Recent research has uncovered significant genetic and epigenetic variations in blueberry cultivars, particularly between northern highbush (NHB) and southern highbush (SHB) blueberries. The study highlights gene introgression's role in SHB's adaptation to subtropical climates and identifies key genes, such as VcTBL44, associated with fruit firmness. These findings offer valuable insights and resources for future blueberry breeding. Blueberries, part of the Vaccinium genus, are renowned for their nutritional benefits and increasing global demand. However, cultivation faces challenges like ...

Enhancer of zeste homolog 2 (EZH2) is a catalytic subunit of the Polycomb-repressive complex 2 (PRC2), which plays a crucial role in transcriptional repression through the methylation of histone H3 on lysine 27 (H3K27me3). This epigenetic modification leads to chromatin compaction and gene silencing. EZH2 is frequently overexpressed in a variety of cancers, including head and neck, breast, prostate, bladder, colorectal, lung, pancreatic, melanoma, and lymphoma. Mutations in the EZH2 gene are also prevalent in several hematological malignancies, such as B-lymphomas and follicular lymphomas. The dual role of EZH2 as both a tumor suppressor and oncogene depending on the cancer type ...

Recent advancements in speech emotion recognition have highlighted the significant potential of deep learning technologies across various applications. However, these deep learning models are susceptible to adversarial attacks. A team of researchers at the University of Milan systematically evaluated the impact of white-box and black-box attacks on different languages and genders within speech emotion recognition. The research was published May 27 in Intelligent Computing, a Science Partner Journal. The ...

Whether Bach, Beethoven, or Mozart, it’s widely recognized that classical music can affect a person’s mood. In a study published August 9 in the Cell Press journal Cell Reports, scientists in China use brainwave measurements and neural imaging techniques to show how Western classical music elicits its positive effects on the brain. Their goal is to find more effective ways to use music to activate the brain in those who otherwise don’t respond, such as people with treatment-resistant depression. “Our research integrates the fields of neuroscience, psychiatry, and ...

Imagine if physicians could capture three-dimensional projections of medical scans, suspending them inside an acrylic cube to create a hand-held reproduction of a patient's heart, brain, kidneys, or other organs. Then, when the visit is done, a quick blast of heat erases the projection and the cube is ready for the next scan. A new report in the journal Chem by researchers at Dartmouth and Southern Methodist University (SMU) outlines a technical breakthrough that could enable such scenarios, and others with widespread utility. The study introduces a technique that uses a specialized ...

Pregnant and postpartum women with depression and anxiety have a slightly better chance of getting psychotherapy these days, a new study finds. And they are paying less of their own money when they do. The changes in care and cost happened mainly after the Affordable Care Act took effect in 2014, and to a lesser extent after the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, or MHPAEA, took effect in 2010, the analysis shows. Both laws aimed at reducing insurance-related barriers to mental health care. Even so, only about 10% of women with private insurance ...

About The Study: In this systematic review, universal free school meals were associated with increased meal participation, no or slight improvements in attendance, and decreased obesity prevalence and suspension rates; certainty of evidence was moderate for lunch participation and low or very low for other outcomes. Studies did not report several important outcomes, such as diet quality and food security, suggesting the need for more high-quality research encompassing policy-relevant indicators.  Corresponding Author: To ...

People with celiac disease must navigate everyday life by avoiding gluten, a protein in wheat, rye and barley which can trigger painful symptoms in the gut, impede the absorption of nutrients and raise the risk of other serious long-term issues. The autoimmune disorder affects about 1 per cent of the population. Its rate of occurrence has roughly doubled in the past 25 years, but there is no treatment available. An interdisciplinary  team of medical and engineering researchers centred at Canada’s McMaster University and including colleagues from the US, Australia, and Argentina, has spent the ...

The Three Gorges Region of the Yangtze River (TGR) in China has a unique geographical location, complex geomorphological features, and a fragile and sensitive climate. The Three Gorges Project, as a large-scale comprehensive water conservancy hub project in the region, has not only greatly changed the nature, society and economy of the area, but also brought great benefits and created problems, such as environmental and climatic impacts. Therefore, it is of great importance to conduct climate and environmental monitoring in the region. Recently, a team led by Chen Xianyan, a Professor at ...

In this work, we study the outdoor and indoor photovoltaic performance of LHP-based devices utilizing Spiro-OMeTAD as the hole-transport material with commonly used dopants such as lithium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide (Li-TFSI) or without any dopants. We find out that, despite the expected low performance of devices employing undoped Spiro-OMeTAD layer under 1-Sun illumination (up to 7.7% efficiency), the devices achieve up to 25.6% efficiency under 1000 lux illumination, which is comparable to the doped counterpart devices achieving up to 29.7% efficiency. This is mainly due to the major improvement in fill factor when going towards low-light ...

A research team led by the School of Engineering of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has constructed an unprecedented chiral-structured interface in perovskite solar cells, which enhances the reliability and power conversion efficiency of this fast-advancing solar technology and accelerates its commercialization. A perovskite solar cell (PSC) is a type of solar cell that includes perovskite-structured compound materials, which are inexpensive to produce and simple to manufacture. Unlike conventional silicon solar cells that require expensive high-temperature, high-vacuum fabrication processes, perovskites can ...

Boulder, Colo., USA: The Geological Society of America (GSA) is proud to announce the recipients of the 2024 GSA Awards, recognizing outstanding contributions to the geoscience community. Each awardee has demonstrated exceptional dedication, innovation, and impact in their respective fields. GSA President’s Medal Kathy Jefferson Bancroftis, a Paiute-Shoshone community leader and environmental protector, is honored for her advocacy and education on water misuse and environmental degradation in the Owens Valley, ...

“GT is a fascinating evolutionary phenomenon observed in lower species and humans, albeit with differing impacts and mechanisms.” BUFFALO, NY- August 9, 2024 – A new editorial was published in Oncoscience (Volume 11) on July 13, 2024, entitled, “Unveiling retrotransposon-derived DNA zip code for myeloma cell internalization.” The complex interplay between extracellular genetic material and the tumor's genetic landscape presents a significant challenge in grasping cancer evolution, tumor genetic heterogeneity, and treatment response. Earlier research has revealed the role of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) in mediating the gene expression among ...

ZrC has drawn wide attention as an anti-ablation coating material for lightweight C/C composites but is limited by the produced porous and loose ZrO2 film. To address this issue, the second phase is introduced to improve the densification of the formed Zr-X-O film. Such as ZrC-SiC/TaC coating, the produced low-melting-point oxides, SiO2 (Tm=1650 °C), Ta2O5 (Tm=1800 °C) and Zr6Ta2O17 (Tm=1900 °C), helped to form a dense oxides film. However, the high service temperature causes heat accumulation and a large thermal stress gradient on the surface of the coatings, which will result in large local defects and accelerate the failure of the coating. To decrease the ablation heat ...

Fukuoka, Japan—The SDGs Design International Awards 2024 are calling for students worldwide to submit their original ideas for using design to achieve Sustainable Development Goals.  First organized in 2019 and led by Faculty of Design, Kyushu University, the awards aim to demonstrate the power of design in solving social problems and to elevate society's expectations for design. Now in its sixth year, this year’s theme is “Let’s Create Sustainable Design for FOOD." ...

Along with all the coffee we drink every day, over 6 million tons of spent coffee grounds are produced annually worldwide. Some of these grounds are reused as biofuel but the rest are disposed of in landfills. Over the last decade, research has focused on how to reuse these grounds. The primary focus has been on the polysaccharides from the cellulose and hemicellulose in the ground up coffee bean’s cell walls. Polysaccharides are used in composites, biopolymers, food packaging, construction materials and cellulose nanofibers (CNFs). CNFs specifically, which are cellulose reduced to nanoparticle size, 3 to 5 ...

As the effects of a changing climate and other ecological insults compound, many coral reefs face severe perturbations and a generally poor prognosis for recovery. In an article published in BioScience's new "Perspective and Insight" category, Dr. Peter J. Edmunds of California State University, Northridge, argues for the continued monitoring of coral reefs, even when the seascapes they inhabit are in a significantly degraded state. Drawing from his ongoing 37-year study in the US Virgin Islands, Edmunds argues that "only consistent, rigorous, and detail-oriented ...

Rockville, MD (8/9/2024) – The AIM-HI Accelerator Fund today announces Margaret Foti, PhD, MD (hc), Chief Executive Officer of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), is selected unanimously by the 2024 Blue Ribbon Selection Committee as the recipient of the 2024 Beacon Award for Women Leaders in Oncology, from a pool of outstanding global nominees.   The Beacon Award for Women Leaders in Oncology was established in 2022 by the AIM-HI Accelerator Fund and sponsored by the National Foundation for Cancer Research (NFCR). The Beacon Award recognizes outstanding women leaders in health and life sciences who have significantly impacted cancer ...

In a July 9 ceremony, Thomas Abbruscato, Ph.D., and Min Kang, Pharm.D., became the first recipients of the Douglas Stocco Research Chair, an endowment formerly known as the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center’s (TTUHSC) Research Endowment. The Texas Tech University System Board of Regents officially renamed the endowed chair in late November 2023 and made two appointments available.  Abbruscato, professor and chair in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the TTUHSC Jerry H. Hodge School of Pharmacy, said it is an honor to receive the endowment. “Personally, I am humbled to have ...

The natural world is rich in chemical compounds with remarkable medicinal properties. A notable example is penicillin, discovered by chance from the Penicillium mold. This discovery revolutionized the treatment of bacterial infections and highlighted the potential of natural compounds in medicine. Since then, the identification, isolation, and synthesis of novel bioactive compounds from plants, fungi, and bacteria have become fundamental to drug development. Recently, two groups of naturally occurring bioactive compounds have garnered significant attention: violaceoids A–F ...

New research from the University of Adelaide has shown that glossy black-cockatoos prefer to feed from trees growing in acidic soils. Glossy black-cockatoos are seed-eating birds that feed almost exclusively on the cones of drooping sheoak trees. However, counterintuitively, they select trees that grow on the poorest soils found on ancient sedimentary rocks. “Sheoak trees are three times more likely to be used as feeding trees if they are growing on non-limestone sedimentary rocks,” says Dr Gay Crowley, from the University of Adelaide’s School of Social Sciences. Dr Crowley compared 6,543 feeding records with 23,484 ...

Autistic youth who were born in underserved neighborhoods are more likely to have greater attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms than those born in communities with more resources. This is one finding of a new study led by researchers at the UC Davis MIND Institute.   This is the first time researchers have investigated how neighborhood factors are associated with ADHD in autistic and non-autistic children. The study provides new insights into mental health conditions and has the potential to inform public policy changes to improve health equity. It was published in the journal JCPP Advances. “We found that some neighborhood ...

Content warning: This post contains details of sharing intimate imagery without consent that may be disturbing to some readers. While much attention on sexually explicit “deepfakes” has focused on celebrities, these non-consensual sexual images and videos generated with artificial intelligence harm people both in and out of the limelight. As text-to-image AI models grow more sophisticated and easier to use, the volume of such content is only increasing. The escalating problem led Google to announce last week that it will work to filter out these deepfakes in search results, and the Senate recently passed ...

LOGAN, UTAH, USA -- Utah State University geoscientist Alexis Ault recalls the devastating aftermath of back-to-back 7.8 and 7.6-magnitude earthquakes on Feb. 6, 2023, near the Turkey-Syria border that killed more than 50,000 people and displaced millions. “We witnessed the destruction firsthand, as well as the resilience of the country and population trying to get their footing and rebuild,” says Ault, associate professor in USU’s Department of Geosciences, who traveled to the disaster site about six months after ...

Light is an excellent carrier of information used not only for classical communication technologies but also increasingly for quantum applications such as quantum networking and computing. However, processing light signals is far more complex, compared to working with common electronic signals. An international team of researchers including Dr. Olga Kocharovskaya, a distinguished professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Texas A&M University, has demonstrated a novel way of storing and releasing X-ray pulses at the single photon level — a concept first ...