The Science In chemical reactions, molecules proceed during their transformation from reactants into reaction products through a critical geometry. In chemistry, geometry refers to the arrangement of atoms in a molecule. Scientists often call critical geometry in reactions a transition state. This state has an almost incomprehensibly short lifetime of less than one millionth of one millionth of a second. Scientists recently captured a critical geometry using the ultra-high speed “electron camera” at SLAC. In combination with quantum simulations of the reaction, ...

Wildfires are an ancient force shaping the environment, but they have grown in frequency, range and intensity in response to a changing climate. At the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, scientists are working on several fronts to better understand and predict these events and what they mean for the carbon cycle and biodiversity. Two months into the 2023 peak summer fire season from June through August, Canadian wildfires had burned more than 25 million acres of land, disrupted the lives of millions and spread beyond the traditional confines of western Canada east to Nova Scotia. The phenomenon attracted renewed attention as smoke drifted to heavily populated ...

When driving through a rainstorm, traction is key. If your tires lack sufficient tread, your vehicle will slip and slide and you won’t have the grip needed to maneuver safely. When torrential rains hit nearshore, shallow water ecosystems, sea urchins experience a similar challenge. Heavy precipitation can alter the concentration of salt in the ocean waters causing lower salinity levels. Even a slight change in salinity can affect the ability of sea urchins to securely attach their tube feet to their surroundings – like tires gripping the road. This ...

HOUSTON – (Aug. 2, 2023) – Rice University physicists have shown that immutable topological states, which are highly sought for quantum computing, can be entangled with other, manipulable quantum states in some materials. “The surprising thing we found is that in a particular kind of crystal lattice, where electrons become stuck, the strongly coupled behavior of electrons in d atomic orbitals actually act like the  f orbital systems of some heavy fermions,” said Qimiao Si, co-author of a study about the research in Science Advances. The unexpected find provides ...

In 2022, a team of researchers at Baylor College of Medicine discovered that a little-known enzyme called MAPK4 is involved in the growth of triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) and its resistance to certain therapies. Looking into the details of this novel role of MAPK4, the researchers have now identified a strategy that can potentially control MAPK4-promoted growth in TNBC and other cancers. The study, published in PLOS Biology, opens new options for treating this devastating disease. “Some cancers depend on MAPK4 for their growth, and our team studies cellular processes or pathways that participate in ...

New interference radar functions employed by a team of researchers from Chapman University and other institutions improve the distance resolution between objects using radar waves. The results may have important ramifications in military, construction, archaeology, mineralogy and many other domains of radar applications. This first proof-of-principle experiment opens a new area of research with many possible applications that can be disruptive to the multi-billion dollar radar industry. There are many new avenues to pursue both in theory and experiment. The ...

MINNEAPOLIS – Black people and people living in less affluent neighborhoods—areas with higher poverty levels and fewer educational and employment opportunities— may be less likely to be seen at a memory care clinic compared to white people and people living in neighborhoods with fewer disadvantages, according to new research published in the August 2, 2023, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.   “Our results are concerning, especially ...

MINNEAPOLIS – Teens who have been bullied by their peers, or who have considered or attempted suicide, may be more likely to have more frequent headaches than teens who have not experienced any of these problems, according to a study published in the August 2, 2023, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study does not prove that bullying or thoughts of suicide cause headaches; it only shows an association. “Headaches are a common problem for teenagers, but our study looked beyond the biological factors to also consider the psychological and social factors that are associated with headaches,” ...

Patients who live in less affluent neighborhoods and those from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups are less likely than others to receive specialized care for dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, a new study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis indicates. Further, the research shows that Black people are more likely than white people to be diagnosed with dementia at a later, more advanced stage, which could contribute to inequities in access to new treatments. The study appears Aug. 2 in the journal Neurology. New medications ...

CONTACT: Camille Jewell cjewell@vancomm.com or 202-248-5460   SAN DIEGO—Contrary to the results of a seminal study in the field, a recent analysis presented today at the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery’s (SNIS) 20th Annual Meeting indicates that surgical approaches (embolization, microsurgery, radiosurgery) for treating selected patients with unruptured arteriovenous malformation (AVM) is safe and effective.   AVMs are tangled blood vessels with abnormal connection between arteries and veins, bypassing the capillary ...

CONTACT: Camille Jewell cjewell@vancomm.com or 202-248-5460   SAN DIEGO—Today at the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery’s (SNIS) 20th Annual Meeting, researchers discussed a smartphone app created that reliably recognizes patients’ physical signs of stroke with the power of machine learning.   In the study, “Smartphone-Enabled Machine Learning Algorithms for Autonomous Stroke Detection,” researchers from the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and multiple medical institutions in Bulgaria used data from 240 patients with stroke at four metropolitan stroke centers. Within 72 hours of the ...

Nose-picking healthcare workers were more likely to catch COVID-19 during the pandemic than their colleagues who refrained, per Netherlands cohort study ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0288352 Article Title: Why not to pick your nose: Association between nose picking and SARS-CoV-2 incidence, a cohort study in hospital health care workers Author Countries: The Netherlands Funding: This work was funded by the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development ZonMw (S3 study, grant agreement no. 10430022010023 to M.K.B.) and the Corona ...

Half of popular TikTok videos about Baby Boomers portray older adults negatively, risking reinforcing stereotypes and creating intergenerational conflict ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0285987 Article Title: Videos about older adults on TikTok Author Countries: Singapore Funding: We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Social Science Research Council SSHR Fellowship (MOE2018-SSHR-004). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to ...

Extreme climates may have driven Middle Pleistocene hominins towards (positive) assortative mating and evolution of bigger brains, according to economic model of climate change impacts ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0287964 Article Title: An economic model and evidence of the evolution of human intelligence in the Middle Pleistocene: Climate change and assortative mating Author Countries: USA Funding: The author received no specific funding for this work. END ...

Interest in local bird feeding appears to have ramped up in countries all over the world during the pandemic lockdowns, even in countries not historically noted for bird feeding practices, according to a study published August 2, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Jacqueline Doremus from California Polytechnic State University and Liqing Li from Texas A&M University College Station, US, and Darryl Jones from Griffith University, Australia. Feeding wild birds is a popular nature-based pastime because of its simplicity, low cost, and accessibility in even urban environments. ...

In an analysis of more than 5,000 people, frequently working in teams was associated with a greater tendency for women and white men to put in extra effort at work, while other links between job conditions and effort varied between genders and ethnoracial groups. Wei-hsin Yu of the University of California, Los Angeles, US, and Janet Chen-Lan Kuo of National Taiwan University, Taiwan, present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on August 2, 2023. Popular media has recently featured discussion of “quiet ...

In a study involving more than 500 people, participants correctly identified speech deepfakes only 73 percent of the time, and efforts to train participants to detect deepfakes had minimal effects. Kimberly Mai and colleagues at University College London, UK, presented these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on August 2, 2023. Speech deepfakes are synthetic voices produced by machine-learning models. Deepfakes may resemble a specific real person’s voice, or they may be unique. Tools for making speech deepfakes have recently improved, raising concerns about security threats. For instance, they have already ...

A single accessory – an ornate necklace from a child’s grave in ancient Jordan – provides new insights into social complexity of Neolithic culture, according to a study published August 2, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Hala Alarashi of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Spain, and the Université Côte d’Azur, France and colleagues. Body adornments are powerful symbols that communicate cultural values and personal identities, and they are therefore highly valuable in the study of ancient cultures. In this study, Alarashi and colleagues analyze materials that adorned ...

In the August 02, 2023 issue of Science Translational Medicine, University of California San Diego researchers lead a team that has published new insights on pelvic floor muscle (PFM) dysfunction, which is one of the key risk factors for pelvic floor disorders, a set of morbid conditions that include pelvic organ prolapse and urinary and fecal incontinence, that impact close to a quarter of women in the U.S. and have a strong association with vaginal childbirth. The work is part of a larger effort to advance understanding, treatment and prevention of pelvic floor muscle dysfunction in humans.  The ...

The study, published today in PLOS ONE, is the first to assess human ability to detect artificially generated speech in a language other than English. Deepfakes are synthetic media intended to resemble a real person’s voice or appearance. They fall under the category of generative artificial intelligence (AI), a type of machine learning (ML) that trains an algorithm to learn the patterns and characteristics of a dataset, such as video or audio of a real person, so that it can reproduce original sound or imagery. While early deepfake speech algorithms may have required thousands of samples of a person’s voice to be able ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- A study examining the effects of deportation on the health and wellbeing of noncitizen veterans who served in the United States military has found that this group is a vulnerable and often unrecognized health disparity population. Overseen by Ann Cheney, an associate professor of social medicine, population, and public health in the School of Medicine at the University of California, Riverside, the study reports the post-deportation economic, social, and political conditions of living abroad harm veterans’ physical and ...

A team of researchers have highlighted the role that the COVID-19 pandemic played in connecting people around the world more with our feathered friends while in lockdowns, finding a surge in interest for bird feeding information and providing more insight into global human-birds interactions. Professor Emeritus Darryl Jones, from Griffith’s Centre for Planetary Health and Food Security, and the research team used Google search index (a valid proxy parameter from Google Trends data) and found a surge of interest in bird feeding in 115 countries after Covid-19 led to lockdowns where people stayed home. Professor Jones, alongside lead author Associate Professor ...

UCLA-led research describes the role that a protein called CEACAM1 plays in protecting the liver from injury during the transplantation process, potentially improving transplant outcomes. But the features that regulate this protective characteristic remain unknown. In a new study, to be published online Aug. 2 in Science Translational Medicine, a research team has identified the molecular factors at the root of this protection and shown how using molecular tools and alternative gene splicing can make CEACAM1 more protective, thus reducing organ injury and ultimately improving post-transplant outcomes. Prior to transplantation, a solid organ, such as a liver, has no ...

In February, the train derailment and subsequent chemical spill and fires in East Palestine, Ohio, caused an environmental emergency that led thousands of people to evacuate their homes. A multi-university study led by the University of Illinois Chicago will investigate the aftermath of that disaster, collecting data on the experiences of nearby residents and the effectiveness of communication from authorities about water, soil and air quality. For the study, the researchers will conduct surveys and interviews with residents in and near East Palestine, including counties ...

HOUSTON ― The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Research Highlights showcases the latest breakthroughs in cancer care, research and prevention. These advances are made possible through seamless collaboration between MD Anderson’s world-leading clinicians and scientists, bringing discoveries from the lab to the clinic and back. Recent developments include a novel biomarker that may predict the aggressiveness of pancreatic cancer precursors, insights into the structure and function of a breast and ovarian cancer susceptibility gene, a new approach to overcoming treatment resistance in ovarian cancer, distinguishing features of young-onset ...