Researchers discovered a drug that safely and effectively helped cancer patients when they suffered from cachexia (ku-KEK-see-uh), a common condition related to cancer that involves weight loss and muscle wasting. The results of the randomized phase 2 clinical trial, which included187 individuals who experienced cachexia with lung, pancreatic, or colorectal cancer, were reported in the New England Journal of Medicine on Sept. 14, 2024. Richard Dunne, MD, MS, a Wilmot Cancer Institute oncologist and cachexia expert was part of the large group of investigators ...

Blanca Barquera's investigation into the energy-generating processes of Bacteroides, the most abundant member of the gut microbiome, and their impact on our well-being holds the promise of significant advancements in human health. Barquera is a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the Departments of Biological Sciences and Chemistry and Chemical Biology. In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that an unhealthy gut is more than just a source of digestive troubles. A healthy ...

Jeffrey Elam, senior chemist, Distinguished Fellow, and founder of the atomic layer deposition (ALD) research program at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, was named as a fellow of the Electrochemical Society (ECS), which focuses on advancing theory and practice at the forefront of electrochemical and solid-state science and technology. Elam, who has been with the lab since 2002, has been a trailblazer in thin film coating science and technology for over 20 years, ...

Oregon Health & Science University researchers have found that despite legislation in 19 states requiring insurers to cover a 12-month supply of contraception, patients aren’t receiving a year’s worth of their prescription; most receive just three months or less. Their study recently published in the journal JAMA Health Forum shows that policies requiring coverage of a 12-month supply of short-acting hormonal contraception — most commonly the birth control pill — have not been fully implemented, resulting in no substantial increases nationally in year-long prescription orders. This leaves many patients at an increased risk for unintended ...

All living organisms emit a low level of light radiation, but the origin and function of these 'biophotons' are not yet fully understood. An international team of physicists, funded by the Foundational Questions Institute, FQxI, has proposed a new approach for investigating this phenomenon based on statistical analyses of this emission. Their aim is to test whether biophotons can play a role in the transport of information within and between living organisms, and whether monitoring biophotons could contribute to the development of medical techniques for the early diagnosis of various diseases. Their analyses of the measurements of the faint glow emitted by lentil ...

Antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections often occur in patients with chronic inflammatory intestinal conditions, such as inflammatory bowel disease, and in patients who have taken antibiotics for a long time. Gram-negative bacteria such as Enterobacteriaceae are a common cause of these infections and have few treatment options. Fecal microbiota transplants have shown promise to curb some of these infections, but their composition varies between batches and they aren’t always successful.  Researchers at Keio University School of Medicine in Tokyo and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have isolated ...

Sometimes all it takes is a little push.  That is the conclusion of a recently published study in which doctors used a handheld ultrasound device to nudge patients’ kidney-stone fragments.  As many as 50% of patients who have kidney stones removed surgically still have small fragments remaining in the kidneys afterward. Of those patients, about 25% find themselves returning for another operation within five years to remove the now-larger fragments. UW Medicine researchers found, however, that patients ...

A recent study has successfully decoded the autotetraploid genome of the wax apple, uncovering its genetic evolution and key factors driving fruit diversity. The research highlights the fruit’s rich antioxidant profile, with promising implications for human health and breeding strategies aimed at enhancing nutritional value. Wax apple (Syzygium samarangense), known for its crisp texture, rose-like aroma, and health benefits, faces breeding challenges due to its complex genetic diversity and limited genomic data. These obstacles have hindered efforts to improve key fruit qualities such as size and sugar ...

A new study co-led by the Smithsonian and the University of Arizona offers the most detailed glimpse yet of how Earth’s surface temperature has changed over the past 485 million years. In a paper published today, Sept. 19, in the journal Science, a team of researchers, including paleobiologists Scott Wing and Brian Huber from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, produce a curve of global mean surface temperature (GMST) across deep time—the Earth’s ancient past stretching over many millions of years. ...

Science has provided more than sufficient evidence to inform a collective and global approach to tackle the continued spread of plastic pollution, according to a new report. Writing in the journal Science, an international group of experts say the need for worldwide action to tackle all forms of plastic and microplastic debris has never been more pressing. It is clear that existing national legislation alone is insufficient to address the challenge, they say, and the United Nations’ Plastic Pollution Treaty ...

Estimating past global temperature is important for understanding the history of life on Earth and for predicting future climate. Now, a new reconstruction of Earth’s temperature history over the past 485 million years – based on a method that combines diverse physical proxy data with climate model predictions – reveals a much wider range of climate variability across the Phanerozoic eon than previously understood. The findings highlight atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) as the dominant factor controlling climate variability throughout this period, offering new ...

Cooling in the subsurface waters beneath Greenland’s Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden Glacier (79NG) from 2018 to 2021 was driven by European atmospheric blocking, which forced changes in the large-scale ocean circulation of the Nordic seas, researchers report, slowing glacial melt, despite ongoing global warming trends. The findings highlight the importance of regional atmospheric dynamics in influencing glacier stability. Understanding these dynamics is key to predicting the future of glaciers like ...

Published in the journal Science, the study presents a curve of global mean surface temperature that reveals Earth's temperature has varied more than previously thought over much of the Phanerozoic Eon a period of geologic time when life diversified, populated land and endured multiple mass extinctions. The curve also confirms Earth's temperature is strongly correlated to the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The start of the Phanerozoic Eon 540 million years ago is marked by the Cambrian ...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Subscribe to UCSF News Department of Defense-funded study aims to end a decades-long impasse in treatment development.  Traumatic brain injury (TBI) results in close to 70,000 deaths in the United States every year, and it is the cause of long-term physical, cognitive and mental disability in 5 million Americans. But despite three decades of work, treatments are sorely lacking. Now, an innovative drug development trial will be available in emergency departments of 18 level 1 trauma sites nationwide. It is launched by UC San Francisco and the Transforming Research and Clinical Knowledge in Traumatic ...

For more than 100 years, scientists have been using X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of crystalline materials such as metals, rocks, and ceramics. This technique works best when the crystal is intact, but in many cases, scientists have only a powdered version of the material, which contains random fragments of the crystal. This makes it more challenging to piece together the overall structure. MIT chemists have now come up with a new generative AI model that can make it much easier to determine the structures of these powdered crystals. The prediction model could help researchers characterize ...

HOUSTON ― The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Research Highlights showcases the latest breakthroughs in cancer care, research and prevention. These advances are made possible through seamless collaboration between MD Anderson’s world-leading clinicians and scientists, bringing discoveries from the lab to the clinic and back. Genetic factors underscore disparities in colorectal cancer survival  Patients with colorectal cancer have varied overall survival, but it remains unclear how the frequency of certain gene mutations among different racial and ethnic groups influences outcomes. To investigate, researchers led by John Paul Shen, M.D., and ...

“We explore how integrating these technologies could revolutionize personalized oncology.” BUFFALO, NY- September 19, 2024 – A new editorial was published in Oncotarget's Volume 15 on September 17, 2024, entitled, “The emerging role of AI in enhancing intratumoral immunotherapy care.” As highlighted in the abstract of this editorial, the emergence of immunotherapy (IO), and more recently, intratumoral IO, offers a novel approach to cancer treatment. This method enhances immune responses, allows for combination therapies, and helps reduce systemic adverse events. These techniques aim to ...

Conservative voters have slightly larger amygdalas than progressive voters—by about the size of a sesame seed. In a replication study publishing September 19 in the Cell Press journal iScience, researchers revisited the idea that progressive and conservative voters have identifiable differences in brain morphology, but with a 10x larger and more diverse sample size than the original study. Their results confirmed that the size of a person’s amygdala is associated with their political views but failed to find a consistent association between politics and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Anatomical differences in both ...

A new international collaborative study provides a list of the wildlife species present at the market from which SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, most likely arose in late 2019. The study is based on a new analysis of metatranscriptomic data released by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The data come from more than 800 samples collected in and around the Huanan Seafood Wholesale market beginning on January 1, 2020, and from viral genomes reported from early COVID-19 patients. The research appears September 19 in the journal Cell. “This is one of the most ...

Human breast milk regulates a baby’s mix of microbes, or microbiome, during the infant’s first year of life. This in turn lowers the child’s risk of developing asthma, a new study shows. Led by researchers at NYU Langone Health and the University of Manitoba, the study results showed that breastfeeding beyond three months supports the gradual maturation of the microbiome in the infant’s digestive system and nasal cavity, the upper part of the respiratory tract. Conversely, stopping breastfeeding earlier than three months disrupts the paced development of the microbiome and ...

The GENOXPHOS (Functional Genetics of the Oxidative Phosphorylation System) group at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC) has discovered a crucial role of sodium in the generation of cellular energy. The study, led by GENOPHOS group leader Dr. José Antonio Enríquez, also involved the participation of scientists from the Complutense University of Madrid, the Biomedical Research Institute at Hospital Doce de Octubre, the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and the Spanish research networks on frailty and healthy aging (CIBERFES) ...

Researchers at Cranfield University have developed an innovative new method for identifying biomarkers in wastewater using origami-paper sensors, enabling the tracking of infectious diseases using the camera in a mobile phone. The new test device is low-cost and fast and could dramatically change how public health measures are directed in any future pandemics. Wastewater a key way to track infections Testing wastewater is one of the primary ways to assess the prevalence of infectious diseases in populations. Researchers take samples from various ...

About The Study: In this large cohort study of successive pregnancies, influenza vaccination was not associated with increased risk of adverse perinatal outcomes, irrespective of interpregnancy interval and vaccine type. Findings support recommendations to vaccinate pregnant people or those who might be pregnant during the influenza season.   Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Darios Getahun, MD, PhD, MPH, email darios.t.getahun@kp.org. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.34857) Editor’s ...

About The Study: The findings of this study suggest that optimizing body mass index (BMI) in women and men from the preconception period onward might be an important strategy to improve fertility and reduce the risk of miscarriage. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Vincent W. V. Jaddoe, MD, PhD, email v.jaddoe@erasmusmc.nl. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.36157) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict ...

A new international study provides a shortlist of the wildlife species present at the market from which SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, most likely arose in late 2019. The study, published Thursday in the journal Cell, is based on an analysis of genetic data released by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The data comes from more than 800 samples collected in and around the Huanan Seafood Wholesale market in Wuhan, China, beginning on Jan. 1, 2020, and from viral genomes from early COVID-19 patients. "This may be the last big, new set of data directly from ...