UTSA will partner with Texas A&M University to co-lead SECURE Southwest, one of five new regional centers being launched to strengthen U.S. research security. Under a five-year, $67 million award from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Safeguarding the Entire Community of the U.S. Research Ecosystem (SECURE) Center aims to strengthen intellectual property and research security by educating members of the research community about security issues and engaging them in a process of collaborative problem-solving. The ...

A widely used security protocol that dates back to the days of dial-up Internet has vulnerabilities that could expose large numbers of networked devices to an attack and allow an attacker to gain control of traffic on an organization's network. A research team led by University of California San Diego computer scientists investigated the Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service (RADIUS) protocol and found a vulnerability they call Blast-RADIUS that has been present for decades. RADIUS, designed in 1991, allows networked devices such as routers, switches or mobile roaming gear to use a remote server to validate login or other credentials.  This is a common set-up in enterprise and ...

A study of children’s conversations with their caretakers sheds light on the timeline of the emergence of moral foundation words in the first six years of life in English-speaking children. Moral Foundations theory posits that morality is largely intuitive and underlaid by modular foundations. The original set of five foundations proposed by researchers includes Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Authority/Subversion, Loyalty/Betrayal, and Purity/Degradation. Aida Ramezani and colleagues systematically ...

Political animus between Republicans and Democrats in the United States is alarmingly high, raising fears of undemocratic or even violent actions. An often-touted intervention to prevent political polarization is to identify and correct misperceptions about people’s partisan opponents. Sean Westwood and colleagues sought to empirically test the effectiveness of this strategy. The authors surveyed 9,810 American partisans online from fall 2022 to fall 2023, finding that their opinions of whether ...

A newly discovered code within DNA – coined “spatial grammar” – holds a key to understanding how gene activity is encoded in the human genome. This breakthrough finding, identified by researchers at Washington State University and the University of California, San Diego and published in Nature, revealed a long-postulated hidden spatial grammar embedded in DNA. The research could reshape scientists’ understanding of gene regulation and how genetic variations may influence gene expression in development or disease. Transcription factors, the proteins that control which genes in one’s genome are turned on or off, ...

An ongoing survey captures how the Russian invasion of Ukraine affected attitudes in European countries not directly involved in the conflict. Margaryta Klymak and Tim Vlandas examine how the Russian invasion of Ukraine affected economic and political attitudes in eight European countries. The authors took advantage of the timing of the European Social Survey (ESS), which happened to be administered both just before and just after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 in eight countries: Switzerland, Greece, Italy, Montenegro, Macedonia, Netherlands, Norway, and Portugal. Overall, the invasion increased support ...

Aromatic ketones have long been valuable intermediates in chemical synthesis, particularly in cross-coupling reactions where different chemical entities are combined to form new compounds. For instance, a process called deacylative cross-coupling removes the acyl group from the aromatic ketone, allowing it to bond with other chemicals and produce a wide variety of useful compounds. These reactions are crucial for producing a wide array of aromatic compounds used in various industries like agrochemicals. However, the utility of aromatic ketones has been limited due to the difficulty in breaking their strong carbon-carbon bonds. These robust bonds are challenging to cleave, ...

In polymers, the competition between the folding and aggregation of chains, both at an individual level and between chains, can determine the mechanical, thermal, and conductive properties of such materials. Understanding the interplay of folding and aggregation presents a significant opportunity for the development and discovery of polymeric materials with tailored properties and functionalities. This also holds true for non-covalent counterparts of conventional covalent polymers, i.e., supramolecular polymers (SPs). SPs are expected to have practical applications as novel stimuli-responsive ...

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (08/20/2024) — A first-of-its-kind adaptive 3D printing system developed by University of Minnesota Twin Cities researchers can identify the positions of randomly distributed organisms and safely move them to specific locations for assembly. This autonomous technology will save researchers time and money in bioimaging, cybernetics, cryopreservation, and devices that integrate living organisms. The research is published in Advanced Science, a peer-reviewed scientific journal. The researchers ...

WASHINGTON (August 20, 2024) – Much of the early human fossil record originates from just a few places in Africa, where favorable geological conditions have preserved a trove of fossils used by scientists to reconstruct the story of human evolution. One of these fossil hotspots is the eastern branch of the East African Rift System, home to important fossil sites such as Oldupai Gorge in Tanzania. Yet, the eastern branch of the rift system only accounts for 1% of the surface area of Africa—a fact that makes it possible to estimate how much information scientists who rely on such small samples are missing. In ...

DENVER, Aug. 20, 2024 — Who are we? Why are we here? As the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young song suggests, we are stardust, the result of chemistry occurring throughout vast clouds of interstellar gas and dust. To better understand how that chemistry could create prebiotic molecules — the seeds of life on Earth and possibly elsewhere — researchers investigated the role of low-energy electrons created as cosmic radiation traverses through ice particles. Their findings may also inform medical and environmental applications on our home planet. Undergraduate student Kennedy Barnes will present the team’s results at the fall meeting of the American ...

Scientists are finding clues for how to treat diabetes and hormone disorders in an unexpected place: a toxin from one of the most venomous animals on the planet. A multinational research team led by University of Utah scientists has identified a component within the venom of a deadly marine cone snail, the geography cone, that mimics a human hormone called somatostatin, which regulates the levels of  blood sugar and various hormones in the body. The hormone-like toxin’s specific, long-lasting effects, which help the snail hunt its prey, could also help scientists design better ...

We know that the Earth has an iron core surrounded by a mantle of silicate bedrock and water (oceans) on its surface. Science has used this simple planet model until today for investigating exoplanets – planets that orbit another star outside our solar system. “It is only in recent years that we have begun to realise that planets are more complex than we had thought,” says Caroline Dorn, Professor for Exoplanets at ETH Zurich. Most of the exoplanets known today are located close to ...

Platelets are circulating cell fragments known to clump up and form blood clots that stop bleeding in injured vessels. Cardiologists have long known that platelets can become “hyperreactive” to cause abnormal clotting that blocks arteries and contributes to heart attack, stroke, and poor blood flow (peripheral artery disease) in the legs of millions of Americans. Despite this major contribution to cardiovascular risk, routine measurement of whether each patient’s platelets clump (aggregate) too much has been infeasible to date. ...

Can research on diseases as diverse as, for example, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, psychiatric disorders and endometriosis be linked? The answer is yes if the research focuses on collecting and analysing large amounts of data from both Danish and international registers and biobanks to learn more about, among other things, risk factors, relationships, patterns, treatment and consequences.  And this is exactly what a new international Pioneer Centre, The Pioneer Centre for SMARTbiomed (Statistical and Computational Methods for Advanced Research ...

A multidisciplinary team of scientists led by Carlo Ballatore, Ph.D., at University of California San Diego and Kurt Brunden, Ph.D., at the University of Pennsylvania has been awarded a $6.9 million grant from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) to prepare a potential disease-modifying Alzheimer’s treatment for future clinical trials. In a recently published study about the new compound, called CNDR-51997, the team found it was effective in restoring brain health in mouse models of Alzheimer's disease. CNDR-51997 was identified through a joint drug discovery program at Penn and UC San Diego that was supported by grants from the NIA. The ...

Atherosclerosis, a major cause of mortality worldwide, involves an overgrowth of vascular smooth muscle cells in the blood vessels, constraining blood flow and potentially causing cardiovascular diseases. Against this backdrop, researchers from Shinshu University recently developed a DNA aptamer called iSN04 that targets and counteracts with the protein nucleolin in smooth muscle cells. This anti-nucleolin aptamer helps maintain smooth muscle cells in a differentiated state, offering new treatment potential for atherosclerosis and other vascular ...

Researchers from the group of Prof. Carles Bo, at the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ-CERCA), have described a computational methodology that simulates complex processes involving different chemical species and diverse conditions. These processes lead to the formation of nanostructures called polyoxometalates (POMs), with important applications in catalysis, energy storage, biology and medicine. "Our group has recently developed unique methods to study the chemistry of polyoxometalates in solution, their speciation and formation ...

The ratchet mechanism is a fascinating energy-conversion system that converts disorderly or random motion into orderly, directed movement through a process known as spontaneous rectification. It is a critical component of mechanical systems, typically consisting of a gear and a pawl, which restricts the movement of the gear in one direction. In biological systems, the concept of a Brownian ratchet has been proposed to help understand the mechanism of molecular motors, where chemical reactions rectify the random thermal motion of molecules. According to the second law of thermodynamics, uniform thermal ...

Porous media play a critical role in various industrial fields due to their complex pore networks and considerable specific surface areas. The transport and reaction phenomena within porous media are key factors influencing fundamental parameters such as energy storage efficiency, catalytic performance, and adsorption rates. To accurately describe these complex transport and reaction processes, solving parameterized partial differential equations (PDEs) is necessary. However, due to the complex structure of porous media, traditional methods, such as the finite element method ...

ROCKVILLE, Md. – August 19, 2024 – The Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP), the premier global molecular diagnostic professional society, and world-renowned pathologist Michael Laposata, MD, PhD, today announced the filing of a lawsuit challenging the recent U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Rule that regulates laboratory developed test (LDT) procedures as medical devices under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas against the FDA; Robert M. Califf, MD, in his official capacity as Commissioner of Food and Drugs; the U.S. Department of Health ...

Nylon, Teflon, Kevlar. These are just a few familiar polymers — large-molecule chemical compounds — that have changed the world. From Teflon-coated frying pans to 3D printing, polymers are vital to creating the systems that make the world function better.  Finding the next groundbreaking polymer is always a challenge, but now Georgia Tech researchers are using artificial intelligence (AI) to shape and transform the future of the field. Rampi Ramprasad’s group develops and adapts ...

LA JOLLA (August 14, 2024)—Professor Rusty Gage has been awarded the 2024 J. Allyn Taylor International Prize in Medicine by the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry and the Robarts Research Institute at Western University. One of the most prestigious medical research awards in Canada, the Taylor Prize recognizes scientists for transformative, career-defining work in basic sciences, translational research, and medical innovations. This year’s prize specifically honors a research leader in aging-related medical science and research—a long-term focus of Gage and his lab. Gage will receive $50,000 and be celebrated at a Robarts Research ...

We know that quality sleep is as essential to survival as food and water. Yet, despite spending a third of our lives in slumber, it largely remains a scientific mystery.    Not that experts haven’t tried.   Sleep analysis, also known as polysomnography, is used to diagnose sleep disorders by recording multiple types of data, including brain (electroencephalogram or EEG) and heart (electrocardiogram or ECG). Typically, patients are hooked up to dozens of sensors and wires in a clinic, tracking brain, ...

1. NIMS and SoftBank Corp. have jointly developed a model capable of predicting the cycle lives of high-energy-density lithium-metal batteries by applying machine learning methods to battery performance data. The model proved able to accurately estimate batteries’ longevity by analyzing their charge, discharge and voltage relaxation process data without relying on any assumption about specific battery degradation mechanisms. The technique is expected to be useful in improving the safety and reliability of devices powered by lithium-metal batteries. 2. Lithium-metal ...