Each year, the American Association for the Advancement of Science elects distinguished scientists, engineers and innovators to become AAAS Fellows. Seven faculty members from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, were awarded this lifetime honor as members of the recently announced 2023 class of AAAS Fellows. Elected faculty are Rigoberto Advincula, Takeshi Egami, Heidi Goodrich-Blair, Sergei Kalinin, Keith Kline, Anthony Mezzacappa and Michela Taufer. They represent a wide range of disciplines across the College of Arts and Sciences, the UT Institute of Agriculture and the Tickle College of Engineering. They join a distinguished group of UT faculty who have been elected AAAS ...

New research shows human activity is significantly altering the ways in which marine organisms are preserved, with lasting effects that can both improve and impair the fossil record.   “We are not only changing the environment; we’re also changing the nature of the record that archives this information,” said Michal Kowalewski, the Thompson chair of invertebrate paleontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History. “These changes can be both good and bad. On one hand, human activities ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $160 million to advance President Biden’s vision to secure the future of American leadership in semiconductor innovation by implementing a key provision in the historic CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 (42 U.S.C. §19331), Microelectronics Research for Energy Innovation. This funding will support the formation of Microelectronics Science Research Centers (MSRCs) focused on energy efficiency and extreme environments. For ...

  INRS professor recognized for international research and mentoring efforts in nanotechnology.     Federico Rosei, a professor at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) in materials science and nanotechnology, has been appointed Materials Research Society (MRS) Fellow 2024 for “his leadership in the nanomaterials synthesis and characterization and his sustained international efforts in service, mentoring and outreach in the field.” He thus becomes the first researcher in Quebec and the third ...

Boronic acid has been used in organic chemistry for decades, even though it is not present in any organism. ‘It gives rise to different chemical reactions than those we find in nature,’ explains Gerard Roelfes, Professor of Biomolecular Chemistry & Catalysis at the University of Groningen. His group created an enzyme with boronic acid at its reactive centre and then used directed evolution to make it more selective and to improve its catalytic power. Furthermore, enzymatic reactions are more sustainable than classical chemical reactions, as they take place at low temperatures and without toxic solvents. The study was presented online in the journal ...

Local decision-makers looking for ways to reduce the impact of heat waves on their communities have a valuable new capability at their disposal: a new study on vegetation resilience. Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory completed a study of how well vegetation survived extreme heat events in both urban and rural communities across the country in recent years. The analysis informs pathways for climate mitigation, including ways to reduce the effect of urban heat islands. Vegetation such as trees provide a valuable cooling effect, shading surfaces and deflecting solar radiation while releasing ...

CHICAGO – The American College of Surgeons (ACS) Clinical Congress 2024 will take place Saturday, October 19, through Tuesday, October 22, in San Francisco and will feature opportunities for members of the media to learn about the latest evidence-based practices and research in surgery and healthcare.   This year’s Clinical Congress will once again be a hybrid event, allowing reporters to cover the conference onsite or virtually.  Clinical Congress is one of the world’s largest educational meetings for surgeons, ...

Janelia Senior Group Leader Gerry Rubin and Cori Bargmann of The Rockefeller University have been jointly awarded the 2024 Gruber Neuroscience Prize for their pioneering work in elucidating the organization of neural circuits in behavior and developing new genetic tools to advance the field of neuroscience. The Gruber Neuroscience Prize, established in 2004, honors scientists for major discoveries that have advanced the understanding of the nervous system. The prize is part of the Gruber International Prize Program, hosted by the Gruber Foundation, which honors individuals in the fields of ...

Pore pressure diffusion generated by carbon dioxide injected underground at a carbon storage site in the Illinois Basin is the likely cause of hundreds of microearthquakes that took place at the site between 2011 and 2012, according to a new analysis. The modeling study published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America indicates that pressure diffusion along existing faults into the basement rock could have destabilized the faults where the microseismicity—ranging from Mw -2 to 1—occurred, said Ruben Juanes of MIT and colleagues. There are some similarities between CO2 injection and wastewater injection from oil and gas operations, although globally the ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – Conversational agents (CAs) such as Alexa and Siri are designed to answer questions, offer suggestions – and even display empathy. However, new research finds they do poorly compared to humans when interpreting and exploring a user’s experience. CAs are powered by large language models (LLMs) that ingest massive amounts of human-produced data, and thus can be prone to the same biases as the humans from which the information comes. Researchers from Cornell University, Olin College and Stanford University tested this theory ...

Researchers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope may have detected atmospheric gases surrounding 55 Cancri e, a hot rocky exoplanet 41 light-years from Earth. This is the best evidence to date for the existence of any rocky planet atmosphere outside our solar system.  Renyu Hu from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, is lead author on a paper published today in Nature. “Webb is pushing the frontiers of exoplanet characterization to rocky planets,” Hu said. “It is truly ...

New research from a multi-disciplinary team at Trinity College Dublin suggests a “tailored vaccine” might hold the key to treating bacteria-driven flares of eczema in children.  The team has taken several leaps forward in understanding how the immune response works in cases of eczema driven by the common, troublesome Staphylococcus aureus bacterium, and in doing so they have identified new cellular targets for a vaccine. Eczema, also known as atopic dermatitis, affects up to one in four children in Ireland. Common symptoms include itchy, dry skin, and – when bacteria are involved – weeping wounds that can ...

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. Recent developments at MD Anderson offer insights into expanding the use of FGFR inhibitors, maintaining radiation therapy as standard of care for locally recurrent endometrial cancer, an antibody-drug ...

In daily life, when two objects are “indistinguishable,” it’s due to an imperfect state of knowledge. As a street magician scrambles the cups and balls, you could, in principle, keep track of which ball is which as they are passed between the cups. However, at the smallest scales in nature, even the magician cannot tell one ball from another. True indistinguishability of this type can fundamentally alter how the balls behave. For example, in a classic experiment by Hong, Ou and Mandel, two identical photons (balls) striking opposite sides of a half-reflective mirror are always ...

Researchers in the emerging field of spatial computing have developed a prototype augmented reality headset that uses holographic imaging to overlay full-color, 3D moving images on the lenses of what would appear to be an ordinary pair of glasses. Unlike the bulky headsets of present-day augmented reality systems, the new approach delivers a visually satisfying 3D viewing experience in a compact, comfortable, and attractive form factor suitable for all-day wear. “Our headset appears to the outside world just like an everyday pair of glasses, but what the wearer sees through the lenses is an enriched world overlaid with vibrant, full-color 3D computed imagery,” said Gordon ...

About The Study: More than 320,000 children in the U.S. lost a parent to drug overdose between 2011-2021, with significant disparities evident across racial and ethnic groups. Given the potential short- and long-term negative impact of parental loss, program and policy planning should ensure that responses to the overdose crisis account for the full burden of drug overdose on families and children, including addressing the economic, social, educational, and health care needs of children who have lost parents to overdose.  Corresponding Author: To contact the ...

About The Study: The findings of this study suggest that there is a high prevalence of harassment in OB-GYN despite being a predominantly female field for the last decade.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Ankita Gupta, M.D., M.P.H., email ankita.gupta@louisville.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/  (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.10706) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, ...

A study examining childhood maltreatment in Australia has revealed the shocking burden for Australians, estimating it causes up to 40 percent of common, life-long mental health conditions. The mental health conditions examined were anxiety, depression, harmful alcohol and drug use, self-harm and suicide attempts. Childhood maltreatment is classified as physical, sexual and emotional abuse, and emotional or physical neglect before the age of 18. Childhood maltreatment was found to account for 41 percent of suicide attempts in Australia, 35 percent for cases of self-harm and 21 percent for depression. The ...

Since the discovery of quantum mechanics more than a hundred years ago, it has been known that electrons in molecules can be coupled to the motion of the atoms that make up the molecules. Often referred to as molecular vibrations, the motion of atoms act like tiny springs, undergoing periodic motion. For electrons in these systems, being joined to the hip with these vibrations means they are constantly in motion too, dancing to the tune of the atoms, on timescales of a millionth of a billionth of a second. But all this dancing around leads ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Ancient, expansive tracts of continental crust called cratons have helped keep Earth’s continents stable for billions of years, even as landmasses shift, mountains rise and oceans form. A new mechanism proposed by Penn State scientists may explain how the cratons formed some 3 billion years ago, an enduring question in the study of Earth’s history. The scientists reported today (May 8) in the journal Nature that the continents may not have emerged from Earth’s ...

The rapid advancement in photonic integrated circuits (PICs), whichcombine multiple optical devices and functionalities on a single chip, has revolutionized optical communications and computing systems. For decades, silicon-based PICs have dominated the field due to their cost-effectiveness and through their integration with existing semiconductor manufacturing technologies, despite their limitations with regard to their electro-optical modulation bandwidth. Nevertheless, silicon-on-insulator optical transceiver chips were successfully commercialized, driving information traffic through millions of glass fibers in modern datacenters. Recently, the lithium niobate-on-insulator ...

Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have shed valuable light on the complex mechanisms by which a class of psychedelic drugs binds to and activates serotonin receptors to produce potential therapeutic effects in patients with neuropsychiatric disorders such as depression and anxiety. In a study published May 8 in Nature, the team reported that certain psychedelic drugs interact with an underappreciated member of the serotonin receptor family in the brain known as 5-HT1A to produce therapeutic benefits in animal models. “Psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin have entered clinical trials with promising early results, though we still don’t ...

LOS ANGELES — Keck Medicine of USC hospitals and USC Student Health, part of Keck Medicine, received the ‘LGBTQ+ Healthcare Equality Leader’ designation in the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s 2024 Healthcare Equality Index (HEI).   HEI is the leading national benchmarking survey of health care facility policies and practices dedicated to the equitable treatment and inclusion of LGBTQ+ patients, visitors and employees. A record 1,065 health care facilities participated in the 2024 HEI survey; ...

Psychiatrists and mental health professionals have a new standard for managing major depression, thanks to refreshed clinical guidelines published today by the Canadian Network for Mood and Anxiety Treatments (CANMAT). The CANMAT guidelines are the most widely used clinical guidelines for depression in the world. The new version integrates the latest scientific evidence and advances in depression care since the previous guidelines were published in 2016. The update was led by researchers at the University of B.C. and the University of Toronto, alongside ...

Children who experience chronic lack of sleep from infancy may be at increased risk of developing psychosis in early adulthood, new research shows.  Researchers at the University of Birmingham examined information on nighttime sleep duration from a large cohort study of children aged between 6 months and 7 years old. They found that children who persistently slept fewer hours, throughout this time period, were more than twice as likely to develop a psychotic disorder in early adulthood, and nearly four times as likely to have a psychotic episode.  While ...