The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory funding as part of the Reaching a New Energy Sciences Workforce (RENEW) initiative, aimed at fostering diversity in STEM and advancing innovative research opportunities. DOE announced $70 million to support internships, training programs and mentorship opportunities at 65 different institutions, including 40 higher-learning institutions that serve minority populations. By supporting these partnerships, DOE aims to create a more diverse STEM talent pool capable of addressing ...

What Question Were You Investigating? Despite elevated risk for substance use disorder and overdose death in the homeless population, benzodiazepine prescribing for this population has not been examined. Our team therefore set out to answer the questions: What is the rate of benzodiazepine prescribing to homeless vs. non-homeless veterans with mental illness in the VA system? Are homeless veterans more likely to receive risky and potentially inappropriate prescriptions?   What Methods Did You Use? We used logistic regression to compare likelihood of benzodiazepine prescribing and t tests to compare ...

Scientists have developed an ingestible device that can safely monitor vital signs like breathing and heart rate from inside humans. The tool, described November 17 in the journal Device, has the potential to provide accessible and convenient care for people at risk of opioid overdose. “The ability to facilitate diagnosis and monitor many conditions without having to go into a hospital can provide patients with easier access to healthcare and support treatment,” says Giovanni Traverso, the first author of the paper, associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and gastroenterologist at Brigham ...

What if, instead of going into a sleep lab or being connected to monitoring devices, a patient could have their risk of obstructive sleep apnea measured by swallowing a pill? A new collaborative study from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Celero Systems and West Virginia University, evaluated a wireless ingestible device that can accurately report vital signs like heart and respiratory rate. The team tested the device, known as the Vitals Monitoring Pill (VM Pill), in a pilot ...

Bio-based plastics such as polylactic acid (PLA) were invented to help solve the plastic waste crisis, but they often end up making waste management more challenging. Because these materials look and feel so similar to conventional, petroleum-based plastics, many products end up not in composters, where they break down as designed, but instead get added to the recycling stream by well-intentioned consumers. There, the products get shredded and melted down with the recyclable plastics, bringing down the quality of the mixture and making it harder to manufacture functional products out of recycled plastic resin. The only solution, currently, is to try to separate the different ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Diagnosing sleep disorders such as sleep apnea usually requires a patient to spend the night in a sleep lab, hooked up to a variety of sensors and monitors. Researchers from MIT, Celero Systems, and West Virginia University hope to make that process less intrusive, using an ingestible capsule they developed that can monitor vital signs from within the patient’s GI tract. The capsule, which is about the size of a multivitamin, uses an accelerometer to measure the patient’s breathing rate and heart rate. In addition to diagnosing sleep apnea, the device could also be useful for detecting ...

About The Study: Among outpatient adults with mild to moderate COVID-19, treatment with fluvoxamine 100 mg twice daily for 13 days, compared with placebo, did not improve time to sustained recovery in this randomized clinical trial of 1,175 participants.  Authors: Susanna Naggie, M.D., M.H.S., of the Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2023.23363) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, ...

About The Study: In this study of 155,000 births, using a causal inference framework based on target trial emulation, birth at 39 weeks’ gestation was not associated with adverse numeracy and literacy outcomes at school age compared with birth at 40 to 42 weeks.  Authors: Roxanne Hastie, Ph.D., of the University of Melbourne, is the corresponding author.  To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/  (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.43721) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for ...

About The Study: In this study of state laws, there was substantial heterogeneity in National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) reporting requirements for mental health prohibitions for firearm possession and a lack of clarity around processes. This raises questions about the ability of NICS to be used to block firearm purchases or possession by individuals with court-identified high risk of perpetrating violence toward themselves or others.  Authors: Marian E. Betz, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus School of Medicine in Aurora, is the ...

There is a well-known relationship between good physical fitness at a young age and a lower risk of cardiovascular disease later in life. However, when researchers adjusted for familial factors by means of sibling analysis, they found a weaker association, although the link between high body mass index (BMI) and cardiovascular disease remained strong. The study, which was conducted by researchers from Karolinska Institutet and other universities, is published in JAMA Network Open. “This does not mean that fitness is irrelevant,” ...

Old people who follow a Mediterranean diet are at a lower risk of cognitive decline, according to a study published in the journal Molecular Nutrition and Food Research. The study provides new evidence for a better understanding of the biological mechanisms related to the impact of the diet on cognitive health in the ageing population. The study is led by Mireia Urpí-Sardá, adjunct lecturer and member of the Biomarkers and Nutritional & Food Metabolomics research group of the Faculty of Pharmacy and Food Sciences, the Institute for Nutrition and Food Safety (INSA-UB), the Food and Nutrition Torribera Campus of the University of Barcelona, and the CIBER on Frailty and ...

The vision system, evolved over millions of years, is highly complex. To make vision sensitive throughout the whole range of visible wavelengths, Nature employs a supramolecular chemistry approach. The visual pigment, cis-retinal, changes its shape upon capturing a photon. This shape transformation is accompanied by changes in the supramolecular organization of the surrounding proteins, subsequently triggering a cascade of chemical signaling events that get amplified and eventually lead to visual perception in the brain. “Some deep-sea fish have evolved antenna-like ...

The remarkable proton and oxide-ion (dual-ion) conductivities of hexagonal perovskite-related oxide Ba7Nb3.8Mo1.2O20.1 are promising for next-generation electrochemical devices, as reported by scientists at Tokyo Tech. The unique ion-transport mechanisms they unveiled will hopefully pave the way for better dual-ion conductors, which could play an essential role in tomorrow’s clean energy technologies. Clean energy technologies are the cornerstone of sustainable societies, and solid-oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) and proton ceramic fuel cells (PCFCs) are among the most promising types of electrochemical devices for green power generation. These devices, however, still ...

MOREHEAD, Ky. (Nov. 17, 2023) — In celebration of National Rural Health Day, yesterday the University of Kentucky College of Medicine and Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Medicaid in Kentucky announced new scholarship opportunities for UK’s Rural Physician Leadership Program (RPLP). The Anthem Rural Medicine Scholarships will provide $100,000 to offset the cost of medical school for students in the RPLP. In a state that suffers from high rates for many chronic, ...

Unlike humans, zebrafish can completely regenerate their hearts after injury. They owe this ability to the interaction between their nervous and immune systems, as researchers led by Suphansa Sawamiphak from the Max Delbrück Center now report in the journal Developmental Cell.  Each year, more than 300,000 people in Germany have a myocardial infarction – the technical term for heart attack. The number of people surviving a heart attack has increased significantly, but this severe cardiac event causes irreparable damage to their hearts. A heart attack ...

(Boston)—CITE-seq (cellular indexing of transcriptomes and epitopes) is an RNA sequencing-based method that simultaneously quantifies cell surface protein and transcriptomic data within a single cell readout. The ability to study cells concurrently offers unprecedented insights into new cell types, disease states or other conditions.   While CITE-seq solves the problem of detecting a limited number of proteins while using single-cell sequencing in an unbiased way, one of its limitations is the high levels of background noise that can hinder analysis.   To rectify ...

5.2% of the global population carry hemoglobin abnormalities, resulting in 300,000 to 400,000 children born with severe hemoglobinopathies annually. Thalassemia, a hereditary hemoglobinopathy, occurs in 4.4 out of every 10,000 live births, and is prevalent in Mediterranean coastal areas, Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and southern China.   To facilitate greater understanding of thalassemia, a hereditary hemoglobinopathy, BGI Genomics today released its State of Thalassemia Awareness Report. This report assesses the level of knowledge and attitudes related to the associated health risks, thalassemia carrier ...

The Alliance Bioversity International and CIAT signed an agreement with the World Economic Forum that enables the Alliance to manage initiatives under the Food Action Alliance, a movement led by the World Economic Forum for transforming sustainable food systems.  The Alliance would establish and manage initiatives in Latin America, the Caribbean, and other regions under the Food Action Alliance to boost the transformation of food systems, facilitating and scaling up multi-stakeholder flagship initiatives in specific countries mostly with multi-national companies such as Bayer, Microsoft, PepsiCo, AB InBev; among others. The Food Action Alliance will continue to grow initiatives ...

WASHINGTON, November 17, 2023 – The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released today the National Strategic Germplasm and Cultivar Collection Assessment and Utilization Plan in support of the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) U.S. National Plant Germplasm System’s (NPGS) mission. The USDA-ARS NPGS is confident that implementing this plan will address current operational and research challenges. The collection is vital for maintaining the nation’s food supply by providing breeders and researchers the germplasm they need to furnish U. S. consumers with abundant, ...

Proteins misfolding and clumping together, a process known as aggregation, is a key feature seen in several neurological conditions, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. These disorders involve the formation of small, potentially harmful structures called oligomers, which could serve as valuable indicators for early diagnosis. They are incredibly small, however, and much rarer than the healthy non-aggregated proteins. This makes it hard to detect and measure them accurately. In collaboration with UCB Biopharma, researchers from the University of Edinburgh’s  ...

  Researchers in Japan and Mongolia have carried out the world's first instance of incorporating satellite-based CO2 emission estimates into a GHG emission report as the verification on the Second Biennial Update Report (BUR2) of Mongolia submitted to the UNFCCC on 15 November 2023, resulting in high accuracy match with actual reported values, reports a new study published online in Scientific Reports in 2023.   Countries have reported their CO2 emissions to the UNFCCC, primarily from human activities and a significant contributor to climate change. ...

Approximately one-fifth of the world's electric energy is dedicated to refrigeration, and the International Energy Agency anticipates a twofold increase in the number of air conditioning units by 2040. Despite a century of advancements, existing refrigeration systems, relying on vapour compression, have hit their thermodynamic threshold. These systems not only emit greenhouse gases, contributing to environmental issues, but also produce significant noise. Prioritizing the development of energy-efficient and eco-friendly systems is thus paramount to address global warming ...

Growth is a fundamental biological process and a prerequisite for living organisms to develop and reproduce. The processes of cell growth (i.e. the production of new biomass) and of cell division must be coordinated with each other. In multicellular organisms such as humans, the growth of cells must also be coordinated with their environment so that cells are present in the right number and size to form functional tissue or organs. Cell growth is therefore strictly regulated and takes place only when certain growth signals are present. But cancer cells are different. They grow unchecked, they divide ...

A research project led by Professor Mingxin Huang at the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the University of Hong Kong (HKU) has made a brand-new breakthrough over conventional stainless steel and the development of stainless steel for hydrogen (SS-H2). This marks another major achievement by Professor Huang’s team in its ‘Super Steel’ Project, following the development of the anti-COVID-19 stainless steel in 2021, and ultra-strong and ultra-tough Super Steel in 2017 and 2020 respectively. The new steel developed by the team exhibits high corrosion ...

NYC Media Lab (NYCML) and Bertelsmann unveiled  the latest cohort joining the AI & the Creative Industries Challenge, a nine-week program in which teams explore new ways to use artificial intelligence (AI) to create digital content and reach new audiences for three Bertelsmann companies: Fremantle, Penguin Random House, and BMG. The teams are tasked with addressing how AI will impact these important creative industries.  This ongoing partnership, NYCML’s third project with Bertelsmann, will continue to build on new business frontiers enabled by technology. The four selected teams, from around the globe, come from various multidisciplinary ...