Marijuana has emerged as one of the most commonly used illicit substances among adolescents in the United States. Given the rising number of states legalizing recreational marijuana for adults and the decreasing perception of risk among adolescents, tracking trends in youth marijuana use is more crucial than ever. Researchers from Florida Atlantic University’s Schmidt College of Medicine conducted a comprehensive study using data from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey between 2011 and 2021, which surveyed 88,183 adolescents in grades nine through 12. Researchers focused on the overall time trends in use of marijuana ...

Researchers from Peking University Third Hospital have developed a novel collaborative framework that integrates various semi-supervised learning techniques to enhance MRI segmentation using unlabeled data. This new approach, published in Health Data Science, leverages advanced deep learning models to significantly improve segmentation accuracy, even when labeled data is scarce. MRI segmentation plays a crucial role in medical imaging, aiding in the precise partitioning of MR images into different regions or structures. While deep learning-based ...

About The Study: In this network meta-analysis of patients with asthma, inhaled corticosteroids combined with formoterol and inhaled corticosteroids combined with short-acting β agonists were each associated with reduced asthma exacerbations and improved asthma control compared with short-acting β agonists alone. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Derek K. Chu, MD, PhD, email chudk@mcmaster.ca. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2024.22700) Editor’s ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Thin, stretchy skin — like that of a pig or human — significantly lessens the underlying damage that occurs when it’s punctured. Pig skin even outperforms synthetic materials that are designed to mimic skin, a new study finds. Its special qualities, in particular its ability to dissipate the energy of a puncturing object, greatly reduce the damage to deeper tissues, researchers report. Their findings appear in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. Philip Anderson, a professor of evolution, ecology and behavior who led the study with postdoctoral researcher Bingyang Zhang at the University of Illinois ...

“Out of meat, how do you get thought? That’s the grandest question.” So said philosopher Patricia Churchland to Robert Lawrence Kuhn, the producer and host of the acclaimed PBS program, Closer to Truth. Now Kuhn, a member of FQxI’s scientific advisory council, has published a taxonomy of proposed solutions to, and theories regarding, the hard problem of consciousness. He produced the organizing framework in order to explore their impact on meaning, purpose and value (if any), AI consciousness, virtual immortality, survival beyond death, and free will. Kuhn's ‘landscape of consciousness’ ...

There are, without a doubt, two broad technological fields that have been developing at an increasingly fast pace over the past decade: artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT). By excelling at tasks such as data analysis, image recognition, and natural language processing, AI systems have become undeniably powerful tools in both academic and industry settings. Meanwhile, miniaturization and advances in electronics have made it possible to massively reduce the size of functional devices capable ...

There is a pressing need for environmentally friendly meat production technologies to tackle the increasing global food demand. Cultured meat production is one such technology that is attracting a lot of attention as an alternative to conventional meat production. First developed in 2012, cultured meat is simply meat that is produced by growing or culturing muscle cells from animals in a laboratory. Typically, cultured meat production requires serum (or the liquid part of the blood) from animals, which is essential for the growth of muscle cells in the culture medium since serum includes abundant proteins that promote muscle cell growth. ...

Recent advances in three-dimensional (3D) scanning, particularly in photogrammetry and laser scanning, have made it possible to quickly and accurately scan complex 3D objects in the real world. These techniques generate detailed models by collecting large-scale point cloud data, representing the object's surface geometry through millions of individual points. This technology has applications in different fields, such as the 3D scanning of cultural heritage objects. By preserving these objects in digital formats, ...

As urban areas expand, the threat of natural disasters becomes a pressing concern for city planners and disaster management authorities. In earthquake-prone countries like Japan, one of the critical risks to infrastructure is liquefaction, a phenomenon where intense shaking causes loose, water-saturated soils to lose their strength and behave like a liquid. Liquefaction can cause buildings to sink into the soil, crack foundations, and collapse roads and utilities like water lines. Soil liquefaction accompanies every major earthquake, and the damage is significant. The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake in Japan caused liquefaction ...

Metal peroxide (MO2, M=Ca, Sr, Ba) is an alternative to hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). It has excellent oxidative properties, superior chemical stability, high purity, and is easy to store and transport. It has been widely used in wastewater treatment and disinfection. A Chinese research group has recently developed a novel self-cleaning electrode by constructing a micro-/nanostructure of a highly active catalyst with appropriate surface modification, achieving highly stable synthesis of alkaline-earth MO2. This study was published in Nature Nanotechnology. The current primary synthesis process of MO2 involves fast decomposition of H2O2, leading to insufficient utilization ...

Digital Science, a technology company serving stakeholders across the research ecosystem, is today calling for greater awareness of the impact that a myriad of fast-developing technologies are having on academics and their institutions. This follows the publication of a new report from Digital Science looking at how changing attitudes and behaviors towards research are affecting traditional research models and dynamics. Key themes to emerge from the findings relate to areas of open research, impact and evaluation, tech and AI, collaboration and research security. The objective of the report – titled Research Transformation: Change in the era of AI, open and impact ...

Researchers from the University of Oxford have identified a key biochemical mechanism relevant to the development of Huntington’s Disease. This discovery opens up the possibility of studying the disease before its clinical onset and eventually stopping its progression. The study, published in Nature Metabolism, has shown for the first time the biochemical change responsible for the development of Huntington’s disease, and how blocking this change stopped disease progression. Huntington's disease is an inherited condition that stops parts of the brain from working properly, leading to mental and physical decline that slowly ...

The potential of human-AI collaboration has captured our imagination: a future where human creativity and AI's analytical power combine to make critical decisions and solve complex problems. But new research from the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence (CCI) suggests this vision may be much more nuanced than we once thought. Published today in Nature Human Behaviour, “When Combinations of Humans and AI Are Useful” is the first large-scale meta-analysis conducted to better understand when human-AI combinations are useful in task completion, and when they are not. Surprisingly, the research has found that combining humans and AI to ...

Researchers at UCLA Health have found that a person's risk of developing psychotic-like experiences may be influenced by both childhood attention problems and their genetic makeup.  The findings, published in Nature Mental Health, build upon a long-studied association between childhood attention problems and the likelihood of later developing schizophrenia. Using data from about 10,000 children over six years, UCLA researchers led by Dr. Carrie Bearden sought to determine how attentional variability ...

It is well known that acting quickly in the event of a cardiac arrest is important, but what does a quick initial shock with a defibrillator mean exactly for patients' chances of survival? Researchers from Amsterdam UMC analysed the data of 3723 patients who had a cardiac arrest outside the hospital and concluded that for the first shock, every minute reduces the chance of survival by 6%. The results of this research were published today in the international journal Circulation.   "Our research shows that every minute of delay in giving the first shock has a major impact. If the first shock was given within six minutes, it was possible ...

An abnormal BMI in children – be it high or low – can now be associated with impaired lung function, but if their BMI is normalised before they reach adulthood, the impairment can be offset, researchers from Karolinska Institutet report. Their results, which are based on data collected under the BAMSE project in Sweden, are presented in The European Respiratory Journal.  One in ten people have reduced lung function development in childhood and cannot achieve maximal lung capacity in adulthood, increasing the risk of serious health problems such as cardiovascular disease, lung disease and diabetes. One risk factor associated with impaired lung function development is abnormal ...

Imagine you decide to write a short story about a protagonist who creates an artificial human and then falls in love with it. What gender is your protagonist? What about the artificial human? Would you write a moving love story? A cautionary dystopian tale? Would your story be more compelling than one written by ChatGPT? Likely yes, says Nina Beguš, a researcher and lecturer in UC Berkeley's School of Information and Department of History. Leveraging her background in comparative literature ...

A new study from Karolinska Institutet shows that heart failure mortality has decreased in Sweden over the last 20 years. The study has been published in the European Journal of Heart Failure. A national study has shown that heart failure mortality has decreased in Sweden over the last two decades. Despite these improvements, the prognosis for heart failure patients remains worrying – 25 percent of those diagnosed in 2022 died within a year. “Our results suggest that advances in heart failure treatment over the past decades have reduced heart failure mortality, both at the population level and for individual patients. ...

Many statistical models and algorithms used by scientists can be imagined as a “black box.” These models are powerful tools that give accurate predictions, but their internal workings are not easily interpretable or understood. In an era dominated by deep learning, where an ever-increasing amount of data can be processed, Natália Ružičková, a physicist and PhD student at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), chose to take a step back. At least in the context of genomic ...

Humans can do plenty, but plants have an ability we don’t: they make energy straight from sunlight, a superpower called photosynthesis. Yet new research shows that scientists are closing that gap. Osaka Metropolitan University researchers have revealed the 3D structure of an artificial photosynthetic antenna protein complex, known as light-harvesting complex II (LHCII), and demonstrated that the artificial LHCII closely mirrors its natural counterpart. This discovery marks a significant step forward in understanding how plants harvest and manage solar energy, paving the way for future innovations in artificial ...

“Vaccines are 100% safe, and anyone who doubts this is ignorant”: Have you ever come across messages like this during the pandemic crisis a few years ago? If you often feel that certain public debates—such as those on vaccines or the climate crisis—boil down to a black-and-white clash between two sides demanding, with harsh tones, unquestioning allegiance to their view, you're not entirely wrong. We are rightly accustomed to being warned about pseudoscientific misinformation and fake news, and much research has been devoted ...

Written by a team of European experts from the marine sciences, Navigating the Future VI discusses how the biodiversity crisis is being played out in the Ocean. It notes that Ocean species large and small are far less well described than their terrestrial counterparts, making it harder to measure declines and their impacts. This publication provides governments, policymakers and funders with robust, independent scientific advice on future seas and Ocean research. With the COP16 on biodiversity already in full swing in Cali, Colombia, it is timely to reflect further on the need to better understand our Ocean biodiversity. “Climate change ...

The research team of Dr. Byeongjin Park and Dr. Sang Bok Lee from the Composites & Convergence Materials Research Division at the Korea Institute of Materials Science (KIMS), has developed the world's first ultra-thin film composite material capable of absorbing over 99% of electromagnetic waves from various frequency bands (such as 5G/6G, WiFi, and autonomous driving radar) using a single material. This electromagnetic wave absorption and shielding material is less than 0.5mm thick and is distinguished by its low reflectance ...

In 2022, U.S. high school students Calcea Johnson and Ne'Kiya Jackson astonished teachers when they discovered a new way to prove Pythagoras’ theorem using trigonometry after entering a competition at their local high school. As a result, both students were awarded keys to the city of New Orleans, and even received personal praise from Michelle Obama. Today they become published authors of a new peer-reviewed paper detailing their discoveries, published in the journal American Mathematical Monthly. Pythagoras’ famous 2,000-year-old ...

UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 00:01 GMT MONDAY 28 OCTOBER / 20:01 ET SUNDAY 27 OCTOBER 2024 More social species live longer, Oxford study finds New research published today (28 Oct) from the University of Oxford has revealed that species that are more social live longer and produce offspring for a greater timespan. This is the first study on this topic which spans the animal kingdom, from jellyfish to humans.   What are the benefits and costs of sociality? Social organisms may enjoy benefits such as sharing resources, being better protected from predators, and having support to raise offspring. However, by living in more ...