Each cell in the body has its own unique delivery system that scientists are working on harnessing to move revolutionary biological drugs — molecules like proteins, RNA and combinations of the two — to specific diseased parts of the body. A new study from Northwestern University hijacked the transit system and sent tiny, virus-sized containers to effectively deliver an engineered protein to its target cell and trigger a change in the cell’s gene expression. The success came from encouraging engineered proteins to move toward a specific cell membrane structure that the researchers found increased a protein’s likelihood of latching onto the container. Published ...

SAN ANTONIO — July 16, 2024 — Researchers from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) are collaborating to evaluate a next-generation sensor designed to measure neutral gas velocities in the Earth’s upper atmosphere. The project, led by SwRI’s Dr. Joo Hwang and UTD’s Dr. Phillip Anderson, is supported by a grant from the new SwRI/UTD Seed Projects for Research, INnovation, and Technology (SPRINT) Program. Another SPRINT project is researching domestic lithium independence, looking at ...

AMHERST, Mass. – A new global assessment of scientific literature led by researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst finds that nature-based solutions (NbS) are an economically effective method to mitigate risks from a range of disasters—from floods and hurricanes to heatwaves and landslides—which are only expected to intensify as Earth continues to warm. NbS are interventions where an ecosystem is either preserved, sustainably managed or restored to provide benefits to society and to nature. For instance, they can mitigate risk from a natural disaster, or facilitate climate mitigation and adaptation. NbS ...

July 16, 2024-- A new report from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and the Columbia Aging Center with colleagues from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health highlights a troubling trend: while global adolescent fertility rates have significantly declined, sub-Saharan Africa is experiencing an increase in teen births. This region's share of global adolescent births surged from 12 percent in 1950 to 47 percent in 2020 and is projected to reach a clear majority – a full 67 percent - by ...

New research at the University of Illinois Chicago is testing whether digital tools can help predict which patients with depression will benefit from specific treatments and help deliver those treatments to them on demand. Two new grants awarding over $10 million to UIC will help Dr. Jun Ma and colleagues in the College of Medicine investigate the use of a smartphone app, an AI voice assistant and other technologies to diagnose and treat depression. The researchers hope these tools will both broaden access to psychiatric care and ...

The human brain is responsible for critical functions, including perception, memory, language, thinking, consciousness, and emotions. To understand how the brain works, scientists often use neuroimaging to record participants’ brain activity when the brain is performing a task or at rest. Brain functions are systematically organized on the cerebral cortex, the outer layer of the human brain. Researchers often use what is called a "cortical surface model" to analyze neuroimaging data and study the functional organization of the ...

An article published in the journal Cell describes a study that enabled a group of researchers to discover how SARS-CoV-2 evades the cytotoxic immune response by identifying a protein called ORF6 that is a key factor in this mechanism.  The cytotoxic immune response involves T-lymphocytes that kill pathogens when they recognize cells bearing a specific antigen while sparing neighboring uninfected cells. The study was led by Wilfredo Garcia-Beltran and Julie Boucau, research scientists at the Ragon ...

A collaborative team of researchers led by Ben Weinstein of the University of Florida, Oregon, US, used machine learning to generate highly detailed maps of over 100 million individual trees from 24 sites across the U.S., publishing their findings July 16th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology. These maps provide information about individual tree species and conditions, which can greatly aid conservation efforts and other ecological projects.  Ecologists have long collected data on tree species to better understand a forest’s unique ecosystem. Historically, this has been done by surveying small plots of land and extrapolating those findings, though this cannot account for ...

Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine have used machine learning to define three subtypes of Parkinson’s disease based on the pace at which the disease progresses. In addition to having the potential to become an important diagnostic and prognostic tool, these subtypes are marked by distinct driver genes. If validated, these markers could also suggest ways the subtypes can be targeted with new and existing drugs. The research was published on July 10 in npj Digital Medicine. “Parkinson’s disease is highly heterogeneous, which means that ...

People who are severely overweight (obese) not only exhibit altered risk behavior, but also changes in their metabolism and psyche. It was previously assumed that severely obese people are more impulsive and show an increased willingness to take a risk. Scientists from the DZD partner German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbrücke (DIfE) have now investigated whether massive weight loss leads to an improvement in metabolic and psychological states and whether decision-making is improved. The results were published in the journal 'Clinical Nutrition'. Being overweight can cause metabolism to slip Our behavior depends on many factors. ...

The winners of the 2024 EurekAlert! Travel Awards are Pavla Hubálková, a Czech science journalist at WIRED.CZ, and Iris Duțescu, a Romanian freelance science journalist.   An independent panel of three judges with regional science journalism expertise selected the winners. Both awardees will receive travel support from EurekAlert! to attend the 2025 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Boston, Mass., where they will have opportunities to cover the latest scientific research and make connections with scientists ...

Splenic venous hypertension (SVH), also known as left-sided portal hypertension, is a rare condition characterized by upper gastrointestinal (GI) bleeding in the absence of liver disease. This condition arises due to increased pressure in the splenic vein (SV), causing blood to drain through the short gastric veins to the stomach, leading to the dilation of submucosal structures and the formation of gastric varices. Unlike traditional portal venous hypertension (PVH), SVH does not involve elevated pressures in the main portal vein and is primarily an extrahepatic condition. Diagnosing SVH requires ...

"With the method we developed, we can make things visible that no one has seen before," says Prof. Sebastian Loth, Managing Director of the Institute for Functional Matter and Quantum Technologies (FMQ) at the University of Stuttgart. "This makes it possible to settle questions about the movement of electrons in solids that have been unanswered since the 1980s." However, the findings of Loth's group are also of very practical significance for the development of new materials. Tiny changes with macroscopic consequences In ...

A fiery orange bat, its wings folded and tiny teeth forever bared on its fuzzy face, is mounted inside a 6-inch, black coffin. Its retail price: $59. Or, for $140, you can get one framed with its black and orange wings spread, deliverable in two days. Despite declining numbers in the wild, hundreds of specimens like this of Kerivoula picta—or painted woolly bat—are being sold on Etsy, eBay and Amazon as jewelry, Halloween decorations, and jarred curios.  A study published July 9 in the European Journal of Wildlife Research found “abundant evidence that ...

AMHERST, Mass. – Informal political polls conducted on X/Twitter during both the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential elections were significantly skewed by questionable votes, many of which may have been purchased from troll farms. This conclusion, reached by a team of scientists led by Przemyslaw (Przemek) Grabowicz, research assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, shows that X/Twitter’s poll system deliberately reports biased public vote counts. On average, the results of such questionable polls favored Donald Trump over Joe Biden, 58% to 42% in a head-to-head comparison, during 2020. The team additionally found that ...

An international research collaboration, led by Prof. Dr. Robert Grosse (Centre for Integrative Biological Signalling Studies and Institute of Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Freiburg), Dr. Libor Macurek (Institute of Molecular Genetics, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague) and Dr. Zdenek Lansky (Institute of Biotechnology, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague) has uncovered a new mechanism of the crosstalk between microtubules and actin cytoskeleton during cell division and ...

Alcoholic liver disease (ALD) is a major cause of liver-related morbidity and mortality globally. Chronic alcohol consumption, a primary driver of ALD, leads to a spectrum of liver conditions ranging from fatty liver to cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. In China, the incidence of ALD has been rising at an alarming rate, reflecting the country's rapid economic growth and changing social norms around alcohol consumption. This paper explores the complex social factors influencing ALD in China, the complications ...

Foreign direct investments (FDI) in tropical countries in extractive industries like mining, logging and fossil fuels have a long, environmentally destructive track record in tropical countries. Are FDI in food systems another extractive industry? Highlights: Foreign direct investment (FDI) in food systems are a major contributor to deforestation in tropical countries, an advanced machine learning model shows Laws requiring deforestation-free exports are welcome but likely address only a fraction of forest loss potentially linked to FDI in food systems in domestic markets Better regulation of FDI in domestic food production is needed to save more forest ...

SEATTLE – Everybody poops, but not every day. New research by the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) suggests bowel movement frequency is linked to long-term health.  An ISB-led research team examined the clinical, lifestyle, and multi-omic data of more than 1,400 healthy adults. How often people poop, they found, can have a large influence on one’s physiology and health. Their findings will be published in the Cell Reports Medicine on July 16. Researchers explored data from consenting participants of the consumer wellness company Arivale. The ...

Hormone modulating therapy (HMT) used for the treatment of breast cancer was associated with a 7% lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias later in life, according to a new study published today in JAMA Network Open. The study, which is one of the largest of its kind, found that although HMT was linked with protection against the development of dementia overall, the association decreased with age and varied by race. “Our findings emphasize the importance of being cognizant of individual patient factors when we prescribe medications or develop treatment plans for breast cancer,” said senior author Francesmary Modugno, Ph.D. M.P.H., ...

About The Study: In this retrospective cohort study, hormone therapy was associated with protection against Alzheimer disease and related dementias in women age 65 or older with newly diagnosed breast cancer; the decrease in risk was relatively greater for Black women and women under age 75, while the protective effect of hormone-modulating therapy (HMT) diminished with age and varied by race in women. When deciding to use HMT for breast cancer in women age 65 years or more, clinicians should consider age, self-identified race, and HMT type in treatment decisions. Corresponding ...

As part of a nationwide trend, many more of NYU Langone Health’s patients during the pandemic started using electronic health record tools to ask their doctors questions, refill prescriptions, and review test results. Many patients’ digital inquiries arrived via a communications tool called In Basket, which is built into NYU Langone’s electronic health record (EHR) system, EPIC. While physicians have always dedicated time to managing EHR messages, they saw a more than 30% annual increase in recent years in the number of messages received daily, according an article by ...

UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL JULY 16, 2024, AT 11:00 AM ET ITHACA, N.Y. – A new study of radar experiment data from the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn has yielded fresh insights related to the makeup and activity of the liquid hydrocarbon seas near the north pole of Titan, the largest of Saturn’s 146 known moons. The key takeaway: Using data from several bistatic radar experiments, a Cornell University-led research team was able to separately analyze and estimate the composition and roughness of Titan’s sea surfaces, something previous analyses of monostatic radar data were unable to achieve. This will help pave the way for future combined ...

LA JOLLA, CA—Alzheimer’s disease, the most common type of dementia, currently affects twice as many women as men, with minority populations predicted to witness the most significant increase in cases in the coming years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Disturbances in sleep are well-known in dementia but have previously been explained as an outcome of the disease, not the cause. Increasing evidence, however, now implicates sleep disturbances with the development of dementia. In a bid to better understand the relationship between sleep and cognitive outcomes in women, scientists at the Scripps ...

In California's Northern San Joaquin Valley, agricultural leftovers such as almond shells, fruit peels, and orchard trimmings can potentially be converted into sustainable bioproducts and biofuels – with the right technology. Today, Schmidt Sciences’ Virtual Institute on Feedstocks of the Future awarded new funding to a group investigating how to make better use of the diverse agricultural waste in the region. The group, “Building the Circular Bioeconomy in the North San Joaquin Valley” or BioCircular Valley, is co-led by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), UC Berkeley, and BEAM Circular, ...