A U.S. Army Medical Materiel Development Activity commercial partner received Emergency Use Authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the Department of Defense to use octaplasLG Powder—a potentially lifesaving treatment option for blood replacement therapies in certain operational circumstances. Notice of the EUA for this product was received by the company, Octapharma USA, on Aug. 8, 2024. USAMMDA’s Warfighter Protection and Acute Care Project Management Office, which has a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with Octapharma USA, manages research and development efforts for several ...

Pennington Biomedical Research Center’s Dr. Candida Rebello wants to know more about the intersection of blood sugar levels and a diet rich in soy. This intersection is the primary focus of her new study, “Lifestyle Intervention for Improving Metabolic and Motivational Outcomes,” or MOTIVATE, which explores how specific diets can impact blood sugar, and potentially improve mood and energy levels.   When soy seeds are cut, they produce the anti-microbial compound known as glyceollin, which has been shown to improve insulin sensitivity and cognition. The cut soy seeds will be milled into flour and will be included in the diets of some of the participants. The MOTIVATE ...

When UC San Francisco research showed that routinely treating children in Sub-Saharan Africa with a common antibiotic could reduce deaths in children under five, the World Health Organization (WHO) moved quickly to recommend the treatment – but only for infants between 1 and 11 months old.     Now, UCSF researchers have shown that treating babies is not enough. The antibiotic must be given to all children up to 5 years old to realize its full benefit, which is considerable: It lowers child mortality ...

RESEARCH SUMMARY Study Title: Belzutifan Versus Everolimus for Advanced Renal-Cell Carcinoma Publication: New England Journal of Medicine, August 22, 2024 Dana-Farber Cancer Institute authors: Toni K. Choueiri, MD Summary: The LITESPARK-005 phase 3 clinical enrolled 746 patients with metastatic clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) who had progressed after treatment with both an immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) and an anti-angiogenic therapy. Patients were randomized to receive treatment with either belzutifan, a HIF-2α inhibitor, or everolimus. Overabundant HIF-2α is associated with increased cancer-driving activity. At the second interim analysis of this study, ...

When you get infected with a virus, some of the first weapons your body deploys to fight it were passed down to us from our microbial ancestors billions of years ago. According to new research from The University of Texas at Austin, two key elements of our innate immune system came from a group of microbes called Asgard archaea. Specifically, viperins and argonautes, two proteins that are known to play important roles in the immune systems of all complex life — from insects to plants to humans — came from the Asgard archaea. Versions of these defense proteins are also present in bacteria, but the versions in complex life forms are ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — UC Santa Barbara professors Andrew Jayich and Jon Schuller have been selected by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to be part of the 2024 cohort of Experimental Physics Investigators. They join 17 other mid-career researchers from around the country, each receiving a five-year, $1.25 million grant to pursue research goals. “This initiative is designed to support novel and potentially high-payoff projects that will advance the field of physics but might be hard to fund through traditional funding sources,” said Theodore ...

In the first 24 hours after a python devours its massive prey, its heart grows 25%, its cardiac tissue softens dramatically, and the organ squeezes harder and harder to more than double its pulse. Meanwhile, a vast collection of specialized genes kicks into action to help boost the snake’s metabolism fortyfold. Two weeks later, after its feast has been digested, all systems return to normal—its heart remaining just slightly larger, and even stronger, than before. This extraordinary process, described by CU Boulder researchers this week in the journal PNAS, could ultimately inspire novel treatments for a common human heart condition called cardiac fibrosis, in which ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 21, 2024 MINNEAPOLIS – Contrary to previous research, a new study of female participants finds no link between migraine and the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease. The study is published in the August 21, 2024, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. “These results are reassuring for women who have migraine, which itself causes many burdens, that they don’t have to worry about an increased risk ...

Neuroticism may moderate the relationship between certain personality traits and self-control, and the interaction effects appear to differ by the type of self-control, according to a study published August 21, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Fredrik Nilsen from the University of Oslo and the Norwegian Defence University, Norway, and colleagues.  Self-control is important for mental and physical health, and certain personality traits are linked to the trait. Previous studies suggest that conscientiousness and extraversion enhance self-control, whereas neuroticism hampers it. However, the link between personality ...

Per a new study, as of April 2021, US Congress members whose ancestors enslaved 16 or more people had a net worth that was five times higher than that of legislators whose ancestors did not have slaves. Neil Sehgal of the University of Pennsylvania, US, and Ashwini Sehgal of Case Western Reserve University, US present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on August 21, 2024.  Prior research has linked slavery’s intergenerational effects to contemporary inequality, poverty, education, voting behavior, and life expectancy in the US However, the extent to which past slavery in the US contributes to today’s social and economic conditions remains ...

Following a Mediterranean diet may be associated with reduced risk of COVID-19 infection, per systematic review, although it's unclear if the diet is also associated with reduced symptoms and severity of illness.  #### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0301564  Article Title: Relevance of Mediterranean diet as a nutritional strategy in diminishing COVID-19 risk: A systematic review  Author Countries: Indonesia  Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.  END ...

Homicide is a major reason behind lower and more variable reduction in life expectancy for Black rather than White men in recent years, according to a new study published August 21, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Michael Light and Karl Vachuska of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA.   The COVID-19 pandemic precipitated a staggering drop in U.S. life expectancy and substantially widened Black-White disparities in lifespan. It also coincided with the largest one-year increase in the U.S. homicide rate in more than a century, with Black men bearing the brunt of these. Despite these trends, there has been limited research on the contribution ...

ANN ARBOR—As the human population grows, more than half of Earth's land will experience an increasing overlap between humans and animals by 2070, according to a University of Michigan study. Greater human-wildlife overlap could lead to more conflict between people and animals, say the U-M researchers. But understanding where the overlap is likely to occur—and which animals are likely to interact with humans in specific areas—will be crucial information for urban planners, conservationists and countries that have pledged international conservation commitments. Their findings ...

Imagine owning a camera so powerful it can take freeze-frame photographs of a moving electron – an object traveling so fast it could circle the Earth many times in a matter of a second. Researchers at the University of Arizona have developed the world's fastest electron microscope that can do just that. They believe their work will lead to groundbreaking advancements in physics, chemistry, bioengineering, materials sciences and more. "When you get the latest version of a smartphone, it comes with a better camera," said Mohammed Hassan, associate professor of physics and optical sciences. "This transmission electron microscope is ...

In recent years, the news about Earth's climate—from raging wildfires and stronger hurricanes, to devastating floods and searing heat waves—has provided little good news. A new Dartmouth-led study, however, reports that one of the very worst projections of how high the world's oceans might rise as the planet's polar ice sheets melt is highly unlikely—though it stresses that the accelerating loss of ice from Greenland and Antarctica is nonetheless dire. The study challenges a new and alarming prediction in the latest high-profile report from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on ...

New research by the University of Liverpool has revealed how an underwater avalanche grew more than 100 times in size causing a huge trail of destruction as it travelled 2000km across the Atlantic Ocean seafloor off the North West coast of Africa. In a study publishing in the journal Science Advances (and featured on the front cover), researchers provide an unprecedented insight into the scale, force and impact of one of nature’s mysterious phenomena, underwater avalanches. Dr Chris Stevenson, a sedimentologist from the University of Liverpool’s School of Environmental Sciences, co-led the team that for the first time has mapped a giant underwater avalanche from head ...

How did early humans use sharpened rocks to bring down megafauna 13,000 years ago? Did they throw spears tipped with carefully crafted, razor-sharp rocks called Clovis points? Did they surround and jab mammoths and mastadons? Or did they scavenge wounded animals, using Clovis points as a versatile tool to harvest meat and bones for food and supplies? UC Berkeley archaeologists say the answer might be none of the above. Instead, researchers say humans may have braced the butt of their pointed spears against the ground and angled the weapon upward in a way that would impale a charging animal. The force would have driven the spear deeper ...

Researchers at Stanford and Colorado State University have developed a rapid, low-cost approach for studying how individual extreme weather events have been affected by global warming. Their method, detailed in a Aug. 21 study in Science Advances, uses machine learning to determine how much global warming has contributed to heat waves in the U.S. and elsewhere in recent years. The approach proved highly accurate and could change how scientists study and predict the impact of climate change on a range of extreme weather events. The ...

An enzyme called PGK1 has an unexpectedly critical role in the production of chemical energy in brain cells, according to a preclinical study led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine. The investigators found that boosting its activity may help the brain resist the energy deficits that can lead to Parkinson’s disease. The study, published Aug. 21 in Science Advances, presented evidence that PGK1 is a “rate-limiting” enzyme in energy production in the output-signaling branches, or axons, of the dopamine neurons that are affected in Parkinson’s disease. This means that even a modest boost to PGK1 activity can have ...

One of the major unanswered questions about the origin of life is how droplets of RNA floating around the primordial soup turned into the membrane-protected packets of life we call cells.  A new paper by engineers from the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME), the University of Houston’s Chemical Engineering Department, and biologists from the UChicago Chemistry Department, have proposed a solution.  In the paper, published today in Science Advances, UChicago PME postdoctoral researcher Aman Agrawal and his co-authors ...

Billions of our cells die every day to make way for the growth of new ones. Most of these goners are cleaned up by phagocytes—mobile immune cells that migrate where needed to engulf problematic substances. But some dying or dead cells are consumed by their own neighbors, natural tissue cells with other primary jobs. How these cells sense the dying or dead around them has been largely unknown. Now researchers from The Rockefeller University have shown how the sensor system operates in hair follicles, which have a well-known cycle of birth, decay, and regeneration put into motion by hair follicle stem cells (HFSCs). In a new study published in Nature, ...

Irvine, Calif., Aug. 21, 2024 — Researchers from the University of California, Irvine have discovered the neurons responsible for “item memory,” deepening our understanding of how the brain stores and retrieves the details of “what” happened and offering a new target for treating Alzheimer’s disease.   Memories include three types of details: spatial, temporal and item, the “where, when and what” of an event. Their creation is a complex process that involves storing information based on the meanings and outcomes of different experiences and forms the foundation of our ability to recall and recount them.   The study, published ...

By John Lovett University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT show promise as a useful means in agriculture to write simple computer programs for microcontrollers, according to a study published this month. Microcontrollers are small computers that can perform tasks based on custom computer programs. They receive inputs from sensors and can be used in climate and irrigation controls, food processing systems, as well as robotic and drone applications, to name a few agricultural uses. A recent study published with the Arkansas Agricultural ...

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. – August 20, 2024) Children who survive a brain tumor often experience effects from both the cancer and its treatment long after therapy concludes. Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital found very young children treated for brain tumors were less prepared for school (represented by lower academic readiness scores) compared to their peers. This gap persisted once survivors entered formal schooling. Children from families of higher socioeconomic status were partially protected from the effect, suggesting that providing early developmental resources may proactively help reduce the academic achievement gap. The findings were published today in ...

Each year, 100,000 people visit their doctor with abdominal pain, with approximately 30,000 of them diagnosed with gallstones. The standard treatment for these patients is a laparoscopic cholecystectomy. Since the 1990s, the number of surgeries has increased exponentially, despite the lack of clear international criteria. As a result, gallbladder removal is one of the most common surgeries in the Netherlands, yet it is not always effective against pain: about one-third of patients continue to experience abdominal pain after cholecystectomy. The procedure has long been an example of inappropriate care, but this is now changing. In a 2019 study conducted by Radboud university ...