A new paper published today in Science Advances exposes the global aquaculture sector’s growing dependence on wild fish. Despite industry claims to the contrary, these findings highlight how the growing appetite for expensive farmed salmon can leave coastal communities struggling to access affordable local fish like sardines and anchovies. Instead, these small pelagic fish are frequently caught, processed, and “reduced” to fishmeal and fish oil, almost all of which is used to feed farmed fish. These ‘reduction fisheries’ account for 26% of global ocean catch.    “As the aquaculture industry grows, so does its ...

Neural spheroids — 3D clusters of brain cells — are emerging as essential tools for understanding neural networks and studying neurological diseases in the lab. EPFL’s e-Flower, a flower-shaped 3D microelectrode array (MEA), allows researchers to monitor the electrical activity of these spheroids in a way that was previously impossible. This breakthrough, published in Science Advances, lays the groundwork for more sophisticated research on brain organoids, which are complex, miniaturized models of brain tissues. “The ...

A study published in the journal Science Advances suggests that global fish farming, or aquaculture, may rely on significantly larger quantities of wild-caught ocean fish than previously calculated. The study is part of a special issue focused on expanding contributions from the aquaculture industry to food systems with an aim towards sustainability. These findings call into question long-held assumptions about the sustainability of the rapidly growing aquaculture industry and provides a range of plausible estimates for its impact on wild fish populations. The research, led by an international team of scientists ...

A collaborative effort between investigators at the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, demonstrates the potential of precise genome editing technologies, called adenine base editors, to correct disease-causing mutations in stem cells from patients with X-linked chronic granulomatous disease (X-CGD), a rare genetic disorder characterized by high susceptibility to infections. The findings are published in Science Translational Medicine. Patients with ...

On present-day Earth, plate subduction continuously modifies the chemical composition of the convecting mantle, and various mantle sources linked to these processes have been widely studied. However, when did global chemical heterogeneity of the convecting mantle first emerge in Earth's geological history? And how might Earth’s geodynamic evolution have influenced the chemical composition of the convecting mantle over time? Researchers from the Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IOCAS), along with collaborators from Australia, Switzerland and the USA, have tried to address these questions ...

Multilingual students face unique challenges that can hurt their performance in school. New methods of teaching may help close this gap, according to a new study from the University of Georgia. In the United States, English is the main language used in classrooms. Schools also tend to rely on spoken communication to teach and written exams to assess learning. That can make it difficult for multilingual students to express themselves. This is especially true in science classes, with their specific terms and complex sentence structures. So a UGA researcher developed an immersive virtual reality game to communicate scientific ...

Video available here. Without proper medical invention, injuries sustained from traffic collisions, serious workplace accidents or weapons may result in fatal hemorrhaging. University of Central Florida researchers aim to prevent such bleeding in potentially deadly situations with a new hemostatic spongelike bandage with antimicrobial efficacy that they recently developed and detailed in a newly published study in the journal Biomaterials Science. “What happens in the field or during an accident is due to heavy bleeding, patients can die,” says Kausik Mukhopadhyay, assistant professor of materials ...

When an election result is disputed, people who are skeptical about the outcome may be swayed by figures of authority who come down on one side or the other. Those figures can be independent monitors, political figures, or news organizations. However, these “debunking” efforts don’t always have the desired effect, and in some cases, they can lead people to cling more tightly to their original position. Neuroscientists and political scientists at MIT and the University of California at Berkeley have now ...

Identifying whether online information is faulty or ungrounded is important to ensure information integrity and a well-informed public. This was especially challenging during the COVID-19 pandemic when misinformation spread like wildfire across the Internet. A new project led by Dong Wang, associate professor in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, will integrate diverse human and machine intelligence to examine multimodal data (e.g., text and image) that was produced during the pandemic. ...

BEAUFORT, N.C. -- To whales that hunt with soundwaves in the lightless depths of the ocean, a torn plastic party balloon and a delicious squid seem to be remarkably similar, according to a new study that put some plastic beach trash through underwater acoustic testing. "These acoustic signatures are similar, and this might be a reason that these animals are driven to consume plastic instead of, or in addition to, their prey," said Duke University graduate student Greg Merrill, who led the research. "One hundred percent of plastic marine debris ...

How can we engineer materials that are stronger and lighter? What about new materials for extreme conditions such as in jet engines and spacecrafts? The answer, says Fadi Abdeljawad, an associate professor of materials science and engineering in Lehigh University's P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science, might be hidden in the infinitesimally tiny regions, or boundaries, where atoms in crystals come together. Along with his collaborators at the U.S. Department of Energy's Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT), Abdeljawad is uncovering how those ...

Washington, D.C. (October 16, 2024) – For the first time, adults living with congenital heart disease (CHD) now have valuable insights into their long-term quality of life through data from the Congenital Heart Initiative (CHI). CHI is the nation’s first and largest patient-focused registry for adults with CHD and released its first study involving over 4,500 participants from all 50 states.  This research, published today in JAMA Network Open, marks a significant step forward in making better information available for the ...

Researchers at Colorado State University have identified an alternate method to study changes during the DNA replication process in lab settings using genetically modified yeast. The new approach offers a clearer window than current drug methods used to understand cell cycle arrest – a fundamental mechanism that is key to treating cancers and genetic issues. The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and were led at CSU by Assistant Professor Grant Schauer in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. The work focuses on hydroxyurea, a chemotherapy drug used ...

Synthetic diamond is durable, inert, rigid, thermally conductive and chemically well-behaved—an elite material for both quantum and conventional electronics. But there’s one problem. Diamond only likes diamond. It’s homoepitaxial, meaning it only grows on other diamonds, and integrating diamond into quantum or conventional computers, quantum sensors, cellphones, or other devices would mean sacrificing the diamond’s full potential or using large, expensive chunks of the precious material. “Diamond stands alone in terms of its material properties, both for electronics—with its wide band gap, ...

A new study analyzes the links between the enactment of major air pollution and climate policies in New York City and significant improvement in air quality during the period 1998-2021. It finds a cumulative beneficial effect of these policies both city-wide and among residents residing in communities that have been disproportionately affected by air pollution. The study by environmental health scientists at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health is published in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Public Health. “Because of the known significant associations between the pollutants studied and multiple adverse health effects, there are important implications for health ...

New research gives another reason to take folic acid supplements while pregnant. A new study by Simon Fraser University researchers has found that folate may weaken the link between blood-lead levels in pregnant women and autistic-like behaviours in their children.    Researchers from SFU’s Faculty of Health Sciences, led by PhD candidate Joshua Alampi, published the study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.   “Folic acid supplementation during pregnancy has numerous benefits to child health, especially brain development,” ...

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. Novel therapeutic target overcomes treatment resistance in triple-negative breast cancer Many patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) do not respond to combination ...

SAN ANTONIO — October 16, 2024 —The Supercritical Transformational Electric Power (STEP) Demo pilot plant, a $169 million, 10-megawatt supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) test facility at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San Antonio, has completed its first phase of testing, having achieved its full operational speed of 27,000 rpm and operating at a target turbine inlet temperature of 500 degrees Celsius. As STEP achieved this milestone, it was synchronized with the electrical grid, generating approximately four megawatts of net power. “Achieving full operating conditions while connected to the grid is a major advancement ...

Despite having no greater chance of developing problems after high risk cardiovascular surgery, women are more likely than men to die from postoperative complications, a University of Michigan-led study suggests. A patient dying of complications after surgery is often referred to as a “failure to rescue”. Investigators assessed more than 850,000 cases of Medicare beneficiaries who had high risk heart surgery — including heart bypass, aortic aneurysm repair, and mitral and aortic valve repair — ...

Columbia researchers have engineered probiotic bacteria that educate the immune system to destroy cancer cells, opening the door for a new class of cancer vaccines that take advantage of bacteria’s natural tumor-targeting properties. These microbial cancer vaccines can be personalized to attack each individual’s primary tumor and metastases, and may even prevent future recurrences. In studies using mouse models of advanced colorectal cancer and melanoma, the bacterial vaccine supercharged the immune system to suppress the growth of – or in many cases eliminate – primary ...

AURORA, Colo. (October 16, 2024) – A new study, out today in the Journal of Urban Health, finds that involuntary sweeps of homeless encampments in Denver, Colorado were not effective in reducing crime. Researchers, led by first author Pranav Padmanabhan, research assistant and MPH student at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, analyzed the effect of involuntary displacement on crime in one-quarter to three-quarters of a mile radius around sweep sites, among all sweeps between November ...

About The Study: In this cohort study of pregnant individuals and offspring, exposure to maternal COVID-19 was not associated with abnormal neurodevelopmental screening results through 24 months’ postpartum. Continued study of diverse groups of children is needed because, among other factors, evidence suggests sensitivity of the developing fetal brain to maternal immune activation.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Eleni G. Jaswa, MD, MSc, MAS, email elenijaswa@gmail.com. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website ...

Tokyo, Japan – Unwanted heating of electronic components hinders the performance of many devices. For example, the processing speed and memory available to silicon-based computer chips depend strongly on the ability to dissipate heat effectively. Unfortunately, despite high demand, thermal management remains challenging. Now, in a study published in Nature, a team of researchers led by the Institute of Industrial Science, the University of Tokyo, has demonstrated the ability to control heat transfer in graphite crystals. Their novel approach applies concepts from fluid ...

An international team led by three researchers from the CNRS1, the European Southern Observatory (ESO, Europe), and Charles University (Czech Republic) has successfully demonstrated that 70% of all known meteorite falls originate from just three young asteroid families. These families were produced by three recent collisions that occurred in the main asteroid belt 5.8, 7.5, and about 40 million years ago. The team also revealed the sources of other types of meteorites; with this research, the origin of more than 90% of meteorites ...

The researchers used spatial proteomics to analyze skin samples from patients with toxic epidermal necrolysis. This cutting-edge approach, known as Deep Visual Proteomics, merges powerful microscopy with AI-driven analysis, laser-guided microdissection and ultimately ultra-high sensitivity mass spectrometry. They zoomed in on individual cells and studied them like never before, creating a map of the thousands of proteins driving this deadly reaction. Thierry Nordmann, first author, clinician-scientist at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry and senior dermatologist at the Ludwig Maximilians Universität München explains: ...