Science
press releases.

Science11 Sep 2023

Sorghum bran packs bigger punch than whole grain

Sorghum bran has much higher levels of some essential amino acids and minerals needed for human health and development than a whole grain or dehulled sorghum flour, researchers from the University of Johannesburg have found. Sorghum bran packs a calcium, magnesium, leucine and valine punch much higher than the whole grain flour. The climate-resilient gluten-free grain also holds its own on macro – and micronutrients compared to the biggest grains produced worldwide. Dr Janet Adebo and Dr Hema Kesa investigated and compared the nutritional quality and functional properties of the different ...

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Science11 Sep 2023

Large-scale investigation supports modified classification system for pulmonary adenocarcinomas

(Singapore – 10:05 a.m. SGT--September 11, 2023) – A modified adenocarcinoma classification approach significantly enhances reproducibility and may be an improvement on the existing World Health Organization classification system, according to research unveiled at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) 2023 World Conference on Lung Cancer in Singapore. The study, led by Dr. Erik Thunnissen, Department of Pathology, Amsterdam UMC, VU Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, ...

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Science10 Sep 2023

Aldosterone synthase inhibition with lorundrostat for uncontrolled hypertension

About The Study: Among individuals with uncontrolled hypertension in this randomized clinical trial that included 200 participants, use of lorundrostat was effective at lowering blood pressure compared with placebo, which will require further confirmatory studies. Authors: Steven E. Nissen, M.D., of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, 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/jama.2023.16029) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional ...

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Science10 Sep 2023

Exhaled breath analysis shows promise in detecting malignant pleural mesothelioma

[Singapore -- 10:35 a.m. SGT--September 10, 2023] -- Identifying and analyzing volatile organic compounds in exhaled breath of patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma showed promise as a screening method for MPM, according to research presented today at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) 2023 World Conference on Lung Cancer in Singapore. Malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) is a challenging disease with limited treatment options and a poor prognosis. To improve ...

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Science8 Sep 2023

These worms have rhythm

There’s a rhythm to developing life. Growing from a tiny cell cluster into an adult organism takes precise timing and control. The right genes must turn on at the right time, for the right duration, and in the correct order. Losing the rhythm can lead to diseases like cancer. So, what keeps every gene on beat? Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Professor Christopher Hammell has found that in the worm C. elegans, this genetic orchestra has no single conductor. Instead, a quartet of molecules works in concert to time each developmental stage. Hammell says this process shares some similarities with the circadian clocks that control human ...

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Science8 Sep 2023

UMBC team of data scientists named a tools competition winner

Baltimore – A team of four data scientists from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, was named today as one of 32 winners of the Tools Competition, one of the largest education technology (edtech) competitions in the world that awarded more than $4 million to winners this year. The team was a winner in the DARPA AI Tools for Adult Learning opportunity, which sought artificial intelligence-powered tools to help adults learn complex topics necessary for the current and future national security workforce (e.g., AI engineering ...

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Science8 Sep 2023

Synchrotron studies change the composition of the Earth’s core

In work published in Science Advances, a team of researchers have determined a new pressure scale, which is critical for understanding the Earth’s composition. Using x-rays from a uniquely powerful spectrometer at RIKEN’s SPring-8 Center they avoided some of the large approximations of previous work, discovering that the previous scale overestimated pressure by more than 20% at 230 gigapascals (2.3 million atmospheres) - a pressure reached in Earth’s core. This is similar to someone running a marathon that they thought was 42 kilometers, but finding they had only really run 34 kilometers. While 20% might seem like a modest correction, it has big implications. An accurate ...

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Science8 Sep 2023

British sex lives revealed in new study

A new study published today shows the number of sexual partners we have changes as we age – and there are some surprising results. Researchers from the University of East Anglia (UEA), in collaboration with King’s College London and University College London, surveyed more than 5,000 people aged 18 years and older during the 2022 mpox (previously known as “monkeypox”) outbreak. The team wanted to better understand how sexual behaviours change with age, so that mathematical models of sexually transmitted infections can be made more accurate. Key findings included in the paper, published today ...

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Science8 Sep 2023

How trees influence cloud formation

As part of the international CLOUD project at the nuclear research centre CERN, researchers at PSI have identified so-called sesquiterpenes – gaseous hydrocarbons that are released by plants – as being a major factor in cloud formation. This finding could reduce uncertainties in climate models and help make more accurate predictions. The study has now been published in the journal Science Advances. According to the latest projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the global climate will be 1.5 to 4.4 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial levels by 2100. This figure is based on various scenarios describing how anthropogenic ...

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Science8 Sep 2023

A guide to Big Team Science creates a blueprint for research collaboration on a large scale

Scientific research depends on collaboration between researchers and institutions. But over the past decade, there has been a surge of large-scale research projects involving extraordinarily large numbers of researchers, from dozens to hundreds, all working on a common project. Examples of this trend include ManyBabies, centred on infant cognition and development, and ManyManys, focused on comparative cognition and behaviour across animal taxa. These kinds of projects, known as big team science (BTS), benefit from pooled human and material ...

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Science8 Sep 2023

Valleytronics is warming up at Brookhaven Lab

UPTON, NY—Researchers at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, and Northrop Grumman, a multinational aerospace and defense technology company, have found a way to maintain valley polarization at room temperature using novel materials and techniques. This discovery could lead to devices that store and process information in novel ways using this technology without the need to keep them at ultra-low temperatures. Their ...

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Science8 Sep 2023

Readmission rates after acute respiratory distress syndrome in children

About The Study: The findings of this study suggest that childhood survivors of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) are at high risk of readmission in the first two months after discharge. Future studies should evaluate whether post-discharge interventions (e.g., telephonic contact, follow-up clinics, and home health care) may help reduce the readmission burden. Authors: Garrett Keim, M.D., of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, 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.2023.30774) Editor’s ...

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Science8 Sep 2023

Probing the unimaginable: New data help to understand the nature of aphantasia

The ability to visualize faces, objects, landscapes, or even scenes from the past exists on a spectrum. While some can picture the layout of a city in minute detail and mentally walk through it, street by street, others have a perfectly blank internal cinema. In this case, we speak of aphantasia—the inability to voluntarily produce the visual mental image corresponding to an idea. People whose aphantasia is congenital—i.e., not due to a stroke, brain injury, or psychiatric illness—become aware of their peculiarity reasonably ...

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Science8 Sep 2023

The 10th Heidelberg Laureate Forum is just around the corner!

This September 24–29, at the 10th Heidelberg Laureate Forum (HLF), 200 young researchers in mathematics and computer science will spend a week of scientific exchange with the recipients of the disciplines’ most prestigious prizes: the Abel Prize, ACM A.M. Turing Award, ACM Prize in Computing, Fields Medal, the Nevanlinna Prize as well as its continuation, the IMU Abacus Medal. Below are a few highlights of the upcoming program of the HLF as well as a breakdown of how to cover this unique event. More ...

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Science8 Sep 2023

Study shows food from tobacco-owned brands more 'hyperpalatable' than competitor's food

LAWRENCE — Many of us know all too well the addictive nature of many foods marketed in the United States — most call it “junk food.” In fact, this kind of salty, sweet and high-fat fare makes up the lion’s share of what’s marketed to Americans. Researchers employ a more scholarly term for food items featuring purposely tempting combinations of salts, fats and sugars: They’re “hyperpalatable.” Now, an investigator at the University of Kansas has conducted research showing food brands owned by tobacco ...

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Science8 Sep 2023

Unveiling the causes of the 1931 Yangtze River Deluge

In the summer of 1931, an unprecedented calamity unfolded along the Yangtze River basin in eastern China - the 1931 Yangtze River flood, known as one of history's deadliest natural disasters. This cataclysmic event submerged a staggering 180,000 km2, affected 25 million lives, and tragically claimed over 2 million lives. Despite its immense societal impact, the origins of this monumental flood have remained largely unexplored, a challenge compounded by the scarcity of historical records and pre-1950s meteorological data in China. Recent access to crucial historical datasets has, however, unlocked the ability to investigate the 1931 Yangtze River flood. A recent study published ...

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Science8 Sep 2023

Benchtop NMR spectroscopy can accurately analyse pyrolysis oils

Benchtop NMR spectroscopy can accurately analyse pyrolysis oils Pyrolysis bio-oils have the potential to be widely used as alternative fuels but are very complex to analyse Cheaper, simpler, low-field, or ‘benchtop’, NMR spectrometers were able to accurately quantify key oxygen-containing components of pyrolysis bio-oils for the first time More accessible analysis could help develop the potential of bio-oils as an alternative to fossil fuels EMBARGOED UNTIL FRIDAY 8TH SEPTEMBER at 9am UK time 2023 | Birmingham, UK A team of researchers at Aston University ...

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Science8 Sep 2023

Disney princesses can be good for a child’s self-image, UC Davis researchers suggest

Children have loved Disney princesses since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered in theaters in 1937. While this adoration continues to grow in terms of princess movie ratings, some parents may wonder what effects these idealized images of young women might have on how their children feel about and express themselves. According to new research from the University of California, Davis, a favorite princess improved — but did not harm — young children’s ...

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Science8 Sep 2023

Labour laws need updating now remote work is here to stay

Australia’s employment laws and regulations must be updated to reflect the changing nature of work, with many people continuing to work from home long after the COVID-19 pandemic. That’s according to University of South Australia Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour Dr Ruchi Sinha who says labour laws and protections should be updated to clarify issues related to work hours, overtime, and breaks in a remote work context, now that almost half of all employees are working from home at least once a week. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare ...

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Science8 Sep 2023

UArizona scientists investigate new frontiers of sound with $30M center

The National Science Foundation has granted the University of Arizona $30 million over five years to establish a new NSF Science and Technology Center. The New Frontiers of Sound Science and Technology Center, which comes with an additional $30 million funding option over the following five years, will bring together researchers working in topological acoustics. With topological acoustics, researchers exploit the properties of sound in ways that could vastly improve computing, telecommunications and sensing. Applications could include reaching quantum-like computing speeds, reducing the power usage of smartphones, and sensing changes in aging infrastructure or the natural ...

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Science7 Sep 2023

Research spotlight: History of Adverse Childhood Events (ACEs) linked to increased risk of head or neck injury and concussion

Altaf Saadi, MD, MSc, principal investigator of the Neurodisparities & Health Justice Lab in the Department of Neurology at Mass General and an assistant professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, is lead author of a new study in the Journal of Head Trauma and Rehabilitation, Examining the Association Between Adverse Childhood Experiences and Lifetime History of Head or Neck Injury or Concussion in Children From the United States. What Question Were You Investigating? Is there an association between adverse childhood experiences ...

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Science7 Sep 2023

They fall more easily for conspiracy theories

People who primarily use their own gut feeling to determine what is true and false are more likely to believe conspiracy theories. That is the conclusion of researchers at Linköping University, Sweden, who have investigated the relationship between susceptibility to misleading information and the conviction that the truth is relative. “I think many people who emphasise a more relativistic view of what truth is mean well. They believe that it’s important that everyone should be able to make their voice heard. But these results show that such a view can actually be quite dangerous,” says PhD student ...

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Science7 Sep 2023

"Monstrous births” and the making of race in the nineteenth-century United States

From the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, “monstrous births”—malformed or anomalous fetuses—were, to Western medicine, an object of superstition. In 19th-century America, they became instead an object of the “modern scientific study of monstrosity,” a field formalized by French scientist Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. This clinical turn was positioned against the backdrop of social, political, and economic activity that codified laws governing slavery, citizenship, immigration, family, ...

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Science7 Sep 2023

Calcium channel blocker use and associated glaucoma and related traits

About The Study: Calcium channel blocker use was adversely associated with glaucoma prevalence in this study of 427,000 adult UK Biobank participants, suggesting that calcium channel blockers may represent an important modifiable risk factor for glaucoma, potentially through an intraocular pressure–independent mechanism. Authors: Alan Kastner, M.D., M.Sc., of the Moorfields Eye Hospital National Health Service Foundation Trust and University College London Institute of Ophthalmology in London, 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/jamaophthalmol.2023.3877) Editor’s ...

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Science7 Sep 2023

Many people have biased perceptions of EDI leaders

For the past decade, companies across North America have paid more attention to supporting equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI). This has prompted many organizations to create a leadership role fully dedicated to advancing EDI — so much so that between 2015 and 2020, the job title “head of diversity” increased 107 percent on LinkedIn. By 2021, more than half of S&P 500 firms had named a chief diversity officer. But a new study from the UBC Sauder School of Business shows many people have deeply held beliefs about who should ...

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