Investigators from the SWOG Cancer Research Network have developed and validated a risk prediction model for identifying which patients with advanced cancer who are enrolled to clinical trials are at highest risk for unplanned emergency room (ER) visits and hospital stays. Determining which patients are at significantly higher risk could inform interventions to reduce the need for such visits, improving care quality and reducing costs. The work will be delivered as an oral presentation by Dawn L. Hershman, MD, MS, at the 2024 ASCO Quality Care Symposium, which will ...

Background and Goal: Family medicine residency programs are essential for training future primary care physicians. The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) program requires family medicine residents to perform two scholarly projects. One must be a quality improvement project, and the second project type is at the program's discretion. This study assessed the scholarly activity output of family medicine residency programs in the U.S., identified institutional factors associated with increased scholarly ...

Background and Goal: This study examined whether patients with non-reversible chronic airway disease using a transparent capsule in single-dose dry powder inhalers affects the amount of medication delivered. The goal was to determine if patients who use transparent capsules that allow them to see if the medication has been fully inhaled have better inhalation results compared to those using opaque capsules. Study Approach: Researchers conducted an observational cross-sectional study between October 2020 and October ...

Background and Goal: The U.S. is experiencing a maternal health crisis, particularly in rural areas. This issue is compounded by rising rates of severe maternal morbidity and mortality. Family physicians often fill critical gaps in care in rural areas where obstetricians are scarce. This study examined how the presence of family physicians in rural hospitals impacts cesarean delivery rates and the overall quality of care during childbirth. Study Approach: The study analyzed data from rural hospitals in Iowa and collected survey responses from clinicians  about their attitudes and practices related to ...

Background and Goal: “Long COVID” is the continuation or development of new symptoms three months after initial SARS-CoV-2 infection. For many patients with long COVID, primary care is the first point of interaction with the health care system. This study aimed to examine the expectations and experiences of primary care patients seeking treatment for long COVID. Study Approach: Researchers conducted 20 semistructured interviews between 2022 and 2023 with primary care patients from a ...

Inspired by the VA’s My Life, My Story project, this initiative used the Electronic Health Record (EHR) to strengthen the patient-physician relationship. The initiative invited patients to share personal narratives before their first visit with a new primary care physician. Conducted at a regional clinic affiliated with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the project involved sending secure messages to patients, asking them to describe what they wanted their health care team to know about them as a person. The majority of patients responded ...

September 23, 2024, Mountain View, CA – The SETI Institute's AIR program announced the recipients of its Cosmic Consciousness residency for mid-career and emerging artists: Open (Mid-Career) category: The recipients are the artist team of Bart Kuipers, Julie Michele Morin, and daniela brill estrada, with their project Exoplanet Poetry. The artists plan to create a book of poems using an AI trained on chemical data from imagined extraterrestrial sources. The book will be presented as a multi-sensory chemical experience, making ...

A probable crater stretching more than 370 miles, or 600 kilometers, across the heart of Australia could reshape our understanding of Earth’s geological history. Researcher Daniel Connelly and Virginia Commonwealth University’s Arif Sikder, Ph.D., believe they have found evidence to support the existence of MAPCIS – the Massive Australian Precambrian-Cambrian Impact Structure -– which is a nonconcentric complex crater that could provide new insights into the geological and biological evolution of our planet. “Working on the MAPCIS project has been an incredible journey,” said Sikder, an associate professor in the Center for ...

Solar flares are extremely intense events that occur in the Sun’s atmosphere, lasting anywhere from a few minutes to several hours. According to the standard flare model, the energy that triggers these explosions is transported by accelerated electrons that hurtle from the magnetic reconnection region in the corona to the chromosphere. As the electrons collide with the chromospheric plasma, they deposit their energy in the plasma, which is heated and ionized as a result. They also cause intense radiation in several ...

A University of Missouri researcher has created a computer program that can unravel the mysteries of how proteins work together — giving scientists valuable insights to better prevent, diagnose and treat cancer and other diseases. Jianlin “Jack” Cheng from Mizzou’s College of Engineering and his student, Nabin Giri, have developed a tool called Cryo2Struct that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to build the three-dimensional atomic structure of large protein complexes, work recently published in Nature Communications. ...

A significant breakthrough in the understanding of sleep mechanism opens new promise for treating sleep disorders and associated neuropsychiatric conditions: Scientists have pinpointed the melatonin receptor MT1 as a crucial regulator of REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. REM sleep is crucial for dreaming, memory consolidation, and emotional regulation. In the brain, the melatonin MT1 receptor affects a type of neuron that synthesizes the neurotransmitter and hormone noradrenaline, found in an ...

The degree to which a surgical patient’s subconscious processing of pain, or “nociception,” is properly managed by their anesthesiologist will directly affect the degree of post-operative drug side effects they’ll experience and the need for further pain management they’ll require. But pain is a subjective feeling to measure, even when patients are awake, much less when they are unconscious. In a new study, MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers describe a set of statistical models that objectively quantified nociception during surgery. Ultimately, they hope to help anesthesiologists optimize drug dose and minimize post-operative ...

The researchers used tiny GPS tracking devices to follow the movements of 104 cranes in Africa, Asia, and Europe. These devices included unique solar-powered GPS leg bands developed by scientists from MPI-AB. The tracking data revealed the impressive migrations that cranes undertook. Some of the migratory routes exceeded 6,400 km of travel round trip and required crossing barriers such as the Alps or Himalaya mountain ranges, the deserts of the Arabian peninsula, or the Mediterranean Sea. In addition to the tracking study, the researchers also developed a statistical framework that revealed how the cranes’ movements relate to aspects of the ...

Engineers at RMIT University have designed an innovative tubular structural system that can be packed flat for easier transport and pop up into strong building materials. This breakthrough is made possible by a self-locking system inspired by curved-crease origami — a technique that uses curved crease lines in paper folding. Lead researchers, Dr Jeff (Ting-Uei) Lee and Distinguished Professor Mike (Yi Min) Xie, said bamboo, which has internal structures providing natural reinforcement, inspired the tube design. “This self-locking system is the result of an intelligent geometric design,” said Lee from RMIT’s School of Engineering. ...

Johns Hopkins Medicine scientists who arranged for 48 human bioengineered heart tissue samples to spend 30 days at the International Space Station report evidence that the low gravity conditions in space weakened the tissues and disrupted their normal rhythmic beats when compared to earth-bound samples from the same source. The scientists said the heart tissues “really don’t fare well in space,” and over time, the tissues aboard the space station beat about half as strong as tissues from the same source kept on Earth. The findings, ...

Joshua Lupton, M.D., has no memory of his own cardiac arrest in 2016. He only knows that first responders resuscitated his heart with a shock from a defibrillator, ultimately leading to his complete recovery and putting him among fewer than one in 10 people nationwide who survive cardiac arrest outside of a hospital. He attributes his survival to the rapid defibrillation he received from first responders — but not everybody is so fortunate. Now, as lead author on a new observational study published in the journal JAMA Network Open, he and co-authors from Oregon Health & Science University ...

A student studying biological chemistry at The University of Texas at Arlington earned a state-wide award for her research on diazo compounds, the building blocks of some medications. Jenny Hoang, a senior, received the third-place award at the 2024 University of Texas System Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) conference held in El Paso in August. “Honestly, I was so shocked that I won third place because I almost didn’t even apply for this program,” said Hoang, a Carrollton ...

High levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere can alter not only the climate of our planet but also the functioning of our cells. The gas interacts with hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), which performs various functions in the human body, giving rise to a potent oxidant called peroxymonocarbonate. "More and more evidence is emerging that peroxymonocarbonate is important in both cells’ adaptive responses via redox signaling and in cellular dysfunction. There is also epidemiological evidence that the levels of CO2 our cities are close to reaching cause a number of physiological problems. And the mechanisms underlying the toxicity of CO2 are ...

Scientists from the American Cancer Society (ACS) are presenting research studies at the 2024 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Quality Care Symposium (QCS) September 27-28 in San Francisco, CA. ASCO QCS offers research and education that encompasses the needs and viewpoints of multiple disciplines and various practice settings, attracting oncology professionals from around the world. This year’s program will feature studies complementing the meeting’s theme: “Driving Solutions, Implementing ...

New research finds that adults with schizophrenia spectrum disorders have high rates of comorbid mental and substance use disorders and significant social and economic disadvantages, and only 26% received minimally adequate treatment. Meeting the needs of people with schizophrenia spectrum disorders will require innovative interventions and implementation to improve access to and use of evidence-based approaches, the authors argue. The research was published today in Psychiatric Services in Advance. The researchers, led by Natalie Bareis, Ph.D., ...

Reston, VA (September 23, 2024)—More than 300 nuclear medicine clinicians, researchers, technologists, regulators and suppliers gathered in Bethesda, Maryland, on September 19-21, for the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) 2024 Therapeutics Conference. As the largest SNMMI Therapeutics Conference to date, the meeting offered attendees the chance to explore the latest innovations and advancements in theranostics and other nuclear medicine therapies as well as gain valuable insights into enhancing their practice. This year’s Therapeutics Conference included eight distinct sessions covering advances in radiopharmaceutical ...

Following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, many companies with operations in Russia withdrew from or severely curtailed their Russian operations. For example, Dell and McDonald’s ceased all operations in Russia after the invasion. Many experts have argued that the corporate response to the Ukraine war is a striking example of stakeholder capitalism, a model where corporations are responsible for considering the interests of various stakeholders — including employees, customers, communities, governments and the environment — and not just ...

A Mississippi State biologist’s groundbreaking research in improving global nutrition and sustainability is featured this week in New Phytologist, a leading plant biology journal. Ling Li, an associate professor in the MSU Department of Biological Sciences, has spent more than a decade studying rice and soybean crops, with the goal of providing a new strategy for crop improvement to increase protein content.  Her work offers a potential solution to combat global protein deficiency, a condition affecting millions, particularly children, contributing to cognitive impairments, stunted growth and susceptibility to diseases like Kwashiorkor, ...

DETROIT — Wayne State University researchers recently received a grant from the Great Lakes Protection Fund to team with the Huron River Watershed Council, the Cleveland Water Alliance, Buffalo Niagara Waterkeeper and Resource Recycling Systems to help communities combat microplastics in water sources. The project, “Mobilizing a Great Lakes Microplastic Action Network,” is led by Yongli Wager, Ph.D., associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of the Sustainable Water-Environment-Energy Technologies Lab in Wayne State’s College of Engineering. The project’s goal is to create ...

Doctors and researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus published a discussion paper today highlighting key initiatives to help strengthen, train and prepare doctors and health care workers for the impact of climate change on human health. The paper is published in the National Academy of Medicine Perspectives. The authors, who come from a diverse background in health care from pediatrics to emergency medicine, and nursing to pharmacy, outline the importance of educating a climate-savvy health care workforce and highlight educational opportunities to fulfill the critical need. “As climate change increasingly ...