(MEMPHIS, Tenn. – May 01, 2024) St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists have identified specific DNA variants in the non-coding regions of the genome contributing to chemotherapy resistance in acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). The results guided the team to unravel the mechanism behind a previously unknown contributor to therapeutic resistance. The discovery was enabled by combining new technologies to overcome previous limitations in understanding the non-coding genome, which could be adapted to other ...

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. – The Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine is now accepting applicants for an observational trial focused on fertilized anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction. Unlike traditional ACL repairs, fertilized ACL surgery uses a biologic concentrate of the patient’s stem cells, bone marrow and autograft bone along with an internal brace with the goal of stabilizing and expediting the healing process. “Past patients of the fertilized ACL have already shown shorter recovery times with no known additional risks to the patient,” said Chad D. Lavender, M.D., ...

New York State is vulnerable to increasing weather-driven power outages, with vulnerable people in the Bronx, Queens and other parts of New York City being disproportionately affected. #### Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000364 Article Title: Powerless in the storm: Severe weather-driven power outages in New York State, 2017–2020 Author Countries: United States Funding: This work was supported by the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) P30 ES009089 ...

Combining time-restricted eating with high-intensity functional training may improve body composition and cardiometabolic parameters more than either alone, according to a study published May 1, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Ranya Ameur and Rami Maaloul from the University of Sfax, Tunisia, and colleagues. Changes in diet and exercise are well-known ways to lose weight and improve cardiometabolic health. However, finding the right combination of lifestyle changes to produce sustainable results can be challenging. Prior studies indicate that time-restricted eating (which limits when, but not what, individuals eat) and ...

Simulations of agriculture on Mars using pea, carrot and tomato plants suggest that intercropping, growing different crops mixed together, could boost yields in certain conditions ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0302149 Article Title: Intercropping on Mars: A promising system to optimise fresh food production in future martian colonies Author Countries: The Netherlands Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work. END ...

Earth System Models – complex computer models which describe Earth processes and how they interact – are critical for predicting future climate change. By simulating the response of our land, oceans and atmosphere to manmade greenhouse gas emissions, these models form the foundation for predictions of future extreme weather and climate event scenarios, including those issued by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). However, climate modellers have long faced a major problem. Because Earth System Models integrate many complicated processes, they cannot immediately run a simulation; they must first ensure that it has reached a stable equilibrium ...

Weather-related power outages in the United States have become nearly twice as common in the last ten years compared to the previous decade. These outages, which can last most of a day, are more than an inconvenience: lack of power and related indoor temperature discomfort can exacerbate health conditions; lack of power also endangers the lives of people who are reliant on electricity-powered medical devices and/or elevators.   A new study led environmental health scientists at Columbia University ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke researchers have opened a new avenue in the attack against influenza viruses by creating a vaccine that encourages the immune system to target a portion of the virus surface that is less variable. Their approach worked well in experiments with mice and ferrets and may lead to more broadly-protective influenza vaccines and less reliance on an annual shot tailored to that year’s versions of the virus. Even with vaccines, influenza kills about a half-million people each year around the world. This new vaccine approach, described May 1 in the journal Science Translational ...

EMBARGOED: Not for Release Until 14:00 U.S. Eastern Time (19:00 UK Time) on Wednesday, 01 May 2024 Mystery behind huge opening in Antarctic sea ice solved Researchers have discovered the missing piece of the puzzle behind a rare opening in the sea ice around Antarctica, which was nearly twice the size of Wales and occurred during the winters of 2016 and 2017. A study published today [1 May 2024] in Science Advances reveals a key process that had eluded scientists as to how the opening, called a polynya, was able to form and persist for ...

Human consciousness requires arousal (i.e., wakefulness) and awareness  Brain imaging studies over the last decade have produced connectivity maps of the cortical networks that sustain awareness, but maps of the subcortical networks that sustain wakefulness are lacking, due to the small size and anatomic complexity of subcortical structures such as the brainstem In a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) study that integrated high-resolution structural and functional connectivity data, researchers mapped a subcortical brain network that is believed to integrate arousal and awareness in human consciousness In a paper titled, “Multimodal ...

A new study by Northwestern University researchers and coworkers explains a puzzling problem with maps of future earthquake shaking used to design earthquake-resistant buildings. Although seismologists have been making these maps for about 50 years, they know very little about how well they actually forecast shaking, because large damaging earthquakes are infrequent in any area. To learn more, the Northwestern research team compiled shaking data from past earthquakes. These include CHIMP (California Historical Intensity Mapping Project) ...

AI holds the potential to help doctors find early markers of disease and policymakers to avoid decisions that lead to war. But a growing body of evidence has revealed deep flaws in how machine learning is used in science, a problem that has swept through dozens of fields and implicated thousands of erroneous papers. Now an interdisciplinary team of 19 researchers, led by Princeton University computer scientists Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, has published guidelines for the responsible use of machine learning in science. “When we graduate from traditional statistical methods to machine learning methods, there are a vastly ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. – Truth Social was more effective at driving news attention toward Donald Trump during the 2022 midterm election cycle than Twitter (now known as X) was during the 2016 primary election season, a pattern driven mostly by partisan media on the left and the right, according to a new paper by a University at Buffalo communication researcher. But that success had limits. Journalists covered Trump’s social media use differently during those times and across those platforms, directly embedding his Truth Social posts into their stories far less frequently than was the case with his tweets in 2016. The findings published in the Journal of Information ...

RICHLAND, Wash.--A major approach to achieving net-zero carbon emissions relies on converting various parts of the economy, such as personal vehicles and heating, to run via electricity generated from renewable sources. But carbon cannot be removed from all parts of society. Plastics, ubiquitous in the modern world, cannot be decarbonized because they are made of carbon-based molecules. Led by chemist Wendy Shaw of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), a multi-institutional effort has produced a new roadmap to reducing emissions in hard-to-electrify segments of the economy. The multifaceted approach includes developing non-carbon fuels, ...

LOS ANGELES, CA – The Protein Society, the premier international society dedicated to supporting protein research, announces the winners of the 2024 Protein Society Awards, which will be conferred at the 38th Anniversary Symposium, July 23 – 26, 2024, in Vancouver, Canada. Plenary talks from select award recipients will take place throughout the 3.5-day event. The winners’ scientific accomplishments, described by their nominators below, demonstrate their lasting impact on protein science. The ...

Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) have identified an innovation in stem cell therapy to regenerate neural cells in the brain after cardiac arrest in an animal model. The study led by Xiaofeng Jia, BM, MS, PhD, FCCM, Professor of Neurosurgery, found that the application of modified sugar molecules on human neural stem cells improved the likelihood of the therapy's success. The application of these sugar molecules both enhanced the stem cells' proliferation and their transition into neurons to help repair critical connections in the brain. The finding could eventually lead to improved recovery of patients ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Scientists have designed a new artificial intelligence model that emulates randomized clinical trials at determining the treatment options most effective at preventing stroke in people with heart disease. The model was front-loaded with de-identified data on millions of patients gleaned from health care claims information submitted by employers, health plans and hospitals – a foundation model strategy similar to that of generative AI tools like ChatGPT. By pre-training the model on a huge cache of general ...

PHILADELPHIA— Protein imbalances that increase brain cell excitability may explain why individuals with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) who also experience seizures demonstrate more rapid cognitive decline than those who do not experience seizures. These imbalances may be present in the brains of individuals before the onset of AD symptoms.The new findings, from a research team at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, are published this week in Brain. The team found ...

NEW ORLEANS, La. – Dedicated to excellence in patient safety, several Ochsner Health hospitals and partners throughout Louisiana and Mississippi have earned an “A” Hospital Safety Grade from The Leapfrog Group, a national nonprofit watchdog. Leapfrog assigns an “A,” “B,” “C,” “D” or “F” grade to general hospitals across the country based on over 30 measures of errors, accidents, injuries and infections as well as the systems hospitals ...

A new mobile game launching today allows anyone with a smartphone or tablet to take part in ocean exploration and discovery. Welcome to FathomVerse. Now available for download on the App Store and Google Play, FathomVerse allows players to interact with real underwater images to improve the artificial intelligence that helps researchers study ocean life. The game combines immersive imagery, compelling gameplay, and cutting-edge science to inspire a new wave of ocean explorers. Scientists are collecting massive amounts of images and video to study marine life and assess ocean ...

A group of researchers at the University of Waterloo and the University of British Columbia have discovered a potential “cosmic glitch” in the universe’s gravity, explaining its strange behaviour on a cosmic scale.  For the last 100 years, physicists have relied upon Albert Einstein’s theory of “general relativity” to explain how gravity works throughout the universe. General relativity, proven accurate by countless tests and observations, suggests that gravity impacts ...

About The Study: For postmenopausal women, the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) randomized clinical trials do not support menopausal hormone therapy to prevent cardiovascular disease or other chronic diseases. Menopausal hormone therapy is appropriate to treat bothersome vasomotor symptoms among women in early menopause, without contraindications, who are interested in taking hormone therapy. The WHI evidence does not support routine supplementation with calcium plus vitamin D for menopausal women to prevent fractures or a low-fat diet with increased fruits, vegetables, and grains to prevent ...

About The Study: The proportions of American Indian or Alaska Native, Black, and white females of reproductive age in states with effective abortion bans were higher than in states without such policies, while proportions for other racial and ethnic groups were lower. Although these restrictive laws were not based on race, they were concentrated in states with higher proportions of American Indian or Alaska Native and Black individuals, resulting in a differential effect of restrictive abortion laws in these groups. American Indian or Alaska Native and Black populations are disproportionately affected by disparities in pregnancy-related ...

The gut microbiota is the microbial community that occupies the gastrointestinal tract. It is responsible for producing enzymes, metabolites, and other molecules crucial for host metabolism and in response to the environment. Consequently, a balanced gut microbiota is important for mammalian health in many ways, such as helping to regulate the immune and endocrine systems. This in turn, impacts the physiology of tissues throughout the body. However, little was known about the impact of the gut microbiota on host reproduction, ...

The health benefits of exercise are well known but new research shows that the body’s response to exercise is more complex and far-reaching than previously thought. In a study on rats, a team of scientists from across the United States has found that physical activity causes many cellular and molecular changes in all 19 of the organs they studied in the animals. Exercise lowers the risk of many diseases, but scientists still don’t fully understand how exercise changes the body on a molecular level. Most studies have focused on a single organ, sex, or time point, and only include one or two data types.  To take a more comprehensive ...