Final results of landmark study confirm two-thirds reduction in cases of malaria, including cases of severe malaria, and deaths from malaria, for RTS,S-drug combination over either intervention given alone in settings of highly seasonal malaria transmission.   RTS,S vaccine has similar high efficacy to drugs in preventing malaria in highly seasonal transmission settings.   Overall reduction in malaria incidence likely “tops” 90% among children protected by bednets, vaccines, and drugs.   Seattle and London, August 22, 2023—The final results of a landmark study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases ...

Diabetes is a condition in which the body produces too little or no insulin. Diabetics thus depend on an external supply of this hormone via injection or pump. Researchers led by Martin Fussenegger from the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering at ETH Zurich in Basel want to make the lives of these people easier and are looking for solutions to produce and administer insulin directly in the body. One such solution the scientists are pursuing is enclosing insulin-producing designer cells in capsules that can be implanted in the body. To be able to control from the outside when and how much insulin the cells release into the blood, researchers have studied and applied ...

When UCLA shifted to remote instruction during the early days of COVID-19, the campus was much less populated — but it wasn’t totally empty. Several species of animals continued to go about their daily lives, just with far fewer disturbances from humans. Among them were around 300 dark-eyed juncos, a bird species that has thrived at UCLA for probably around 20 years. A group of UCLA scientists who have been studying fear and aggression in urban juncos for years recognized that the dramatic shift in human activity presented a unique opportunity for an experiment: ...

Silicon is one of the most pervasive functional materials of the modern age, underpinning semiconductor technologies ranging from microelectronics to solar cells. Indeed, silicon transistors enable computing applications from cell phones to supercomputers, while silicon photovoltaics are the most widely deployed solar-cell technology to date. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) reports that nearly 50% of new electric generation capacity in 2022 came from solar cells, and according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), silicon has a 95% market share. Yet despite silicon’s ...

The number of local zoning ordinances governing renewable energy deployment is growing in the United States, according to new research by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The amount of land available to deploy renewables depends on the characteristics of the ordinances. “It’s important to understand the types of ordinances in effect, specifically setback ordinances, or the required distance from a specific feature like a house,” said Anthony ...

(Boston) – Serum amyloid A (SAA) is a family of ancient proteins that can be traced from present-day humans back half a billion years to sea cucumbers and oysters. A new study by researchers from the Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine explores the link between the dual nature of this small plasma protein: how it works to clear toxic debris from wounds and inflammation sites, but also its role in forming fibrous deposits of the pathologic amyloid in vital organs such as the ...

In the United States and other western countries, a form of esophageal and stomach cancer has risen dramatically over the last five decades. Rates of esophageal adenocarcinoma, or EAC, and gastric cardia adenocarcinoma, or GCA, are both highly fatal. However, Joel Rubenstein, M.D., M.S., a research scientist at the Lieutenant Colonel Charles S. Kettles Veterans Affairs Center for Clinical Management Research and professor of internal medicine at Michigan Medicine, says that preventative measures can be a saving grace. “Screening can identify pre-cancerous changes in ...

https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.15212/AMM-2023-0016 Announcing a new publication for Acta Materia Medica journal.  Cuproptosis is a newly identified specific form of programmed cell death. This study aims to identify cuproptosis-related genes (CRGs) in patients with kidney renal clear cell carcinoma (KIRC) from the The Cancer Genome Atlas database and to evaluate CRG biological functions. Using lasso regression, four KIRC prognosis-associated CRGs were identified and an associated prognostic risk signature was constructed. Kaplan-Meier curves showed that patients with ...

New Haven, Conn. — High levels of exposure to the virus that causes COVID-19 may reduce or overcome the protection that vaccination and prior infection provides, according to a new study by researchers from Yale University, the University of Florida, and the Connecticut Department of Correction.  The findings, published Aug. 19 in Nature Communications, suggest that in densely crowded settings, control measures that reduce levels of exposure to the virus — such as masking, improved ventilation, and distancing — may afford additional benefit in preventing new infections among people who have been ...

For his contributions to the aerospace community, Peyman Givi, Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Pittsburgh, was selected to present the 2024 Dryden Lecture in Research, by the Honors and Awards Committee and the Board of Trustees of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). According to AIAA, the Dryden Lectureship in Research, established in 1961, is one of the Institute’s most prestigious lectureships and emphasizes the importance ...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – In osteoporosis, bones become brittle and fragile, putting them at high risk of fractures or breaks. These “fragility fractures” can cause pain, suffering, disability and even death, and patients have increased risks of repeat fractures. It is estimated that one in two women and up to one in four men experience a fracture in their lifetime due to osteoporosis. Can an augmented health care delivery pathway reduce the chances of those future fractures and improve outcomes that are important to patients? Two University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Indigenous peoples suffered disproportionately from the COVID-19 pandemic, experiencing a lack of sovereignty, limited infrastructure and discrimination in local healthcare systems that make them particularly vulnerable to infectious diseases. Yet little research exists to guide interventions and public health efforts tailored to remote-living Indigenous populations during pandemics. In Bolivia, for example, a team of researchers including UC Santa Barbara’s Tom Kraft and Michael Gurven, and local collaborators, attempted to mitigate SARS-CoV-2’s impact on the ...

To improve therapies for cancer and other diseases, researchers strive to identify tissue-specific therapeutic targets and diagnostic biomarkers in every patient. Identifying specific targets and biomarkers can be achieved by analyzing the cellular composition of tumors at the single-cell level. Although tissue profiling technologies such as single-cell RNA and single-nuclei RNA sequencing provide cell-type-specific information at unprecedented resolution, their implementation has technical and financial challenges that prevent their widespread adoption in clinical settings. In this study published in Genome Biology, researchers at Baylor College of Medicine, Ghent University ...

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA  – Ochsner Health has announced the recipients of the 38th Annual Alton Ochsner Award Relating Smoking and Disease.  They are Ken J. Kellar, Ph.D, Professor of Pharmacology, Georgetown University Medical Center, and Ryan E. Hibbs, Ph.D., Professor of Neurobiology, University of California San Diego. This prestigious honor bestowed by Ochsner Health recognizes scientists who have made major contributions in understanding the relationship between smoking and disease, along with the development of innovative treatment modalities. The award is named in honor of Alton Ochsner, MD, the co-founder of the Ochsner ...

In the last few years, breast reduction procedures in the U.S. have become increasingly common. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, nearly 100,000 breast reduction procedures were performed in 2020. This procedure involves a high-tension T-Junction suture in which three incisions meet, forming the shape of a T. Larger breast reductions with longer incisions may have a higher risk of complications and wound healing problems at the T-Junction, which represent 13 to 39% of wound breakdown. It’s known that decreased blood flow to the wound, which then reduces the amount of oxygen to the area, promotes wound breakdown. Looking to improve ...

It’s human nature to be judgmental. But why do we place less blame on someone, or give more praise, if we find out that person had a history of suffering in childhood? In a recent study, University of Missouri researchers discovered why someone’s childhood adversity influences how others judge their behavior. The finding contributes to a growing body of evidence that suggests judgments of praise and blame are “asymmetrically sensitive” to certain types of information about someone’s life history, said Philip Robbins, associate professor and chair of the Department of Philosophy. “In the case of negative or anti-social behavior, we ...

East Hanover, August 22, 2023 — Since the COVID-19 pandemic, gains in the labor market for people with disabilities have been at near all-time highs. Expert speakers at last Friday’s nTIDE Deeper Dive Lunch & Learn Webinar provided results from an in-depth University of New Hampshire research study, which took a closer look at the unprecedented surge in employment-to-population ratio among most of the six disability subgroups identified by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Possible driving factors behind this employment transformation were also explored. nTIDE Deeper Dive Lunch & Learn Webinar is presented by Kessler Foundation ...

If coal and natural gas power generation were 2% more efficient, then, every year, there could be 460 million fewer tons of carbon dioxide released and 2 trillion fewer gallons of water used. A recent innovation to the steam cycle used in fossil fuel power generation could achieve this. Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have developed a coating for steam condensers used in fossil fuel steam-cycle generation that is made with fluorinated diamond-like carbon, or F-DLC. The researchers reported in the journal Nature Communications that this coating could boost the overall process efficiency ...

NEW YORK, NY--Ask any neurologist: Parkinson’s disease is a brain disorder. The conspicuous symptoms of Parkinson’s disease—uncontrollable tremors, slowed down motions, and the feeling that one’s feet are stuck to the ground—all stem from the loss of neurons in a region of the brain that helps control movement. But many researchers believe that the neurodegenerative disorder may get started far away from the brain—in the gut—and years before the first neurological signs appear. New findings by Columbia researchers David Sulzer, ...

Freshwater ecosystems account for half of global emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. Rivers and streams, especially, are thought to emit a substantial amount of that methane, but the rates and patterns of these emissions at global scales remain largely undocumented. An international team of researchers, including University of Wisconsin–Madison freshwater ecologists, has changed that with a new description of the global rates, patterns and drivers of methane emissions from ...

INDIANAPOLIS – A new study by Indiana University School of Medicine researchers uses more genetically diverse mouse models to study the accumulation and spread of abnormal tau protein deposits in the brain—a known sign of Alzheimer’s disease and several other neurodegenerative diseases. The study’s findings, recently published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, could lead to better research models that improve understanding of how different genetic backgrounds influence neurodegenerative disease development and treatment needs. “As ...

A study conducted by researchers affiliated with the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil concluded that particles of glitter can hinder the growth of organisms at the base of aquatic ecosystems, such as cyanobacteria (blue-green algae), which play a key role in the biogeochemical cycles of water and soil, as well as being eaten by other organisms. An article on the study is published in the journal Aquatic Toxicology. Ubiquitous in makeup, nail polish, holiday decorations, greeting cards, Carnival costumes and many other places, glitter sticks to skin and clothes and requires a lot of effort to remove. It is made up of microplastics, tiny particles ...

Paper Title: Outpatient cervical ripening and labor induction with low-dose vaginal misoprostol reduces the interval to delivery: A systematic review and network meta-analysis Journal: American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, July 2023 Authors: Joanne L. Stone, MD, MSHCDL, Professor and System Chair of the Raquel and Jaime Gilinski Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Science at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; Rachel Meislin, MD, Maternal-Fetal Medicine Fellow at Mount Sinai Hospital; and other coauthors. Bottom Line: While prior research and analysis have evaluated methods of outpatient labor ...

HOUSTON (Aug. 22, 2023) — The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) recently awarded The Texas Heart Institute® (THI) a two-year, $1.14 million grant to develop a novel, first-in-class drug to treat cardiovascular disease (CVD) as a significant improvement to current treatment regimens — specifically for adverse events arising from atherosclerosis.   Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimating that one person dies from CVD every 33 seconds in the United States, accounting for one in every five deaths in 2021.   CVD leads to heart ...

SAN ANTONIO (Aug. 22, 2023) — The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (also called UT Health San Antonio) and seven regional collaborators will leverage $46 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) over the next five to seven years to translate scientific discoveries into therapeutic benefits for human health and well-being. A key focus will be reducing health disparities among Mexican Americans, active military personnel and veterans. William L. Henrich, ...