By Jake Siegel SEATTLE, WASH.—July 15, 2024—How do neurons react to magic mushrooms? What happens in the brain when we see motion, or when we recognize grain patterns in a piece of wood? How do our brains track the subtle changes in our friends’ appearances over time?  The Allen Institute has launched four projects to investigate these questions through OpenScope, a shared neuroscience observatory. Just as astronomers use a few well-equipped observatories to study the universe, the OpenScope program lets neuroscientists worldwide propose and direct experiments on the Allen Brain Observatory pipeline. ...

In a significant leap forward for quantum technology, researchers have achieved a milestone in harnessing the frequency dimension within integrated photonics. This breakthrough not only promises advancements in quantum computing but also lays the groundwork for ultra-secure communications networks. Integrated photonics, the manipulation of light within tiny circuits on silicon chips, has long held promise for quantum applications due to its scalability and compatibility with existing telecommunications infrastructure. In a study published in Advanced Photonics, researchers from the Centre for Nanosciences and Nanotechnology (C2N), Télécom Paris, ...

There’s a frustrating fact about today’s immunotherapies for cancer. While sometimes they work beautifully — completely eliminating or greatly reducing cancer in particular patients — other times they don’t work at all. It’s a mystery. Scientists have posed several hypotheses to explain the disparity. Perhaps it’s the number of mutations present in a tumor, with more mutations leading to better responses. Or maybe it’s the tissue environment surrounding the tumor, with some environments supporting and others suppressing effective immune responses. But so far, none of these ...

Ventures that pursue both commercial and social value creation have grown in popularity in recent years, but a new study published in the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal better defines four distinct types of social ventures. By training a business model lens on these social good ventures, the study offers insight on how the model choices impact a firm's value creation and value capture potential. “Despite the popularity of the term ‘social entrepreneurship,’ not much was known about the business model of such companies yet,” says study co-author Lien De Cuyper of ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — American diets may have gotten healthier and more diverse in the months following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study led by Penn State researchers. The study — published in PLOS ONE — found that as states responded to the pandemic with school closures and other lockdown measures, citizens’ diet quality improved by up to 8.5% and food diversity improved by up to 2.6%. Co-author Edward Jaenicke, professor of agricultural economics in the College ...

The latest ecological research will be on full display at the Ecological Society of America’s upcoming Annual Meeting in Long Beach, California, Aug. 4–9. A focal point of the conference, symposia consist of four 20-minute talks organized around a central theme of broad interest. These sessions consider topics from different angles, integrate multiple lines of evidence and offer new insights on ecological phenomena. This year, Annual Meeting symposia will address nonmaterial (“cultural”) ecosystem services, nature-based solutions to problems like stormwater runoff and urban heat, ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Rechargeable solid-state lithium batteries are an emerging technology that could someday power cell phones and laptops for days with a single charge. Offering significantly enhanced energy density, they are a safer alternative to the flammable lithium-ion batteries currently used in consumer electronics — but they are not environmentally friendly. Current recycling methods focus on the limited recovery of metals contained within the cathodes, while everything else goes to waste.   A team of Penn State researchers may have solved this issue. Led by Enrique Gomez, interim associate dean for equity and inclusion and professor of chemical engineering ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Biodegradable electronics allow for medical devices — such as drug delivery systems, pacemakers or neural implants — to safely degrade into materials that are absorbed by the body after they are no longer needed. But if the water-soluble devices degrade too quickly, they cannot accomplish their purpose. Now, researchers have developed the ability to control the dissolve rate of these biodegradable electronics by experimenting with dissolvable elements, like inorganic fillers and polymers, that encapsulate the device. The team, led by Huanyu “Larry” Cheng, the James L. Henderson, Jr. Memorial Associate Professor ...

URBANA, Ill. – Raw poultry is one of the main causes of Salmonella poisoning, which affects thousands of people in the U.S. every year. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign shows that few products with high levels of very virulent Salmonella strains are responsible for most of the illnesses from raw chicken parts. The researchers suggest regulation efforts should focus on detecting and preventing those types of high-risk contamination. “Over the last 20 years, the poultry industry has done a really good job of lowering the frequency of Salmonella in poultry. However, the number of people ...

By Maddie Johnson University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — While half the global population relies on rice as a staple, about 15 percent of rice produced each year is contaminated by potentially fatal aflatoxins. Seeing this threaten lives in her home country of Kenya prompted a graduate research assistant to focus on eradicating the risk through safer storage methods. Faith Ouma, a Ph.D. student in the food science department at the University of Arkansas, was the lead author of “Investigating safe storage conditions to mitigate aflatoxin contamination in rice.” It was published ...

Embargoed for release until 5:00 p.m. ET on Monday 15 July 2024      Annals of Internal Medicine Tip Sheet      @Annalsofim      Below please find summaries of new articles that will be published in the next issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The summaries are not intended to substitute for the full articles as a source of information. This information is under strict embargo and by taking it into possession, media representatives are committing to the terms of the embargo not only on their own behalf, but also on behalf of the organization they represent.      ----------------------------     1. ...

An “unconventional” immune response now identified by scientists from the Hackensack Meridian Center for Discovery and Innovation (CDI) is a potential new pathway for developing new vaccines for tuberculosis (TB), according to a new publication. Marginal zone B (MZB) cells are a natural response to TB infection which has been long overlooked - and which might be a welcome new target that could be bolstered through new vaccines to better combat and prevent the disease, according to the new publication in the journal Cell Reports. “Our results indicate that B cells skew their immune landscape ...

Michelle Mendoza, PhD, researcher at Huntsman Cancer Institute and associate professor of oncological sciences at the University of Utah (the U) and Jeffrey Weiss, PhD, professor of biomedical engineering and faculty member in the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute at the U, are the recipients of a $2.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to research how tension in lung tissue affects the growth and distribution of tumors. This innovative approach could uncover new mechanisms for understanding how lung cancer develops.  “There ...

Narcissistic CEOs that also serve as chair of the board are adept at controlling how their boards of directors focus their attention, giving the CEO the ability to get their way. A new study published in the Strategic Management Journal found that by driving board discussions about risk-taking to hold a positive tone, narcissistic CEOs can allocate more resources toward risk-taking strategies. The findings deepen our understanding of how CEO behavior and personality types can drive risk management strategies. The research team — Christopher S. Tuggle of the University of Central Arkansas, Cameron J. Borgholthaus of the University of Wyoming, Peter D. Harms of the University of Alabama, ...

Sickle cell disease is the most common inherited red blood cell disorder in the United States and can lead to health problems including organ dysfunction, acute chest syndrome and strokes over a patient’s lifespan. According to a new study, individuals living with sickle cell disease who experience a delay of more than six months after transferring from pediatric to adult care are twice as likely to be hospitalized compared to those who transition in less than two months. In the study, Kristen ...

Overall rates of long-term survival following stroke are improving, but Black individuals experience worse long-term outcomes compared to white individuals, according to University of Cincinnati research published online July 15 in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. UC’s David Robinson, MD, corresponding author on the research, said prior studies had examined short-term stroke outcomes of 30 or 60 days, but this time the team looked at survival rates five years past a person’s stroke. “This was ...

The Associate Dean of Research at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center’s College of Nursing has received a two-year, $421,188 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to improve cognitive screening in people who suffer from a devastating type of stroke called aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH). Professor Ansley Stanfill, PhD, RN, FAAN, has devoted her program of research to improving outcomes for people who survive strokes. Her latest grant aims to determine if an existing screening tool can be used in a new way to assess patients following aSAH and trigger a ...

Washington, D.C. – The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) has received $128,000 from the estate of James L. Roberts, PhD. With the funds, SfN Council voted to create a new long-term endowed fund, The James L. Roberts Fund, and will use the income from its investments to create and perpetually fund James L. Roberts Trainee Professional Development Awards (TPDAs) beginning at Neuroscience 2024.   “I knew Jimmy Roberts very well. We basically launched neurobiology at Sinai when we co-directed the Fishberg Research Center for Neurobiology at Mount Sinai from 1989–2002,” said incoming SfN President John Morrison. “Jimmy was an outstanding ...

CLEVELAND—The evolution of resistance to diseases, from infectious illnesses to cancers, poses a formidable challenge. Despite the expectation that resistance-conferring mutations would dwindle in the absence of treatment due to a reduced growth rate, preexisting resistance is pervasive across diseases that evolve—like cancer and pathogens—defying conventional wisdom. In cancer, it is well known that small numbers of drug-resistant cells likely exist in tumors even before they’re treated. In something of a paradox, before treatment, these mutants have been repeatedly shown to have lower fitness than the surrounding ancestor cells from which they arose. It leads ...

BOSTON, Mass. (July 15, 2024)—A groundbreaking study conducted at the lab of Beth Stevens, PhD, at Boston Children’s Hospital has revealed that an immune protein impacts neuronal protein synthesis in the aging brain. Previous work from the Stevens lab had uncovered that immune cells in the central nervous system, microglia, help prune synapses in the developing brain by tagging synapses with the immune protein C1q. New research led by Nicole Scott-Hewitt, published in Cell, shows that neurons can also internalize C1q. C1q seems to influence protein production inside neurons by interacting with ribosomal proteins, RNA-binding proteins, and ...

A network of proteins found in the central nervous system could be harnessed to increase the effectiveness and reduce the side effects of popular diabetes and weight-loss drugs, according to new research from the University of Michigan.    The study, appearing today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, focused on two proteins called melanocortin 3 and melanocortin 4 found primarily on the surface of neurons in the brain that play a central role in regulating feeding behavior and maintaining the body's energy balance.   Melanocortin ...

Advances in 3D printing have enabled many applications across a variety of disciplines, including medicine, manufacturing, and energy. A range of different materials can be used to print both simple foundations and fine details, allowing for the creation of structures with tailored geometries. However, creating structures with micro-scale, precise internal voids and channels still poses challenges. Scaffolds used in tissue engineering, for example, must contain a three-dimensional complex network of conduits that mimic the human vasculature. With traditional additive manufacturing, where the material is deposited layer ...

Philadelphia, July 15, 2024 – Building upon groundbreaking research demonstrating how the SARS-CoV-2 virus disrupts mitochondrial function in multiple organs, researchers from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) demonstrated that mitochondrially-targeted antioxidants could reduce the effects of the virus while avoiding viral gene mutation resistance, a strategy that may be useful for treating other viruses. The preclinical findings were recently published in the journal Proceedings ...

Climate change is causing the ice masses in Greenland and Antarctica to melt. Water from the polar regions is flowing into the world’s oceans –and especially into the equatorial region. “This means that a shift in mass is taking place, and this is affecting the Earth’s rotation,” explains Benedikt Soja, Professor of Space Geodesy at the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering at ETH Zurich. “It’s like when a figure skater does a pirouette, first holding her arms close to her body and then stretching ...

“FDG-PET is generally considered as a useful metabolic evaluation tool, while it is also thought to have an emerging role for assessment of systemic therapy response.” BUFFALO, NY- July 15, 2024 – A new research paper was published in Oncotarget's Volume 15 on June 20, 2024, entitled, “Comparison of FDG-PET/CT and CT for evaluation of tumor response to nivolumab plus ipilimumab combination therapy and prognosis prediction in patients with unresectable malignant pleural mesothelioma.” Malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) is an aggressive neoplasm and affected ...