27 August 2024, Singapore – A KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital (KKH) study[1] on breastfeeding practices revealed that among the women who exclusively breastfed, those with high body mass index[2] (BMI) before pregnancy lost more weight than women with a healthy BMI pre-pregnancy. Women with high BMI who exclusively breastfed, in addition to losing their pregnancy weight, lost an extra 200 grammes on average, 12 months after childbirth. Women with normal BMI who exclusively breastfed lost weight ...

The authors investigate the physiological functions of Terc-53 by creating transgenic mice that overexpress this noncoding RNA. They observe that Terc-53 overexpression affects normal aging in mammals, contributing to cognitive decline and shortened lifespan. Mechanistically, they find that Terc-53 binds to and promotes the degradation of Hmmr, leading to enhanced inflammation in tissues and accelerated aging. They also note that Hmmr levels decrease with age in certain brain regions, similar to Terc-53's pattern, and that restoring Hmmr levels can improve cognitive abilities ...

A next-generation COVID-19 mucosal vaccine is set to be a gamechanger not only when delivering the vaccine itself, but also for people who are needle-phobic. New Griffith University research, published in Nature Communications, has been testing the efficacy of delivering a COVID-19 vaccine via the nasal passages. Professor Suresh Mahalingam from Griffith’s Institute for Biomedicine and Glycomics has been working on this research for the past four years. “This is a live attenuated intranasal vaccine, called CDO-7N-1, designed ...

A research group led by Nagoya University has developed an innovative approach to creating anti-counterfeiting labels for high-value goods. Their findings, published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, enhance the security of the currently used cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCs) by adding fluorescent dyes to produce florescent CLCs (FCLCs).   Using this unique technology, the group created unique labels with almost impossible-to-counterfeit security features. These advanced labels are designed to protect valuable items, important documents, and sensitive products ...

The Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology funded two research projects in 2024 as part of its research seed grant program. The program supports interdisciplinary research projects and is now in its second year. This year, two research projects beginning in May 2024 received $75,000 per year for up to two years. Research projects seeded by the Beckman Institute anticipate growth and typically lead to external funding proposals after the two-year seeding term. Exploring how ASD-related genes influence brain networks that guide behavior The CDC estimates that “1 in 36 children has been identified with autism spectrum disorder,” or ASD. ASDs ...

A team of researchers led by Rutgers University-New Brunswick scientists has analyzed crop yields of more than 1,500 fields on six continents, and found that production worldwide of important, nutritionally dense foods such as fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes is being limited by a lack of pollinators. The results, detailed in Nature Ecology & Evolution, showed that across diverse crops and locations, one-third to two-thirds of farms contain fields that aren’t producing at the levels they should be due to a lack of pollinators. The phenomenon of a low crop yield because of insufficient visits by insects is known as pollinator limitation. The ...

The American Meteorological Society is proud to announce its 2025 Awards and Honors, recognizing outstanding contributions to the weather, water, and climate community. 2025 recipients will be honored at the 105th AMS Annual Meeting in New Orleans, 12–16 January, 2025.  “One of our key priorities at AMS is to recognize the work of our global weather, water, and climate enterprise for the impact they have on scientific advancement and public safety, as well as on economic growth for all communities,” says Awards Oversight Committee Chair ...

BOZEMAN – Scientists at Montana State University have been studying unique immune systems for decades, and a research team in the Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology took another step forward with work described in a paper published in the highly regarded journal Nature. The Aug. 7 paper, titled “A virally-encoded tRNA neutralizes the PARIS antiviral defense system,” was fast-tracked for publication by the journal due to the importance of the findings. MSU doctoral student ...

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the higher education non-profit VentureWell have selected 11 winners and five honorable mentions in the Design by Biomedical Undergraduate Teams (DEBUT) Challenge, who are set to receive prizes totaling $160,000. The awards will be presented to the winning teams on Oct. 25, 2024, during the annual Biomedical Engineering Society conference in Baltimore. Now in its 13th year, the annual DEBUT Challenge calls on teams of undergraduate students to identify ...

Three distinct problems in data science — trend identification in graphs, the quantitative study of scientific literature and evaluation of single-cell genomics — will all be addressed by new research in large-scale network analytics, jointly led by Distinguished Professor David Bader at New Jersey Institute of Technology. The problems have a common challenge of finding patterns, known as community detection, from inside incredibly large datasets. Work is funded by a $648,000 National Science Foundation grant, Cyber-Infrastructure ...

Researchers from the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA and their colleagues have received a one-year, $1 million grant as part of a new National Science Foundation program aimed at accelerating the development and commercialization of quantum technologies for the benefit of society. The Quantum Sensing and Imaging Lab, or Q-SAIL, which will be led by UCLA quantum physicist David Leibrandt, is one of five pilot projects across the country selected by the NSF to participate in the agency’s new National Quantum Virtual Laboratory, a first-of-its-kind national resource to enable the faster ...

SAN FRANCISCO—Viruses are tricky to keep up with. They evolve quickly and regularly develop new proteins that help them infect their hosts. These rapid shifts mean that researchers are still trying to understand a multitude of viral proteins and precisely how they increase viruses’ infecting abilities—knowledge that could be crucial for developing new or better virus-fighting treatments. Now, a team of scientists at Gladstone Institutes and the Innovative Genomics Institute led by Jennifer Doudna, PhD, have harnessed computational tools to predict the three-dimensional shapes of nearly 70,000 viral ...

A new era at the University of Virginia’s School of Data Science officially kicked off, as the inaugural class of data science undergraduate majors arrived for orientation on the eve of UVA’s first day of classes.  Throughout the day at the new School of Data Science building, students heard from faculty and staff, learned more about their curriculum, took headshots and a group photograph, and began to familiarize themselves with classrooms and other features of the facility that would be their academic home.  The day also served as a call to action, as students learned not only what requirements would be needed to complete their degree but what a data ...

Embargoed for release until 5:00 p.m. ET on 26 August 2024       Annals of Internal Medicine Tip Sheet        @Annalsofim       Below please find summaries of new articles that will be published in the next issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The summaries are not intended to substitute for the full articles as a source of information. This information is under strict embargo and by taking it into possession, media representatives are committing to the terms of the embargo not only on their own behalf, but also on behalf of the organization they represent.       ----------------------------    1. High ...

If Medicare Part D narrowly defines cardiovascular disease, majority of patients would remain ineligible while new federal spending could still exceed $10 billion Current federal regulation restricts Medicare from covering drugs prescribed solely for weight loss. However, in March 2024, Medicare announced it would extend coverage to semaglutide (Wegovy), a popular glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1RA), for patients with elevated body mass index (BMI) who also had established cardiovascular disease (CVD). This means that the definition of “established CVD,” which has not been ...

With a grand vision of investing $66 million over 10 years in groundbreaking medical innovations, WEHI’s first strategic investment fund, 66ten, is the largest internal pre-seed and seed fund created by an Australian medical research institute. Managed by WEHI Ventures, 66ten serves the sole purpose of bridging the gap between scientific discoveries and commercial viability, ultimately creating both positive outcomes for patients and healthcare systems globally as well as financial returns to investors.  Since its foundation a year ago, 66ten has ...

LA JOLLA, CA—Fighting cancer effectively often involves stopping cancer cells from multiplying, which requires understanding proteins that the cells rely on to survive. Protein profiling plays a critical role in this process by helping researchers identify proteins—and their specific parts—that future drugs should target. But when used on their own, past approaches haven’t been detailed enough to spotlight all potential protein targets, leading to some being missed. Now, by combining two methods of protein analysis, a team of chemists at Scripps Research has mapped more than 300 small molecule-reactive ...

Simulating particles is a relatively simple task when those particles are spherical. In the real world, however, most particles are not perfect spheres but take on irregular and varying shapes and sizes. Simulating these particles becomes a much more challenging and time-consuming task. The ability to simulate particles is critical to understanding how they behave. For example, microplastics are a new form of pollution as plastic waste has increased drastically and uncontrollably decays in the environment ...

New Orleans, LA. – Ochsner Digital Medicine has teamed up with AmeriHealth Caritas Louisiana to offer digital medicine services to the health plan’s members. Utilizing remote patient management (RPM), Ochsner Digital Medicine and AmeriHealth Caritas Louisiana will work together to help members with certain chronic conditions better manage their health and improve their quality of life. AmeriHealth Caritas Louisiana, part of the AmeriHealth Caritas Family of Companies, is a Healthy Louisiana managed Medicaid health plan covering ...

New methods to shape RNA molecules into circles could lead to more effective and long-lasting therapies, shows a study by researchers at the University of California San Diego. The advance holds promise for a range of diseases, offering a more enduring alternative to existing RNA therapies, which often suffer from short-lived effectiveness in the body.    The work was published Aug. 26 in Nature Biomedical Engineering. RNA molecules have emerged as powerful tools in modern medicine. They can silence ...

As electronic devices continue to get smaller and smaller, physical size limitations are beginning to disrupt the trend of doubling transistor density on silicon-based microchips approximately every two years according to Moore’s law. Molecular electronics—the use of single molecules as the building blocks for electronic components—offers a potential pathway for the continued miniaturization of small-scale electronic devices. Devices that utilize molecular electronics require precise control over the flow of electrical current. However, the dynamic nature of these single molecule components affects device performance and impacts ...

Over 12,000 feet below the surface of the sea, in a region of the Pacific Ocean known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), million-year-old rocks cover the seafloor. These rocks may seem lifeless, but nestled between the nooks and crannies on their surfaces, tiny sea creatures and microbes make their home, many uniquely adapted to life in the dark.  These deep-sea rocks, called polymetallic nodules, don’t only host a surprising number of sea critters. A team of scientists that includes Boston University experts has discovered they ...

At the end of the Paleocene and beginning of the Eocene epochs, between 59 to 51 million years ago, Earth experienced dramatic warming periods, both gradual periods stretching millions of years and sudden warming events known as hyperthermals. Driving this planetary heat up were massive emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases, but other factors like tectonic activity may have also been at play. New research led by University of Utah geoscientists pairs sea surface temperatures with levels ...

Lithium-ion (or Li-ion) batteries are heavy hitters when it comes to the world of rechargeable batteries. As electric vehicles become more common in the world, a high-energy, low-cost battery utilizing the abundance of manganese (Mn) can be a sustainable option to become commercially available and utilized in the automobile industry. Currently, batteries used for powering electric vehicles (EVs) are nickel (Ni) and cobalt (Co)-based, which can be expensive and unsustainable for a society with a growing desire for EVs. By switching the positive electrode ...

The Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center (TLI) announced updates to its Board of Directors today. TLI welcomes one new distinguished member and thanks the two outgoing members for their invaluable contributions. “On behalf of the Board, I am delighted that Dr. Bill Dorfman, a global leader in cosmetic dentistry, has joined the TLI Board. Dr. Dorfman's extensive expertise and commitment to philanthropy make him an invaluable addition to our leadership,” said Mitchel Sayare, PhD, TLI Board ...