Professor Ian Wong has been appointed as Regius Professor of Pharmacy at Aston University A Regius Professorship is a rare award bestowed on a university by the monarch - a mark of exceptionally high standards of research and teaching Aston University’s Pharmacy School can trace its roots back to 1847.   Under embargo until 00:01 hrs BST 3 July 2023| Birmingham, UK Aston University has appointed Professor Ian Wong as its new Regius Professor of Pharmacy. Professor Wong is a pharmacoepidemiologist. His research focuses on the application ...

Babies and puppies have at least two things in common: aside from being newborns, they promote a positive emotional state in human mothers, leading them to articulate better when they speak. This finding is the result of research by an international team1 that included Alejandrina Cristia, a CNRS Researcher at the Laboratoire de sciences cognitives et psycholinguistique (LSCP) (CNRS/EHESS/ENS-PSL). Scientists studied the vocal behaviour of ten mothers to better understand why mothers articulate more when speaking to infants. Participants were asked to ...

COVID-19 vaccination helped reduce disparities in disease incidence between low- and high-income communities, according to a new analysis led by Cedars-Sinai investigators. While lower-income communities had lower vaccination rates than higher-income communities, the impact of vaccination on disease incidence was larger in lower-income communities. As a result, investigators say, vaccination led to reduced income-related disparities in COVID-19 incidence.  The findings were published today in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a publication of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “This study is a unique demonstration ...

Scientists have successfully tested a novel way of boosting honey bees’ immune systems to help them fend off deadly viruses, which have contributed to the major losses of the critical pollinator globally. In a new study, the research team, which includes entomologists with the University of Florida, the Agricultural Research Service-USDA, Louisiana State University and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, showed that prompting honey bees’ cells to produce free radicals helped the bees weather a host of viruses. In fact, the treatment greatly reduced, and in some cases, nearly eliminated virus ...

ATLANTA — Dr. Jun Zou, a research assistant professor in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University, has received a five-year, $2.67 million federal grant to study the link between gut dysbiosis, an imbalance in the microbiota, and cardiac disease in diabetes.  The grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute will be used to explore the role of diabetes-induced alteration of gut microbiota ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today released a plan to ensure the Department’s Federally funded research is more open and accessible to the public, researchers, and journalists as part of a broader effort by the Biden-Harris Administration to make government data more transparent. With 17 National Laboratories and scores of programs that fund university and private research, DOE directly supports thousands of research papers per year, and, when this plan goes into effect, those findings will be available ...

Leesburg, VA, June 30, 2023—According to an accepted manuscript published in ARRS’ own American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), using an automated deep-learning AI tool, as well as weight-based volumetric thresholds, might afford large-scale evaluation for splenomegaly on CT examinations performed for any indication. Noting that, historically, the standard linear splenic measurements used as a surrogate for splenic volume yielded suboptimal performance in detecting volume-based splenomegaly, “the ...

Leesburg, VA, June 30, 2023—According to an accepted manuscript published in ARRS’ own American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), a deep learning-based model using initial chest radiographs predicted 30-day mortality in patients with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP), improving upon the performance of an established risk prediction tool (i.e., CURB-65 score). “The deep learning (DL) model may guide clinical decision-making in the management of patients with CAP by identifying high-risk patients who warrant hospitalization and intensive treatment,” concluded first author Eui Jin Hwang, MD, PhD, from the department of radiology at Seoul National ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — The universe is expanding; we’ve had evidence of that for about a century. But just how quickly celestial objects are receding from each other is still up for debate.  It’s no small feat to measure the rate at which objects move away from each other across vast distances. Since the discovery of cosmic expansion, its rate has been measured and re-measured with increasing precision, with some of the latest values ranging from 67.4 up to 76.5 kilometers per second per megaparsec, which relates the recession velocity (in ...

“[...] we see our work as an indication that combining different molecular data types could be a general strategy to improve future aging clocks.” BUFFALO, NY- June 30, 2023 – A new research paper was published on the cover of Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 15, Issue 12, entitled, “Age prediction from human blood plasma using proteomic and small RNA data: a comparative analysis.” Aging clocks, built from comprehensive molecular data, have emerged as promising tools ...

How can you tell if a fruit fly is hungry? Ask a computer. While that may sound like a bad dad joke, it’s reality at Tulane University, where researchers have developed a new A.I. tool that can tell you if a fruit fly is hungry, sleepy or singing (yes, fruit flies sing).  Dubbed MAFDA (for Novel Machine-learning-based Automatic Fly-behavioral Detection and Annotation) the system uses cameras and a newly developed software to track and identify complex interactive behaviors of individual flies within a larger group. This allows researchers to compare and contrast the behaviors of fruit flies with different genetic backgrounds. For more than a century, ...

LA JOLLA, CALIF. – June 30, 2023 – A study led by researchers at Sanford Burnham Prebys has found that in young women, certain genetic mutations are associated with treatment-resistant breast cancer. These mutations are not linked to treatment-resistant breast cancer in older women. The findings, published in the journal Science Advances, could help improve precision medicine and suggest a brand-new way of classifying breast cancer. “It’s well established that as you get older, you’re more likely to develop cancer. But we’re finding that this may not be true for all cancers depending on a person’s genetic makeup,” ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Flexible displays that can change color, convey information and even send veiled messages via infrared radiation are now possible, thanks to new research from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Engineers inspired by the morphing skins of animals like chameleons and octopuses have developed capillary-controlled robotic flapping fins to create switchable optical and infrared light multipixel displays that are 1,000 times more energy efficient than light-emitting devices. The new study led by mechanical science and engineering professor Sameh Tawfick demonstrates ...

AURORA, Colo. (June 30, 2023) – Researchers from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus have identified a potential new immune checkpoint receptor that could lead to treatments for diseases such as lung and bowel cancer and autoimmune conditions including IBD. The study, published today in Science Immunology, examines a family of 13 receptors, or proteins that transmit signals for cells to follow, called killer cell immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIR). Of the 13 receptors, one is unique in that it has not readily been observed on immune cells of ...

A team of scientists from around the globe, including those from Trinity College Dublin, has gained high-res structural insights into a key bacterial enzyme, which may help chemists design new drugs to inhibit it and thus suppress disease-causing bacteria. Their work is important as fears continue to grow around rising rates of antibiotic resistance.  The scientists, led by Martin Caffrey, Fellow Emeritus in Trinity’s School of Medicine and School of Biochemistry and Immunology, used next-gen X-ray crystallography and single particle cryo-electron microscopy ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Experiencing traumatic events such as natural disasters may have long-term consequences for the academic progress and future food security of youth — a problem researchers said could worsen with the increased frequency of extreme weather events due to climate change. In a study using data from Peru, researchers from Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences found that being exposed to a greater number of traumatic events or “shocks,” such as a natural disaster or loss of family income, in early ...

Researchers have demonstrated a new material for single-molecule electronic switches, which can effectively vary current at the nanoscale in response to external stimuli. The material for this molecular switch has a unique structure created by locking a linear molecular backbone into a ladder-type structure. A new study finds that the ladder-type molecular structure greatly enhances the stability of the material, making it highly promising for use in single-molecule electronics applications. Reported in the journal Chem, the study shows that the ladder-type molecule serves as a robust and reversible molecular switch over a wide range of conductivity levels and different molecular ...

A $7 million study beginning this summer at Wake Forest University and Wake Forest University School of Medicine will help determine whether a combination of resistance training plus bone-strengthening exercises and/or osteoporosis medication use can help older adults safely lose weight without sacrificing bone mass. That paradox – that shedding pounds can help stave off heart disease and diabetes while increasing bone loss and subsequent fracture risk – has been a focus of Wake Forest researcher Kristen Beavers for about a decade.  Her previous research ...

About The Study: Incidence rates of type 1 diabetes and diabetic ketoacidosis at diabetes onset in children and adolescents were higher after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic than before the pandemic. Increased resources and support may be needed for the growing number of children and adolescents with diabetes. Future studies are needed to assess whether this trend persists and may help elucidate possible underlying mechanisms to explain temporal changes.  Authors: Rayzel Shulman, M.D., ...

About The Study: The results of this systematic review and meta-analysis of 12 studies including 832 patients suggest that preoperative high-intensity interval training may improve cardiorespiratory fitness and reduce postoperative complications. These findings support including high-intensity interval training in pre-habilitation programs before major surgery.  Authors: John C. Woodfield, Ph.D., of the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, is the corresponding author.   To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media ...

Insights into healing and aging were discovered by National Institutes of Health researchers and their collaborators, who studied how a tiny sea creature regenerates an entire new body from only its mouth. The researchers sequenced RNA from Hydractinia symbiolongicarpus, a small, tube-shaped animal that lives on the shells of hermit crabs. Just as the Hydractinia were beginning to regenerate new bodies, the researchers detected a molecular signature associated with the biological process of aging, also known as senescence. According to the study published in Cell Reports, Hydractinia demonstrates that the fundamental biological processes of healing and aging are intertwined, ...

For the first time, researchers have succeeded in predicting how to change the optimum temperature of an enzyme using large computer calculations. A cold-adapted enzyme from an Antarctic bacterium was used as a basis. The study is to be published in the journal Science Advances and is a collaboration between researchers at Uppsala University and the University of Tromsø. The type of cold-adapted enzymes used by the researchers for their study can be found in bacteria and fish that live in icy water, for example. Evolution has shaped ...

The goal of fully protecting 10% of the EU's land area is ambitious for European countries that have been profoundly shaped by millennia of human transformation. A recently published study, coordinated by the University of Bologna, has carried out the first analysis at European level on the strictly protected areas (classified by the IUCN as integral reserves, wilderness areas and national parks) across the EU, studying how extensive integral protection is across biogeographical regions, countries and elevation gradients. "We have discovered – explains Prof. Roberto Cazzolla Gatti, conservation ...

This study is led by Dr. Jiali Liu (State Key Laboratory of Animal Biotech Breeding, College of Biological Sciences, China Agricultural University). Meiotic recombination-related gene (e.g., DMC1, HFM1, MEIOB, MAJIN, C14ORF39/SIX6OS1, STAG3, SYCE1, SYCP2-3, TERB1-2) mutations have been identified in human subfertility or infertility. Surprisingly, most patients have been found to have aberrant splicing of genes such as MEIOB, C14ORF39/SIX6OS1, STAG3, and SYCE1. Therefore, it is imperative to understand ...

Patients with limited hand function are soon set to benefit from an intelligent neuro-orthosis that will enable them to lead independent lives again. Prof. Dr. Alessandro Del Vecchio, a neuroscientist at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), is working on this aim in two new projects and has received over 1.3 million euros of funding from the Free State of Bavaria. The main focus of this research during the next three years will involve wireless measurements of muscle impulses and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to make the intended movements. Around 50 million people worldwide suffer from neuromotor impairments to their hands caused ...