Expanding newborn screening (NBS) to include identifying genes associated with an increased risk for neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD) would cause more harm than good, according to an article published in Pediatrics. While some experts believe early identification of NDDs in the newborn period would provide an equitable way to flag and treat disabilities early, the authors of the new paper contend that broader genomic sequencing would worsen existing health disparities.    “The benefit of early genomic screening hinges upon the ability ...

Overview A research team led by Assistant Professor Mizuki Takeda from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Toyohashi University of Technology, has developed a technique to generate training data for robots that operate based on estimations of the user’s state using machine learning. To date, some methods based on machine learning have been proposed to estimate the state of a robot users using candidate points for the position of the center of gravity. However, for such learning, training data corresponding to when the robot is used to support movements are required. The above-mentioned research ...

Bard, Google’s AI chatbot, based on LaMDA and later PaLM models, was launched with moderate success in March 2023 before expanding globally in May. It’s a generative AI that accepts prompts and performs text-based tasks like providing answers, and summaries, and creating various forms of text content. On 13 July 2023, Google Bard announced a major update which allowed providing images as inputs together with textual prompts. It was claimed that Bard can analyze visual content and provide a description (e.g., image captions) or answer questions using visual ...

Prof. John Speakman from the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, alongside Prof. Kevin Hall from the National Institutes of Health (U.S.), Prof. Thorkild Sorensen from the University of Copenhagen and Prof. David Allison from Indiana University (U.S.), has published a perspective article on potential mechanisms of obesity pathogenesis. It was based on an academic conference held by The Royal Society, with experts and scholars in the field of obesity research discussing the potential pathogenesis of obesity. This article was published in Science on Aug. 31. Governments ...

Osaka, Japan – When your wounds heal and your liver detoxifies a poison such as histamine you ingested, you can thank the class of enzymes known as copper amine oxidases for their assistance. Identifying the exact positions of the smallest hydrogen atoms in these enzymes is challenging with commonly used technologies, but is critical to engineering improved enzymes that exhibit unusual yet useful biochemical reactivity. Now, in a study recently published in ACS Catalysis, a team led by researchers ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- In previous research, Andrew Subica and his colleagues found exceptionally high rates of alcohol use disorder (or alcohol abuse) and alcohol-related harms among Pacific Islander young adults. Now Subica, an associate professor in the UC Riverside School of Medicine’s Department of Social Medicine, Population, and Public Health, has received a $3 million grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, or NIAAA, of the National Institutes of Health to conduct research aimed at preventing these disorders and harms in Pacific ...

A research group led by Professor Emeritus Michio Homma (he, him) and Professor Seiji Kojima (he, him) of the Graduate School of Science at Nagoya University, in collaboration with Osaka University and Nagahama Institute of Bio-Science and Technology, have made new insights into how locomotion occurs in bacteria. The group identified the FliG molecule in the flagellar layer, the ‘motor’ of bacteria, and revealed its role in the organism. These findings suggest ways in which future engineers could build nanomachines with full control over their movements. They published the study in iScience.    As nanomachines become ...

A new evaluation tool offers practical guidance for diagnosing an extreme form of social isolation known as hikikimori. The diagnostic evaluation tool was published online Sept. 15 with an accompanying letter by co-authors in the journal World Psychiatry. The tool is the first structured technique to evaluate people who suffer from a condition first recognized in young people in Japan, but believed to be widely shared in people of all ages across the globe. Known as the Hikikomori Diagnostic Evaluation, or HiDE, the tool provides practical guidance and specific ...

One explanation for why some species decline is that human modifications make existing habitat unsuitable for them. For other species, these modifications are advantageous and make the habitat available for them to expand into. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, and the University of California Santa Barbara and the University of Rochester in the USA investigated the role that increased habitat availability might have played. They compared the rapidly expanding great-tailed grackle with their closest relative, the boat-tailed grackle, who are not ...

More than half of volunteer community health care workers in 19 countries experience labor exploitation, including sub-minimum-wage pay and excess work hours, Mount Sinai researchers report in the first systematic review of the subject. The researchers focused on two-tiered or dual-cadre programs, in which salaried community health workers work alongside a volunteer group of community health workers. The study, published in Lancet Global Health on September 19, provides a global estimate of the presence, prevalence, and magnitude of labor ...

Multi-storey buildings are assembled over cautiously to withstand wind strengths, researchers have found. This is because there are several difficulties in estimating damping – the method of removing energy in order to control vibratory motion like noise and mechanical oscillation, accurately in high-rise buildings The findings, published today in the journal Structures, addresses the draw back and were compiled by a team at the University of Bristol who studied the damping and natural frequency characteristics of a 150 m tall building in London (UK) obtained from the full-scale wind-induced responses using a minimal monitoring system. In general, the response ...

UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 00:01 BST WEDNESDAY 20 SEPTEMBER 2023 / 19:01 ET TUESDAY 19 SEPTEMBER 2023 New study finds that most Rafflesia species, which produce the world’s largest flowers, face extinction. Lack of protection at local, national, and international levels means that remaining populations are under critical threat. Researchers propose an urgent action plan to save these remarkable flowers, building on local success stories. An international group of scientists, including botanists at the University of Oxford’s Botanic ...

Barcelona, Spain: Two out of the four internationally-recommended screening tools used by emergency medical services are inadequate for recognising sepsis, according to new research presented at the European Emergency Medicine Congress today (Wednesday).   Mrs Silke Piedmont, a health scientist at the Department of Emergency Medicine Campus Benjamin Franklin Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin (Germany), and her colleagues from the University of Magdeburg and Jena (Germany), analysed data on 221,429 patients who were seen by emergency medical services (EMS) in Germany in 2016 outside of the hospital setting. They found that only one out of four ...

Is it an eagle? A birdie? No, it’s a gator.  The Rosenblatt Lab at the University of North Florida has recently published a study finding that living on a golf course dramatically changes alligator feeding habits.  The study suggests that land use changes can significantly alter the feeding habits of large predators. Changes in habitat and prey availability caused gators living on golf courses to have different dietary patterns and access to different prey communities compared to those living in natural habitats. As ...

New Haven, Conn. — Yale School of Nursing (YSN) embarks on its centennial year (Sept. 2023-May 2024) this month with a new dean as the school begins its next century of service. Azita Emami began her term Aug. 1 and will steer YSN through a slate of programming that reflects on 100 years of history while shaping the future of the nation’s most trusted profession. “We — all ...

PHILADELPHIA (September 19, 2023) – The University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing (Penn Nursing) has received a $1 million grant from the Bedford Falls Foundation – DAF, a donor-advised fund established by Philanthropists William (Bill) E. Conway Jr., co-founder and co-chairman of The Carlyle Group, and his wife, Joanne. The couple have given millions to support nursing education and scholarships to address the nation’s nursing workforce shortage. The $1 million grant to Penn Nursing will ...

Klebsiella pneumoniae (popularly known as KPC) is a little-known bacteria that causes a variety of afflictions, including pneumonia and UTIs, and which can be deadly.    “Hypervirulent” strains of the bacteria which cause severe infections, and their multidrug-resistant cousins, are beginning to evolve together, which has raised public health concerns. Now a team of Hackensack Meridian Center for Discovery and Innovation (CDI) scientists have partnered with colleagues at ...

Images EAST LANSING, Mich. – Michigan State University displayed some of its latest innovative research and introduced attendees to the mobility experts of tomorrow at the 2023 North American International Detroit Auto Show. MSU students and faculty — in partnership with the University Research Corridor, or URC, a cluster of three public research institutions in the state also including the University of Michigan and Wayne State University — presented current research related to ...

September 19, 2023 — Reflecting the need in anesthesiology to address diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), Anesthesia & Analgesia has devoted its entire October 2023 issue to these topics. This official journal of the International Anesthesia Research Society is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.  "The mission of Anesthesia & Analgesia states that the Journal exists for the benefit of current and future patients under the care of health care professionals engaged in the disciplines broadly related ...

Chemotherapy as a treatment for cancer is one of the major medical success stories of the 20th century, but it's far from perfect. Anyone who has been through chemotherapy or who has had a friend or loved one go through it will be familiar with its many side effects: hair loss, nausea, weakened immune system, and even infertility and nerve damage. This is because chemotherapy drugs are toxic. They're meant to kill cancer cells by poisoning them, but since cancer cells derive from healthy cells and are substantially similar to them, it is difficult to create a drug that kills them without also harming healthy tissue. But ...

Would you help a complete stranger in desperate need of money, based solely on their social media posts? Simon Fraser University professor and bioethicist Jeremy Snyder examines the complex dimensions of this question in his new book, Appealing to the Crowd: The Ethical, Political, and Practical Dimensions of Donation-Based Crowdfunding (Oxford University Press, 2023) which highlights how online crowdfunding – while helping to meet immediate needs – also impacts privacy and dignity, worsens inequalities, doesn’t solve systemic issues and most often, falls short of its goals. In ...

“This approach may allow clinicians to select the most effective therapeutic agents with real time in patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma.”  BUFFALO, NY- September 19, 2023 – A new research paper was published in Oncotarget's Volume 14 on September 15, 2023, entitled, “Real time ex vivo chemosensitivity assay for pancreatic adenocarcinoma.” Patient-derived organoids (PDOs) and xenografts (PDXs) have been extensively studied for drug-screening. However, their usage is limited due to lengthy establishment time, high engraftment failure rates and different tumor microenvironment ...

Empowering Employers Last year, Deep Longevity launched SenoClock, a B2B platform that grants easy access to aging clocks and an anti-aging recommendation engine. SenoClock has gained popularity among longevity clinics and consumer health companies and is releasing a major update SenoClock Gold that’ll enable any organization to adopt the anti-aging paradigm to improve the quality of life of their workforce. SenoClock highlights the drivers of the aging process in its end-users, and now offers a dynamic view of their progress. Forward-looking ...

UCF Scientist Looking at Role of Fats to Curb Graft-Versus-Host Disease in Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation Patients BY SUHTLING WONG  Every three minutes, someone in the U.S. is diagnosed with leukemia, lymphoma, or myeloma – cancers of the blood, bone marrow, and lymph nodes.   Treatments for blood cancers often require hematopoietic stem cell transplants but such cells can launch a potentially deadly immunological attack on the patient’s organs called graft-vs-host ...

ITHACA, N.Y.- Though human-made ponds both sequester and release greenhouse gases, when added up, they may be net emitters, according to two related studies by Cornell University researchers. The studies begin to quantify the significant effects that both human-made and natural ponds have on the global greenhouse gas budget, measurements that aren’t well understood. “Global climate models and predictions rely on accurate accounting of greenhouse gas emissions and carbon storage,” said Meredith Holgerson, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Cornell and senior ...