Proteins are important molecules that perform a variety of functions essential to life. To function properly, many proteins must fold into specific structures. However, the way proteins fold into specific structures is still largely unknown. Researchers from the University of Tokyo developed a novel physical theory that can accurately predict how proteins fold. Their model can predict things previous models cannot. Improved knowledge of protein folding could offer huge benefits to medical research, as well as to various industrial processes. You are literally made of proteins. These chainlike molecules, made from tens to thousands of smaller molecules called amino acids, form things like hair, ...

A McMaster University-led analysis published in the BMJ on Oct. 19, exposes high rates of injuries with forceps and vacuum delivery in Canada that have been documented for over a decade without efforts to address them.    The paper, titled Maternal and neonatal trauma during forceps and vacuum delivery must not be overlooked, was authored by perinatal epidemiologists, obstetricians, urogynecologists, community advocates and patient partners, and calls for increased recognition, transparency and action to prevent these injuries.   As part of the analysis, researchers present data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation ...

Toronto, ON — New research from the University of Toronto has revealed the mental health toll of the COVID-19 pandemic on older adults with peptic ulcer disease (PUD), a painful condition in which gastric sores develop in the lining of the stomach or upper portion of the small intestine. The researchers examined a subsample of older adults from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging, a national dataset of older Canadians. The sample consisted of 1,140 older adults with PUD, of whom 689 had a pre-pandemic history of depression and 451 had no history of depression. By using longitudinal data, the researchers were ...

Key takeaways: Eating more than one weekly serving of red meat may raise type 2 diabetes risk. Replacing red meat with plant-based protein sources, such as nuts and legumes, may reduce risk of type 2 diabetes. Embargoed for release: Thursday, October 19, 4:00 AM ET Boston, MA — People who eat just two servings of red meat per week may have an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes compared to people who eat fewer servings, and the risk increases with greater consumption, according to a new study led by researchers from Harvard T.H. ...

Grouping English learners together in classrooms, a longstanding practice in schools, has no impact—positive or negative—on reading development for elementary school students, shows a new study by a team of literacy education researchers. “When I taught middle school 20 years ago, I noticed that my English learner students were separated from their native English-speaking peers all day long,” says NYU Steinhardt associate professor Michael Kieffer, the study’s lead author. “Data show that this practice continues in many places today, ...

Arlington, Va. — October 19, 2023 — A new report published today in the American Journal of Infection Control (AJIC) demonstrates that implementing a dedicated team of nurses to assist with central line insertions can reduce patients’ risk of developing bloodstream infections due to those central lines. In this report, infection preventionists at UNC Health found that having this dedicated team reduced the proportion of central line-associated bloodstream infections occurring within ...

Scientists have discovered the deepest known evidence of coral reef bleaching, more than 90 metres below the surface of the Indian Ocean. The damage – attributed to a 30% rise in sea temperatures caused by the Indian Ocean dipole – harmed up to 80% of the reefs in certain parts of the seabed, at depths previously thought to be resilient to ocean warming. However, scientists say it serves as a stark warning of the harm caused in our ocean by rising ocean temperatures, and also of the hidden damage being caused throughout the natural world as a result of climate change. The findings, highlighted in a study published ...

Of all the mammals, bats have one of the poorest fossil records, with palaeontologists estimating that about 80 per cent of it is missing. This has made it difficult to pinpoint exactly when they first began to fly, or began roosting in caves, or developed their unique way of ‘seeing’ their surroundings in the dark using sound – called echolocation. But a near-perfectly preserved bat’s skull discovered by French palaeontologists in a cave that dates back about 50 million years has shed new light on what we thought we knew about this ancient, ...

Many aquifers in California and around the world are being drained of their groundwater because of the combined impacts of excess pumping, shifts in land use, and climate change. However, a new study by scientists at UC Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley, published on Oct. 18 in Nature Water, may offer a solution. It describes the development and operation of a novel incentive program that uses water rebates to pay for some of the costs of getting stormwater runoff into the ground. The program is called recharge net metering (ReNeM). Although ...

In vitro fertilization (IVF) is a time-intensive and often stress-inducing fertility procedure. Yet how does that stress impact its success? Investigators at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, assessed the effects of anxiety and depression in men on fertility and IVF outcomes. Their findings reveal no correlation between anxiety, regardless of antidepressant use, on IVF outcomes or live birth rate. Results are published in Human Reproduction. “Our findings indicate that despite past concerns over antidepressant medication’s ...

Niigata, Japan - A new Japanese ecological study revealed that prefecture-specific participation rates for Specific Health Checkups (SHC participation rates) had significant negative effects on prefecture-specific standardized incidence rates (SIRs) of treated ESKD and prefecture-specific prevalence of chronic kidney disease (CKD). The findings support the importance of increasing SHC participation rates at the population level and encouraging people to undergo regular health checkups. "Japan has one of the highest incidence and ...

A 2000-year-old practice by Chinese herbalists – examining the human tongue for signs of disease – is now being embraced by computer scientists using machine learning and artificial intelligence. Tongue diagnostic systems are fast gaining traction due to an increase in remote health monitoring worldwide, and a study by Iraqi and Australian researchers provides more evidence of the increasing accuracy of this technology to detect disease. Engineers from Middle Technical University (MTU) in Baghdad and the University of South Australia (UniSA) used a USB web camera and computer to capture tongue ...

NYU leadership - including recently inaugurated President Linda Mills and NYU Tandon School of Engineering Dean Jelena Kovačević - joined University faculty and partners on October 18th to cut the ribbon at the newly-minted NYU Nanofabrication (NanoFab) Cleanroom, a specialized research environment in which scientists and engineers can fabricate cutting-edge semiconductor chips to advance research on quantum science and engineering, precision medicine, neurotechnologies, next-generation communications technology and secure computing.  Located on NYU Tandon’s ...

Two widely used statins, rosuvastatin and atorvastatin, are equally effective at preventing heart attacks, strokes and death in people with coronary artery disease. But while rosuvastatin treatment is associated with lower cholesterol levels, it also carries a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes than atorvastatin, finds a study published by The BMJ today.  Lowering “bad” (LDL) cholesterol levels with statins is recommended for people with coronary artery disease - a condition where the blood vessels supplying the heart are ...

Surgery to straighten a crooked septum (the thin wall of bone and cartilage dividing the space between the two nostrils) is more effective than nasal sprays, and should be offered to adults with at least moderate symptoms such as breathing disruption, suggests a UK trial published by The BMJ today. A crooked (deviated) septum often means that one nasal passage is narrower than the other, making it feel blocked, which can affect breathing, sleep or exercising. Surgery to correct this (septoplasty) is a common operation. In 2019-20, 16,700 septoplasties were carried ...

  Biodegradable plastics may not be the solution to plastic pollution many hoped for, with a University of Otago study showing they are still harmful to fish.   Petroleum-derived microplastics are known to impact marine life, but little is known about the impact of biodegradable alternatives.   The study, published in Science of the Total Environment and funded by a University of Otago Research Grant, is the first to assess the impact petroleum-derived plastic and biodegradable plastic have on wild fish.   Lead author Ashleigh Hawke, who completed a Master of Science in Otago’s Department of Marine Science, ...

The fusion of artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled technologies and precision oncology is advancing at an unprecedented pace, and the introduction of the new peer-reviewed journal, AI in Precision Oncology, will support clinicians, researchers, AI experts, patients, and industry leaders with up-to-date advancements in the field while fostering an environment conducive to further innovation and collaboration. A preview issue of the journal is now available. Click here to read the issue now.  “At the heart of my vision for this journal is the ...

The U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research has funded a new Multi-University Research Initiative to be led by Yuliy Baryshnikov, a professor of mathematics and electrical & computer engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The initiative, Hybrid Dynamics – Deconstruction and Aggregation, or HyDDRA, will bring researchers from four universities together to address the problem of hybrid control using modern mathematical tools. The initiative will be funded with an award ...

Jonathan Middleton, DMA, a professor of music theory and composition at Eastern Washington University, is the lead author of a newly published study demonstrating how the transformation of digital data into sounds could be a game-changer in the growing world of data interpretation. The analysis was conducted over three years with researchers from the Human-Computer Interaction Group at Finland’s Tampere University. Recently published in the peer-review journal Frontiers in Big Data, Dr. Middleton’s research paper examines how he and his co-investigators were primarily concerned with showing ...

As the wind and rain pound the blades of a wind turbine, UBC Okanagan researchers carefully monitor screens, hundreds of kilometres away analyzing if the blade’s coatings can withstand the onslaught. While this was only a test in a lab, the researchers are working to improve the way structures such as turbines, helicopter propellers and even bridges are monitored for wear and tear from the weather. A changing climate is increasing the need for better erosion-corrosion monitoring in a wide range of industries from aviation to marine transportation and from renewable energy generation to construction, explains UBC Okanagan doctoral student Vishal Balasubramanian. In ...

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. (October 18, 2023) — Today, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) announced the launch of a new biomedical research hub in New York City that will catalyze collaboration between leading scientific and technology institutions in the area, with the goal of solving grand scientific challenges on 10- to 15-year time horizons. The Chan Zuckerberg Biohub New York (CZ Biohub NY) brings together Columbia University, The Rockefeller University, and Yale University to create new technologies to characterize and bioengineer immune cells — with the ultimate ...

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Cornell researchers have harnessed the power of baker’s yeast to create a cost-effective and highly efficient approach for unraveling how plants synthesize medicinal compounds, and used the new method to identify key enzymes in a kratom tree. Aspirin, morphine and some chemotherapies are examples of drugs that are derived from natural compounds produced by plants. Understanding how a plant creates such compounds usually begins with analyzing plant transcriptomes to identify up to hundreds of genes that could potentially code for the enzymes that work together ...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, eviction moratoria prevented or delayed many people from experiencing homelessness. But now that the pandemic is over and the short-term eviction protection has ended, the number of evictions and cost of basic needs have increased. Daphne Hernandez, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Research with Cizik School of Nursing at UTHealth Houston, is studying how varying periods of eviction protection that people experienced during the pandemic is associated with psychosocial ...

A five-year, $6.4 million grant to develop an integrated, multiscale artificial intelligence (AI) approach to study genetic factors associated with Alzheimer’s disease has been awarded to UTHealth Houston by the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health. A team led by Zhongming Zhao, PhD, and Xiaoqian Jiang, PhD, principal investigators and professors at McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics at UTHealth Houston, are developing a deep-learning AI system to link brain imaging with cell-specific ...

SAN ANTONIO — October 18, 2023 —On November 2, Dr. Alan Stern, planetary scientist and associate vice president of Southwest Research Institute’s Space Science Division, will fly aboard the Virgin Galactic commercial spaceship VSS Unity on a suborbital space mission to train for a future NASA-funded Virgin Galactic suborbital flight in which he will perform two NASA experiments in space. “When I was a kid, human spaceflight was only available to NASA astronauts and Russian cosmonauts. Now that’s changing, and SwRI is pioneering a new era of space research being conducted in space, by space scientists,” Stern ...