Consumers are drawn to authenticity when it comes to craft-based firms, and a new study published in the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal explores what factors can help give credence to such a quality. The study, authored by Stanislav D. Dobrev of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and J. Cameron Verhaal of Tulane University, looked at how managers in identity-driven markets are challenged to maintain their authenticity as their company’s scale of operations expands. In such craft industries, the authors note, ...

New research being presented at the European Congress on Obesity (ECO) in Venice, Italy (12-15 May) suggests that it is possible to predict if someone is going to gain weight based on their size of their fat cells. Individuals with large fat cells tend to lose weight over time, while those with small fat cells gain weight, the Swedish study found. The size and number of fat cells are known to determine fat mass – how much body fat someone has.   But their impact on long-term changes in body weight are unknown. To explore this further, Professor Peter ...

New research being presented at the European Congress on Obesity (ECO) in Venice, Italy (12-15 May), and published in the International Journal of Obesity, could help explain why type 2 diabetes is more common in men than in women. “Previous studies have shown that men develop type 2 diabetes (TD2) at a younger age and at a lower weight than women and, overall, men appear to be at higher risk of the condition,” says lead researcher Dr Daniel P Andersson, at the Department of Endocrinology, Karolinska University Hospital Huddinge, Stockholm, Sweden. “One reason for ...

New research being presented at the European Congress on Obesity (ECO) in Venice, Italy (12-15 May) has found that poor muscle health is associated with a higher risk of an early death in people living with obesity. Individuals with adverse muscle composition were up to three times more likely to die during the course of the study than those with healthy muscles, a Swedish study of people in the UK concluded. “We found that just by looking at muscle composition we can predict which individuals with obesity are most likely to die during the next few years,” says lead researcher Dr Jennifer Linge, of AMRA Medical, ...

The May 2024 issue of the American Journal of Health Economics collects articles on the topic of health equity. The edition was inspired in part by the COVID-19 pandemic, writes guest editor Mónica García-Pérez, and the ways in which that “health crisis exposed the sources of disparities among different US populations that affect access to health care, quality of care, and final health outcomes.” Consisting of five papers, the issue devotes particular attention to the topics of “race/ethnicity, ...

With the emergence of internet services such as AI-generated content and virtual reality, the demand for global capacity has surged, significantly intensifying pressures on fiber-optic communication systems. To address this surge and reduce operational costs, efforts are underway to develop autonomous driving optical networks (ADONs) with highly-efficient network operations. One of the most important tasks for an ADON is to accurately model and control the optical power evolution (OPE) over fiber links, since it ...

“These results argue that combinations based on immunotherapy may also provide an opportunity for targeting urothelial cancers with low TMB, and provide efficacy superior to classic chemotherapy.” BUFFALO, NY- May 10, 2024 – A new editorial paper was published in Oncoscience (Volume 11) on April 25, 2024, entitled, “Therapeutic opportunities for hypermutated urothelial carcinomas beyond immunotherapy.” In this new editorial, researcher Ioannis A. Voutsadakis from Sault Area Hospital and Northern Ontario School of Medicine discusses tumor mutation burden (TMB)—a ...

By Rose Miyatsu, UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute Although you may not appreciate them, or have even heard of them, throughout your body, countless microscopic machines called spliceosomes are hard at work. As you sit and read, they are faithfully and rapidly putting back together the broken information in your genes by removing sequences called “introns” so that your messenger RNAs can make the correct proteins needed by your cells. Introns are perhaps one of our genome’s biggest mysteries. They are DNA sequences that interrupt the sensible protein-coding information ...

Professor Manolya Kavakli is an expert in gamification Her talk will examine the complex relationship between humans, computers and tech She will examine how digital developments have the potential to improve lives and modernise industry. The latest inaugural lecture at Aston University will look at the complex relationship between humans, computers and technology. Professor Manolya Kavakli will discuss progress so far and offer insights into how to ease into digital transformation for the challenges that lie ahead. The professor is an expert in gamification, the process of using elements of gaming in non-gaming situations such as learning and training. She ...

There are 62.5 million internally displaced persons worldwide, according to 2022 data by the UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency. These individuals were forced to leave their homes but remain in the same country.   Prior research has shown that internally displaced persons often experience prejudice and discrimination, as residents in their new locale fear that the migrants may be insurgents or criminals, or compete for jobs.   Now, a new Dartmouth study involving Afghanistan indicates that changing such attitudes is an uphill battle. Given the decades of fighting there, Afghanistan has had one of the largest populations ...

A breakthrough study, published in Science Translational Medicine, features a biomedical engineering innovation with the potential to transform trauma care and surgical practices. Chapman University’s Fowler School of Engineering Founding Dean and Professor, Andrew Lyon, is a member of this multidisciplinary, multi-university scientific research team developing platelet-like particles that integrate into the body’s clotting pathways to stop hemorrhage. Sanika Pandit, an alumna of Chapman University, is also among the 15 authors in this research. Addressing a longstanding gap in surgical and trauma care, this advancement holds potential for patient implementation.  Patients ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Melanoma, an aggressive form of skin cancer that accounts for 75% of all skin-cancer-related deaths, is often detected later in people with darker skin complexions — and the consequences can be devastating, a Mayo Clinic study reveals. While melanoma may be found less frequently in people with darker complexions than fair ones, this potentially serious form of cancer can strike anyone. The study, which consisted of 492,597 patients with melanoma, suggests that added vigilance in early screening is particularly needed for Black men, whose cancers ...

What do infants see?  What do they look at?  The answers to these questions are very different for the youngest babies than they are for older infants, children and adults. Characterized by a few high-contrast edges in simple patterns, these early scenes also contain the very materials needed to build a strong foundation for human vision.  That is the finding of a new study, “An edge-simplicity bias in the visual input to young infants,” published on May 10 in Science Advances by IU researchers Erin Anderson, Rowan Candy, Jason Gold and Linda Smith.  “The starting ...

New research into molten rock 20km below the Earth’s surface could help save lives by improving the prediction of volcanic activity. Volcanic eruptions pose significant hazards, with devastating impacts on both people living nearby and the environment. They are currently predicted based on activity of the volcano itself and the upper few kilometres of crust beneath it, which contains molten rock potentially ready to erupt. However, new research highlights the importance of searching for ...

The discovery of how a critical enzyme “hidden in nature’s blueprint” works sheds new light on how cells control key processes in carbon fixation, a process fundamental for life on Earth. The discovery, made by scientists from The Australian National University (ANU) and the University of Newcastle (UoN), could help engineer climate resilient crops capable of sucking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere more efficiently, helping to produce more food in the process. The research, published in Science Advances, demonstrates a previously unknown function of an enzyme called carboxysomal carbonic anhydrase (CsoSCA), which is found in cyanobacteria – also called ...

Fifteen years ago, human hands touched NASA's Hubble Space Telescope for the last time. As astronauts performed finishing tasks on the telescope during its final servicing mission in May 2009, they knew they had successfully concluded one of the most challenging and ambitious series of spacewalks ever conducted. But they couldn’t have known at the time what an impact they had truly made. “I had high hopes that Hubble would last at least five years more, and maybe even a little more to overlap with Webb,” said astronaut and former associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate John ...

55 Cancri e is one of five known planets orbiting a Sun-like star in the constellation Cancer. With a diameter nearly twice that of Earth and a density slightly greater, the planet is classified as a super-Earth: larger than Earth, smaller than Neptune, and similar in composition to the rocky planets in our solar system. Brice-Olivier Demory from the Center for Space and Habitability CSH of the University of Bern and member of the NCCR PlanetS is co-author of the study that has just been published in Nature.  He ...

Data has the power to tell captivating stories and reveal hidden insights, often in aesthetically compelling ways. In celebration of this, the University of Virginia’s School of Data Science hosted an art competition to commemorate the opening of its new building and to invite participants from all over the world to tell unique stories by transforming raw data into art. The School received more than 130 submissions from nine countries, far exceeding expectations for an inaugural competition. After selecting eight finalists from a wide range of artistic formats, the winners were announced during ...

MSU has a satellite uplink/LTN TV studio and Comrex line for radio interviews upon request. EAST LANSING, Mich. – A recent study out of Michigan State University found large gaps between people’s career interests and U.S. job demands. These gaps indicate that the interest demands of the U.S. labor market differ drastically from the supply of interested people, revealing how many people have unfulfilled interests at work. The study, published in the Journal of Business and Psychology, is the first to look at labor gaps using career ...

Bob Wilbur thought he’d found a retirement home that would be a place of peace. Nestled against Admiralty Bay on the western edge of Whidbey Island, the three-story house is surrounded by trees and shoreline. It offers the kind of quiet that only an island can provide. Except when the Growlers fly.  As often as four days a week, Boeing EA-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft based at the nearby Naval Air Station Whidbey Island fly loops overhead as pilots practice touch-and-go landings. The noise is immense, ...

When it comes to improving the lives of children with genetic conditions, medical research often focuses solely on the children. But there is an equally important population in need of research that a faculty member at the University of Colorado Department of Medicine is highlighting — the caregivers.   “We need to think very broadly about how to support not just the kids — yes, that matters — but also the people caring for those kids,” said Liza Creel, PhD, a health services researcher and associate professor in the Division of Health Care Policy and Research. “I want to do work that ...

Ever since Darwin published his landmark theory of how species evolve, biologists have been fascinated with the intricate mechanisms that make evolution possible. Can mechanisms responsible for the evolution of a species over a few generations, called microevolution, also explain how species evolve over periods of time extending to thousands or millions of generations, also called macroevolution? A new paper, just published in Science, shows that the ability of populations to evolve and adapt over a few generations, ...

Many artificial intelligence (AI) systems have already learned how to deceive humans, even systems that have been trained to be helpful and honest. In a review article publishing in the journal Patterns on May 10, researchers describe the risks of deception by AI systems and call for governments to develop strong regulations to address this issue as soon as possible. “AI developers do not have a confident understanding of what causes undesirable AI behaviors like deception,” says first author Peter S. Park (@dr_park_phd), an AI existential safety postdoctoral fellow at MIT. “But generally speaking, we think AI deception ...

Common conditions such as indigestion and heartburn as well as peptic ulcers, autoimmune gastritis and stomach and esophageal cancers have one thing in common – they involve disruptions of the normal activity of parietal cells (PCs) in the stomach, the only cells in the body that produce acid. Despite their medical importance, little is known about the molecular and genetic pathways that direct the generation and maturation of PCs from stem cells. Looking to gain new insights into the generation of PCs, researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and collaborating institutions identified the genes that were preferentially ...

About The Study: In this secondary analysis of a randomized clinical trial, blood pressure (BP) self-monitoring plus self-titration of antihypertensive medication based on an individualized prearranged plan used in primary care reduced BP in the longer term with passive follow-up compared with usual care, without increasing health care use or adverse events. These results suggest that simple, inexpensive, and easy-to-implement self-management interventions have the potential to improve the long-term control of hypertension in routine clinical practice.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Gabriel Sanfelix-Gimeno, ...