UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The availability and adoption of high-speed broadband appears to boost the number of farms offering agritourism activities, according to a new study led by Penn State researchers. Their findings, the researchers said, bolster the argument for expanding broadband availability in support of farm operators who want to benefit from the growing consumer interest in on-farm experiences. “Agritourism operations are consumer-facing businesses that offer activities to farm or ranch visitors, such as farm stands, pumpkin patches, corn mazes, hayrides and ...

URBANA, Ill. -- LGBTQ+ people involved in farm work are over three times more likely to experience depression and suicidal intent and about two and a half times more likely to experience anxiety than the general population. That’s according to a new study led by farmer mental health experts at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.   “For several years, I've done work around farm stress and mental health among farmers in general. We’ve found people who work in agriculture have adverse mental health compared to those who work in other areas. Similarly, there are findings that queer folks have worse mental health than their ...

Since the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, 10 to 30 per cent of the general population has experienced some form of virus-induced cognitive impairment, including trouble concentrating, brain fog or memory loss. This led a team of researchers to explore the mechanism behind this phenomenon and pinpoint a specific protein that appears to be driving these cognitive changes.    A new study published in Nature Immunology, led by researchers at Western and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, also looked at how vaccination may help reduce the impacts of memory loss following COVID-19 infections.     The ...

A study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by the "la Caixa" Foundation, provides new evidence on the adverse effects of prenatal exposure to ethylene oxide (EO) on foetal development. The results, published in Epidemiology, show that increased EO exposure in utero is associated with a reduction in birth weight and head circumference in newborns. Ethylene oxide is a chemical used in various industrial processes and in hospitals, is known for its ...

Repetitive tasks carried out by ancient Egyptian scribes — high status men with the ability to write who performed administrative tasks — and the positions they sat in while working may have led to degenerative skeletal changes, according to a study published in Scientific Reports. Petra Brukner Havelková and colleagues examined the skeletal remains of 69 adult males — 30 of whom were scribes — who were buried in the necropolis at Abusir, Egypt between 2700 and 2180 BCE. They identified degenerative joint changes that were more common among scribes compared to men with other occupations. These were in the joints connecting the lower jaw to the skull, ...

Most coral reef restoration efforts involve restocking reefs with nursery-grown corals. However, if these corals are of the same stock as their wild counterparts, they will be equally vulnerable to the heat stress that caused the bleaching event in the first place. In a review publishing June 27 in the journal Trends in Microbiology, researchers discuss the potential of improving corals’ chances by inducing the evolution of heat tolerance in their symbionts—the mutualistic microbes that provide corals with nutrients in ...

About The Study: Rural residents with head and neck cancer experienced higher mortality rates and less annual improvement compared to urban counterparts in this cross-sectional study. Multilevel barriers may explain the widening rural-urban mortality gap, including alcohol and tobacco use and lower human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination rates. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, S. M. Qasim Hussaini, M.D.,M.S., email shussaini@uabmc.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamaoto.2024.1650) Editor’s Note: Please see the article ...

About The Study: This study provides insights into complex factors surrounding maternal suicide, and it highlights opportunities for further research to understand long-term consequences of perinatal mental health. These findings also underscore the need for targeted evidence-based interventions and effective policies targeting mental health, substance use, and intimate partner problems to prevent maternal suicide and enhance maternal health outcomes.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Kara Zivin, Ph.D., M.S., M.A., M.F.A., email kzivin@umich.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this ...

In many cases of malignant melanoma, the effect of targeted treatment is lost over time. A research team from UZH and USZ has now discovered that a factor secreted by tumor cells is responsible for the resistance. These findings could pave the way for more effective therapies.   Malignant melanoma is one of the most aggressive types of cancer. Despite recent progress in effective therapies, the tumors of many patients are either resistant from the outset or become so during the course of treatment. “It is therefore crucial to understand the mechanism ...

Researchers at Princeton and UCLA have developed a passive mechanism to cool buildings in the summer and warm them in the winter. In an article published June 27 in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science, they report that by restricting radiant heat flows between buildings and their environment to specific wavelengths, coatings engineered from common materials can achieve energy savings and thermal comfort that goes beyond what traditional building envelopes can achieve. “With the increase ...

HOUSTON ― Results from a new study led by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center support standard use of the more precise intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) over the alternative 3D-conformal radiotherapy (3D-CRT) for patients with unresectable, locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The study, published today in JAMA Oncology, revealed fewer side effects with IMRT, with similar survival outcomes. A prospective secondary analysis of long-term outcomes from 483 patients on the Phase III NRG Oncology-RTOG 0617 randomized trial demonstrated ...

A study of multiple Mycena mushroom species reported in the journal Cell Genomics has found that they have unexpectedly large genomes. While the mushrooms had been thought to be purely saprotrophic – living by degrading dead organic material alone – the discovery suggests that they may instead have a collection of genes to enable them to adapt to different lifestyles as circumstances change. Interestingly, they show certain Mycena strains living in the Arctic have some of the largest mushroom genomes ever described.   These mushrooms show widespread growth across their genome. This includes not only the genes that help them invade or interact ...

In collaboration with the BioInnovation Institute (BII), AAAS is announcing the establishment of the BII & Science Translational Medicine Prize for Innovations in Women’s Health. Submissions are now open for the first year of the prize, which will be awarded in 2025. The new award will aim to recognize and elevate scientists who have made outstanding research discoveries that have translational potential to impact women’s health around the world. Relevant research topics include, but are not limited to, investigation into maternal health and gynecological conditions, areas of ...

Images   Simultaneously advancing biomaterials research with clinical applications and connecting researchers at well-resourced institutions with those rich in diverse talent is the aim of a $10.5 million center supported by the National Institutes of Health.    The Humanity Unlocking Biomaterials center, led by the University of Michigan and University of Washington, is designed to spur the development of biomaterials solutions that have potential in medical treatments by bringing together researchers and providing seed funding to kickstart ...

The European Southern Observatory’s Extremely Large Telescope (ESO’s ELT), under construction in the Chilean Atacama Desert, is one step closer to completion. German company SCHOTT has successfully cast the blank for the last of the 949 segments commissioned for the telescope’s primary mirror (M1). With a diameter of more than 39 metres, M1 will be by far the largest mirror ever made for a telescope. Too large to be made from a single piece of glass, M1 will consist of 798 hexagonal segments, each about five centimetres thick and 1.5 ...

Older coastal cities, like Philadelphia, New York and Boston are at risk of being inundated by untreated sewage during floods. Due in part to the design of their combined sewer systems and in part due to sea level rise, these cities could be facing a growing public health crisis as climate change also drives more extreme precipitation, according to researchers at Drexel University who study urban stormwater management. The group recently published research that modeled the potential extent of the problem in a section of the coastal city of Camden, New Jersey, and the effectiveness of one proposed intervention to help ...

At present, stroke has become one of the most serious neurological diseases, which is usually accompanied by movement disorders and cognitive impairment. In recent years, the number of stroke patients has increased annually . Most stroke patients are accompanied by movement disorders, which seriously affect the normal life of patients. A groundbreaking study conducted by Shihao Sun and colleagues, recently published in the Cyborg Bionic Systems journal, has introduced innovative findings in the realm of Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES), particularly its application in muscle recovery and fatigue management. Functional ...

HOUSTON ― The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Rice University today announced the creation of the Cancer Bioengineering Collaborative to develop innovative technologies and bioengineering approaches to improve cancer research, diagnosis and treatment. Led by Rice’s Gang Bao, Ph.D., and MD Anderson’s Jeffrey Molldrem, M.D., the initiative aims to foster collaboration between the two institutions on fundamental and translational cancer research, to develop new technologies for cancer detection and therapy, and to secure external funding in support of further research and training. Envisioned as a hub for accelerating ...

Researchers have developed an innovative method for assessing spinal muscle strength, utilizing isokinetic testing combined with advanced spine musculoskeletal modeling. This cutting-edge approach, detailed in a study published by the Cyborg and Bionic Systems journal, marks a significant advancement in personalized health and athletic training. Understanding individual muscle strength is crucial for optimizing physical therapy and enhancing athletic performance. Traditional methods, however, often fall short in precision. The newly introduced technique by Zuming Xiao and colleagues from the Beijing Institute of Technology and Shenyang ...

We are pleased to share that many MIT Press journals were ranked highly in their fields in 2023, earning exceptional impact factors—which measure recent citation activity for scholarship—and placing in the top quartile of all journals for their areas of study.  Several MIT Press journals in linguistics landed in the top of the field—including Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics at #6 out of all 297 linguistics journals in publication; Computational Linguistics at #10; Neurobiology of Language at #14; and Linguistic Inquiry at #77.  We ...

OAKLAND, Calif., June 27, 2024 – Power outages are on the rise nationwide as climate change brings more frequent wildfires, heat waves, and severe weather events. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the state of California have both recently established funding to help communities create “resilience hubs” that rely on solar+battery systems to provide emergency power for residents. A new study in the journal Risk Analysis finds that strategically placing resilience hubs throughout California could generate up to 8 GW of solar energy and lower the state’s carbon emissions by 5 million tons ...

A new study has illuminated the connection between inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and lipid profile.  IBD is a chronic condition that causes inflammation in the intestines. Abnormal lipid factor levels such as cholesterol in IBD patients have been observed in previous studies, but whether this association is causal remained unclear. This study employed Mendelian randomization (MR) to investigate the potential causal link between lipid profile and IBD. The results revealed no significant ...

In recent years, rehabilitation robots have become increasingly popular in the field of healthcare, able to mimic the movements of a therapist and enhance patients' mobility through carefully designed control methods. A team from the Automation College of Beijing Institute of Technology, led by Kexin Hu, Zhongjing Ma, Suli Zou, Jian Li, and Haoran Ding, in collaboration with collaborators from the University College London, has recently proposed a novel impedance sliding mode control method that combines stiffness scheduling technology, which has brought significant advancements to rehabilitation robot systems. This research has broken through the ...

Around the time of the untimely death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Black man in police custody, researchers from Johns Hopkins University were collecting data for Communities CARING, a study that examined the relationship of health behaviors among public housing residents in East and West Baltimore communities in Maryland. Led by Kristal Lyn Brown, PhD, an assistant professor in Drexel University’s College of Nursing and Health Professions, a secondary analysis of the data collected for Communities CARING examined the relationship between a high-profile event (Gray’s death) and disordered eating ...

Korean researchers are strengthening South Korea’s leadership in the global market through the development of 6G, the next-generation mobile communication technology. Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) announced that they showcased their latest research results at the “6G Symposium Spring 2024” held in Oulu, Finland, from April 9 to 11, drawing the attention of attendees. At this symposium, ETRI particularly showcased its “service mesh” technology. This technology is a key 6G technology that addresses complex communication issues among numerous cloud-nativemobile network functions that ...