Science
press releases.

Science28 Aug 2023

Two networks, two realities, one big problem

National news coverage from the two largest broadcast outlets, CNN and Fox News, not only reflects growing political polarization in America, but in a recent publication, researchers at Virginia Tech have shown that partisan and inflammatory broadcast coverage has increased over time and can exacerbate growing divides in the new public square of social media. Collaborative insights Eugenia Rho is assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science with a background in political science and a passion for ...

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Science28 Aug 2023

SfN’s TPDA Program earns ASAE 2023 Power of Associations Gold Award

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) earned a Power of Associations Gold Award from the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) for its successful Trainee Professional Development Award (TPDA) program. ASAE’s Power of Association awards celebrate and promote the invaluable contributions that associations make within the U.S. and globally through catalytic initiatives focused on professional advancement, global development, diversity and inclusion practices, advocacy, and community support and engagement. In operation since 2015, the TPDA program recognizes undergraduate and graduate ...

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Science28 Aug 2023

New approach to fighting malaria

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- The mosquito-borne infectious disease malaria resulted in about 241 million clinical episodes and 627,000 deaths in 2020. In young children and pregnant women living in areas where the disease is endemic, a major cause of death is Plasmodium falciparum, the most virulent, prevalent, and deadly human malaria parasite. Scientists are keen to understand the mechanisms that regulate gene expression through the different stages of P. falciparum’s lifecycle because such knowledge can ...

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Science28 Aug 2023

Once rhabdomyosarcoma, now muscle

“Every successful medicine has its origin story. And research like this is the soil from which new drugs are born,” says Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Professor Christopher Vakoc. For six years, Vakoc’s lab has been on a mission to transform sarcoma cells into regularly functioning tissue cells. Sarcomas are cancers that form in connective tissues like muscle. Treatment often involves chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation—procedures that are especially tough on kids. If doctors could transform cancer cells into healthy cells, it would offer patients a whole new treatment option—one that could spare them and their families a great deal of ...

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Science28 Aug 2023

Historic red tide event of 2020 fueled by plankton super swimmers

A major red tide event occurred in waters off Southern California in the spring of 2020, resulting in dazzling displays of bioluminescence along the coast. The spectacle was caused by exceedingly high densities of Lingulodinium polyedra (L. polyedra), a plankton species renowned for its ability to emit a neon blue glow. While the red tide captured the public’s attention and made global headlines, the event was also a harmful algal bloom. Toxins were detected at the height of the bloom that had the potential to harm marine life, and dissolved oxygen levels dropped to near-zero as the extreme biomass of the red tide decomposed. This lack of oxygen led to fish die-offs ...

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Science28 Aug 2023

Intravascular imaging associated with improved outcomes compared with angiography

Amsterdam, Netherlands – 27 Aug 2023: Intravascular imaging-guided percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) is associated with a lower rate of target lesion failure compared with angiography-guided PCI, according to late breaking research presented in a Hot Line session today at ESC Congress 2023.1 Numerous randomised trials have compared intravascular imaging-guided PCI with angiography-guided PCI. However, most of these prior trials have used intravascular ultrasound (IVUS). Optical coherence ...

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Science28 Aug 2023

Pulsed field ablation is noninferior to thermal ablation in paroxysmal atrial fibrillation

Amsterdam, Netherlands – 27 Aug 2023: Pulsed field ablation (PFA) is as effective and safe as conventional thermal ablation for the treatment of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation (AF), according to late breaking research presented in a Hot Line session today at ESC Congress 2023.1 ESC guidelines recommend catheter ablation after failure of drug therapy in patients with paroxysmal AF.2 Conventional ablation technology uses thermal energy (either heat/radiofrequency energy or cold/cryothermal energy) to ablate the tissue. Unlike thermal ablation, PFA uses high energy electrical pulses to destroy tissue by a process called electroporation. Preclinical ...

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Science28 Aug 2023

Ambulances should take cardiac arrest victims to closest emergency department

Amsterdam, Netherlands – 27 Aug 2023: A randomised trial involving all hospitals in London, UK, has found no difference in survival at 30 days in patients with resuscitated cardiac arrest in the community who were taken by ambulance to a cardiac arrest centre compared with those delivered to the geographically closest emergency department. That’s the finding of late breaking research presented in a Hot Line session today at ESC Congress 2023.1 The study also found no overall difference in neurological outcomes at discharge and at three months between groups. Sudden ...

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Science28 Aug 2023

How plants pass down genetic memories

When organisms pass their genes on to future generations, they include more than the code spelled out in DNA. Some also pass along chemical markers that instruct cells how to use that code. The passage of these markers to future generations is known as epigenetic inheritance. It’s particularly common in plants. So, significant findings here may have implications for agriculture, food supplies, and the environment. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Professors and HHMI Investigators Rob Martienssen and Leemor Joshua-Tor have been researching how plants pass along the markers that ...

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Science28 Aug 2023

NIH study shows association between better neighborhood conditions and lower childhood asthma rates

Living in a neighborhood with better access to resources such as high-quality housing, healthy food, parks and playgrounds, and clean air during the early stages of childhood was associated with lower asthma incidence in a new study from NIH’s Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program. Children born in high-opportunity neighborhoods had an asthma incidence rate of 23.3 cases per 1,000 children, while those born in very low and low-opportunity neighborhoods had rates of 35.3 per 1,000 ...

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Science28 Aug 2023

Due to sea-ice retreat, zooplankton could remain in the deep longer

Due to intensifying sea-ice melting in the Arctic, sunlight is now penetrating deeper and deeper into the ocean. Since marine zooplankton respond to the available light, this is also changing their behaviour – especially how the tiny organisms rise and fall within the water column. As an international team of researchers led by the Alfred Wegener Institute has now shown, in the future this could lead to more frequent food shortages for the zooplankton, and to negative effects for larger species including seals and whales. The study ...

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Science28 Aug 2023

Spintronics: X-ray microscopy unravels the nature of domain walls

Magnetic skyrmions are tiny vortices-like of magnetic spin textures that - in principle - can be used for spintronic devices, for example very fast and energy-efficient data storage devices. But at the moment it is still difficult to control and manipulate skyrmions at room temperature. A new study at BESSY II analyses the formation of skyrmions in ferrimagnetic thin films of dysprosium and cobalt in real time and with high spatial resolution. This is an important step towards characterising suitable materials with skyrmions more precisely in the future. Isolated magnetic skyrmions are topologically protected spin textures that are in the focus of research ...

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Science28 Aug 2023

An all-in-one surface design of copper nanowire assemblies to achieve ~100% defrosting efficiency

Scientists at Dalian University of Technology propose a design of copper nanowire assemblies that can sufficiently enhance the de-icing and defrosting efficiency without conventional energy input. Specifically, the defrosting efficacy approaches 100%, a record-high value compared to reported studies. The research, published in International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing, shows a simple electrochemical method for fabricating nanowire assemblies with controlled pattern, hierarchy, and size. This enables the simultaneous presentation of photothermal, thermal conductive, and superhydrophobic ...

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Science28 Aug 2023

Trial re-evaluates routine defibrillator implantation after myocardial infarction

Amsterdam, Netherlands – 26 Aug 2023: Is the routine implantation of an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) in myocardial infarction survivors with heart failure still an adequate therapy for prevention of sudden cardiac death? The PROFID EHRA trial is set to answer this question in a large, multicentre, EU-funded study set to enrol the first patient this summer. The consortium of partners and colleagues involved in the trial, including the European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA) of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), will meet during ESC Congress 2023 to discuss the start of the study. Myocardial ...

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Science28 Aug 2023

Sleep can be most restful for older adults when nighttime temperature range is between 68 to 77 °F, study finds

New research finds that sleep can be most efficient and restful for older adults when nighttime bedroom ambient temperature ranges between 68 to 77 °F. The authors observed an overall trend: a 5-10 % drop in sleep efficiency as the nighttime ambient temperature increases from 77°F to 86°F. Importantly, this research also reveals substantial between-individual differences in optimal bedroom temperature. “These results highlight the potential to enhance sleep quality in older adults by optimizing home thermal environments and emphasizing the importance ...

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Science28 Aug 2023

Low cost, high efficiency, multiple colors at the same time!

A research team led by Dr. Jung-dae Kwon from the Department of Energy & Electronic Materials at the Korea Institute of Materials Science(KIMS) has succeeded in realizing the world's first transparent thin-film solar cell on a flexible substrate that exhibits different reflective colours and does not significantly reduce solar cell's efficiency. KIMS is a government-funded research institute under the Ministry of Science and ICT. This is a technology that achieves reflective colour only a single material by periodically incorporating hydrogen into zinc oxide material doped with aluminium, which is a transparent electrode, to induce a refractive index difference. ...

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Science28 Aug 2023

UEA researchers develop new tool to reduce stroke risk

Peer reviewed – observational study - humans Researchers at the University of East Anglia have developed a new way of identifying patients at risk of an irregular heartbeat, known as ‘atrial fibrillation’. While not life threatening, the condition increases people’s risk of having a transient ischaemic attack (TIA) or stroke by up to five times. A new study, published today, reveals four specific factors that can predict which patients will have atrial fibrillation. These include older age, higher diastolic blood pressure and problems with both the coordination ...

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Science26 Aug 2023

Observation of metal healing itself confirms Texas A&M researcher’s prediction

A microscopic crack grew in a very small piece of platinum when placed under repetitive stretching. The experiment, designed to study fatigue crack growth, continued as predicted for a while before something unexpected happened. The crack stopped growing and instead began to get shorter, effectively “healing” itself. A group of researchers at Sandia National Laboratories made this surprising observation while conducting fracture experiments on nanocrystalline metals. The findings were recently published in the journal Nature. It ...

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Science25 Aug 2023

Children with SEND deserve authentic inclusion in the foreign languages classroom, report warns

Pupils with special educational needs and disabilities should be given equal opportunities to learn languages, a new report argues. Anecdotal evidence suggests that children with SEND are often removed from language lessons, because the subject is perceived as “difficult”, an assumption that is further exacerbated by trends with GCSE subject choices. Instead of withdrawing children with additional needs from the foreign languages classroom, opportunities should be provided for them to thrive within it. Evidence shows learning new languages can be possible and hugely beneficial for many children with ...

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Science25 Aug 2023

Mitochondria pore emerges as potential key to managing muscular dystrophies

Ever since the Jerry Lewis telethons began in the 1960s, millions of people have become familiar with an otherwise rare disease called muscular dystrophy (MD). The medical world has learned much over the ensuing years, including that more than 30 closely related disorders exist that can produce the gradual muscle degeneration that steals a child’s ability to walk and eventually disrupts other organ functions. An estimated 250,000 people in the U.S. are living with a muscular dystrophy. While many are living longer lives thanks to improved treatments, no cure has been found. Now an eye-opening study ...

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Science25 Aug 2023

Colchicine fails to reduce primary outcomes in COP-AF trial but encouraging signals found

Amsterdam, Netherlands – 25 Aug 2023: Colchicine does not significantly reduce perioperative atrial fibrillation (AF) or myocardial injury after non-cardiac surgery (MINS) in patients undergoing major non-cardiac thoracic surgery, according to late breaking research presented in a Hot Line session today at ESC Congress 2023.1 Perioperative AF occurs in approximately 10% of patients after major thoracic surgery, while MINS has an incidence of about 20% in the same patient population.2 Patients with perioperative AF and MINS have a poor prognosis.3,4 High levels ...

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Science25 Aug 2023

First ESC Guidelines covering all acute coronary syndromes published today

Amsterdam, Netherlands – 25 Aug 2023: The European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Guidelines on acute coronary syndromes are published online today in European Heart Journal.1 The document covers the management of unstable angina and all types of acute myocardial infarction. “Time is critical in acute coronary syndromes. When an artery supplying the heart with blood becomes blocked, the quicker we open the artery and restore flow, the less damage occurs to the heart muscle,” said Guidelines task force ...

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Science25 Aug 2023

Understanding the surge in cannabis use among pregnant and postpartum women in the US

Pregnant and recently postpartum women who suffer with mental health disorders may be vulnerable to using cannabis to self-medicate, according to a Rutgers-led study. In a nationally representative survey, Qiana L. Brown, an assistant professor at the Rutgers School of Social Work, examined the relationship between mental health disorders, cannabis use and cannabis use disorder (CUD) among pregnant and postpartum women in the US. The findings were published online in advance of print in the July 2023 issue of the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence. “Before this study, we ...

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Science25 Aug 2023

A study to keep downtown Arlington vibrant

A study led by two University of Texas at Arlington public affairs professors, in partnership with city leaders, suggests downtown Arlington events would enjoy increased attendance if there were more parking, shaded areas and Instagram-ready photo opportunities. Respondents to the survey consider downtown Arlington one of the top-three destinations in the city for entertainment. “Downtown is competing with Texas Live! and The Highlands,” said Emily Nwakpuda, assistant professor in UTA’s College of Architecture, ...

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Science25 Aug 2023

Move over pythons: These snakes are the real champion eaters

Pythons have huge appetites, but which snake would win an eating contest? Surprisingly, it’s a harmless little African snake that consumes eggs whole like an amuse-bouche. Biologist Bruce Jayne at the University of Cincinnati discovered that this species, Dasypeltis gansi, can consume bigger prey relative to its own length and mass than even Burmese pythons, among the most massive snakes on Earth. “They probably would hold the Guinness world record,” said Jayne, a professor of biological sciences in UC’s College of Arts and Sciences. “It’s spectacular but on a small scale,” he said. ...

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