are a busy place. Having reliable data about oceanic conditions can be critical to safe operations for those who work and play in coastal waters. Up until now, Louisiana’s Gulf Coast has been hampered by a lack of high-quality information about currents, waves and other important factors. A new, LSU-led high-frequency radar project will change that. This $5 million, NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) funded project will install up to eight high-frequency radar, or HF radar, systems along the Louisiana coastline. Spearheaded by the ...

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Science20 Sep 2023

Ancient human remains buried in Spanish caves were subsequently manipulated and utilized

Caves served as sites for burial and later modification of human remains for thousands of years in the Iberian Peninsula, according to a study published September 20, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Zita Laffranchi and Marco Milella of the University of Bern, Switzerland, and Rafael Martinez Sanchez, Universidad de Córdoba, Spain, and colleagues. The use of caves as burial sites is a cultural phenomenon with a broad distribution in both space and time. In the southern Iberian Peninsula, this practice became particularly ...

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Science20 Sep 2023

Long-term history of violence in hunter-gatherer societies uncovered in the Atacama Desert

Interpersonal violence was a consistent part of life in ancient hunter-gatherer communities on the Atacama Desert coast of northern Chile, according to a study published September 20, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Vivien Standen of the University of Tarapacá, Chile and colleagues. Archaeological research supports the notion that interpersonal violence and warfare have played an important role in the lives of hunter-gatherer groups over time, but many questions remain about the factors that influence such violence. The record of ...

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Science20 Sep 2023

Job ads which use masculine rather than gender-inclusive language are perceived by women as sexist, leading them to feel ostracized, demotivated, and as though they don't belong at work

Job ads which use masculine rather than gender-inclusive language are perceived by women as sexist, leading them to feel ostracized, demotivated, and as though they don't belong at work ### Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0290709 Article Title: The impact of gender-exclusive language on women’s anticipated ostracism: A preregistered replication of Stout and Dasgupta (2011) Author Countries: USA Funding: Miami University Committee on Faculty Research, Heather M. Claypool Miami University College of Arts and Science, Heather M. Claypool. END ...

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Science20 Sep 2023

Ancient Amazonians intentionally created fertile “dark earth”

The Amazon river basin is known for its immense and lush tropical forests, so one might assume that the Amazon’s land is equally rich. In fact, the soils underlying the forested vegetation, particularly in the hilly uplands, are surprisingly infertile. Much of the Amazon’s soil is acidic and low in nutrients, making it notoriously difficult to farm. But over the years, archaeologists have dug up mysteriously black and fertile patches of ancient soils in hundreds of sites across the Amazon. This “dark earth” has been found in and around human settlements dating ...

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Science20 Sep 2023

MD Anderson expands breakthrough research campus with groundbreaking of innovative new facility

HOUSTON ― The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center today broke ground on a 600,000-square-foot facility intended to anchor the institution’s expansive south campus research park. The building was purposefully built to enable collaborative science and impactful breakthrough discoveries that will accelerate efforts to end cancer. A $668 million institutional investment will support the construction of MD Anderson’s South Campus Research Building 5 (SCRB5), a 7-story building designed by Elkus Manfredi Architects with state-of-the-art research facilities and inspiring public spaces to facilitate exceptional science. ...

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Science20 Sep 2023

Genetic biomarker may predict severity of food allergy

Researchers from Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and colleagues reported for the first time that a genetic biomarker may be able to help predict the severity of food allergy reactions. Currently there is no reliable or readily available clinical biomarker that accurately distinguishes patients with food allergies who are at risk for severe life-threatening reactions versus more mild symptoms. Findings were published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. Dr. Lang and colleagues found that the presence of an enzyme isoform called α-tryptase, ...

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Science20 Sep 2023

Making contact: Researchers wire up individual graphene nanoribbons

Researchers have developed a method of “wiring up” graphene nanoribbons (GNRs), a class of one-dimensional materials that are of interest in the scaling of microelectronic devices. Using a direct-write scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) based process, the nanometer-scale metal contacts were fabricated on individual GNRs and could control the electronic character of the GNRs. The researchers say that this is the first demonstration of making metal contacts to specific GNRs with certainty and that those contacts induce device functionality needed for transistor function. The results of this research, led by electrical and computer engineering (ECE) professor Joseph Lyding, along ...

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Science20 Sep 2023

A new regulatory model which supports and encourages needed to help organizations comply with equalities legislation, study says

A new type of regulation is needed to support and encourage organisations to comply with equality and human rights law because enforcement alone is ineffective, a new study says. The introduction of the Public Sector Equality Duty and the Human Rights Act were intended to establish an equality and human rights culture within public authorities. The research highlights how this culture has failed to take hold. An alternative is needed to the current model of regulation (the enforcement pyramid) under which penalties increasingly progress until noncompliers comply. The study says the current model cannot recognise innovation, ...

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Science20 Sep 2023

Stabilizing precipitate growth at grain boundaries in alloys

Materials are often considered to be one phase, but many engineering materials contain two or more phases, improving their properties and performance. These two-phase materials have inclusions, called precipitates, embedded in the microstructure. Alloys, a combination of two or more types of metals, are used in many applications, like turbines for jet engines and light-weight alloys for automotive applications, because they have very good mechanical properties due to those embedded precipitates. The average precipitate size, however, tends to increase ...

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Science20 Sep 2023

Researchers discover biomarker for tracking depression recovery

Using a novel deep brain stimulation (DBS) device capable of recording brain signals, researchers have identified a pattern of brain activity or “biomarker” related to clinical signs of recovery from treatment-resistant depression. The findings from this small study are an important step towards using brain data to understand a patient’s response to DBS treatment. The study was published in Nature and supported by the National Institutes of Health’s Brain Research Through Advancing ...

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Science20 Sep 2023

NIH awards $3.1 million to study human mitochondrial disorders

The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development awarded $3.1 million to the University of Arkansas to study a spectrum of pediatric mitochondrial disorders caused by mutations in the mitochondria. These disorders often impact different organs requiring energy and can lead to mitochondria-induced multiple organ disorder syndromes, or MIMODS. Shilpa Iyer, an associate professor of biological sciences, will serve as the principal investigator on the five-year award. Iyer and her team conduct research on mitochondrial diseases and have received grants from Arkansas ...

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Science20 Sep 2023

Language acquisition may work differently in people with autism

You’re looking at a truck. You’re with a young child and he follows your gaze. He’s interested in the object you’re looking at without you pointing at it. This is called joint attention and it is one of the primary ways children learn to connect words with objects and acquire language. Lack of joint attention is a core feature of autism. Until now, it was thought that stimulating joint attention in people with autism would help them express themselves verbally. But a meta-analysis of 71 studies on autism challenges this assumption and suggests that people with autism spectrum disorders may acquire language differently. The study – by Laurent Mottron, ...

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Science20 Sep 2023

Consumption of ultraprocessed food and risk of depression

About The Study: The findings of this study suggest that greater ultraprocessed food (UPF; i.e., energy-dense, palatable, and ready-to-eat items) intake, particularly artificial sweeteners and artificially sweetened beverages, is associated with increased risk of depression. Although the mechanism associating UPF to depression is unknown, recent experimental data suggests that artificial sweeteners elicit purinergic transmission in the brain, which may be involved in the etiopathogenesis of depression. Authors: Raaj S. Mehta, ...

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Science20 Sep 2023

Surrogate adiposity markers and mortality

About The Study: Waist-to-hip ratio had the strongest and most consistent association with mortality irrespective of body mass index in this study consisting of 387,000 UK adult participants from the UK Biobank. Clinical recommendations should consider focusing on adiposity distribution compared with mass. Authors: Guillaume Pare, M.D., M.Sc., of the Vascular and Stroke Research Institute in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.34836) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional ...

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Science20 Sep 2023

Prehistoric fish fills 100 million year gap in evolution of the skull

A 455-million-year-old fossil fish provides a new perspective on how vertebrates evolved to protect their brains, a study has found. In a paper published in Nature today (Wednesday 20th September), researchers from the University of Birmingham, Naturalis Biodiversity Centre in Leiden, Netherlands; and the Natural History Museum have pieced together the skull of Eriptychius americanus. The research, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, suggests that the ancient jawless fish found in ancient deposits in ...

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Science20 Sep 2023

Study finds firearm injuries increased in gentrified neighborhoods

Brigham researchers reported that gentrified neighborhoods had a 62 percent higher firearm injury incidence rate than non-gentrified communities with comparable sociodemographic characteristics Understanding the reason for this increase is vital to reducing future firearm injuries Gentrification can have a ripple effect on communities. While it can improve certain conditions in typically low-income areas, rising housing costs can displace residents, causing social disruption and other downstream effects. Investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, conducted a study using national data to examine the relationship ...

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