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Technology15 Jul 2024

Wojtusiak to use artificial intelligence to help caregivers with social isolation

Janusz Wojtusiak, Professor, Health Administration and Policy, College of Public Health, is set to receive funding for the project: “An Artificial Intelligence Solution to Social Isolation and Longlines of Caregivers of People with Dementia.” Wojtusiak and his graduate student Ghaida Alsadah will lay the foundation for a large study aimed at utilizing AI methods to address social isolation and loneliness among people who care for those with Alzheimer’s Disease and those suffering from dementia. Addressing ...

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Science15 Jul 2024

You're just a stick figure to this camera

Images A new camera could prevent companies from collecting embarrassing and identifiable photos and videos from devices like smart home cameras and robotic vacuums. It's called PrivacyLens and was made by University of Michigan engineers. PrivacyLens uses both a standard video camera and a heat-sensing camera to spot people in images from their body temperature. The person's likeness is then completely replaced by a generic stick figure, whose movements mirror those of the person it stands in for. The accurately animated stick figure allows a device relying on the ...

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Science15 Jul 2024

Scorching storms on distant worlds revealed in new detail

Astronomers have created the most detailed weather report so far for two distant worlds beyond our own solar system. The international study – the first of its kind – reveals the extreme atmospheric conditions on the celestial objects, which are swathed in swirling clouds of hot sand amid temperatures of 950C. Using NASA’s powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), researchers set out to capture the weather on a pair of brown dwarfs – cosmic bodies that are bigger than planets but smaller than stars. These brown dwarfs, named collectively ...

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Space15 Jul 2024

JWST unveils stunning ejecta and CO structures in Cassiopeia A's young supernova

July 15, 2024, Mountain View, CA -- The SETI Institute announced the latest findings from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) of the supernova remnant, Cassiopeia A (Cas A). These observations of the youngest known core collapse supernova in the Milky Way provide insights into the conditions that lead to the formation and destruction of molecules and dust within supernova ejecta. The study’s findings change our understanding of dust formation in the early universe in the galaxies detected by JWST 300 million years after the Big Bang. ...

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Environment15 Jul 2024

UC Irvine Earth system scientists discover missing piece in climate models

Irvine, Calif., July 15, 2024 — As the planet continues to warm due to human-driven climate change, accurate computer climate models will be key in helping illuminate exactly how the climate will continue to be altered in the years ahead. In a study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, a team led by researchers from the UC Irvine Department of Earth System Science and the University of Michigan Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering reveal how a climate model commonly used by geoscientists currently overestimates ...

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Environment15 Jul 2024

Wildfire smoke has a silver lining: It can help protect vulnerable tree seedlings

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Forest scientists at Oregon State University studying tree regeneration have found that wildfire smoke comes with an unexpected benefit: It has a cooling capacity that can make life easier for vulnerable seedlings. An OSU College of Forestry collaboration led by faculty research assistant Amanda Brackett made the discovery while working to determine the effect of forest canopy cover on summer maximum temperatures near ground level. The study’s goal was to describe how heat waves and other future climate conditions might affect canopy cover’s influence on temperature. The scientists used previously established heat stress responses of seedlings from ...

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Science15 Jul 2024

How does superglue work, and what the heck is electroadhesion? (video)

WASHINGTON, July 15, 2024 — How would you stick a slice of banana to a sheet of copper? Until a few months ago, you couldn’t. But a new discovery called “hard-soft electroadhesion” enables chemists to stick almost any hydrogel to almost any metal, using nothing but an electric current. And you can unstick the materials simply by reversing the current. Recently reported in ACS Central Science, this astonishingly general phenomenon works with a wide variety of gels (including fruits, vegetables, meat and fish) and conductors (including metals and graphite). Join our host George as he attempts to replicate electroadhesion in his basement ...

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Medicine15 Jul 2024

Progression from pre-symptomatic to clinical type 1 diabetes after COVID-19 infection

About The Study: Follow-up of youth with pre-symptomatic type 1 diabetes demonstrated that the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with an accelerated progression to clinical disease and that this acceleration was confined to those with COVID-19. Further studies are required to determine whether COVID-19 also accelerates progression to type 1 diabetes in adults and whether vaccination and monitoring for COVID-19 symptoms should be considered for individuals with pre-symptomatic type 1 diabetes. Corresponding ...

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Medicine15 Jul 2024

Mental health of transgender youth following gender identity milestones by level of family support

About The Study: The results of this study demonstrate that without a supportive family environment, gender identity development increases the risk of transgender youth attempting suicide or running away from home. Social services and community resources to establish supportive relationships between transgender children and their parents are essential. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Travis Campbell, Ph.D., email campbelt1@sou.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2024.2035) Editor’s ...

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Medicine15 Jul 2024

Use of massage therapy for pain

About The Study: This study found that despite a large number of randomized clinical trials, systematic reviews of massage therapy for painful adult health conditions rated a minority of conclusions as moderate-certainty evidence and that conclusions with moderate- or high-certainty evidence that massage therapy was superior to other active therapies were rare. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Selene Mak, Ph.D., M.P.H., email selene.mak@va.gov. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.22259) Editor’s ...

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Science15 Jul 2024

Substantia nigra pathology, contact sports play, and parkinsonism in chronic traumatic encephalopathy

About The Study: In this cross-sectional study of contact sports athletes with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), years of contact sports participation were associated with substantia nigra tau pathology and neuronal loss, and these pathologies were associated with parkinsonism. Repetitive head impacts may incite neuropathologic processes that lead to symptoms of parkinsonism in individuals with CTE. Corresponding Authors: To contact the corresponding authors, email Ann C. McKee, M.D. (amckee@bu.edu) and Thor D. Stein, M.D., Ph.D. (tdstein@bu.edu). To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamaneurol.2024.2166) Editor’s ...

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Medicine15 Jul 2024

Early life antibiotic increases risk of asthma: providing clues to a potential prevention adult asthma

WHY EARLY LIFE ANTIBIOTIC USE CAN INCREASE RISK OF ASTHMA: A POTENTIAL PREVENTION FOR ASTHMA LATER IN LIFE? Early exposure to antibiotics can trigger long term susceptibility to asthma, according to new research from Monash University. Importantly the research team isolated a molecule produced by gut bacteria that in the future could potentially be trialed as a simple treatment, in the form of a dietary supplement, for children at risk of asthma to prevent them developing the disease. Asthma affects over 260 million people globally and causes ...

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Medicine15 Jul 2024

Tell-tale gene affects success of drug used to treat chronic pain

Women who carry a particular form of a pain gene are more likely to respond well to a common medication used to treat long-term discomfort, research shows. In a study, women with chronic pelvic pain who had a naturally occurring variation of a gene, known as Neuregulin 3, in their DNA were more likely to experience relief after taking the painkilling drug gabapentin. Targeting gabapentin use to those with this genetic marker would avoid ineffective treatment and unwanted side-effects in those who are unlikely to respond, experts say. The findings could improve use of gabapentin in treating chronic pelvic pain – a persistent, disabling ...

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Medicine15 Jul 2024

Study reveals how an anesthesia drug induces unconsciousness

There are many drugs that anesthesiologists can use to induce unconsciousness in patients. Exactly how these drugs cause the brain to lose consciousness has been a longstanding question, but MIT neuroscientists have now answered that question for one commonly used anesthesia drug. Using a novel technique for analyzing neuron activity, the researchers discovered that the drug propofol induces unconsciousness by disrupting the brain’s normal balance between stability and excitability. The drug causes brain activity to become increasingly unstable, until the brain loses consciousness. “The brain has to operate on this knife’s ...

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Space15 Jul 2024

Existence of lunar lava tube cave demonstrated

A team of international scientists, under the lead of the University of Trento, Italy, has published a research study that has made a milestone discovery on the Moon knowledge. For the first time, scientists have demonstrated the existence of a tunnel in the lunar subsurface. It seems to be an empty lava tube. The research study was published by Nature Astronomy and is the result of an international collaboration. "These caves have been theorized for over 50 years, but it is the first time ever that we have demonstrated their existence," ...

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Medicine15 Jul 2024

Wyss Institute research collaboration awarded ARPA-H agreement to develop disease-agnostic immunotherapeutic RNA platform

By Benjamin Boettner With the award for up to $27 million from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), a collaborative research project at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University will advance a disease-agnostic novel RNA therapeutic with the potential to treat diverse diseases, and to be effectively and rapidly deployable. By safely and naturally stimulating the “innate immune” system — the body’s first line of defense against ...

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Space15 Jul 2024

A stochastic modeling approach for interplanetary supply chain planning

First of all, the problem scope and the theoretical foundation are presented. The considered ISC network is a layered network in which nodes represent points of interactions between the two layers. The two interacting networks are PN which delivers cargo from Earth to Mars and SN that is responsible for the propellant supply along the way, respectively. They share the same nodes but comprise different arcs based on their distinct purposes. The nodes are defined as surface nodes (celestial bodies ...

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Science15 Jul 2024

When certain boys feel their masculinity is threatened, aggression ensues

It’s been long established that certain men become aggressive when they see their manhood as being threatened. When does this behavior emerge during development—and why? A new study by a team of psychology researchers shows that adolescent boys may also respond aggressively when they believe their masculinity is under threat—especially boys growing up in environments with rigid, stereotypical gender norms. The findings, reported in the journal Developmental Science, underscore the effects of social pressure that many boys face to be stereotypically masculine. “We know that not all men respond aggressively to manhood threats—in ...

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Science15 Jul 2024

Safe, successful pregnancies possible after alloHCT

Findings refute former consensus that pregnancies post-transplant are nearly impossible, highlight need for increased fertility counseling (WASHINGTON, July 15, 2024) — Despite treatment-related fertility challenges, female patients can become pregnant and give birth to healthy children after undergoing allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (alloHCT), according to a study published in Blood. During alloHCT, stem cells from a healthy donor are transplanted to individuals with hematologic cancers or benign hematologic disorders such as leukemia and sickle cell disease. Procedural improvements in the administration of alloHCT ...

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Technology15 Jul 2024

Santiago Núñez-Corrales on ‘NCSA’s Mission in Quantum Computing’

Editor’s note: This is part of a series of virtual essays from NCSA experts on current topics impacting the field of high-performance computing and research. NCSA’s Mission in Quantum Computing By Santiago Núñez-Corrales, NCSA Quantum Lead Research Scientist The fact that physical laws in our universe contain the recipe to perform computation is nothing short of extraordinary. John Archibald Wheeler described how intricate and intense the relationship is between physics and information in his foundational paper in 1991, one that bears profound consequences ...

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Medicine15 Jul 2024

Study pinpoints origins of creativity in the brain

Have you ever had the solution for a tough problem suddenly hit you when you’re thinking about something entirely different? Creative thought is a hallmark of humanity, but it’s an ephemeral, almost paradoxical ability, striking unexpectedly when it’s not sought out. And the neurological source of creativity—what’s going on in our brains when we think outside the box—is similarly elusive. But now, a research team led by a University of Utah Health researcher and based in Baylor College of Medicine has used a precise method of brain imaging to unveil how different parts of the brain ...

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Technology15 Jul 2024

Breakthrough wildlife tracking technology that adheres to fur delivers promising results from trials on wild polar bears

TORONTO, July 15, 2024 – Studying polar bears just became a lot easier with new “burr on fur” trackers which confirmed scientists’ belief that subadult and adult males spend most of their time on land lazing around, conserving energy until the ice returns. A multi-institutional research team led by York University and including the University of Alberta, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Manitoba Sustainable Development, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry, and Polar Bears International, used three ...

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Science15 Jul 2024

Study unveils complexity of zoonotic transmission chains

[Vienna, July 11 2024] — Researchers from the Complexity Science Hub and the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna have dissected the complex interactions involved in zoonoses, which affect worldwide over two billion people annually. They introduce the concept of a "zoonotic web," a detailed network representation of the relationships between zoonotic agents, their hosts, vectors, food sources, and the environment. "Zoonotic diseases, which can be transmitted between animals and humans, are a significant public health concern, and our study highlights the importance of a holistic approach to understanding and managing these ...

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Medicine15 Jul 2024

30-year risk of cardiovascular disease may help inform blood pressure treatment decisions

Research Highlights: A comparison of two tools for calculating cardiovascular disease risk found that if only the current 10-year risk thresholds are applied, fewer adults may be recommended for blood pressure-lowering medication. The tools, The American Heart Association’s new PREVENTTM tool and the Pooled Cohort Equations, were applied to a cross-sectional sample of adults from NHANES datasets with stage 1 hypertension who did not report having CVD. PREVENT can additionally be used to calculate an individual’s 30-year risk ...

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Medicine15 Jul 2024

Off-the-shelf wearable trackers provide clinically-useful information for patients with heart disease

Monitoring of heart rate and physical activity using consumer wearable devices was found to have clinical value for comparing the response to two treatments for atrial fibrillation and heart failure. The study published in Nature Medicine examined if a commercially-available fitness tracker and smartphone could continuously monitor the response to medications, and provide clinical information similar to in-person hospital assessment. The wearable devices, consisting of a wrist band and connected smartphone, collected a vast amount of data on the response to two different medications prescribed ...

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