About The Study: In a study of children ages 16 to 30 months assessed for autism in six specialty clinics, eye-tracking–based measurement of social visual engagement was predictive of autism diagnoses by clinical experts. Further evaluation of this test’s role in early diagnosis and assessment of autism in routine specialty clinic practice is warranted. Authors: Warren Jones, Ph.D., of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, 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/jama.2023.13295) Editor’s ...

About The Study: In two diagnostic studies of 1,089 children younger than age 3, objective eye-tracking–based measurements of social visual engagement quantified diagnostic status as well as individual levels of social disability, verbal ability, and nonverbal ability in autism. These findings suggest that objective measurements of social visual engagement can be used to aid in autism diagnosis and assessment.  Authors: Warren Jones, Ph.D., of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, is the corresponding author.  To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link ...

ATLANTA (September 5, 2023) – Results of clinical studies published simultaneously today in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and in JAMA Network Open demonstrate that measuring children’s looking behavior predicts expert clinical diagnosis of autism in children between ages 16 to 30 months tested with a high degree of accuracy. According to researchers from Marcus Autism Center, a subsidiary of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, this new tool can help clinicians diagnose autism earlier while also providing objective measurements of each child’s strengths and vulnerabilities, to help jumpstart effective support for child ...

While conventional silicon-based solar cells have had an unmistakable impact on the buildout of renewable energy resources around the world, additional performance improvements have become increasingly difficult to make as the devices approach their practical efficiency limits. This constraint has prompted scientists to seek out new technologies that can be combined with silicon cells to unlock higher efficiencies. Solar cells made with crystals called perovskites are one such technology that have rapidly emerged as an appealing low-cost add-on, but perovskite cells are notoriously susceptible to voltage-induced ...

Female kidneys are known to be more resilient to disease and injury, but males need not despair. A new USC Stem Cell-led study published in Developmental Cell describes not only how sex hormones drive differences in male and female mouse kidneys, but also how lowering testosterone can “feminize” this organ and improve its resilience. “By exploring how differences emerge in male and female kidneys during development, we can better understand how to address sex-related health disparities for patients with kidney ...

The US continues to face stark inequalities in preterm birth and mortality rates between mothers of differing socioeconomic status and race, finds a new report led by UCL researchers. The study, published in JAMA Paediatrics, examined data from the US National Centre for Health Statistics Birth Infant/Death Dataset, of over 12 million preterm infant births over the course of 25 years, between 1995 and 2020. Preterm birth is defined as any infant born before 37 weeks and is the leading cause of infant death ...

Researchers at the University of California San Diego have developed a new type of material that could offer a sustainable and eco-friendly solution to clean pollutants from water. Dubbed an “engineered living material,” it is a 3D-printed structure made of a seaweed-based polymer combined with bacteria that have been genetically engineered to produce an enzyme that transforms various organic pollutants into benign molecules. The bacteria were also engineered to self-destruct in the presence ...

Industrial Internet of Things (IIoTs) refers to a technology that combines wireless sensors, controllers, and mobile communication technologies to make every aspect of industrial production processes intelligent and efficient. Since IIoTs can involve several small battery-driven devices and sensors, there is a growing need to develop a robust network for data transmission and power transfer to monitor the IIoT environment.   In this regard, wireless power transfer is a promising technology. It utilizes radio frequency signals to power small devices that consume minimal power. Recently, simultaneous wireless information ...

This funding, part of the EU’s Horizon Europe programme, will be invested in scientific projects spanning all disciplines of research. For example, a geochemist in the Netherlands will study Venus’ atmosphere to better understand habitability beyond Earth; a computer scientist in Germany seeks to make virtual reality more inclusive to physically disabled people; a geneticist in the UK aims to analyse parasites that cause malaria; and a researcher in Israel is set to investigate how algorithms are used at work to supervise employees. ERC President Professor Maria Leptin said: “It is part of our mission to give early-career talent the independence to pursue ambitious ...

This is the first ERC Starting Grant to be hosted at the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics. ChiralTopMat aims to provide the direct experimental observation of chiral spin-hedgehogs in structurally chiral crystals and to explore ways to control their properties for applications in magnetic memory devices. Moreover, another focus will be to test the stability of topological Berry curvature monopoles against strong electronic interactions that Schröter’s group recently discovered in a chiral topological semimetal, a material that combines structural ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – Using a standardized assessment, researchers in the UK compared the performance of a commercially available artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm with human readers of screening mammograms. Results of their findings were published in Radiology, a journal of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). Mammographic screening does not detect every breast cancer. False-positive interpretations can result in women without cancer undergoing unnecessary imaging and biopsy. To improve the sensitivity and specificity of ...

A Perspective sheds light on why megaprojects take so long and cost so much—and what can be done to prevent the problem. Why did Boston’s “Big Dig” building project go 19 billion dollars over budget and take 9 years longer than anticipated? Globally, between $6 trillion and $9 trillion is spent on megaprojects every year, including everything from space telescopes to wind farms. In the United States, the recently passed $1 trillion infrastructure bill means a new era of megaprojects is at hand. In a Perspective, Guru Madhavan and colleagues review the causes behind ballooning costs and extended timelines for such megaprojects. Problems include premature ...

Researchers have developed an energy-efficient computing-based chip with smell-sensing units that can detect food spoilage and provides real-time conditions continuously throughout the spoilage process. The system is described in a study published in Advanced Science. Other electronic noses, or artificial olfactory systems (AOSs), have been developed in the past, but they have numerous limitations, including high energy consumption, time delays, and data loss. The AOS developed in this study requires little energy and integrates sensing and computing units on the same chip. It detects food spoilage by employing thin zinc oxide ...

Sending an email with a forged address is easier than previously thought, due to flaws in the process that allows email forwarding, according to a research team led by computer scientists at the University of California San Diego.  The issues researchers uncovered have a broad impact, affecting the integrity of email sent from tens of thousands of domains, including those representing organizations in the U.S. government–such as the majority of U.S. cabinet email domains, including state.gov, ...

Sept. 5, 2023 – In a new report posted online in the  American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, a global consensus conference of 32 critical care experts with broad international representation and from diverse backgrounds has proposed a new definition of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). In addition to the experts, critical care societies from around the world provided input,  once they received feedback from their members. The report, which builds on the 2012 Berlin Definition of ARDS, will be published Jan. 1, 2024 in the American Thoracic Society’s AJRCCM. ARDS is a life-threatening illness in which the lungs ...

AMES, IA – During Frito-Lay's first "Crash the Super Bowl" contest in 2006, thousands of participants submitted 30-second videos promoting Doritos. Entries were winnowed down to five finalists, and a public vote selected the winning commercial, which aired during the most watched American television broadcast of the year. The ad boosted Doritos sales and pulled in awards, sparking other big brands, like Nestlé, BMW and Fisher-Price, to launch their own crowdsourcing contests. "Crowdsourcing has become more prevalent over the last decade. It can generate innovative ideas and solutions and engage ...

A new opinion piece published in Health Affairs Forefront raises questions around current approaches to assess drug safety and effectiveness in people with obesity. The article sheds light on how increased body fat can modify the effects of drugs used to treat common conditions, in some cases rendering the drugs ineffective or unsafe for people with obesity. The article, titled “Assessments Of Drug Safety And Effectiveness Continue To Fail People With Obesity,” argues that drug manufacturers should be required to show correct dosing instructions on their labels ...

Over the course of four weeks this summer, a motley crew of biologists, engineers, entrepreneurs and programmers gathered at predetermined sites within Windsor Nature Park, a 185-acre tropical rainforest located in the heart of Singapore. They’d traveled from all over the world to participate in a one-of-a-kind competition hosted by the XPRIZE Foundation, in which 13 teams would have three days to identify as many organisms within the forest as possible. Up to 10 winning teams would equally split $2 million and advance to the 2024 finals, where they’d vie for the first-place prize of $5 million. But there was a catch: All observations and data collection ...

Approximately 95% of the world’s food supply is directly or indirectly produced on soil, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Soil health is therefore critical to the health of all living organisms—especially plants. Equally as critical, resources that consider the overlap between soil’s mineral nutrition and plant diseases have been scarce, until members of the American Phytopathological Society (APS) recognized this gap. APS PRESS has newly published an updated edition of the first book to successfully combine the two important plant science disciplines of nutrition and pathology. Mineral Nutrition and Plant Disease, ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Seven years after an initial $17.9 million award from the National Institutes of Health, the Illinois Kids Development Study at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign will receive approximately $13.7 million – awarded in two phases – to continue its work for another seven years. The money coming to Illinois is part of a national collaborative effort to explore how environmental exposures influence child development, cognition, growth and health. IKIDS is part of Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes, a national initiative to study five ...

Gratitude is a strong emotion, usually felt by a person who benefits from an intentional good deed of another person. Receiving gifts or benefits can instill a feeling of gratitude in people who receive them, i.e., beneficiaries, encouraging them to be more prosocial, while also helping to create a bond with their benefactors. This has led several researchers to examine the determinants of gratitude. Interestingly, beneficiaries often have preconceived beliefs about receiving a benefit. For instance, they may have no prior expectations of receiving a ...

Two scientists at the CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences have received prestigious ERC Starting Grants from the European Commission: Clarissa Campbell and Barbara Maier. In Clarissa Campbell's laboratory, researchers are working to better understand the interplay between the immune system and metabolism. Barbara Maier and her team are researching the role of lymph nodes in the context of cancer. (Vienna, 5 September 2023) The ERC grants are among the most prestigious and competitive research grants offered ...

PULLMAN, Wash. – A more efficient U.S. Postal Service can increase voter turnout in all states regardless of their mail voting laws, according to a Washington State University study. WSU researcher Michael Ritter analyzed election data from 2012 through 2020, when the pandemic encouraged many more people than usual to vote by mail. He found that in general more accessible mail voting laws, such as universal mail-in voting and no-excuse mail voting, increased the probability that individuals would vote. Restrictive laws, such as requiring ...

Organometallic compounds, molecules made up of metal atoms and organic molecules, are often used to accelerate chemical reactions and have played a significant role in advancing the field of chemistry.  Metallocenes, a type of organometallic compound, are known for their versatility and special "sandwich" structure. Their discovery was a significant contribution to the field of organometallic chemistry and led to the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1973 to the scientists who discovered and explained their sandwich structure.  The ...

Opposites don’t actually attract. That’s the takeaway from a sweeping CU Boulder analysis of more than 130 traits and including millions of couples over more than a century. “Our findings demonstrate that birds of a feather are indeed more likely to flock together,” said first author Tanya Horwitz, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience and the Institute for Behavioral Genetics (IBG). The study, published Aug. 31 in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, confirms what individual studies have hinted at for decades, defying the age-old adage that “opposites ...