(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Computers have come so far in terms of their power and potential, rivaling and even eclipsing human brains in their ability to store and crunch data, make predictions and communicate. But there is one domain where human brains continue to dominate: energy efficiency. “The most efficient computers are still approximately four orders of magnitude — that’s 10,000 times — higher in energy requirements compared to the human brain for specific tasks such as image processing and recognition, although they outperform the brain in tasks like mathematical calculations,” said UC Santa Barbara ...

Biogenic monoamines — molecules like dopamine and serotonin — are famous for their role as the brain’s emissaries of mood, learning and memory, stress mechanisms, and fight-or-flight responses in the body. But these neurotransmitters existed in nature long before brains popped up in the evolutionary tree. They’re prevalent in plants, bacteria, and single-cell organisms as well, but their functions there are far less understood. Scientists at the Morgridge Institute for Research have added another task for ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- There’s a strong chance that last week’s scorching temperatures were even hotter than reported for those living in underserved urban areas. It’s been well established that more impoverished areas within cities are typically hotter than their wealthier neighborhoods. Dubbed “urban heat islands,” these communities have more buildings, less vegetation and somewhat higher population density, which combine to produce the heating effect. New research from environmental engineers at Duke University has shown that citizen science tools used to gauge heat in these ...

A functional, healthy bladder is something that many of us take for granted. Yet millions of Americans deal with bladder issues, ranging from temporary inconveniences to long-lasting conditions. While many bladder disorders can be managed with non-invasive solutions, some conditions may require surgery to restore bladder function. In patients with major bladder issues, a cystectomy may need to be performed. In this procedure, some or all of the bladder is removed (reasons for this may include acute trauma or bladder cancer). Sometimes, to compensate for the loss of tissue, the bladder is augmented (made larger), typically with ...

American Geophysical Union Press Release 24-27 For Immediate Release 25 June 2024 This press release is available online at: https://news.agu.org/press-release/worlds-lakes-less-resilient-climate-pollution/ AGU press contact: Rebecca Dzombak, news@agu.org (UTC-4 hours) Contact information for the researchers: Ke Zhang, Chinese Academy of Sciences, kzhang@niglas.ac.cn (UTC+8 hours) WASHINGTON — Nearly half of the world’s large lakes have lost resilience, or the ability to bounce back after an abrupt disturbance, in recent ...

Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) researchers are touting data from a multicenter, international phase 2 clinical trial showing a new, curative treatment for sickle cell disease (SCD). The therapy, nonmyeloablative haploidentical bone marrow transplant (BMT) with thiotepa and posttransplant cyclophosphamide (PTCy), is proving to have equivalent efficacy and one-fifth the cost as recently FDA-approved myeloablative gene therapy options, according to Michael DeBaun, MD, MPH, director of the Vanderbilt-Meharry Center ...

In a significant finding, researchers from The Jackson Laboratory (JAX) and UConn Health have discovered that sodium valerate, a short-chain fatty acid produced by gut microbes, can dramatically reduce binge drinking behavior and blood ethanol concentration in mice. The study, reported June 17 in Microbiome, offers promising insights into the gut-brain axis and presents a novel therapeutic approach for excessive alcohol use. We are interested in physiological addiction genetics and genomics to identify new drug targets for treating addiction/overdose. The research team, led by Yanjiao Zhou, M.D., ...

Chocolate-flavored pills for children who hate taking medicine. Several drugs combined into one daily pill for seniors who have trouble remembering to take their medications. Drugs printed at your local pharmacy at personalized dosages that best suit your health needs. These are just a few potential advantages of 3D drug printing, a new system for manufacturing drugs and treatments on-site at pharmacies, health care facilities and other remote locations.  In 2015, the Food and Drug Administration approved the first 3D-printed drug, Spritam ...

Toronto - New research shows that CEOs who have moved away from their country of origin have a significantly higher tendency to make acquisitions internationally, with a preference for targets in their birth country or in countries that once colonized it. “Foreign-born CEOs are taking an increasing leadership role in the corporate world,” says researcher Ron Shalev, an associate professor of accounting at the University of Toronto Scarborough who is cross-appointed to U of T’s Rotman School of Management. “In our sample, 24 per ...

Shoppers browsing through blouses and blenders at Target know they can also quaff a cappuccino at one of more than 1,700 Starbucks cafeshoused within Targets. The strategic alliance benefits both corporations by helping them reach new markets, boost their brands, and add incremental sales. Collaborative partnerships such as this have grown at a pace of 3,600 per year, according to the SDC Platinum database. That’s partly because companies in alliances can gain access to new technologies and customers while keeping their autonomy. New research from Texas McCombs highlights ...

Alfred Hitchcock observed that “There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.” A common way to build suspense in a movie scene is for the audience to know something bad is going to happen, but not when it is going to happen. But how does uncertainty work to ratchet up our anxiety? In a recent paper in the journal Computational Psychiatry, researchers at the University of California, Davis, Department of Psychology take a deeper look into what builds fear. Not knowing when something will happen can cause anxiety, but until ...

Young people aged 14 to 20 years are nowadays more satisfied with being single than their counterparts ten years ago. This is the conclusion of a study undertaken by the Institute of Psychology at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU). "It seems that today's adolescents are less inclined to pursue a romantic relationship. This could well be the reason for the increased singlehood satisfaction," said psychologist Dr. Tita Gonzalez Avilés, lead author of the recent study. Growing numbers of people are living as ...

In a study published in Nature Communications June 19, a team of scientists led by Rice University’s Qimiao Si predicts the existence of flat electronic bands at the Fermi level, a finding that could enable new forms of quantum computing and electronic devices. Quantum materials are governed by the rules of quantum mechanics, where electrons occupy unique energy states. These states form a ladder with the highest rung called the Fermi energy. Electrons, being charged, repel each other and move in correlated ways. ...

By Darrin S. Joy  “We discovered a pronounced ‘men are from Mars, women are from Venus’ pattern,” says marine and environmental biologist Suzanne Edmands. She refers not to human psychology, but rather to mitochondria, the cell components responsible for generating energy. Edmands, professor of biological sciences at the USC Dornsife College of Letter, Arts and Sciences, recently published research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that reveals vast differences in gene activity within the mitochondria of males compared to females. Although the study looks at tiny marine organisms called copepods, ...

East Hanover, NJ – June 25, 2024 – The employment-to-population ratio for individuals with vision impairments continues to show marked improvement, according to data shared during the according to last Friday’s National Trends in Disability Employment (nTIDE) Deeper Dive Lunch & Learn Webinar. nTIDE is a joint effort by Kessler Foundation and the University of New Hampshire’s Institute on Disability (UNH-IOD). Director of Research Arielle Silverman, PhD, and Research Specialist Sarahelizabeth Baghun, PhD, from the ...

West Virginia University researchers will put a sleep apnea detection device at the fingertips or wrists of patients facilitating early diagnosis and treatment of the disease with support from a National Science Foundation grant. Dr. Sunil Sharma, N. Leroy Lapp Professor and division chief of the Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine Fellowship Program in the WVU School of Medicine, received the award after working with other WVU researchers to develop prototypes and secure a patent. “It’s about taking technology from the lab to the bedside,” Sharma said. ...

The University of California San Diego has been selected for the third time to participate in the Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Program (GWEP). This highly selective program comes with a $5 million grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). These funds will be used over the next five years to support the San Diego Imperial Geriatric Education Center (SDIGEC), which provides geriatric educational programming to health workers and other care providers across both San Diego and ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Dairy isn’t the only food that’s good for bone health. Prunes may also protect bone structure and strength in postmenopausal women, according to a new study led by Penn State researchers. The findings, published in Osteoporosis International, suggest that daily prune consumption slows the progression of age-related bone loss and reduces the risk of fracture. “This is the first randomized controlled trial to look at three-dimensional bone outcomes with respect to bone structure, geometry and estimated strength,” said Mary Jane ...

“[...] our study brings attention to the potential influence of adolescent crystalized intelligence on age-related DNAm at older age.” BUFFALO, NY- June 25, 2024 – A new research paper was published in Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 16, Issue 11, entitled, “Associations of childhood, adolescence, and midlife cognitive function with DNA methylation age acceleration in midlife.” Prior studies showed increased age acceleration (AgeAccel) is associated with worse cognitive function among ...

Peek in medicine cabinets across the U.S. and you’ll find stacks of leftover COVID-19 tests. When symptoms arise, so do questions: When should I test? How accurate is it really? And what should I do if I test positive? In a paper published June 14 in the journal Science Advances, CU Boulder researchers unveil a new mathematical model to quickly answer such questions, not only for COVID but also for emerging rapid tests for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), the flu and other infectious diseases. One key takeaway: Advice can differ ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – An Oregon State University doctoral student and researchers at Adobe have created a new, cost-effective training technique for artificial intelligence systems that aims to make them less socially biased. Eric Slyman of the OSU College of Engineering and the Adobe researchers call the novel method FairDeDup, an abbreviation for fair deduplication. Deduplication means removing redundant information from the data used to train AI systems, which lowers the high computing costs of the training. Datasets gleaned from the internet often contain biases present in society, the researchers said. When those biases are codified in trained AI models, they can serve to perpetuate ...

DETROIT — Wayne State University postdoctoral research fellows Patrick Monaghan, Ph.D., and Michael VanNostrand, Ph.D., along with Nora E. Fritz, Ph.D., PT, DPT, NCS, director of the Neuroimaging and Neurorehabilitation Lab and associate professor of physical therapy in the Department of Health Care Sciences in WSU’s Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, recently published a study on mobility assessments in the journal, Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders. The study, “Backwards walking speed reserve in persons ...

The evaluation of the OPTI-MEND trial demonstrates that investing in an additional dedicated professional team to the already existing ED care increases patients’ quality of life and will save, on average per person, a staggering €6,128. Crowding in emergency departments (EDs) is a growing problem in Ireland and internationally and, coupled with long waiting times, affects healthcare outcomes and patient satisfaction. A new study from researchers at Trinity College Dublin and University of Limerick examined the economic impact of adding a specific, appropriate, and dedicated team of professionals to the care already available ...

The climate modeling community has been particularly vexed by the glacial/interglacial cycles of the past three million years, when the Northern Hemisphere oscillated between times with and without large ice sheets. From about 1.25 million to 750,000 years ago—in the Pleistocene epoch—a change in glacial cycles called the Mid-Pleistocene Transition (MPT) occurred. During this time, glacial/interglacial cycles shifted from occurring every 41,000 years to every 100,000 years, with an increase in the amplitude and asymmetry of the cycles. Scientists are working to understand why these changes happened, considering that insolation forcing—variation ...

Metal-halide perovskites have quickly advanced in the last decade since their discovery as a semiconductor that outshines silicon in its conversion of light into electric current.  Simulations on TACC's Frontera and Lonestar6 supercomputers have revealed surprising vortex structures in quasiparticles of electrons and atoms, called polarons, which contribute to generating electricity from sunlight. This new discovery can help scientists develop new solar cells and LED lighting. This type of lighting is hailed as eco-friendly, sustainable technology ...