Increasing ventilation in child-care settings may not always be effective at preventing flu virus spread, according to a new study published by a team of researchers at Emory University, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and Virginia Tech. The spread of flu viruses is commonly studied in animal models that don’t mimic the real-life scenarios of the human experience, making it difficult to evaluate strategies that will be effective in common places where disease spreads rapidly, such as childcare settings. As reported online and in a coming print issue of the journal Proceedings of the National ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – People who are lonely are more apt to have bad dreams, according to a collaboration that included an Oregon State University scientist. The findings are important because both loneliness and sleep disorders are serious public health issues, said OSU’s Colin Hesse. They are connected to increased risk of heart disease, stroke and premature death. In a paper published in the Journal of Psychology, Hesse and researchers at the University of Arizona, the University of Tampa and Whitworth University note that stress ...

Irvine, Calif., Aug. 6, 2024 — Researchers led by the University of California, Irvine have discovered how the TREM2 R47H genetic mutation causes certain brain areas to develop abnormal protein clumps, called beta-amyloid plaques, associated with late-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Leveraging single-cell Merfish spatial transcriptomics technology, the team was able to profile the effects of the mutation across multiple cortical and subcortical brain regions, offering first-of-their-kind insights at the single-cell level.   The study, recently published online in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, compared the brains of normal mice and special mouse models that undergo ...

Inducible laryngeal obstruction is a breathing disorder characterized by unwanted vocal fold closure having the potential to restrict breathing at times. It’s estimated that between 3-12% of patients with dyspnea complaints have inducible laryngeal obstruction.  Patients with inducible laryngeal obstruction are thought to make up to 22% of patients with frequent emergency room visits due to sudden onset dyspnea.  While experts know how to treat the condition, there’s not much formal research about what patients with the disorder experience ...

Media  When clams gamble on living with a killer, sometimes their luck may run out, according to a University of Michigan study. A longstanding question in ecology asks how can so many different species co-occur, or live together, at the same time and at the same place. One influential theory called the competitive exclusion principle suggests that only one species can occupy a particular niche in a biological community at any one time. But out in the wild, researchers find many instances of different species that appear to occupy the same ...

In a new peer-reviewed article in The Journal of Population and Sustainability, demographic experts are urging the United Nations to reject the current “‘growth’ paradigm which treats Earth and its nonhuman inhabitants as mere resources” and to take the lead in “contracting the large-scale variables of the human enterprise” in order to “forge a path out of multiple environmental and social crises,” and “reverse our advanced state of ecological overshoot.”  Earth Overshoot Day, the date when humanity’s demand on nature’s resources surpasses Earth’s capacity ...

Outbreaks of hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD), which causes fever and rash in young children, typically occur in the summer months. Similarly, historic cases of polio were observed in the summer months in the United States. Both diseases are caused by different species of enteroviruses, a large genus of RNA viruses. However, the drivers of the seasonal patterns of these diseases have remained somewhat unclear. A common set of drivers can explain the timing of outbreaks of both HFMD and polio according a recent study by researchers at Brown University, Princeton University ...

(Memphis, Tenn. – August 6, 2024) To effectively treat a disease or disorder, doctors must first know the root cause. Such is the case for developmental and epileptic encephalopathies (DEEs), whose root causes can be hugely complex and heterogeneous. Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital demonstrated the value of DNA methylation patterns for identifying the root cause of DEEs, showing specific gene methylation and genome-wide methylation “episignatures” ...

URBANA, Ill. – Black Americans experience racial discrimination on a regular basis, and it is a cause of chronic and pervasive stress. It is known to contribute to elevated risk for poor mental health outcomes, but most research has focused on individuals. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign looks at the interpersonal effects of discrimination on parents and their adolescent children. “A person’s experiences with racial discrimination are not just their own but may spill over into the ...

DETROIT — Mark Lumley, Ph.D., distinguished professor of psychology in Wayne State University’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, was recently awarded the 2024 Nathan W. Perry, Jr. Award for Career Service to Health Psychology from the Society for Health Psychology. The Society for Health Psychology is a national nonprofit that seeks to improve the lives of individuals and society by promoting health, preventing illness and improving health care through research, practice, education, training and advocacy. “I’m delighted and greatly honored for this recognition,” ...

URBANA, Ill. -- Elephant conservation is a major priority in southern Africa, but habitat loss and urbanization mean the far-ranging pachyderms are increasingly restricted to protected areas like game reserves. The risk? Contained populations could become genetically isolated over time, making elephants more vulnerable to disease and environmental change.  A recent study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Pretoria in South Africa demonstrates how African conservation managers could create and optimize elephant movement corridors across a seven-country ...

Social media’s rise to popularity between 2010 and 2020 has been strongly correlated with the nationwide freefall in youth mental health that characterized the 2010s. Lawmakers have put increasing pressure on the U.S. government to take social media regulation more seriously, with cases about platforms like Facebook, Instagram and X rising to the Supreme Court level. But despite the ubiquity of social media, scientists at Northwestern Medicine and Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago found that in Illinois, youth emergency room visits and hospitalizations for depression and anxiety decreased ...

or many plants, more branches means more fruit. But what causes a plant to grow branches? New research from the University of California, Davis shows how plants break down the hormone strigolactone, which suppresses branching, to become more “bushy.” Understanding how strigolactone is regulated could have big implications for many crop plants. The study was published August 1 in Nature Communications. “Being able to manipulate strigolactone could also have implications beyond plant architecture, including on a plant’s resilience to drought and pathogens,” said senior author Nitzan Shabek, an associate professor in the UC Davis Department of ...

How would you summarize your study for a lay audience? Some proteins, such as programmed cell death protein 1 (PD1), can stop the immune system from attacking cancer cells and, therefore, support the growth of cancer. Therapies targeting these proteins can be highly effective, but tumors can become resistant. We applied a method to detect proteins on a single–cell level to uncover human carcinoembryonic antigen cell adhesion molecule 1 (CEACAM1) patterns in melanoma. We found that increased ...

Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation awards $5.2 million to top clinical investigators The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation has named six new Damon Runyon Clinical Investigators. The recipients of this prestigious award are outstanding, early-career physician-scientists conducting patient-oriented cancer research at major research centers under the mentorship of the nation's leading scientists and clinicians. The Clinical Investigator Award program was designed to increase the number of physicians capable of translating scientific discoveries into new treatments for cancer patients. Each Awardee will receive $600,000 over three years, ...

August 6, 2024 — Thoracic ossification of the posterior longitudinal ligament (TOPLL) is a rare condition associated with ectopic bone formation in the thoracic spine. A long-term follow-up study from Japan shows significant and lasting improvement in outcomes with posterior decompression and fixation surgery for patients with T-OPLL, reports The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.  "Surgical treatment of T-OPLL is effective in improving neurological function, quality ...

A new way to combat Alzheimer’s disease has been discovered by Takaomi Saido and his team at the RIKEN Center for Brain Science (CBS) in Japan. Using mice with the disease, the researchers found that treatment with dopamine could alleviate physical symptoms in the brain as well as improve memory. Published in the scientific journal Science Signaling on August 6, the study examines dopamine’s role in promoting the production of neprilysin, an enzyme that can break down the harmful plaques in the brain that are the ...

Millions of Americans consume supplements that contain potentially hepatoxic botanical ingredients, according to a study from University of Michigan researchers. Over a 30-day period, 4.7% of the adults surveyed in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey conducted from 2017 to 2020 took herbal and dietary supplements containing at least one of the botanicals of interest: turmeric; green tea; ashwagandha; black cohosh; garcinia cambogia; and red yeast rice containing products. The resulting paper, “Estimated Exposure ...

Sometimes you just can’t win, and that goes double for people navigating the increasingly polarized political landscape in the United States. Having nuanced opinions of politics in the U.S. turns out to be a very lonely, and unpopular, road, according to a recent study from a research team that includes assistant professor Aviva Phillipp-Muller from Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business.   Published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, the study found that people who express ambivalence about political topics – ranging from COVID-19 mask mandates, immigration and the death ...

EL PASO, Texas (Aug. 6, 2024) – Grab a drink with friends at happy hour and you’re likely to feel chatty, friendly and upbeat. But grab a drink alone and you may experience feelings of depression. Researchers think they now know why this happens. “Social settings influence how individuals react to alcohol, yet there is no mechanistic study on how and why this occurs,” said Kyung-An Han, Ph.D., a biologist at The University of Texas at El Paso who uses fruit flies to study alcoholism. Now, Han and a team of UTEP faculty and students have taken a key step in understanding the neurobiological process behind social drinking and how it boosts ...

A team of researchers, led by the University of Houston, has discovered two new ways of preventing and treating respiratory viruses. In back-to-back papers in Nature Communications, the team - from the lab of Navin Varadarajan, M.D. Anderson Professor of William A. Brookshire Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering - reports the development and validation of NanoSTING, a nasal spray, as a broad-spectrum immune activator for controlling infection against multiple respiratory viruses; and the development of NanoSTING-SN, a pan-coronavirus nasal vaccine, that can protect against infection and disease by all members of the coronavirus family.  NanoSTING ...

A new UBC study has revealed regular seasonal shifts in people’s moral values. The finding has potential implications for politics, law and health—including the timing of elections and court cases, as well as public response to a health crisis. The research published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) analyzed survey responses from more than 230,000 people in the U.S. over 10 years and revealed that people’s embrace of certain moral ...

The chemical and energy industries depend upon catalysts to drive the reactions used to create their products. Many important reactions use heterogeneous catalysts — meaning that the catalysts are in a different phase of matter than the substances they are reacting with, such as solid platinum reacting with gases in an automobile’s catalytic converter. Scientists have investigated the surface of well-defined single crystals, illuminating the mechanisms underlying many chemical reactions. However, there is much more to be learned. For heterogeneous catalysts, their 3D atomic structure, their chemical composition and the nature of ...

When we’re sick, the first step on the road to recovery is a visit to the doctor’s office.  It turns out the same may also be true for breathing life into America’s democracy. A Rutgers University–New Brunswick study published in the journal JAMA Health Forum finds that physicians can play a crucial role in strengthening political inclusion of marginalized groups by aiding patients in voter registration. “Hospitals aren’t the first place we think of when it comes to voter registration,” said Katherine McCabe, an associate professor of American politics at Rutgers University-New Brunswick and lead ...

Electronic waste, or e-waste, is a rapidly growing global problem, and it’s expected to worsen with the production of new kinds of flexible electronics for robotics, wearable devices, health monitors, and other new applications, including single-use devices. A new kind of flexible substrate material developed at MIT, the University of Utah, and Meta has the potential to enable not only the recycling of materials and components at the end of a device’s useful life, but also the scalable manufacture of more ...