Almost everyone has a bag of veggies shoved into the dark recesses of their freezer that’s now essentially an unrecognizable block of ice crystals. And when thawed, foods damaged by excessive ice lose their texture and become mushy. Now, researchers reporting in ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry have shown that broken-down soy proteins can prevent ice crystal growth and could be especially useful for preserving frozen vegan foods or biological samples. Some animals that ...

The discovery of antibiotics in 1928 was a major turning point in the history of medicine. For the first time since the dawn of human civilization, doctors had gained access to an extremely powerful and effective tool to fight against a wide variety of bacterial infections. Today, bacterial diseases that were previously a death sentence can be cured, and infections following surgery or chemotherapy can be prevented or treated more effectively. Unfortunately, the worldwide use (and abuse) of antibiotics led to the emergence of drug-resistant bacterial strains. Over time, bacteria that could normally be killed by ...

Eighty percent of older adults see the benefit of tests that can give an early warning that a person’s memory and thinking abilities have started to decline, a new poll of people age 65 to 80 finds. And 60% think that health care providers should offer cognitive screening, in the form of brief memory tests, to all older adults every year. If they had a cognitive screening test and it showed signs of trouble, the vast majority of those polled said it would spur them to take action to protect their brain health (96%) and adjust their financial and health ...

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have found the possible ‘sibling’ of a planet orbiting a distant star. The team has detected a cloud of debris that might be sharing this planet’s orbit and which, they believe, could be the building blocks of a new planet or the remnants of one already formed. If confirmed, this discovery would be the strongest evidence yet that two exoplanets can share one orbit. “Two decades ago it was predicted in theory that pairs of planets of similar mass may share the same orbit around their star, the so-called Trojan or co-orbital planets. For the first time, we have found evidence ...

HOUSTON – (July 19, 2023) – Rice University’s Michael Wong was named a fellow to the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), the oldest chemical society in the world, whose mission is to “advance excellence in the chemical sciences.” More than 180 years old, the United Kingdom-based chemical society has over 54,000 members worldwide. “It’s a confirmation that the work we do in our group is something that people appreciate and is making a meaningful contribution ...

Genoa (Italy), 19 July 2023 – Researchers at Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Italian Institute of Technology - IIT) and Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca (University of Milan-Bicocca), in cooperation with Acquario di Genova (Genoa Aquarium) in Italy, have recently published a study in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, which demonstrates the efficacy of curcumin, a natural antioxidant substance extracted from turmeric, in reducing coral bleaching, a phenomenon caused primarily by climate change. The research group developed a biodegradable biomaterial to deliver the molecule without ...

About The Study: The results of this study of 1.6 million patients suggest that residence within more disadvantaged neighborhoods was associated with higher risk of dementia among older veterans integrated in a national health care system. Authors: Christina S. Dintica, Ph.D., of the University of California, San Francisco, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamaneurol.2023.2120) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author ...

A study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society found that immediately after retirement, white adults tended to experience a significant decline in cognitive function, whereas Black adults experienced minimal cognitive decline. White men showed the steepest post-retirement cognitive decline across sex/race combinations, whereas Black women showed the least decline. White women performed better cognitively at retirement than other race/sex subgroups, and after retirement, their cognitive functioning declined at a rate that was slightly ...

New research published in Contemporary Economic Policy indicates that Disability Insurance (DI) may improve economic opportunities for children whose parents have health conditions that limit work. The study included 52,575 parent-child pairs in the United States. When investigators examined economic mobility patterns for children whose parents reported work-limiting disability, they found that children had less upward economic mobility and more downward mobility relative to children of non-limited parents. Children of parents ...

A randomized controlled trial conducted in Canada and published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry found that Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP), a nurse-home visiting program, improved child language and mental health at age 2 years when compared with existing services. Rates of child injuries and maternal subsequent pregnancies were similar in the two groups. This real-world effectiveness trial involved sustained research-policy-practice collaborations from 2011–2022. Investigators successfully reached/enrolled and sustained engagement with 739 participants (368 NFP, 371 comparison) and their 737 children for ...

Functional Family Therapy is a family-based intervention for youth with behavior problems, and although it’s been implemented in 45 states in the U.S and in nine other high-income countries, a recent analysis of published and unpublished studies found that the therapy is not consistently more or less effective than other treatments, including various forms of individual, family, and group interventions. The authors of the analysis, which is published in Campbell Systematic Reviews and included 20 studies, also noted that there is insufficient evidence ...

In the late 1950s and 1960s, more than 12,000 malformed babies with short arms and legs were born as a side effect of thalidomide, a drug sold to pregnant women to prevent morning sickness. The tragedy was caused by the drug's side effect, which exists in a racemic mixture of two mirror-image forms. Research to determine the molecular structure of various compounds is essential for understanding biological phenomena and developing drugs to treat diseases and is mainly based on the interpretation ...

Overview A research team from the Department of Applied Chemistry and Life Science at the Toyohashi University of Technology (Professor Ryugo Tero et al.) discovered a phenomenon in which specific lipids were concentrated on graphene oxide in a multicomponent lipid bilayer membrane serving as a cell membrane model. This research team also clarified the mechanism by which the components of “lipid rafts" (where important cell membrane reactions such as neurotransmission and metabolism occur) gather owing to the surface characteristics of graphene oxide. This discovery is ...

A team of researchers from the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore (CSI Singapore) at the National University of Singapore (NUS), led by Assistant Professor Anand Jeyasekharan, has discovered a unique combination of oncogenes that could predict treatment resistance, and hence unfavourable outcomes, of patients with Diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL), the most common type of blood cancer in Singapore and globally.  This unique oncogenic combination, serving as an indicator of treatment resistance, can be detected through state-of-the-art technology. The researchers, however, went a step ...

SINGAPORE, XX July 2023 – Long-running research by Duke-NUS Medical School into the omega-3 transporter protein Mfsd2a has shown that it plays a key role in a specific mechanism that prevents the liver from storing too much fat from food. Published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, this latest study by Duke-NUS and collaborators from Singapore General Hospital (SGH) signals the possibility that a dietary supplement could be developed to help prevent non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Eating too much fatty food increases the risk of many health problems, including cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes and NAFLD. The excess fat that accumulates in the ...

A team led by Prof. GUO Guoping and Prof. CAO Gang from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), collaborating with Sigmund Kohler from Materials Science Institute of Madrid, developed a response theory applicable to strongly coupled and multiqubit systems. Their study was published in Physical Review Letters.  Semiconductor quantum dot (QD) strongly coupled to microwave photons is the key to investigate light-matter interactions. In previous studies, the team used high-impedance super-conducting resonant cavity to implement the strong coupling of the QD-cavity hybrid system. Based on this strong ...

The Safety Sensescaping project, funded by WorkSafe's WorkWell Mental Health Improvement Fund, is part of Peninsula Health’s Thriving in Health program, which aims to create safe and mentally healthy environments for healthcare workers to thrive in.   Project lead and RMIT Senior Lecturer Dr Olivier Cotsaftis worked with doctors, nurses and non-clinicians at Peninsula Health for three years to understand the psychosocial hazards in their workplace and find design-led solutions to prevent mental injury.   Cotsaftis said hospital scrubs were an unconscious source of stress for many healthcare workers.  Designed according to the standard male ...

An international team of astronomers used the state-of-the-art capability of VERA, a Japanese network of radio telescopes operated by NAOJ, to uncover valuable clues about how rapidly growing “young” supermassive black holes form, grow, and possibly evolve into more powerful quasars. It is now widely accepted that nearly every active galaxy harbors a supermassive black hole at its core, with masses ranging from millions to billions of times that of the Sun. The growth history by which these black holes have gained such huge masses, however, remains an open question. Led by Mieko Takamura, ...

Membraneless organelles (MLOs), also known as “biomolecular condensates,” are formed by the biological process of liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS). MLOs are highly dynamic bodies containing proteins and nucleic acids. While the role of proteins in LLPS has been extensively investigated, there is a growing interest in the scientific community to understand the role of RNAs—the nucleic acid responsible for innumerable biological functions including coding, decoding, regulation, and expression of genes, and ultimately proteins—in phase separation. Recent studies have revealed that MLOs are rich in RNAs ...

Piezoelectricity in native bones has been well recognized as the key factor in bone regeneration. However, the current additive-manufactured scaffolds mainly focus on the reconstruction of bionic topological structure and mechanical microenvironment, while the crucial electrical microenvironment (EM) in bone regeneration is neglected. Piezoelectricity in native bones has been well recognized as the key factor in bone regeneration. However, the current additive-manufactured scaffolds mainly focus on the ...

Investigators from Cedars-Sinai have provided new understanding of how diabetes delays wound healing in the eye, identifying for the first time two related disease-associated changes to the cornea. The findings, published today in the peer-reviewed journal Diabetologia, also identified three therapeutic pathways that reversed these changes and partially restored wound-healing function to the cornea—a discovery that could ultimately inform new treatments for diabetes. “We have found that diabetes induces more cellular changes than we were aware of previously,” ...

Biomolecular condensates, the tiny combinations of proteins and mRNA forming membrane-less compartments within cells, have big potential implications for the future of not just plants but humans. On Sunday, August 6, at 9:00 am, the #PlantBio2023 plenary “Highlights of New and Emerging Research on Biomolecular Condensates in Plants” will dive into this new field and its recent discoveries.  “It’s going to be a great way to get your feet wet and understand what biomolecular condensates are,” ...

Not being heard, not being taken seriously and being misunderstood by health care providers often describes a routine medical visit for many Black parents. For Black parents of young children, that lack of cultural understanding can lead to grim consequences for the health of the baby and mother.   According to the California Department of Public Health, Black babies in the Bay Area are two to three times more likely to be born too soon or too small or to die before their first birthday, compared to white babies. Scientific evidence points to structural racism and a systemic lack ...

Scientists have combined two light wavelengths to deactivate a bacterium that is invulnerable to some of the world’s most widely used antibiotics, giving hope that the regime could be adapted as a potential disinfectant treatment. Under the guidance of project leader Dr Gale Brightwell, scientists at New Zealand’s AgResearch demonstrated the novel antimicrobial efficiency of a combination of two light wavelengths against a ‘superbug’ known as antibiotic-resistant extended-spectrum beta-lactamase E. coli. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a major global threat of ...

At first, some parents were wary: An audio chatbot was supposed to teach their kids to speak positively to themselves through lessons about a superhero named Zip. In a world of Siri and Alexa, many people are skeptical that the makers of such technologies are putting children’s welfare first. Researchers at the University of Washington created a new web app aimed to help children develop skills like self-awareness and emotional management. In Self-Talk with Superhero Zip, a chatbot guided pairs of siblings ...