San Diego, CA - The NEC Society and Cincinnati Children’s have teamed up to present the NEC Symposium, the only conference in North America dedicated to understanding and preventing necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). NEC is a devastating intestinal disease that affects medically fragile infants in their first weeks and months of life. Every year in the United States, thousands of babies are diagnosed with NEC and at least one baby dies from NEC every day. The NEC Symposium will transform the NEC Research ...

North Carolina State University researchers recently found that a program designed to get Girl Scouts involved in citizen science – programs where members of the public can participate in real scientific research – not only taught girls about the process of science, but also motivated them to tackle scientific or environmental problems in their communities. The findings demonstrate the impacts citizen science projects can have on their participants and offer lessons for other organizations on how to structure STEM-focused learning opportunities using citizen science. “We’ve found that after participating ...

Six structures exhibited by the rotating sodium ion pump were reconstructed in 3D using cryo-electron microscopy. This analysis revealed that (1) the rotor exhibits non-uniform rotation behavior due to partial structural interference with the stator component, and (2) the rotor interacts with one edge of the large ion transport ring causing it to rotate. The study showed a unique molecular mechanism of the rotary sodium ion pump.   The results will be published on July 28 in Communications Biology.   “In previous single-molecule imaging ...

Resilient corals, often referred to as ‘super corals’, have recently been seen as potential saviours in the face of climate change and its detrimental effects on coral reefs. Now, a team of scientists from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and the University of Haifa, Israel is working to better understand these corals in order to develop strategies to protect fragile ecosystems such as the Great Barrier Reef. UTS scientist Dr Emma Camp, co-lead researcher on the study recently published in the journal Nature Communications, says the findings have significant implications ...

Infants who nap a lot have smaller vocabularies and poorer cognitive skills – according to new research from the University of East Anglia. Parents the world over are prone to worry about their children getting either too little or too much sleep. But a new study published today reveals that some children are more efficient at consolidating information during sleep, so they nap less frequently. Meanwhile others, usually those with fewer words and poorer cognitive skills, need to nap more frequently. The research team say that reducing naps for these children will not improve brain development, ...

Though it’s just as likely to be worn while lounging on the couch as in the gym, a large driver of activewear’s popularity among women is its association with a dynamic lifestyle, positive wellbeing and overall good health.    However, two new Edith Cowan University (ECU) studies suggest online shopping for activewear may in fact be harmful to women’s body image.    Sales of “Athleisure” — a hybrid style of athletic clothing typically worn as everyday wear — have risen rapidly following ...

This soft robotic gripper is not only 3D printed in one print, it also doesn’t need any electronics to work.  The device was developed by a team of roboticists at the University of California San Diego, in collaboration with researchers at the BASF corporation, who detailed their work in a recent issue of Science Robotics.  The researchers wanted to design a soft gripper that would be ready to use right as it comes off the 3D printer, equipped with built in gravity and touch sensors. As a result, the gripper can pick up, hold, and release objects. No such gripper existed before this work.  “We ...

Opioids remain the most potent and effective pain relievers in medicine, but they’re also among the most addictive drugs that can halt a person’s ability to breathe during an overdose — which can be deadly. Researchers have been racing to develop safer pain reliever drugs that target a specific opioid receptor, called the kappa opioid receptor, that is only found in the central nervous system and not elsewhere in the body, like other opioid receptors. Previous research suggests that such drugs may not lead to addiction or death due to overdose, but ...

OVX836 demonstrated positive safety and immunogenicity data across three dose levels A notable signal of protection of 84% was observed against symptomatic influenza infection Lyon, France – July 28, 2023 – Osivax, a biopharmaceutical company developing vaccines to provide broad-spectrum protection against highly mutating infectious viruses, today announced that The Lancet Infectious Diseases published results from the company’s OVX836-003 study under the title, “Immunogenicity, safety and preliminary efficacy evaluation of OVX836, a nucleoprotein-based universal influenza A vaccine candidate: randomised, double-blind placebo-controlled, Phase 2a trial.” ...

A new Cochrane review finds that the use of physical restraints on care home residents can be reduced without increasing the risk of falls, when frontline care staff are empowered by supportive managers. Physical restraints are devices that restrict freedom of movement and are frequently used in residential care homes, such as nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Examples are bed rails or belts that prevent residents from getting out of bed unassisted. These restraints are ethically problematic as they are mostly ...

July 27, 2023 – How many stars would you give your plastic surgeon? An analysis of Yelp reviews identifies a wide range of surgeon-and practice-related factors that influence whether plastic surgery patients leave positive or negative reviews, reports the September issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer. "Our study also identifies some sources ...

Researchers at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering are improving the safety and performance of electric vehicles through a new design that protects their batteries. Their design uses tubes filled with paraffin wax, which is a type of phase change material, or PCM. These materials are commonly used to store and dissipate heat, making them useful for protecting a battery from overheating. The researchers’ new method uses PCM-filled tubes in another way, exploring their application as protection against ...

An industrial engineering researcher at The University of Texas at Arlington has earned a grant from the Department of Defense to purchase state-of-the-art hybrid additive-subtractive manufacturing equipment. The project will improve manufacturing capabilities at UTA for printing a wide range of metals and alloys. The grant recipient, Emma Yang, is an assistant professor in the Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering Department and an expert in additive and sustainable manufacturing. END ...

In an increasingly diverse, multicultural world, adolescents struggle academically in multicultural environments if they don’t receive consistent and positive messages at school, home and among their peers about cultures that are not their own, a University of California, Davis, study suggests. In a survey of more than 700 teens at public schools in the Southwestern United States, researchers found that while these students attended ethnically diverse schools and reported learning about multiple ...

Susan G. Komen®, the world’s leading breast cancer organization, announced the fourth MBC-focused research grant supported through the Komen Metastatic Breast Cancer Collaborative Research Initiative (MBCCRI), a collaboration between Komen, Duke Cancer Institute and the University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, which pairs researchers from each of the organizations to work together and address significant gaps in our knowledge about MBC to advance patient care and improve patient outcomes.   In 2021, Komen’s MBCCRI awarded $1.5 million for three research projects focused on finding ...

LA JOLLA, CA—Support for early career researchers is about to get a major boost, thanks to a new fellowship fund established by leaders at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) and Japan-based global pharmaceutical corporation, Kyowa Kirin, Inc. The fellowship fund has been named in honor of LJI Professor Michael Croft, Ph.D., who has worked closely with Kyowa Kirin scientists through the years. The new Michael Croft Fellowship in Immunology Fund recognizes Croft’s commitment to training and mentoring the next generation ...

UT-Battelle, LLC, has appointed Stephen K. Streiffer to be the next director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). He currently serves as interim director at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and will join ORNL in October. “Stephen is a proven leader with diverse experience and a commitment to mission-driven research and development,” said Lou Von Thaer, CEO of Battelle and chair of UT-Battelle, which operates ORNL for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). “Throughout his career, Stephen has leveraged existing strengths to create new opportunities and partnerships that strengthen our nation’s ability to innovate ...

Researchers at NYU College of Dentistry’s Pain Research Center have developed a gene therapy that treats chronic pain by indirectly regulating a specific sodium ion channel, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).   The innovative therapy, tested in cells and animals, is made possible by the discovery of the precise region where a regulatory protein binds to the NaV1.7 sodium ion channel to control its activity.   “Our study represents a major step forward in understanding the underlying biology of the NaV1.7 sodium ion channel, which can be harnessed to provide relief from chronic pain,” said Rajesh ...

At first glance, the hexagonal cells build by honey bees and social wasps may seem similar, but they are significantly different. Honey bees build using wax, whereas wasps use paper. Honey bees build their double-sided combs vertically, whereas wasps build single-sided comb horizontally (i.e., the opening of each cell faces downward). Indeed, the hexagonal cells built by these two groups have independent evolutionary origins. Just like sharks and whales have similar body plans due to their watery environment, bees and wasps build hexagonal cells because the shape maximizes strength and storage area, while minimizing building materials. But what happens when perfectly ...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments changed rules and procedures related to Medicaid enrollment. These changes decreased many of the burdens eligible people face when signing up for programs and contributed to a 30 percent increase in Medicaid enrollment. However, the end of public health emergency declarations brings an end to these pandemic policies, which many fear could lead to eligible people losing public health insurance simply because they are unable to fulfill administrative requirements such as accurately filling out and submitting forms, renewing their enrollment ...

New research shows the importance of long-term commitment to the MIND diet for reaping the greatest benefit to brain health. “The benefits within the new study’s three-year clinical trial weren’t as impressive as we’ve seen with the MIND diet observational studies in the past, but there were improvements in cognition in the short-term, consistent with the longer-term observational data,” said lead study author Lisa Barnes, PhD, associate director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at RUSH. Results from the study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, showed that within a three-year period, there was no significant ...

July 27, 2023 – Race/ethnicity is not an independent predictor of hospital readmission in patients undergoing breast reconstruction surgery, reports a study in the August issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer. Among patients who have unplanned hospitalizations after breast reconstruction, costs are substantially higher for Black or Hispanic patients, according to the new research by ASPS ...

A soil nematode reanimated from Siberian permafrost had laid dormant for approximately 46,000 years, according to a study publishing July 27, 2023 in the open access journal PLOS Genetics by Anastasia Shatilovich at the Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems in Soil Science RAS in Russia, Vamshidhar Gade at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Germany, and colleagues. Some animals, such as tardigrades, rotifers, and nematodes, can survive harsh conditions by entering a dormant state known as “cryptobiosis”. Previously, nematode individuals were reanimated from samples collected from a fossilized burrow in silt deposits ...

For over two hundred years, the origin of the Indo-European languages has been disputed. Two main theories have recently dominated this debate: the ‘Steppe’ hypothesis, which proposes an origin in the Pontic-Caspian Steppe around 6000 years ago, and the ‘Anatolian’ or ‘farming’ hypothesis, suggesting an older origin tied to early agriculture around 9000 years ago. Previous phylogenetic analyses of Indo-European languages have come to conflicting conclusions about the age of the family, due to the combined effects of inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the datasets they used and limitations in the way that phylogenetic methods analyzed ...

Some organisms, such as tardigrades, rotifers, and nematodes, can survive harsh conditions by entering a dormant state known as “cryptobiosis.” In 2018, researchers from the Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems in Soil Science RAS in Russia found two roundworms (nematode) species in the Siberian Permafrost. Radiocarbon dating indicated that the nematode individuals have remained in cryptobiosis since the late Pleistocene, about 46,000 years ago. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) in ...