SAN ANTONIO — June 3, 2024 — Southwest Research Institute will enhance models to strengthen the earthquake resilience of America’s transportation infrastructure and improve public safety in earthquake-prone areas. As part of a contract with the U.S. Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), an SwRI-led team will update and improve liquefaction models. Liquefaction occurs during an earthquake when intense shaking causes soil to temporarily act more like a fluid, losing its capacity to support roads and structures. “For highways specifically, sometimes state and ...

Unraveling the behavior of plasma increasingly requires intensive computing resources. That’s why plasma demands a calculated approach to computation.  As the new head of computational sciences at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), Shantenu Jha is excited to be at the helm of the Lab’s computing efforts, fusing computer science expertise with PPPL’s pioneering research into the fourth state of matter. “I want to continue to grow the excellence that already exists in computing for fusion energy at PPPL, which ...

CLEVELAND—A new study by researchers at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine reveals that the popular diabetes and weight-loss drugs Wegovy and Ozempic are linked to reduced incidence and recurrence of alcohol abuse or dependence. The team’s findings, recently published in the journal Nature Communications, may suggest a possible new treatment for excessive alcohol use—including alcohol-use disorder (AUD), a health condition that causes about 178,000 deaths in the United States each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control. To date, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved only three medications to treat AUD. The active ingredient ...

Blocking a protein known as CDK7 could prevent heart damage associated with a commonly used cancer chemotherapy medication, according to a study led by scientists at Washington State University. Importantly, the researchers also found that inhibiting CDK7 could help enhance the medication’s cancer-killing capability.   Based on an animal model, the study findings could provide a foundation for future treatment strategies to reduce chemotherapy-related heart toxicity and increase treatment effectiveness. ...

Although diet is the leading contributor to premature death from heart disease in the United States, fewer than one-quarter of people who undergo major heart events receive dietary counseling in the aftermath, a study finds.   The research, led by a team from the University of Michigan Health Frankel Cardiovascular Center, tracked nearly 150,000 patients seen at hospitals across Michigan for serious heart conditions — such as heart attack and heart failure — between late 2015 and early 2020.   Results published in Journal of the Academy of Nutrition ...

BOSTON—Healthy adults under the age of 75 are unlikely to benefit from taking more than the daily intake of vitamin D recommended by the Institutes of Medicine (IOM) and do not require testing for vitamin D levels, according to a new Clinical Practice Guideline issued today by the Endocrine Society. For children, pregnant people, adults older than 75 years and adults with high-risk prediabetes, the guideline recommends vitamin D higher than the IOM recommended daily allowance. Vitamin D use and ...

Chocolate lovers may have been alarmed by a 2023 Consumer Reports finding that some dark chocolate brands could contain harmful levels of lead and cadmium. However, a new study by Tulane University published in Food Research International has found that dark chocolate poses no adverse risk for adults and contains nutritionally beneficial levels of essential minerals. The study sampled 155 dark and milk chocolates from various global brands sold in the United States and tested for the presence of 16 heavy metals ranging from the toxic (lead and cadmium) to the essential (copper, iron, zinc). The study then modeled the risk of eating one ounce of the chocolates per day which ...

Black patients with early-stage breast cancer who were treated with docetaxel chemotherapy every 3 weeks had less drug-induced peripheral neuropathy and significantly fewer dose reductions compared to those who received weekly paclitaxel, according to a trial by the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group (ECOG-ACRIN). Study EAZ171 is the first National Cancer Institute (NCI)-sponsored trial to focus specifically on enrolling a minority or underserved population to assess drug-induced toxicity (rather than drug efficacy) ...

In materials science, particularly in the study of glasses, the intermediate range order (IRO) is one of the most intriguing research areas owing to its significant influence over the physical properties of glasses. The IRO refers to the structural arrangement of atoms beyond the short-range order (atomic arrangement within a few atomic distances) but shorter than the long-range order (arrangement patterns over macroscopic distances). Notably, for covalent glasses, the IRO is marked by atomic density fluctuations. Scattering experiments provide a distinct signature of ...

Crucial shift in River Nile’s evolution during ancient Egypt discovered Researchers have explored how the River Nile evolved over the past 11,500 years and how changes in its geography could have helped shape the fortunes of ancient Egyptian civilisation. Research published in Nature Geoscience reveals a major shift in the Nile around four thousand years ago, after which the floodplain in the Nile Valley around Luxor greatly expanded. The findings raise the possibility that this shift could have contributed to the success of the ancient Egyptian agricultural economy at points between the Old and New Kingdom periods. ...

DARIEN, IL – A new study to be presented at the SLEEP 2024 annual meeting found robust evidence that implicates lower alertness, a key outcome of insufficient sleep, as a predictor of muted empathic responding, which suggests alertness may support both cognitive and affective empathy. Results show that slower response times on objective alertness tests were significantly associated with lower levels of empathic concern, and that lapses and false starts on these tests were significantly associated with poorer empathic accuracy. Additionally, those ...

DARIEN, IL – A new study to be presented at the SLEEP 2024 annual meeting found that sleep apnea is associated with increased odds of future utilization of health care services including hospitalization among older adults. Results show that participants aged 50 years and older with sleep apnea had a 21% higher odds of reporting future use of any health service compared with those without sleep apnea. Specifically, individuals with sleep apnea had 21% higher odds of hospitalization after controlling for potential confounders including demographics, body mass index, health conditions, and depressive symptoms. “Our research indicates that older adults who have sleep apnea are more ...

DARIEN, IL – A new study to be presented at the SLEEP 2024 annual meeting found that most sleep tips shared on TikTok are supported by empirical evidence. The research findings show that of 35 unique sleep tips shared in popular videos, there was empirical support for 29. Only six sleep tips were unsupported by scientific evidence. “These results suggest that the sleep research and sleep medicine communities have done a good job of promoting appropriate tips for sleep hygiene,” said lead author Brian T. Gillis, who has studied sleep for eight years and is an assistant professor of marriage and family therapy in the College of Human Sciences ...

DARIEN, IL – A new study to be presented at the SLEEP 2024 annual meeting found that low-dose acetylsalicylic acid, also known as aspirin, can reduce inflammatory responses to sleep restriction. Results show that compared with placebo, preemptive administration of low-dose aspirin during sleep restriction reduced pro-inflammatory responses. Specifically, aspirin reduced interleukin-6 expression and COX-1/COX-2 double positive cells in lipopolysaccharide-stimulated monocytes, as well as C-reactive protein serum levels. “The novelty of this study is that it investigated whether we can pharmacologically reduce the inflammatory consequences of sleep restriction,” ...

A team of New York University researchers has created a new way to visualize crystals by peering inside their structures, akin to having X-ray vision. Their new technique—which they aptly named “Crystal Clear”—combines the use of transparent particles and microscopes with lasers that allow scientists to see each unit that makes up the crystal and to create dynamic three-dimensional models. “This is a powerful platform for studying crystals,” says Stefano Sacanna, professor of chemistry at NYU and the principal investigator for the study, published in the journal Nature ...

AMHERST, Mass. – A team of scientists led by François Lapointe, a research associate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has combined paleoclimatic data from the last 2,000 years with powerful computer modeling and in-the-field research on lake sediments and tree rings to show that an understudied phenomenon, known as atmospheric blocking, has long influenced temperature swings in the Arctic. As temperatures warm due to climate change, atmospheric blocking will help drive ever-wilder weather events. The study focused ...

Nextdoor is the world’s largest hyperlocal social media network, used by 13% of American adults. Yet little is known about the make-up of the actual neighborhoods—numbering approximately 220,000 across the United States—in which these accounts exist and what people in those communities talk about on the platform.  To address our limited understanding of this population, a team of New York University and University of Michigan researchers generated a demographic portrait of communities in which Nextdoor neighborhoods exist, the presence of public agencies in those communities, and what topics are most often discussed. Using U.S. Census data, other publicly available ...

Permafrost soils store large quantities of organic carbon and are often portrayed as a critical tipping element in the Earth system, which, once global warming has reached a certain level, suddenly and globally collapses. Yet this image of a ticking timebomb, one that remains relatively quiet until, at a certain level of warming, it goes off, is a controversial one among the research community. Based on the scientific data currently available, the image is deceptive, as an international team led by the Alfred Wegener Institute has shown in a recently released study. According to their findings, there is no single ...

San Antonio, Texas – June 3, 2024 – Recognizing an unusual prevalence of bloodstream infections (BSI) that threatened extremely ill patients receiving Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation, or ECMO, Tampa General Hospital (TGH) infection preventionists started an intervention that eliminated these infections completely from their 18-bed Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit (CTICU). At the APIC 2024 Annual Conference, presenters from the 1,000-bed, tertiary care, academic medical system  reported on how they reduced bloodstream infections in ECMO patients from a rate of 36% in October 2021 to a rate of 0% in April 2022. This rate was sustained for seven ...

The primary cause of lung cancer is smoking. However, the incidence of lung cancer among never-smokers has been steadily increasing, especially among women. While approximately 80% of never-smoking lung cancer patients are prescribed targeted therapies that focus on mutations in proteins such as EGFR and ALK, the remaining patients often receive cytotoxic chemotherapy with high side effects and relatively low response rates, highlighting the urgent need for targeted therapies. Dr. Lee Cheolju's ...

Converting CO2 into fuel and chemicals using electricity, also known as electrochemical conversion of CO2, is a promising way to reduce emissions. This process allows us to use carbon captured from industries and the atmosphere and turn it into resources that we usually get from fossil fuels. To advance ongoing research on efficient electrochemical conversion, scientists from Doshisha University have introduced a cost-effective method to produce valuable hydrocarbons from CO2. The study was made available online on 17 May 2024 and formally published in the journal Electrochimica Acta on 20 July 2024. The research team, led by Professor Takuya Goto and including Ms. Saya Nozaki from ...

How can someone have alcohol intoxication without consuming alcohol? Auto-brewery syndrome, a rare condition in which gut fungi create alcohol through fermentation, is described in a case study in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) https://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.231319. “Auto-brewery syndrome carries substantial social, legal, and medical consequences for patients and their loved ones,” writes Dr. Rahel Zewude, University of Toronto, with coauthors. “Our patient had several [emergency department] visits, was assessed by internists and psychiatrists, and was certified ...

Implementing human papillomavirus (HPV)-based screening in British Columbia could eliminate cervical cancer in the province before 2040, according to a modelling study in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) https://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.231682. More than 90% of cervical cancer cases worldwide are caused by 9 types of high-risk HPV. The World Health Organization and the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer (CPAC) have both set targets to eliminate cervical cancer by 2040, defined as an annual rate of less than 4 per 100 000 women. The Pap test has been the primary screening ...

Berlin, Germany:  While influenza infection is a significant public health threat, causing serious illness in between three and five million people worldwide per year and leading to about up to 650,000 deaths, the effectiveness of influenza vaccines varies considerably between individuals depending on vaccine types and individual circumstances. A person’s ability to resist infection (host immunity) plays an important role in this. Now, researchers have developed a way of classifying host immunity in individuals, which may lead to the early identification of those who will not respond well to a regular vaccine schedule and therefore ...

Berlin, Germany:  Aneuploidy (the presence of an abnormal number of chromosomes) in embryos is a major cause of impaired embryo development, leading to conditions such as Down syndrome, as well as to pregnancy loss. The transfer of such embryos in women undergoing IVF is therefore usually avoided because of unfavourable pregnancy outcomes. But mosaic embryos, comprising both genetically normal and abnormal cells, can result in perfectly normal babies. Now, researchers have been able to understand how these mosaic ...