Using a small bird’s nest-making process as a model, researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a nontoxic process for making cellulose gels. The freeze-thaw process is simple, cost-effective, and can create cellulose gels that are useful in a number of applications, including tunable gels for timed drug delivery. The process also works with bamboo and potentially other lignin-containing plant fibers. Cellulose is a wonderful material for making hydrogels – which are used in applications ranging from contact lenses to wound care and drug delivery. But creating hydrogels from cellulose is tricky, and often the processes used to create the hydrogels ...

CORNELL UNIVERSITY MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE FOR RELEASE: October 17, 2023 Abby Shroba Kozlowski cell: 607-229-2681 ars454@cornell.edu Familiarity breeds contempt for moral failings ITHACA, N.Y. – People judge members of their own circles more harshly than they judge individuals from other groups for the same transgressions, according to new Cornell University research. Morality plays a central role in this phenomenon. The researchers found that because morality is a social glue that holds a community together, when someone breaks those moral rules inside the group, it is perceived as more of a threat than when outsiders breaks the same rules in their own groups. “When ...

Between the Inflation Reduction Act and the EU’s Just Transition Mechanism, both the United States and Europe are poised to put tens of billions of dollars toward creating green jobs. At the same time, there are conversations about how to ensure workers in the current fossil fuel industry have the skills to participate in this green revolution. But new research published in Nature Communications shows many fossil fuel workers have the right skills already — the problem is that those new green jobs likely won’t be in the right place. The results spell a message for those planning a greener economy: If all they think about ...

Cold Spring Harbor, NY - Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press (CSHL Press), a publisher of scientific books, journals, and electronic media, today announced the publication of The Medical Revolution of Messenger RNA by science and technology journalist Fabrice Delaye. Many people think it took just ten months to develop a vaccine against the virus that causes COVID-19. What most don’t know is that it was made possible by using messenger RNA (mRNA), the molecule that instructs cells to make a ...

A study published today in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery demonstrates outstanding long-term survival following low-risk isolated surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR). The study reviewed 42,586 patients who underwent low-risk isolated SAVR between 2011 and 2019 at 981 different cardiac surgery programs across the U.S. Conducted by eight leading national investigators, the assessment relied on evidence from The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) National Database, with linkage to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Death Index (NDI). The STS ...

A phase 3 clinical trial evaluating the injectable prescription medication tirzepatide, showed an additional 21.1% weight loss after intensive lifestyle intervention in adults with obesity or who were overweight with weight-related comorbidities, excluding Type 2 diabetes. The findings of the SURMOUNT-3 study, sponsored by pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, were simultaneously published this week in the journal Nature Medicine and presented at a national conference of obesity researchers. Tirzepatide, marketed ...

WASHINGTON, DC – Applications are currently being accepted for the Summer 2024 term of two undergraduate internship programs offered by the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science: the Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships (SULI) program and the Community College Internships (CCI) program. The application deadline is January 9, 2024, at 5:00 p.m. EST. Through SULI and CCI, undergraduate students and recent graduates discover science and technology careers at the DOE national laboratories and gain the experience needed to transition ...

WASHINGTON, DC – Applications are currently being accepted for the Summer 2024 term of the DOE Office of Science’s Visiting Faculty Program (VFP). The application deadline is January 9, 2024, at 5:00 p.m. ET. Two application assistance workshops will be held for all faculty interested in applying to VFP: November 17, 2023, at 12:00 p.m. ET (register here) December 1, 2023, at 12:00 p.m. ET (register here) In addition, prospective VFP applicants can engage with recruiters and scientists from the DOE national laboratories at a summer internship fair sponsored by the Office of Workforce ...

Big Tech’s race into augmented reality (AR) grows more competitive by the day. This month, Meta released the latest iteration of its headset, the Quest 3. Early next year, Apple plans to drop its first headset, the Vision Pro. The announcements for each platform emphasize games and entertainment that merge the virtual and physical worlds: a digital board game imposed on a coffee table, a movie screen projected above airplane seats. Some researchers, though, are more curious about other uses for AR. The University of Washington’s Makeability Lab is applying these budding technologies to assist people with disabilities. This month, ...

AUSTIN, Texas -- A rule to limit trading based on nonpublic stock information has limited effectiveness, according to a recent study by Texas McCombs Finance Professor Robert Parrino. Issued in 2000 by the Securities & Exchange Commission, Rule 10b5–1 requires corporate insiders to schedule the purchase or sale of a predetermined number of shares through a third-party broker up to two years in advance. Because the trades under these “plan” sales are scheduled in advance of their execution, insiders are presumed less likely to be acting on inside information. But ...

A special brain-wave cap can diagnose stroke in the ambulance, allowing the patient to receive appropriate treatment faster. Jonathan Coutinho, neurologist at Amsterdam UMC, is one of the inventors the swimming cap: "Our research shows that the brain-wave cap can recognize patients with large ischemic stroke with great accuracy. This is very good news, because the cap can ultimately save lives by routing these patients directly to the right hospital." The research is published today in Neurology.  Every year, millions of people worldwide suffer an ischemic stroke, the most common type of stroke. An ischemic stroke occurs ...

Aspergillus fumigatus is the major airborne fungus present indoors and outdoors that causes various diseases, the severity of which are dependent on an individual’s immune status.  Researchers in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center have received a $423,500 grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the National Institutes of Health for research aimed at reducing disease and mortality rates associated with Aspergillus infections ...

Lugano, Switzerland, 17 October 2023 – Women living and working in places with higher levels of fine particle air pollution are more likely to get breast cancer than those living and working in less polluted areas. Results of the first study to take account of the effects of both residential and workplace exposure to air pollution on breast cancer risk are presented at the ESMO Congress 2023 in Madrid, Spain (1).   “Our data showed a statistically significant association between long term exposure to fine particle air pollution, at home and at work, and risk of breast cancer. This contrasts with previous research which looked only at fine particle exposure ...

Thermosensation is critical for the survival of animals, but the mechanisms by which this is modulated by nutritional status remain unclear; here, behavioral and live brain imaging studies reveal why food-sated fruit flies prefer to stay at relatively higher temperatures compared to hungry flies. ##### In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Biology: http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002332 Article Title: Independent insulin signaling modulators govern hot avoidance ...

Different strains of E.coli can outcompete one another to take over the gut, a new study reveals. Publishing their findings today in PLOS Biology, scientists reveal that a particular strain, known as MDR ST131, can readily colonise new hosts, even if those hosts are already have E.coli in their healthy gut. The international team, led by experts at the University of Birmingham, used a mouse model to help understand why strains of E.coli that live in a healthy gut are rapidly overtaken of when challenged with a multi-drug resistant strain. Lead author Professor Alan McNally, from ...

Sleeping patterns and stress hormones could be the key to understanding how and when people with epilepsy are likely to experience seizures, a new study reveals.  Researchers used mathematical modelling to understand the impact of different physiological processes, such as sleep and changes in concentration of the stress-hormone cortisol, on key signatures of epilepsy – known as epileptiform discharges (ED). Epilepsy is a serious neurological disorder characterised by a tendency to have recurrent, spontaneous seizures. Classically, seizures were assumed to occur at random, until the discovery of ED activity with timescales that vary from hours and days through to months. The scientists ...

The Dompé Foundation is offering 16 scholarships to support neuroscience and neurobiology students enrolled at US universities for the academic year 2023/2024. This funding opportunity, which honors the legacy of the only female Italian Nobel laureate in Medicine, is intended for promising candidates from any nationality that have already been admitted to a Master’s, PhD or post-doc program. With a total budget of up to about 1 million USD, the Foundation has doubled from the previous two years its funding for the US project, ...

Continuing the temperature trend from this summer, September 2023 was the hottest September on record, according to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). The month also set the record for the highest temperature anomaly – the largest difference from the long-term average. This visualization shows global temperature anomalies along with the underlying seasonal cycle. Temperatures advance from January through December left to right, rising during warmer months and falling during cooler months. The color of each line represents the year, with colder purples for the 1960s and warmer oranges and yellows for more recent ...

One of the biggest challenges for earthquake early warning systems (EEW) is the lack of seismic stations located offshore of heavily populated coastlines, where some of the world’s most seismically active regions are located. In a new study published in The Seismic Record, researchers show how unused telecommunications fiber optic cable can be transformed for offshore EEW. Jiuxun Yin, a Caltech researcher now at SLB, and colleagues used 50 kilometers of a submarine telecom cable running between the United States and Chile, sampling ...

A team of researchers at the Texas A&M University School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (VMBS) has received a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to research metabolism in people with Down syndrome. By targeting genes that affect metabolism, the team may be able to develop drug therapies for physical and mental symptoms of the condition, like muscle loss, accelerated aging, and lower cognitive function, thereby improving the quality of life for people with Down syndrome. The new grant will also make Dr. Weston Porter, a professor in the VMBS Department of Veterinary Physiology & Pharmacology and lead researcher ...

In a world that relies on high-speed internet and seamless communication, the absence of a reliable fiber connection can be a significant hurdle. Fortunately, a cutting-edge technology known as free-space optical communication (FSO) offers a flexible solution for field-deployable high-speed wireless communication in areas where fiber connections are unavailable. FSO has garnered attention for its versatility across various scales of operation. On a global level, it plays a crucial role in establishing high-speed satellite internet projects like Starlink, ensuring global connectivity. At the ground level, ...

BATON ROUGE – The Obesity Society – the leading professional society focused on obesity science, treatment and prevention – has named Pennington Biomedical’s Dr. Leanne Redman as the recipient of the 2023 TOPS Research Achievement Award. The award, which is funded by the Take Off Pounds Sensibly, or TOPS, Foundation, was presented to Dr. Redman on Monday, Oct. 16, in recognition of her contributions to research in the field of obesity.   Considered by many to be the top award for obesity research, Dr. ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Anyone who has ever tried to pack a family-sized amount of luggage into a sedan-sized trunk knows this is a hard problem. Robots struggle with dense packing tasks, too.  For the robot, solving the packing problem involves satisfying many constraints, such as stacking luggage so suitcases don’t topple out of the trunk, heavy objects aren’t placed on top of lighter ones, and collisions between the robotic arm and the car’s bumper are avoided.  Some traditional methods tackle this problem sequentially, guessing a partial solution ...

Glioblastoma is the most common type of brain tumor that affects adults and, unfortunately, still remains incurable. In a new study, researchers have demonstrated that a specific mitochondrial protein plays an important role in glioblastoma, and can therefore be used as a potential target to reduce tumors. “Glioblastoma is notorious for its lethality. One of the major challenges is that it spreads invasively throughout the brain. We’re interested in understanding what drives this process in order to identify new therapeutic strategies,” said Brendan Harley (RBTE leader/EIRH), the Robert W. Schaefer Professor of Chemical ...

Key takeaways Whaling in the 20th century destroyed 99% of the Eastern North Pacific fin whale breeding  population. Because there is enough genetic diversity, current conservation measures should help the population rebound without becoming inbred. The future of fin whales in the Gulf of California depends on the recovery of the Eastern North Pacific population. A new genomic study by UCLA biologists shows that whaling in the 20th century destroyed 99% of the Eastern North Pacific fin whale breeding, or “effective,” population — 29% more than previously thought. But there is also some good news: Genes among members of this endangered ...