You’re looking at a truck. You’re with a young child and he follows your gaze. He’s interested in the object you’re looking at without you pointing at it. This is called joint attention and it is one of the primary ways children learn to connect words with objects and acquire language. Lack of joint attention is a core feature of autism. Until now, it was thought that stimulating joint attention in people with autism would help them express themselves verbally. But a meta-analysis of 71 studies on autism challenges this assumption and suggests that people with autism spectrum disorders may acquire language differently. The study – by Laurent Mottron, ...

Upgrading, or retrofitting, the world's iron and steel processing plants early could reduce carbon emissions by up to 70 gigatonnes by 2050, roughly equivalent to two years' worth of net global carbon emissions, according to a new study led by UCL researchers. Published in the journal Nature, the researchers found that by upgrading the world’s iron and steel production facilities, carbon emissions can be reduced by 58.7 gigatonnes between 2020 and 2050, roughly equivalent to two years’ worth of net global carbon emissions. ...

One proven method for tracking down the genetic causes of diseases is to knock out a single gene in animals and study the consequences this has for the organism. The problem is that for many diseases, the pathology is determined by multiple genes. This makes it extremely difficult for scientists to determine the extent to which any one of the genes is involved in the disease. To do this, they would have to perform many animal experiments – one for each desired gene modification. Researchers led by Randall Platt, Professor of Biological Engineering at the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering at ETH Zurich in Basel, have now developed a method that will greatly ...

About The Study: The results of this study showed sociodemographic-based disparities in geographic clustering of COVID-19 therapeutic drugs, highlighting disparities in access to these drugs. With the end of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency, these findings highlight an important gap in treatment access.  Authors: Kosuke Tamura, Ph.D., of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, 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.2023.34763) Editor’s ...

About The Study: The findings of this study suggest that greater ultraprocessed food (UPF; i.e., energy-dense, palatable, and ready-to-eat items) intake, particularly artificial sweeteners and artificially sweetened beverages, is associated with increased risk of depression. Although the mechanism associating UPF to depression is unknown, recent experimental data suggests that artificial sweeteners elicit purinergic transmission in the brain, which may be involved in the etiopathogenesis of depression.  Authors: Raaj S. Mehta, ...

About The Study: Waist-to-hip ratio had the strongest and most consistent association with mortality irrespective of body mass index in this study consisting of 387,000 UK adult participants from the UK Biobank. Clinical recommendations should consider focusing on adiposity distribution compared with mass.  Authors: Guillaume Pare, M.D., M.Sc., of the Vascular and Stroke Research Institute in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, 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.2023.34836) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional ...

Among available immunotherapies, the use of «CAR-T» cells is proving extremely effective against certain blood cancers, but only in half of patients. A main reason for this is the premature dysfunction of these immune cells, which have been artificially modified in vitro. A team from the Universities of Geneva (UNIGE), Lausanne (UNIL), the Geneva University Hospitals (HUG) and the Vaud University Hospital (CHUV), all part of the Swiss Cancer Center Léman (SCCL), has discovered how to prolong the functionality of CAR-T cells. By inhibiting a very specific metabolic mechanism, the team has succeeded ...

A 455-million-year-old fossil fish provides a new perspective on how vertebrates evolved to protect their brains, a study has found. In a paper published in Nature today (Wednesday 20th September), researchers from the University of Birmingham, Naturalis Biodiversity Centre in Leiden, Netherlands; and the Natural History Museum have pieced together the skull of Eriptychius americanus. The research, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, suggests that the ancient jawless fish found in ancient deposits in ...

Brigham researchers reported that gentrified neighborhoods had a 62 percent higher firearm injury incidence rate than non-gentrified communities with comparable sociodemographic characteristics Understanding the reason for this increase is vital to reducing future firearm injuries Gentrification can have a ripple effect on communities. While it can improve certain conditions in typically low-income areas, rising housing costs can displace residents, causing social disruption and other downstream effects. Investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, conducted a study using national data to examine the relationship ...

Psychoses like schizophrenia cost billions of dollars annually and derail the lives of people struggling with the disease. Now Monash University researchers have modelled how the effects of psychosis spread through the brain, allowing them to isolate areas where these changes may originate from and which could be targeted by therapies designed to reduce the disease’s progression. The study, published today in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry, details how the scientists were able to map and model the spread of brain changes in people with different stages of psychoses such as schizophrenia,from people newly ...

Santa Barbara, CA and New York, NY -- The Glenn Foundation for Medical Research (GFMR) and the American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR) are pleased to announce the inaugural recipients of the  2023 Glenn Foundation Discovery Awards: Ya-Chieh Hsu, PhD, Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University, and a Principal Faculty Member at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. Xuebing Wu, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medical Sciences (in Medicine and in Systems Biology), Columbia University. The Glenn Foundation Discovery Award  was created to support research projects with strong potential to develop pioneering discoveries ...

A team of leading clinicians, engineers, and neuroscientists has made a groundbreaking discovery in the field of treatment-resistant depression. By analyzing the brain activity of patients undergoing deep brain stimulation (DBS), a promising therapy involving implanted electrodes that stimulate the brain, the researchers identified a unique pattern in brain activity that reflects the recovery process in patients with treatment-resistant depression. This pattern, known as a biomarker, serves as a measurable indicator of disease recovery and represents a significant ...

A research team led by scientists from City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has achieved a significant breakthrough by inventing a new class of near-infrared-activated photo-oxidants that can effectively kill cancer cells without requiring oxygen. The photo-oxidants induce a unique form of cancer cell death that can overcome cancer cell resistance. The findings offer a new strategy, called ‘photo-oxidation therapy’, and provide a promising direction for the development of anti-cancer drugs. Photodynamic therapy, an innovative ...

WASHINGTON (September 20, 2023)—The Ann Theodore Foundation Breakthrough Sarcoidosis Initiative (ATF-BSI), in partnership with the Milken Institute, launched its latest round of funding today. Up to $3.4 million in total funding will be made available to researchers from around the world whose work aims to increase scientific understanding of sarcoidosis. The program is accepting applications for two-year research projects and intends to award four to six research grants from doctorate-level investigators at qualifying research-based institutions worldwide. Awardees may be eligible for a third year of funding.  Sarcoidosis is an inflammatory ...

NEW YORK, NY (September 20, 2023)—Columbia will award the 2023 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize to Zhijian ‘James’ Chen and Glen Barber for discovering the cGAS-STING pathway, a key component of one of the body’s first line of defenses, the innate immune system. When pathogens infiltrate our cells, they leave behind traces of their DNA. These molecular fingerprints are detected by our cGAS-STING pathway, which sounds the alarm and mobilizes the immune system to eliminate invading threats. Research on the cGAS-STING pathway has revealed the ...

The past few decades have witnessed the burgeoning development of on-orbit servicing in light of various meaningful space applications such as repair of malfunctioning satellites, debris removal, on-orbit assembly, and so on. As for the orbit-servicing targets, they are usually divided into 2 categories, i.e., cooperative and non-cooperative ones, based on whether the space targets have active cross-link communication and cooperative identifiers with the servicing spacecraft or not. Before executing the orbit-servicing task, close-range rendezvous and proximity is an inevitable process in which ...

An Australian-first biobank will be established to improve and discover new treatments for children with genetic muscle diseases. The National Muscle Disease Bio-databank, co-led by Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Monash University and Alfred Health, will advance research into understanding why children develop genetic muscle diseases. The project forms part of a $2.5 million Medical Research Future Fund grant awarded to the team for research into congenital muscle diseases. These diseases, spanning dystrophies and myopathies, are characterised by severe muscle weakness, usually from infancy, that can impact swallowing, ...

Liver cancer is one of the most prevalent and deadly types of cancer worldwide. Most patients are diagnosed at an advanced stage, which leaves them with few treatment options. Unfortunately, the first-line drugs used in advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common type of liver cancer, are not very effective and offer only modest clinical benefits. Over the past few years, scientists have been trying to develop new therapies for HCC by analyzing specific genetic abnormalities and the ways in which they affect the manifestation and progression of the disease. One of the most common mutations in HCC ...

The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) approved Tuesday the creation of an undergraduate major for the University of Virginia’s School of Data Science, a landmark development for the four-year-old school, which was the first of its kind in the nation. Prior to Tuesday’s announcement, undergraduates could obtain a minor in data science, while graduate students could pursue master’s or doctoral degrees. Now, the establishment of the B.S. in Data Science will allow UVA’s undergraduates to focus their studies on this emerging and growing interdisciplinary field. “The B.S. in Data Science major is a major milestone ...

Highlights: Organisms, including viruses, live in the deepest, darkest places on the planet Marine virologists analyzed sediment from the Mariana Trench, the deepest place on Earth, and identified a new bacteriophage The phage infects Halomonas bacteria, which have been found in deep-sea environments and near hydrothermal vents The study helps probe how phages and hosts evolve together in secluded, hostile environments Washington, D.C. —  The Mariana Trench, the deepest place on Earth, plunges nearly 11,000 meters at its lowest point on the floor ...

A new Northwestern University-led study is changing the way astrophysicists understand the eating habits of supermassive black holes. While previous researchers have hypothesized that black holes eat slowly, new simulations indicate that black holes scarf food much faster than conventional understanding suggests. The study will be published on Wednesday (Sept. 20) in The Astrophysical Journal. According to new high-resolution 3D simulations, spinning black holes twist up the surrounding space-time, ultimately ripping apart ...

Florida Atlantic University’s María de los Ángeles Ortega, DNP, APRN, in the Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing, has been awarded a three-year, $1.3 million grant from the Administration for Community Living’s (ACL) Alzheimer’s Disease Program Initiative for a groundbreaking project designed to advance health equity and improve quality of life for individuals living with or at high risk for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) and their family caregivers. ACL was created around the fundamental principle that all people, regardless of age or disability, should be able to live independently ...

A team of researchers, led by Professor Jungki Ryu in the School of Energy and Chemical Engineering at UNIST and Professor Soojin Park from Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), have achieved a significant breakthrough in the development of a hybrid silicon photocatalyst. This innovative catalyst utilizes solar power to produce hydrogen and high-value compounds efficiently, marking a major step forward in green hydrogen production technology. The newly developed photocatalyst is both non-toxic and eco-friendly, addressing the limitations associated with ...

As summer turns to fall, many people will be turning off the air conditioning and firing up heaters instead. But traditional heating and cooling systems are energy intensive, and because they typically run on fossil fuels, they aren’t sustainable. Now, by mimicking a desert-dwelling chameleon, a team reporting in ACS’ Nano Letters has developed an energy-efficient, cost-effective coating. The material could keep buildings cool in the summers — or warm in the winters — without additional energy. Many ...

Boulder, Colo., USA: The consequences of a warming climate frequently dominated the news this summer, from devastating wildfires and floods to deadly heat waves across the globe. Reducing harm from climate change is a challenging endeavor, and it requires comprehensive public education. Thus, the question arises: How can climate change science be made most accessible to the general population, as well as decision-makers and educators? In a new paper published in the journal Geosphere, Steph Courtney and Karen McNeal explore the effects ...