Eating more ultra-processed foods (UPFs) may be associated with a higher risk of developing cancers of upper aerodigestive tract (including the mouth, throat and oesophagus), according to a new study led by researchers from the University of Bristol and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).  The authors of this international study, which analysed diet and lifestyle data on 450,111 adults who were followed for approximately 14 years, say obesity associated with the consumption of UPFs may not be the only factor to blame. The study is published today [22 November] in the European Journal of Nutrition. Several ...

For patients with advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and limited performance status, an immune checkpoint inhibitor drug called durvalumab is safe and may benefit overall survival, according to a new eClinicalMedicine study by UPMC Hillman Cancer Center researchers. Performance status, a measure of a patient’s physical function and ability to perform daily activities, is often assessed with the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) score on a scale of 0 to 5. Higher values describe patients who spend more time confined to a bed or chair and have less ability to care for themselves. Many clinical ...

Strip searching a child without appropriate consent is “sexual abuse,” and should attract heavy sanctions—backed up by legislation—for any UK police officer who does it, insists a leading paediatrician in an opinion piece, published online in the Archives of Disease in Childhood. Unless the officer(s) can legitimately justify their actions to an independent panel, they should be instantly dismissed and compelled to sign the Sex Offenders Register, writes paediatrician Professor Andy Bush of Imperial College, London. He cites the “shocking number” of children ...

Striped skunks are less likely to evolve with their famous and white markings where the threat of predation from mammals is low, scientists from the University of Bristol, Montana and Long Beach, California have discovered. Skunks’ iconic black and white colouration signals its toxic anal spray. However some skunks show very varied fur colour ranging from all black to thin or thick black and white bands to all white individuals. Variation is huge across the North American continent. Findings ...

One of the primary chlorine disinfectants currently being used to clean hospital scrubs and surfaces does not kill off the most common cause of antibiotic associated sickness in healthcare settings globally, according to a new study. Research by the University of Plymouth has showed spores of Clostridioides difficile, commonly known as C. diff, are completely unaffected despite being treated with high concentrations of bleach used in many hospitals. In fact, the chlorine chemicals are no more effective at damaging the spores when used as a surface disinfectant – than using water with no additives. Writing in the journal Microbiology, the study’s authors ...

HOUSTON – (Nov. 21, 2023) – The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) awarded Rice University with $2.5 million spanning over five years as part of its Driving Change initiative designed to connect research universities that are working to build inclusive learning environments for students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). “I’m honored and grateful to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute that Rice University was selected for the Driving Change initiative,” said Amy Dittmar, Howard R. Hughes Provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. “Rice has laid the groundwork for student ...

A new artificial intelligence computer program created by researchers at the University of Florida and NVIDIA can generate doctors’ notes so well that two physicians couldn’t tell the difference, according to an early study from both groups. In this proof-of-concept study, physicians reviewed patient notes — some written by actual medical doctors while others were created by the new AI program — and the physicians identified the correct author only 49% of the time. A team of 19 researchers from NVIDIA and the University of Florida said ...

MSU has a satellite uplink/LTN TV studio and Comrex line for radio interviews upon request. Researchers at Michigan State University may have discovered why visceral pain is so common in people who have experienced inflammation in their guts, including patients with irritable bowel syndrome, or IBS. Working with mouse models, MSU physiologists showed that nervous system cells known as glia can sensitize nearby neurons, causing them to send pain signals more easily than they did prior to inflammation. “The glia drop the threshold for activating a neuron,” said MSU Research Foundation Professor Brian Gulbransen, whose research team authored the new report in the ...

A team of University of Toronto Engineering researchers, led by Professor Timothy Chan, is leveraging machine learning to optimize the macronutrient content of pooled human donor milk recipes.   The researchers introduce their data-driven optimization model in a new paper published in Manufacturing and Systems Operations Management.  Chan and his team worked with Mount Sinai Hospital’s Rogers Hixon Ontario Human Milk Bank — which provides donor milk to preterm and sick babies who are hospitalized across Ontario — as well as Dr. Debbie O’Connor, a professor at the Temerty ...

Contact: Morgan Sherburne, morganls@umich.edu  Images ANN ARBOR—If you look at massive galaxies teeming with stars, you might be forgiven in thinking they are star factories, churning out brilliant balls of gas. But actually, less evolved dwarf galaxies have bigger regions of star factories, with higher rates of star formation. Now, University of Michigan researchers have discovered the reason underlying this: These galaxies enjoy a 10-million-year delay in blowing out the gas cluttering up their environments. Star-forming regions are able to hang on to their gas and dust, allowing more stars to coalesce ...

A new study highlights the vital contribution of ‘virtual schools’ for children in care and recommends ten ways to improve their educational outcomes. The research, by the University of Exeter and the National Association of Virtual School Heads (NAVSH), shows strong disparities in progress and attainment for children in care depending on where they live. They found these differences are not driven by neighbourhood deprivation but by patchy distribution of school places, confused funding policies and variable regulation. As a result, some virtual schools have difficulty ...

“[...] little work [has been] published on the effect of parental age in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, a common model organism for aging studies.” BUFFALO, NY- November 16, 2023 – A new research paper was published in Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 15, Issue 21, entitled, “Parental age effect on the longevity and healthspan in Drosophila melanogaster and Caenorhabditis elegans.” Several studies have investigated the effect of parental age on biological ...

MADISON, Wis., - Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies that could be critical tools to combat climate change have developed in line with other technologies from the last century. However, according to new studies led by Gregory Nemet, a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, these technologies need to develop faster to meet policy targets aimed at limiting global warming. As policymakers, researchers and climate activists from around the world prepare to meet for the UN Climate Change Conference beginning on ...

Associate Professor of physics Benjamin Jones has received a $341,571 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to continue his successful traineeship program at The University of Texas at Arlington. The program exposes undergraduate students to opportunities in particle and nuclear physics, which offer key components in many diverse careers, such as nuclear medicine, radiation therapy, archaeology, precision management and astrophysics. UTA’s Nuclear Research Experiences for Minority Students (NREMST) started in 2021 with the goal of immersing students from historically underrepresented populations in nuclear physics. “We know that many students ...

A major new research project will explore the impact of transformational changes to mental health treatment in South America.   Community-based care for people with psychosocial disabilities began in the region in the 1960s and 1970s, when a minority of people were moved from large and isolated psychiatric hospitals to  residential alternatives in the community.   This policy was promoted by the World Health Organization and the Pan America Health Organization and is considered a defining element of the modernisation of mental health systems. But in current analysis of this process the ethical, social and political tensions associated ...

Scientists have discovered that bacteria can create something like memories about when to form strategies that can cause dangerous infections in people, such as resistance to antibiotics and bacterial swarms when millions of bacteria come together on a single surface. The discovery — which has potential applications for preventing and combatting bacterial infections and addressing antibiotic-resistant bacteria — relates to a common chemical element bacterial cells can use to form and pass along these memories to their progeny over later generations. Researchers ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Forest modeling by Oregon State University scientists shows that a site’s productivity – an indicator of how fast trees grow and how much biomass they accumulate – is the main factor that determines which time period between timber harvests allows for maximum above-ground carbon sequestration. The findings, published in the journal Forests, are important for Pacific Northwest forest managers seeking to strike an optimal balance between harvesting and carbon sequestration, an important tool in the fight against climate change. The study by Catherine Carlisle, Temesgen Hailemariam ...

People who speak two languages may be better at shifting their attention from one thing to another compared to those who speak one, according to a study published this month in the journal Bilingualism: Language and Cognition.  The study examined differences between bilingual and monolingual individuals when it comes to attentional control and ignoring information that isn’t important at the time, said its authors Grace deMeurisse, a University of Florida Ph.D. candidate studying linguistics, and Edith Kaan, ...

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. – November 21, 2023) Findings from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital are moving the field of cancer immunotherapy one step closer to treating brain and solid tumors. Scientists at St. Jude validated a cellular immunotherapy target called 78-kDa glucose-regulated protein (GRP78) in proof-of-principle experiments. The group also discovered a resistance mechanism whereby some tumors trick the cancer-killing immune cells into expressing GRP78, thereby turning off the immune cells or causing them to be killed, too. The research, which has implications for developing immunotherapy for the broad range of difficult-to-treat ...

TORONTO, Nov. 21, 2023 – Faced with images that break the expected pattern, like a do not enter sign where a stop sign is expected, how does the brain react and learn compared to being shown images which match what was predicted? That was the question a team, including York University, set out to answer. A long-standing theory suggests the brain learns a predictive model of the world and its internal predictions are updated when incoming sensory data proves them wrong. However, what the researchers found surprised them, says York Faculty of Science Associate Professor Joel Zylberberg, co-corresponding author of the newly published paper. “Testing ...

A new analysis sheds light on the molecular processes involved when a carnivorous species of fungus known as Arthrobotrys oligospora senses, traps and consumes a worm. Hung-Che Lin of Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan, and colleagues present these findings November 21st in the open access journal PLOS Biology. A. oligospora usually derives its nutrients from decaying organic matter, but starvation and the presence of nearby worms can prompt it to form traps to capture and consume worms. A. oligospora is just one of many species of fungi that can trap and eat very small animals. Prior research has illuminated some of the biology behind this ...

In Germany, taxing sugar-sweetened beverages could prevent or postpone cases of type 2 diabetes, extend healthy lifespans and save up to €16.0 billion in societal costs over the next 20 years, according to a new study led by Karl Emmert-Fees of the Technical University of Munich, published November 21st in the open access journal PLOS Medicine. The World Health Organization has recommended that governments worldwide lessen the social and economic burden of cardiometabolic disease by taxing sugar-sweetened beverages. These taxes either reduce consumption by increasing the price, such as the one peso per liter ...

A simulation study conducted by a team from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) demonstrates that a soft drink tax in Germany would have significant positive effects. In all of the simulated variants evaluated, less sugar was consumed and the rate of illness dropped. This would be a way to reduce costs to the national economy and alleviate the burden on the health care system. There is, however, a difference between taxes aimed at reducing soft drink consumption and taxes aimed at bringing about changes in product formulation. Sugary beverages increase the risk of obesity and illnesses such as diabetes. Several countries have therefore introduced taxes on soft drinks. In Germany ...

An analysis of 5.8 million authors across all scientific disciplines shows that the gender gap is closing, but there is still a long distance to go. The new research by John Ioannidis of the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICs) at Stanford University, US, and colleagues, publishes November 21st in the open access journal PLOS Biology. There is a strong gender gap in science which manifests itself in many ways. One of the most prominent ones is the relative representation of men and women among the scientists whose work receive the most attention in the ...

A set of fossils recovered in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil’s southernmost state, has brought an extra layer of complexity to the study of the evolutionary history of silesaurids, a family of dinosauriforms (dinosaurs and their close relatives) that lived in the Triassic period between 247 million and 208 million years ago. In an article published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, researchers affiliated with institutions in Brazil and the United States show that even with the new fossil assemblage ...