Loosening local, state and federal regulations on cannabis and psychedelics has increased Americans' interest in microdosing, according to a study from researchers at the University of California San Diego. Published in JAMA Health Forum, the study found that the rate of microdosing-related Google searches grew by 1250% from 2015 to 2023, with over three million searches in 2023 alone. This surge in interest correlates with recent legislative changes decriminalizing or authorizing the use of psychedelic substances in therapy and permitting ...

A team of researchers led by the University of California San Diego has developed a soft, stretchy electronic device capable of simulating the feeling of pressure or vibration when worn on the skin. This device, reported in a paper published in Science Robotics, represents a step towards creating haptic technologies that can reproduce a more varied and realistic range of touch sensations. The device consists of a soft, stretchable electrode attached to a silicone patch. It can be worn like a sticker ...

Remarkable new research by a University of Virginia undergraduate may help explain recurrent Crohn’s disease in children and open the door to new ways to treat or even cure the devastating condition. Crohn’s is a debilitating – and possibly life-threatening – inflammation of the digestive tract. Symptoms include abdominal pain, weakness, fatigue and malnutrition caused by the body’s inability to absorb nutrients. It’s most common in adults but afflicts tens of thousands of children in the United States alone. Many of those ...

East Hanover, NJ – June 28, 2024 – A pilot study shows promise for a new treatment option for individuals with memory impairments caused by multiple sclerosis (MS). The article, “Exploring the efficacy of a remote strategy-based intervention for people with multiple sclerosis with everyday memory impairments: A pilot study,” (doi: 10.5014/ajot.2024.050468) was published online on May 27, 2024, in the American Journal of Occupational Therapy. This proof-of-concept study, conducted in ten participants ...

Fish consumption during pregnancy is a complex scientific topic. On one hand, fish are rich in nutrients essential to brain development, including polyunsaturated fatty acids, selenium, iodine, and vitamin D.  On the other, fish contain methyl mercury, a known neurotoxicant. This has led the US Food and Drug Administration to recommend that expectant mothers limit consumption, which inadvertently causes many women to forgo fish consumption during pregnancy altogether. Fish consumption is an important route of methyl mercury exposure, however, efforts to understand the health risk posed by mercury are further complicated by the fact that the nutritional ...

A new model developed by researchers could help inform guidelines and improve evidence-based advice on the risks and benefits of fish consumption, especially during pregnancy. In a paper published in The American Journal of Epidemiology, researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of Mass General Brigham; Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; University of Rochester Medical Center; and Cornell University present a new framework that takes into account estimated average mercury content in consumed fish, helping weigh the detrimental effects of mercury against the potential ...

Engaging in meaningful social interactions with peers is associated with lower loneliness and greater affective well-being, new research finds. Researchers followed three cohorts of university students over three years, collecting data on their social interactions and momentary well-being. Prior research has focused on the impacts of social interactions and the contexts in which interactions occur, such as places and activities. However, the new research specifically examines the impact of meaningful interactions on well-being. “Our research indicates that engaging in meaningful social interactions have net positive outcomes for affective well-being, stress, and loneliness,” ...

South Korean researchers have successfully developed technology to mass-produce quantum dot lasers, widely used in data centers and quantum communications. This breakthrough paves the way for reducing the production cost of semiconductor lasers to one-sixth of the current cost. Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) announced that they have developed, for the first time in Korea, technology to mass-produce quantum dot lasers, previously only used for research, using Metal-Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD) systems. The ETRI Optical Communication Components Research Section has successfully developed indium arsenide/gallium ...

TAMPA, Fla. (June 28, 2024) -- An interdisciplinary study led by researchers at the University of South Florida and Indiana University has uncovered significant findings on the long-term effects of one of the most common forms of chemotherapy on cancer survivors. Published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Oncology, the study tracked a cohort of testicular cancer survivors who received cisplatin-based chemotherapy for an average of 14 years, revealing that 78% experience significant difficulties in everyday listening situations, negatively impacting their quality of life. This collaborative research is the first to measure real-world listening challenges and hearing ...

Artificial intelligence models often play a role in medical diagnoses, especially when it comes to analyzing images such as X-rays. However, studies have found that these models don’t always perform well across all demographic groups, usually faring worse on women and people of color.  These models have also been shown to develop some surprising abilities. In 2022, MIT researchers reported that AI models can make accurate predictions about a patient’s race from their chest X-rays — something that the most skilled radiologists can’t do.  That research team has now found that the models that are most accurate at making demographic predictions ...

In brief: For the first time, researchers use seismic data to estimate a global meteorite impact rate showing meteoroids the size of a basketball impact Mars on a near daily basis. Impact-generated seismic signals show meteorite impacts to be 5-times more abundant than previously thought. Seismic data offers a new tool, in addition to observational data, for calculating meteorite impact rates and planning future Mars missions An international team of researchers, co-lead by ETH Zurich and Imperial College London, have derived the first estimate of global meteorite impacts on Mars using seismic data. Their findings indicate between 280 to 360 meteorites strike ...

When Michael Pirovolakis received an individualized gene therapy in a single-patient clinical trial at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in March 2022, the course of his condition was dramatically altered.  Michael has spastic paraplegia type 50 (SPG50), an “ultra-rare” progressive neurodegenerative disorder that causes developmental delays, speech impairment, seizures, a progressive paralysis of all four limbs, and typically fatal by adulthood. Approximately 80 children around the world ...

Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine with an international team have used liver biopsies to identify cellular and molecular markers that can potentially be used to predict whether and when pancreatic cancer will spread to an individual’s liver or elsewhere, such as the lung. The study, published on June 28 in Nature Medicine, proposes that information from a liver biopsy—a small tissue sample collected for lab analysis—when pancreatic cancer is diagnosed may help guide doctors in personalizing treatment, such as liver-directed immunotherapies, before cancer cells have the chance to metastasize. Only 10 percent of people with pancreatic ...

  A study led by a UC Riverside atmospheric scientist predicts that unchecked carbon emissions will force tropical rains to shift northward in the coming decades, which would profoundly impact agriculture and economies near the Earth's equator. The northward rain shift would be caused by complex changes in the atmosphere spurred by carbon emissions that influence the formation of the intertropical convergence zones. Those zones are essentially atmospheric engines that drive about a third of the world’s precipitation, Liu and his co-authors report in a paper published Friday, June 28, in the journal Nature Climate Change. Tropical ...

LOS ANGELES — Physician scientists from City of Hope, one of the largest cancer research and treatment organizations in the United States, found that people with metastatic kidney cancer who orally took a live biotherapeutic product called CBM588 while in treatment with immunotherapy and enzymatic tyrosine kinase inhibitors experienced improved health outcomes. The phase 1 trial was published today in Nature Medicine. Microorganisms in the gut modulate the immune system. City of Hope researchers are now in discussions with the global SWOG Cancer ...

Seismic signals have suggested Mars gets hit by around 300 basketball-sized meteorites every year, providing a new tool for dating planetary surfaces. The new research, led by scientists at Imperial College London and ETH Zurich working as part of NASA's InSight mission, has shed light on how often ‘marsquakes’ caused by meteorite impacts occur on Mars. The researchers found that Mars experiences around 280 to 360 meteorite impacts every year that produce craters larger than eight metres in diameter and shake the red planet’s ...

A new study brings fresh revelations about the connection between early-life exposure to air pollution and lung health later in life. A research team led by the Keck School of Medicine of USC has shown that exposure to air pollution during childhood is directly associated with bronchitis symptoms as an adult. To date, many investigations in the field have established intuitive links that are less direct than that: Air pollution exposure while young is consistently associated with lung problems during childhood — and childhood lung problems are consistently associated with lung issues as an adult.   The current study, published in the American Journal of Respiratory ...

Children learn much about self-regulation – that is affective, mental, and behavioral responses to certain situations – during their first few years of life. Some of these behaviors are about children’s ability to choose a deliberate response over an automatic one. This is known as effortful control, which is learned from the environment, first and foremost through children’s relationship with their parents. In recent years, giving children digital devices to control their responses to emotions, especially if they’re negative, has ...

A new legal requirement for developers to demonstrate a biodiversity boost in planning applications could make a more meaningful impact on nature recovery if improvements are made to the way nature’s value is calculated, say researchers at the University of Cambridge. From 2024, the UK’s Environment Act requires planning applications to demonstrate an overall biodiversity net gain of at least 10% as calculated using a new statutory biodiversity metric. The researchers trialled the metric by using it to calculate the biodiversity value of 24 sites across England. These sites have all been monitored over the long-term, allowing the team to compare biodiversity ...

A group of researchers has successfully demonstrated automatic charge state recognition in quantum dot devices using machine learning techniques, representing a significant step towards automating the preparation and tuning of quantum bits (qubits) for quantum information processing. Semiconductor qubits use semiconductor materials to create quantum bits. These materials are common in traditional electronics, making them integrable with conventional semiconductor technology. This compatibility is why scientists consider them strong candidates for future ...

A research team led by Professor Hyoung Seop Kim from the Graduate Institute of Ferrous & Eco Materials Technology and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Jeong Ah Lee, a PhD candidate, from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, in recent collaboration with Professor Figueiredo from Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais's Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering in Brazil, has developed an optimal artificial intelligence model to predict the yield strength of various metals, effectively addressing traditional cost and time limitations. This research has been published in the online edition of Acta Materialia, an ...

The results of the longitudinal study “Prognostic value of tissue bridges in cervical spinal cord injury” have the potential to change clinical practice. They have just been published in The Lancet Neurology, the world’s leading journal of clinical neurology. The team led by lead author Dr. Dario Pfyffer and senior author Prof. Dr. med. Patrick Freund from Balgrist University Hospital and the University of Zurich, which includes SCI experts from around the world, has successfully developed models that incorporate tissue bridges in the spinal cord in a large, multicenter cohort of patients with cervical SCI for improved prognosis of clinical outcomes. These ...

Several indicative factors, including junior rank, male sex, and younger age, are strongly linked to ‘harmful gambling’ among serving UK military personnel, finds an analysis of survey responses, published online in the journal BMJ Military Health. Harmful gambling refers to the toll taken on finances, health, personal relationships, and  work: nearly 1 in 4 respondents reported one or other of these effects over the past year. The findings prompt the researchers to call for the prioritisation of better, earlier, and targeted support to stave off the harmful consequences of ...

A lower level of mental ability during the teenage years may be linked to as much as a tripling in the risk of having a stroke before the age of 50, finds research published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. The observed associations held true even after factoring in current diabetes and limiting the age of a first stroke up to 40, prompting the researchers to suggest that more comprehensive assessments beyond traditional stroke risk factors are now needed to stave off disability and death. Recent evidence suggests that cases of stroke ...

Children conceived by using egg or sperm donors have the same well-being outcomes as non-donor conceived people. However, they are more likely to have identity difficulties and issues with trust. Secrecy and anonymity about their genetic parentage can have a profound impact on well-being say authors. They warn that children and adults conceived using donor gametes have not been centred in the assisted reproductive industry and more information is needed about adult wellbeing. The study is published today in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology by researchers King’s College London. The study is the first systematic ...