WASHINGTON -- New research conducted with Washington, DC, residents who experienced homelessness during pregnancy sheds light on the intersection of homelessness, pregnancy, and racial inequities. The findings underscore the urgent need for policy and practice changes to support vulnerable populations. The study, published May 30, 2024 in the journal Health Equity (DOI: 10.1089/heq.2023.0235), is grounded in a reproductive justice framework and delves into the lived experiences of 20 DC residents who faced homelessness while pregnant. Homelessness ...

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – In a head-to-head comparison of masks worn by people with active COVID-19, the inexpensive “duckbill” N95 came out on top, stopping 98% of COVID-19 particles in the breath of infected people from escaping into the air. Led by researchers from the University of Maryland School of Public Health (SPH), results showed other masks also performed well, blocking at least 70% of viral particles from escaping from the source – an infected person’s exhaled breath. The study, Relative efficacy of masks and respirators as source control for viral aerosol shedding from people infected with SARS-CoV-2, published May 29 in eBioMedicine, a Lancet ...

Cultivating creativity in schools is vital for a future driven by artificial intelligence (AI). But while teachers embrace creativity as an essential 21st century skill, a lack of valid and reliable creativity tests means schools struggle to assess student achievement.   Now, a new machine-learning model developed by the University of South Australia is providing teachers with access to high-quality, fit-for-purpose creativity tests, that can score assessments in a fraction of the time and a fraction of the cost.   Applied to the current ...

The deep degradation of organic pollutants through solar light-coupled photocatalysis and the Fenton reaction (Photo-Fenton) holds significant importance in the field of water purification. In this study, a novel bifunctional catalyst (Fe-PEI-CN) was synthesized by electrostatic self-assembly and hydrothermal methods, doping graphene-like carbon nitride (CN) with polyethyleneimine (PEI) and iron (Fe) species. This catalyst efficiently degraded p-chlorophenol (p-ClPhOH) by generating hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) during the photocatalytic process. The relationship between catalytic efficiency and structure was explored using various characterization techniques.Under ...

Tumour protein P53 (TP53) plays an important role in suppressing the growth of tumours. Mutations in the gene for TP53 can have a disastrous effect, hampering the body's ability to fight tumours and even encouraging their growth. Because these are the most common mutations in cancers, TP53 has long been an interesting therapeutic target. However, efforts to destroy the mutant protein have been hampered by the difficulty of finding a way to bind to it. Now, a team of researchers from Xi'an ...

New Curtin University research reveals taking pictures of food isn’t just content for our social media feeds, but could be the key to improving people’s diets.   Published in the prestigious American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the feeding study saw researchers measure the weight of meals, which were then provided to participants over a day for breakfast, lunch and dinner.   Participants compared different technology-assisted methods to recall what they had eaten over the past 24 hours.    One method asked participants to take photos of their meals using the mobile Food Record app.   These ...

On-site pathology tests for infectious diseases in rural and remote locations can be just as reliable and accurate as tests carried out in a hospital laboratory, a new report from Flinders University shows. Flinders University researchers tested the quality of on-site pathology testing, or Point-of-Care-Testing (POCT), for molecular-based, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) detection in over 100 remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities across Australia. “Our study demonstrates that when point-of-care testing models are effectively established and managed, the quality of pathology results can be equivalent to ...

Carolyn C. Meltzer, MD, dean of the Keck School of Medicine of USC, has been appointed to the board overseeing the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). CIRM is the voter-created agency that funds stem cell research throughout the state. “Stem cell research holds the tremendous promise to unlock health solutions that patients need,” said Steven D. Shapiro, MD, USC’s senior vice president for health affairs. “The CIRM board—and the people of our state—will benefit greatly from Meltzer’s wide-ranging leadership experience and place at the ...

Antibiotics prevent snails from forming new memories by disrupting their gut microbiome - the community of beneficial bacteria found in their guts.     The new research, led by the University of East Anglia (UEA) in collaboration with Aberystwyth University, highlights the damaging effects that human pollution could be having on aquatic wildlife.   In the study, pond snails were given a favourite food – carrot juice – but had to quickly learn and remember that it was no longer safe to eat.     Snails ...

STARKVILLE, Miss.— A Mississippi State faculty member’s work on symbiosis—a mutually beneficial relationship between living organisms—is pushing back against the newer theory of a “single-origin” of root nodule symbiosis (RNS)—that all symbiosis between plant root nodules and nitrogen-fixing bacteria stems from one point—instead suggesting a “multiple-origin” theory of symbiosis which opens a better understanding for genetically engineering crops. Ryan A. Folk, an assistant professor in the MSU Department of Biological Sciences and herbarium curator, is an author on a paper published this month in Nature ...

Shortly after artificial intelligence models including Midjourney and OpenAI’s Dall-E went public, AI-generated art started winning competitions: one in digital art, another in photography. Concern rumbled that AI could replace artists — and even, by some metrics, be more creative than humans. But simultaneously, people were exploring these tools as ways to augment their creative processes, not replace them. University of Washington researchers grew curious about how AI might affect creativity in children, specifically, so they worked with a group of 12 Seattle-area kids ages seven to 13 to explore how the kids’ creative processes interacted ...

Moisés A. Bernal, assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Auburn University, is collaborating with researchers Kathleen Lotterhos (Northeast University), Megan Phifer-Rixey (Drexel University), and Torrance Hanley, (Sacred Heart University) to evaluate the effectiveness of virtual lab meetings in demystifying the hidden curriculum in academia, incentivize primary research among students without previous experience, and foster participation of underrepresented groups in STEM. The “Biological Practices” article entitled A virtual lab meeting training program mutually benefits mentees and host labs was recently published ...

May 29, 2024 Boosters that target the omicron subvariants of SARS-CoV-2 are still providing reasonably durable protection against infection, hospitalization and death from COVID-19, according to new data from a study led by researchers at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. Published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, the study found that COVID-19 boosters targeting the XBB.1.5 subvariants were most effective one month after receiving one. After four weeks, the vaccines were 52.2% effective at preventing infection and 66.8% effective at preventing hospitalization. The vaccines were also highly effective ...

STARKVILLE, Miss.—A Mississippi State faculty member’s work on plant life symbiosis—a mutually beneficial relationship between living organisms—is pushing back against the newer theory of “single-origin”—that all life stems from one point—instead suggesting “multiple-origin” theory which opens a better understanding for genetically engineering crops. Ryan A. Folk, an assistant professor in the MSU Department of Biological Sciences and herbarium curator, is an author on a paper published this month in ...

Three Huntsman Cancer Institute researchers have recently been recognized for their work as outstanding faculty members at the University of Utah (the U). Kim Kaphingst, ScD, director of cancer communication research at Huntsman Cancer Institute and professor of communication at the U, and June Round, PhD, investigator at Huntsman Cancer Institute and professor of microbiology and immunology at the U, were both granted the 2024 Distinguished Research Award. The faculty prize is given annually to scholars who exemplify exceptional research.  Kaphingst’s group explores cancer communication, particularly how to educate patients and families who ...

In a paper recently published in Nature Communications, the HUN-REN-ELTE Protein Modeling Research Group (Institute of Chemistry) has laid the foundations for a mathematical method, allowing the computer-assisted comparison of the three-dimensional structures of proteins. The method is unique in that while the alternatives available so far only took into account the position of the atoms, the new technique, called LoCoHD (Local Composition Hellinger Distance), also includes the chemical information of the atoms. Proteins are molecular machines that carry out processes necessary for cells to function, acting as molecular switches, transcribing information ...

When trying to measure molecular structures with nanometer precision, every bit of noise shows up in the data: someone walking past the microscope, tiny vibrations in the building and even the traffic outside. A new processing technique removes noise from optical microscope data in real time, allowing scientists to track individual molecules over 10 times more precisely than was possible before. A team of bioengineering researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has introduced an algorithm called adaptive intersection maximization, or AIM, that removes high-frequency ...

Researchers at Rice University have revealed a previously unknown function of opioid receptors in the development of the enteric nervous system (ENS), often referred to as the “brain in the gut.” This discovery challenges conventional understanding of opioid receptors, shedding new light on their significance beyond pain management and addiction. Led by Rosa Uribe, an assistant professor of biosciences at Rice and a Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) Scholar, the research team identified the genes critical for ENS development by conducting a series of experiments using zebrafish ...

CLEVELAND - Researchers from Cleveland Clinic and IBM recently published findings in the Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation that could lay the groundwork for applying quantum computing methods to protein structure prediction. This publication is the first peer-reviewed quantum computing paper from the Cleveland Clinic-IBM  Discovery Accelerator partnership.  For decades, researchers have leveraged computational approaches to predict protein structures. A protein folds itself into a structure that determines how it functions and binds to other ...

WHAT: Researchers have, for the first time, visualized the full network of blood vessels across the cortex of awake mice, finding that blood vessels rhythmically expand and contract leading to “waves” washing across the surface of the brain. These findings, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), improve the understanding of how the brain receives blood, though the function of the waves remains a mystery. A network of elastic and actively pumping vessels carrying oxygenated blood span the surface of the brain before entering the cortex. There, they feed into a second network of capillaries that supply oxygen deeper into ...

More out-of-state women, largely from Texas and Alaska, are traveling to Washington state to obtain an abortion than was the case before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to abortion, according to research published today in JAMA Network Open. The study tracked the number of abortions performed at the Cedar River Clinics, a large network of care sites in Washington state, both before and after the 2022 Dobbs decision. Researchers found a 50% increase in out-of-state patients (from 4% to 6%) and documented an average one-week delay in care for all patients seeking ...

SAN ANTONIO (May 29, 2024) – SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 disease, continues to evolve and evade current vaccine and therapeutic interventions. A consortium of scientists at Texas Biomedical Research Institute (Texas Biomed), the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and Columbia University have developed a promising new human monoclonal antibody that appears a step closer to a universal antibody cocktail that works against all strains of SARS-CoV-2. “This antibody worked against the original SARS-CoV-2 strain, Omicron and SARS-CoV, providing ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, MAY 29, 2024 MINNEAPOLIS – While older drugs for epilepsy, taken while pregnant, have been shown in previous research to affect the creative thinking of children, a new study finds no effects on creativity for children born to those taking newer epilepsy drugs. This study is published in the May 29, 2024, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Overall, the study found no effects on the children’s creative abilities or their executive function, which is a person’s ability to plan, focus, and manage multiple tasks. However, when ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, MAY 29, 2024 MINNEAPOLIS – People who report early memory problems and whose partners also suspect they have memory problems have higher levels of tau tangles in the brain, a biomarker associated with Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study published in the May 29, 2024, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Subjective cognitive decline is when a person reports memory and thinking problems before any decline is large enough to show up on standard tests. “Understanding the earliest signs of Alzheimer’s disease is even more important ...

Researchers found that reports from patients and their partners about cognitive decline were associated with the accumulation of tau, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease A new study adds further evidence that when a patient or family member notices signs of persistent memory loss, it’s important to speak with a doctor. While there are many reasons why someone’s memory may change, researchers from Mass General Brigham who are studying patients prior to diagnosis with Alzheimer’s disease found changes in the brain when patients and their study partners—those who could answer questions about their ...