Markings on a stone pillar at a 12,000 year-old archaeological site in Turkey likely represent the world’s oldest solar calendar, created as a memorial to a devastating comet strike, experts suggest. The markings at Göbekli Tepe in southern Turkey – an ancient complex of temple-like enclosures adorned with intricately carved symbols – could record an astronomical event that triggered a key shift in human civilisation, researchers say.  The research suggests ancient people were able to record their observations of the sun, moon and constellations in ...

In brief: The chemical messenger orexin and the orexin neurons in the brain mediate the decision between exercise and snacking. Researchers at ETH Zurich made this discovery in mice. The results are likely to be transferable to humans. In the experiment, mice with a blocked orexin system opted more frequently for the milkshake offered them and less for exercise. These results could help in researching and developing new strategies to promote physical activity in people. Should I go and exercise, or would I rather go to the café ...

To protect the Amazon and support the wellbeing of its people, its economy needs to shift from environmentally harmful production to a model built around the diversity of indigenous and rural communities, and standing forests. A group of conservationists from Bolivia, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, the US and the UK say that current conservation and development efforts will never sustain or scale without systemic changes in how economies are designed. Despite extensive destruction of the Amazon in the name of economic development, Amazonian communities have seen little improvement in income, life expectancy, and education. The researchers have ...

Scientists at Nagoya University in Japan have made a significant breakthrough in treating lipid disorders. They have developed a new compound, ZTA-261, which selectively binds to the thyroid hormone receptor beta (THRβ). THRβ plays an important role in the regulation of lipid metabolism, which affects lipid levels in the blood. Mice administered the drug showed decreased lipid levels in the liver and blood, with fewer side effects in the liver, heart, and bones compared to existing compounds. These findings, published in Communications Medicine, suggest that ZTA-261 ...

Nicholas A. Marston, MD, MPH, of the TIMI Study Group and Carl J. and Ruth Shapiro Cardiovascular Center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, is the corresponding author of a paper published in Nature Medicine, “Clonal hematopoiesis, cardiovascular events and treatment benefit in 63,700 individuals from five TIMI randomized trials.” How would you summarize your study for a lay audience? Clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP) is a condition that promotes the multiplication of blood stem cells in the body and increases the ...

Gold does not readily lend itself to being turned into long, thin threads. But researchers at Linköping University in Sweden have now managed to create gold nanowires and develop soft electrodes that can be connected to the nervous system. The electrodes are soft as nerves, stretchable and electrically conductive, and are projected to last for a long time in the body.   Some people have a “heart of gold”, so why not “nerves of gold”? In the future, it may be possible to use this precious metal in soft interfaces to connect electronics to the nervous system for medical ...

Accelerating global change continues to threaten Earth’s vast biodiversity, including in the oceans, which remain largely unexplored. To date, only a small fraction of an estimated two million total living marine species have been named and described. A major challenge is the time it takes to scientifically describe and publish a new species, which is a crucial step in studying and protecting these species. The current scientific and publishing landscape often results in decade-long delays (20-40 years) from the discovery of a new species to its official description. As an ...

The 18th Q-Bio Conference on Quantitative Biology was held at the Guangming Yungu International Conference Center in Shenzhen from July 26 to 29, 2024. Organized by the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the Shenzhen Institute of Synthetic Biology (iSynBio), and Peking University, the conference drew over 230 global researchers from countries including the U.S., U.K., France, India, Japan, Chile, and China. Themed "Predictive Modeling and Quantitative Principles in Complex Biological Systems," the event explored future prospects in quantitative and synthetic biology. Under ...

Philadelphia, August 6, 2024 – Doctors recommend making fruits and vegetables a foundational part of the treatment of patients with hypertension. Diets high in fruits and vegetables are found to lower blood pressure, reduce cardiovascular risk, and improve kidney health due to their base-producing effects. A new study in The American Journal of Medicine, published by Elsevier, details the findings from a five-year interventional randomized control trial. Despite ongoing efforts to improve hypertension treatment and reduce its adverse outcomes with pharmacological strategies, hypertension-related chronic kidney disease and its cardiovascular mortality are increasing. Heart disease ...

The expansion of the Mexico-US border wall crossing has been accompanied by a rising toll of serious injuries, with poor discharge care and a lack of appropriate interpreting facilities adding up to a “humanitarian and health crisis,” suggest researchers in the open access journal Trauma Surgery & Acute Care Open. Thirty eight different nationalities and 21 languages other than Spanish were represented among those attempting to cross one segment of the wall in 2021 and 2022, say the researchers. The Mexico-US border wall was extended by 50 miles and raised to a height of 30 feet in Southern California, construction ...

The interplay of a quartet of sex, marital status, education, and race is linked to an 18 year lifespan gap for US citizens, and while no one factor is more influential than any of the others, the more of these influential factors a person has, the higher their risk of an earlier death, finds research published in the open access journal BMJ Open. But a simple scoring system based on these characteristics can help overcome this complexity to identify those most at risk, say the researchers. Individual risks and genetic factors explain part of the differences in health and death, but the evidence increasingly points to the role of social determinants—the ...

At the edge of the south coast of South Africa, Arizona State University professor Curtis Marean and his research teams have been teasing out the secrets of our earliest modern human ancestors in caves at Pinnacle Point for over 25 years. In late July, the site was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Olympic gold medal of heritage, which is only given to sites of “outstanding universal value” to all of humanity.  In 1999, while conducting reconnaissance on the south coast ...

“We sought to identify an association between osteoporosis and LTL shortening in an independent prospective cohort.” BUFFALO, NY- August 5, 2024 – A new research paper was published on the cover of Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 16, Issue 14, entitled, “Association between osteoporosis and the rate of telomere shortening.” A shorter leukocyte telomere length (LTL) is reported to be associated with age-related diseases, including osteoporosis. Many studies ...

Reno, Nev. (August 5, 2024) – DRI’s STEM Education Team has received a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to support environmental education in Nevada’s schools. The $100,000 grant will fund the production of additional educational kits known as Greenboxes that raise awareness and understanding of the prevalence and role of microplastics in the environment. “DRI is honored to be awarded this EPA grant, and we are eager to continue our outreach to underserved rural and urban communities across Nevada,” said DRI STEM Education Program Manager Emily McDonald-Williams. “Middle school students ...

New study reveals a significant sex bias in pain management at emergency departments, showing that female patients are consistently less likely to receive pain medication prescriptions compared to male patients with similar complaints. This bias persists across different ages, pain levels, and physician sex, indicating a systemic issue. Female patients' pain scores are less frequently recorded, and they spend more time in the emergency department than male patients. The findings highlight the need for urgent policy interventions and training for healthcare ...

New York, NY (August 5, 2024) — The Child Mind Institute has released a paper detailing their pioneering study in the journal Nature Human Behaviour titled, "Moving Beyond Processing and Analysis-Related Variation in Resting State Functional Brain Imaging." The research identifies significant challenges in the reproducibility and standardization of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) used to understand brain function and behavior — and proposes concrete solutions to move the field towards results that translate into real world impact. Along with a diverse team of international collaborators, ...

Pneumonia diagnoses are marked by pronounced uncertainty, an AI-based analysis of over 2 million hospital visits has found. More than half the time, a pneumonia diagnosis made in the hospital will change from a patient’s entrance to their discharge—either because someone who was initially diagnosed with pneumonia ended up with a different final diagnosis, or because a final diagnosis of pneumonia was missed when a patient entered the hospital (not including cases of hospital-acquired pneumonia). The study describing the new results publishes August 6th in Annals of Internal Medicine. Barbara Jones, MD, MSCI, pulmonary and critical care physician ...

Embargoed for release until 5:00 p.m. ET on Monday 5 August 2024     Annals of Internal Medicine Tip Sheet      @Annalsofim     Below please find summaries of new articles that will be published in the next issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The summaries are not intended to substitute for the full articles as a source of information. This information is under strict embargo and by taking it into possession, media representatives are committing to the terms of the embargo not only on their own behalf, but also on behalf of the organization they represent.      ----------------------------     1. ...

UCLA Health researchers, in collaboration with researchers from the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, have received $9.5 million award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with support from European funding agencies — The Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and the Public Health Agency Health & Social Care (HSC) — to study the effects of polyphenols on cognitive health and the brain-gut microbiome system. The proposal, named MAEVE, stands for “Microbiota mediated flavonoid metabolites for cognitive health.” In this interdisciplinary and multicenter study funded through the Tripartite US-Ireland Research & Development Partnership Program, ...

A groundbreaking study has revealed that red dwarf stars can produce stellar flares that carry far-ultraviolet (far-UV) radiation levels much higher than previously believed. This discovery suggests that the intense UV radiation from these flares could significantly impact whether planets around red dwarf stars can be habitable. Led by current and former astronomers from the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy (IfA), the research was recently published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. “Few stars have been thought to generate ...

In a new article for the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, UC Santa Cruz researchers laid out the foundation for their highly-anticipated upcoming study of how lack of affordable housing in urban areas of California may be driving increased development in and near wildlands, leading to more severe climate change impacts.  Since the 1990s, California has led the nation in the growth of Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) development, with more than one in three households in the state now located immediately next to or within ...

BUFFALO, NY- August 5, 2024 – A new research paper was published in Oncotarget's Volume 15 on July 12, 2024, entitled, “INT-1B3, an LNP formulated miR-193a-3p mimic, promotes anti-tumor immunity by enhancing T cell mediated immune responses via modulation of the tumor microenvironment and induction of immunogenic cell death.” In this study, researchers Chantal L. Duurland, Thijs de Gunst, Harm C. den Boer, Marion T.J. van den Bosch, Bryony J. Telford, Rogier M. Vos, Xiaolei Xie, Mingfa Zang, Fang Wang, Yingying Shao, Xiaoyu ...

DETROIT — A Wayne State University professor recently received a three-year, $626,467 grant from the National Science Foundation’s Division of Physics. The project, “Probing Nonadiabatic Strong Field Ionization with Phase-Resolved Attoclock,” will research a quantum mechanical process known as quantum tunneling. Wen Li, Ph.D., professor of chemistry in Wayne State’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and his research team propose a new technique they have developed to study the process of quantum tunneling, a quantum mechanical phenomenon in which an object such as an electron or atom passes through ...

Researchers from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center demonstrated that adding metastasis-directed radiation therapy to standard-of-care chemotherapy improved progression-free survival (PFS) in patients with oligometastatic pancreatic cancer. Findings from the multicenter EXTEND trial, published today in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, were first presented at the 2024 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium. At a median follow-up of 17.3 months, PFS was 10.3 months in patients who received metastasis-directed therapy (MDT) ...

Researchers at the University of California, Davis have developed a rapid, noninvasive tool to track the neurons and biomolecules activated in the brain by psychedelic drugs. The protein-based tool, which is called Ca2+-activated Split-TurboID, or CaST, is described in research published in Nature Methods.  There has been mounting interest in the value of psychedelic-inspired compounds as treatments for brain disorders including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and substance use disorder. Psychedelic ...