ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A team at Sandia National Laboratories developed a molecule that helps change the way some materials react to temperature fluctuations, which makes them more durable. It’s an application that could be used in everything from plastic phone cases to missiles. Polymers, which include various forms of plastics, are made up of many smaller molecules, bonded together. This bond makes them especially strong and an ideal product to be used to protect delicate components in a wide variety of items. But with time, use and exposure to different environments, all materials begin to deteriorate. Hot ...

Woods Hole, Mass. (August 23, 2023) -- Scientific exploration of the deep ocean has largely remained inaccessible to most people because of barriers to access due to infrastructure, training, and physical ability requirements for at-sea oceanographic research. Now, a new and innovative framework for oceanographic research provides a way for shore-based scientists, citizen scientists, and the general public to seamlessly observe and control robotic sampling processes. The Shared Autonomy for Remote Collaboration (SHARC) framework “enables remote participants to conduct shipboard operations and control ...

ROCHESTER, Minnesota — Pre-eclampsia, a life-threatening surge in blood pressure, is an enigmatic condition. Each year, it causes the deaths of more than 70,000 women worldwide. Because scientists do not know what causes it, they lack targeted strategies to treat it. Delivery, the only available therapy, is not the cure it is often made out to be, according to Vesna D. Garovic, M.D., Ph.D., a nephrologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, who has devoted her career to studying this common pregnancy complication. "Even after delivery, women ...

URBANA, Ill. — A new analysis from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the USDA-Agricultural Research Service (ARS) has identified the top factors accounting for yield variability in processing sweet corn (used for canned and frozen products), including one within the control of processors.  “We used a very robust approach to account for sweet corn yield with field-level data across some 16,000 fields and 27 years. Year and production region were the two most important variables, which makes ...

Scientists have created a new test for identifying people at risk of developing acute myeloid leukaemia and related cancers, years before they do. The new platform, ‘MN-predict’, will allow doctors and scientists to identify those at risk and to design new treatments to prevent them from developing these potentially lethal cancers.   Researchers at the Wellcome-MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute (CSCI), the University of Cambridge’s Department of Haematology, and Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria del Principado de Asturias (ISPA) analysed data from more than 400,000 individuals participating ...

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (August 24, 2023) — Van Andel Institute scientists have identified a series of processes that help the brain adapt to damage caused by breakdowns in circuits that govern movement, cognition and sensory perception. Because such breakdowns contribute to Parkinson’s disease, the findings may one day help researchers optimize current treatments or develop new ones that repair or bypass the broken circuits. A study describing the findings published this week in the journal Science Advances. “Our work highlights the importance ...

New research from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) and the Sloan Kettering Institute — a hub for basic science and translational research within MSK — suggests a method for revealing DNA repair “scars” could help make treatment decisions in BRCA1- and BRCA2-deficient cancers; modified a bacteria-made compound to target mutant KRAS-driven cancers; and shed new light on brain metastasis in non-small cell lung cancer. New method for revealing DNA repair “scars” ...

In a new study co-led by investigators at the United States Department of Veterans Affairs and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, a global team of scientists conducted one of the largest genetic association studies on heart failure to date. Using genomic data from over 90,000 heart failure patients and more than a million controls, the team identified 39 genetic mutations associated with heart failure, 18 of which had not been reported previously. The researchers also pinpointed seven druggable proteins that, when targeted with specially ...

Inflammation is a standard part of our bodies’ immune system response. But sometimes this response becomes hyperactivated in our lungs, causing inflammation to continue unchecked, which can be fatal. Many deaths from COVID-19 have been due to excessive inflammation, which results in acute lung injury. A group of researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago have investigated how lungs counterbalance inflammation. Their work points to cells in the lung that reduce inflammation by removing ...

A study led by Dr. Hyun Kyoung Lee, associate professor at Baylor College of Medicine and investigator at the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children’s Hospital, has discovered a new biological mechanism to regenerate and repair myelin, a protective sheath that insulates neuronal fibers and plays a vital role in ensuring rapid and accurate neurotransmission. The Duncan NRI team found novel roles for the Dishevelled associated activator of morphogenesis 2 (Daam2) protein and CK2α kinase in regulating myelin repair and regeneration. The study was published in the Proceedings of the National ...

PHILADELPHIA (August 24, 2023) – A bitter taste in the mouth is often a symptom or side effect of illness, which may be the result of how the body reacts to pathogens. A new study published in iScience, by Hong Wang, PhD, an Associate Member at the Monell Chemical Sense Center, and colleagues sheds light on the mechanisms involved in the complex interplay between taste perception and immune function. Their work also highlights the potential of a sequencing tool for investigating epigenetic mechanisms that affect taste-cell gene expression. Epigenetics is the study of how and when genes are expressed rather than alteration of the genetic ...

Researchers have developed an engineered adeno-associated virus (AAV) vector that yields high transduction of brain vascular pericytes and smooth muscle cells. The study describing the characterization of this novel AAV capsid is published in the peer-reviewed journal Human Gene Therapy. Click here to read the article now. In the current study, Servio Ramirez, from Temple University School of Medicine, Patricia Musolino, from Massachusetts General Hospital, and Casey Maguire, from Harvard Medical School, and coauthors, characterize AAV-PR, the capsid that demonstrated high transduction of the brain vasculature. AAV-PR offers the ...

INDIANAPOLIS—Researchers from Indiana University School of Medicine have discovered a neglected brain region that could play a critical role in how likely a person with drug use disorders is to relapse, even after a long withdrawal period. Their findings were published recently in Biological Psychiatry. “Past studies in the field of addiction research have focused on the medial prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain that controls decision making, but no effective prevention or treatment for drug relapse is available,” said Yao-Ying Ma, MD, PhD, associate professor of pharmacology ...

SAN ANTONIO (Aug. 24, 2023) — Urine levels of adenine, a metabolite produced in the kidney, are predictive and a causative biomarker of looming progressive kidney failure in patients with diabetes, a finding that could lead to earlier diagnosis and intervention, researchers from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (also called UT Health San Antonio) reported Aug. 24 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. Elevated adenine was also associated with all-cause mortality. The study results are significant because until now, the most important ...

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Aug. 23, 2023 — Mathematical modeling can show how to safely blend hydrogen with natural gas for transport in existing pipeline systems. A secure and reliable transition to hydrogen is one of the proposed solutions for the shift to a net-zero-carbon economy.  “Mixing hydrogen into a natural gas pipeline changes how the gases flow, which will create new conditions for operators,” said Anatoly Zlotnik, a co-author of a new paper on the modeling in the journal PRX Energy. ...

ChatGPT may match or even exceed the average grade of university students when answering assessment questions across a range of subjects including computer science, political studies, engineering, and psychology, reports a paper published in Scientific Reports. The research also found that almost three-quarters of students surveyed would use ChatGPT to help with their assignments, despite many educators considering its use to be plagiarism. To investigate how ChatGPT performed when writing university assessments compared to students, Talal Rahwan and Yasir Zaki invited faculty members who taught32 different courses at ...

Four out of five emperor penguin colonies in the Bellingshausen Sea, Antarctica, saw no chicks survive to fledge successfully in the spring of 2022, reports a study published in Communications Earth & Environment. The study suggests that this complete breeding failure is a direct consequence of the unprecedented loss of sea ice recorded in the region in recent years due to climate change. Emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri) colonies generally need stable ice attached to the land between April and January to ensure successful breeding and moulting. Any change in the extent of the Antarctic sea ice can affect their ...

Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have observed a large dark spot in Neptune’s atmosphere, with an unexpected smaller bright spot adjacent to it. This is the first time a dark spot on the planet has ever been observed with a telescope on Earth. These occasional features in the blue background of Neptune’s atmosphere are a mystery to astronomers, and the new results provide further clues as to their nature and origin. Large spots are common features in the atmospheres of giant planets, the most famous being Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. On Neptune, a dark spot was first discovered by NASA’s Voyager 2 in ...

Emperor penguin colonies experienced unprecedented breeding failure in a region of Antarctica where there was total sea ice loss in 2022. The discovery supports predictions that over 90% of emperor penguin colonies will be quasi-extinct by the end of the century, based on current global warming trends. In a new study published today in Communications Earth & Environment, researchers from British Antarctic Survey discussed the high probability that no chicks had survived from four of the five known emperor penguin colonies in the central and eastern Bellingshausen Sea. The scientists examined ...

About The Study: Overestimation of oxygen saturation by pulse oximetry led to delayed delivery of COVID-19 therapy and higher probability of readmission regardless of race in this study of 24,000 patients. Black patients were more likely to have unrecognized need for therapy with potential implications for population-level health disparities.  Authors: Tianshi David Wu, M.D., M.H.S., of the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, is the corresponding author.  To access the embargoed ...

About The Study: In this study across all regions in mainland China, an estimated 1.87 million excess deaths occurred among individuals 30 years and older during the first two months after the end of China’s zero COVID policy, a proactive strategy that deploys mass testing and strict quarantine measures to stamp out any outbreak before it can spread. Authors: Hong Xiao, Ph.D., and Joseph M. Unger, Ph.D., M.S., of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, are the corresponding authors.  To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/  (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.30877) Editor’s ...

About The Study: The findings of this study suggest that artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots generally produce accurate information for the top cancer-related search queries, but the responses are not readily actionable and are written at a college reading level. These limitations suggest that AI chatbots should be used supplementarily and not as a primary source for medical information.  Authors: Abdo E. Kabarriti, M.D., of the State University of New York Downstate Health Sciences University ...

HOUSTON ― Researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have uncovered a functional role for KRAS mutations in pancreatic cancer and rapidly translated these findings into a novel therapeutic approach combining a KRAS G12D inhibitor with immune checkpoint inhibitors for early- and late-stage KRAS G12D-mutant pancreatic cancer. The combination therapy led to durable tumor elimination and significantly improved survival outcomes in preclinical models, leading to the launch of a Phase I clinical trial. Two studies, published today in Developmental Cell and Cancer Cell, describe why KRAS-targeted monotherapy likely is not enough ...

Led by Director CHANG Sukbok, scientists from the Center for Catalytic Hydrocarbon Functionalizations within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) have made a significant advancement in the synthesis of β-lactam scaffolds, which are structural components frequently found in essential antibiotics such as penicillins and carbapenems. This breakthrough overcomes challenges in β-lactam synthesis to promise streamlined pathways for drug development. The core chemical structure that makes up penicillins is a four-membered cyclic amide scaffold called chiral ...

Lignocellulosic biomass is a renewable feedstock for 2nd-generation biomanufacturing. In particular, efficient co-fermentation of mixed glucose and xylose in lignocellulosic hydrolysates is a key issue in reducing product costs. However, co-utilization of xylose and glucose in microbes is challenging due to limited xylose assimilation and the glucose repression effect. Recently, a research group led by Prof. ZHOU Yongjin from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy ...