Whether collaborating with the National Football League to study hamstring injuries, addressing the data gap in female musculoskeletal modeling research or simulating the effects of estrogen levels on muscle regeneration, biomedical engineering professor Silvia Salinas Blemker and her colleagues at the University of Virginia are pioneering health care advancements. In recognition of her outstanding work in translational research and entrepreneurship, Blemker received the 2024 Goel Award for Translational Research in Biomechanics from ...

A biology researcher at The University of Texas at Arlington has received a prestigious grant to continue and expand his research on how pollution affects wildlife. Jordan Brown, a postdoctoral research associate in biology, was awarded a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Directorate for Biological Sciences. The award supports researchers whose work focuses on how environmental changes affect animals. Dr. Brown works in the lab of Shane DuBay, UTA assistant professor of biology, who studies evolutionary ecology, environmental science, and natural history to better understand the consequences of environmental change ...

Concern that social media is driving the teen mental health crisis has risen to such a pitch that the majority of states in the country have filed lawsuits against Meta (which owns Instagram and Facebook) and the U.S. surgeon general called last month for warning labels on platforms, similar to those on tobacco. New research from the University of Washington finds, though, that while some teens do experience negative feelings when using Instagram, the dominant feeling they have around the platform is boredom. They open the app because they’re bored. Then they sift through largely irrelevant content, mostly feeling bored, while seeking interesting bits to ...

Irvine, Calif., July 15, 2024 — A University of California, Irvine research team has developed and implemented an intervention to enhance cancer care support services for racial and ethnic minority patients undergoing chemotherapy.   The electronic patient-reported outcome tool is a web-based application that allows individuals to enter their health data into a smartphone, tablet or computer. In this study, the ePRO was available in multiple languages and coupled with digital analytics. At each treatment visit, participants digitally ...

Researchers at the University of Arizona Health Sciences identified a new way to make opioids safer, increasing the pain-relieving properties of opioids while decreasing unwanted side effects through the spinal inhibition of a Heat shock protein 90 isoform. Opioids are the gold standard of chronic pain treatment, but they come with a host of negative side effects including constipation, addiction potential and respiratory depression that can lead to death. This study, published in Scientific Reports, offers a potential new way to treat acute and chronic pain by reducing the amount of opioid needed for ...

Imagine knowing what berry or mushroom is safe to eat during a hike or swiftly detecting pathogens in a hospital setting that would traditionally require days to identify. Identification and detection of drugs, chemicals and biological molecules invisible to the human eye can be made possible through the combined technology of a cellphone camera and a Raman spectrometer — a powerful laser chemical analysis method. Dr. Peter Rentzepis, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M ...

Bacteria have developed special defense mechanisms to protect themselves against viruses, which by no means infect only humans. As part of these so-called CRISPR-Cas systems, a CRISPR ribonucleic acid (crRNA), which serves as a “guide RNA,” recognizes regions of a foreign genome, such as viral DNA. The CRISPR-associated (Cas) nuclease, directed by a crRNA, then renders it harmless by cutting it like a pair of scissors. Humans have exploited this strategy: “CRISPR, often referred to as ‘gene scissors’, is the basis of many molecular technologies,” says ...

Biopsies are clinical tools commonly used to diagnose a variety of diseases or to monitor tissue for abnormal growth or even rejection of a transplant. During biopsies, tissue samples are removed from the body so they can be examined more closely, but depending on the type of tissue that’s needed, the procedure can be rather invasive. Researchers from the School of Medicine Basic Sciences recently developed an analytical tool that could lead to the use of “liquid biopsies” as a substitute ...

ANN ARBOR, Michigan — As cancer treatment and survivorship care relies more on understanding the genetic make-up of an individual’s tumor, a new study from the University of Michigan Health Rogel Cancer Center finds that many breast cancer survivors who meet criteria for genetic counseling and testing are not receiving it.   The good news: Among those who do get testing, nearly two-thirds who have a genetic variant are reaching out to family members to talk about their results.   “Our findings support a rapidly growing movement to simplify clinical guidelines to ...

Sleep and wake: they’re totally distinct states of being that define the boundaries of our daily lives. For years, scientists have measured the difference between these instinctual brain processes by observing brain waves, with sleep characteristically defined by slow, long-lasting waves measured in tenths of seconds that travel across the whole organ. For the first time, scientists have found that sleep can be detected by patterns of neuronal activity just milliseconds long, 1000 times shorter than a second, revealing a new way to study and understand the basic brain ...

Study shows how materials change as they are stressed and relaxed. Like people, materials evolve over time. They also behave differently when they are stressed and relaxed. Scientists looking to measure the dynamics of how materials change have developed a new technique that leverages X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy (XPCS), artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. This technique creates ​“fingerprints” of different materials that can be read and analyzed by ...

Most stars in our universe come in pairs. While our own Sun is a loner, many stars like our Sun orbit similar stars, while a host of other exotic pairings between stars and cosmic orbs pepper the universe. Black holes, for example, are often found orbiting each other. One pairing that has proved to be quite rare is that between a Sun-like star and a type of dead star called a neutron star.    Now, astronomers led by Caltech's Kareem El-Badry have uncovered what appear to be 21 neutron stars in orbit around stars like our Sun. Neutron stars are dense burned-out ...

“[...] the present results strongly suggest the potential of PEDF as a myokine linking exercise training to the suppression of senescence.” BUFFALO, NY- July 16, 2024 – A new research paper was published on the cover of Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 16, Issue 13, entitled, “Roles of pigment epithelium-derived factor in exercise-induced suppression of senescence and its impact on lung pathology in mice.” Senescent cells contribute ...

“[...] we found an independent positive prognostic effect of HER2-low compared to HER2-zero in early breast cancer.” BUFFALO, NY- July 16, 2024 – A new editorial paper was published in Oncotarget's Volume 15 on June 20, 2024, entitled, “HER2-low and HER2-zero in breast cancer between prognosis, prediction and entity.” In this new editorial, researchers Marcus Schmidt, Hans-Anton Lehr, and Katrin Almstedt from the University Medical Center of Johannes Gutenberg University discuss HER2 in breast cancer. HER2 is a well-established prognostic and predictive factor in breast ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA — Foundation models are massive deep-learning models that have been pretrained on an enormous amount of general-purpose, unlabeled data. They can be applied to a variety of tasks, like generating images or answering customer questions. But these models, which serve as the backbone for powerful artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E, can offer up incorrect or misleading information. In a safety-critical situation, such as a pedestrian approaching a self-driving car, these mistakes could have serious consequences. To help prevent such mistakes, researchers from MIT and the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab developed a technique to estimate the reliability ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announce a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to coordinate efforts to move the needle on quantum computing.   “Realizing practical quantum computers has the potential to dramatically accelerate the pace of discovery across the science and technology landscape,” said Ceren Susut, DOE Associate Director of Science for the Advanced Scientific Computing Research program. “The Office of Science is proud to bring decades of experience in fundamental science for quantum ...

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 ...