BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – The immune system has a biological telecommunications system — small proteins known as interleukins that send signals among the leukocyte white blood cells to control their defense against infections or nascent cancer. Interleukin-6, or IL-6, is one of these key mediators of inflammation, and it can, as needed, provoke the immune system into attack against pathogens. However, imbalances of IL-6 — too much or too little — can cause disease, even in the absence of infection. Excess IL-6 is central to the pathogenesis of inflammatory reactions like ...

Tokyo, Japan – Scientists from Tokyo Metropolitan University have proposed a hypothesis for why insects are so rare in marine environments. They previously showed that insects evolved a unique chemical mechanism to harden their shells which uses molecular oxygen and an enzyme called multicopper oxidase-2 (MCO2). Now, they argue that this gives them a disadvantage in the sea, while it confers advantages that help them on land, placing MCO2 at the heart of insect eco-evolution. Insects are some of the most successful organisms on the planet. ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Newly developed “smart” coatings for surgical orthopedic implants can monitor strain on the devices to provide early warning of implant failures while killing infection-causing bacteria, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers report. The coatings integrate flexible sensors with a nanostructured antibacterial surface inspired by the wings of dragonflies and cicadas. In a new study in the journal Science Advances, a multidisciplinary team of researchers found the coatings prevented infection in live mice and mapped strain in commercial implants applied to sheep spines to warn of various implant or healing failures.  “This ...

SAN CARLOS, California – A new publication in the May issue of Nature Aging by researchers from Integrated Biosciences, a biotechnology company combining synthetic biology and machine learning to target aging, demonstrates the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to discover novel senolytic compounds, a class of small molecules under intense study for their ability to suppress age-related processes such as fibrosis, inflammation and cancer. The paper, “Discovering small-molecule senolytics with deep neural networks,” authored in collaboration with ...

Finding a full-time faculty job can be a daunting challenge for doctoral graduates. University of Cincinnati anthropologist Kathleen Grogan says postdoctoral researchers can benefit from having peers review their applications. She learned this herself while working as a postdoctoral researcher. She realized that she and other postdocs routinely solicited feedback in an online messaging app dedicated to aspiring scientists. “I was on the job market and wanted people with broad scientific expertise to look at my stuff,” said Grogan, an assistant professor in UC’s College ...

LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 5, 2023) — The University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center has been recognized by the National Pancreas Foundation (NPF) as an approved NPF Center of Excellence. The designation is awarded after a rigorous audit review to determine that an institution's focus is on multidisciplinary treatment of pancreatic cancer, treating the “whole patient” with a focus on the best possible outcomes and an improved quality of life. “We are honored to receive the NPF designation, which highlight’s Markey’s commitment to multidisciplinary ...

Researchers at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory captured one of the fastest movements of a molecule called ferricyanide for the first time by combining two ultrafast X-ray spectroscopy techniques. They think their approach could help map more complex chemical reactions like oxygen transportation in blood cells or hydrogen production using artificial photosynthesis. The research team from SLAC, Stanford and other institutions started with what is now a fairly standard technique: They zapped a mixture of ferricyanide and water with an ultraviolet laser and bright X-rays generated by the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray free-electron laser. ...

Providing defendants with legal counsel during their initial bail hearing decreases use of monetary bail and pretrial detention, without increasing the likelihood that defendants fail to appear at the subsequent preliminary hearing, according to a new RAND Corporation study.   Researchers found that having legal counsel at bail hearings increased the probability of being released without monetary bail by 21% and reduced the probability that an individual was in jail three days after their bail hearing by 10%.   The analysis, based on a field experiment in Pittsburgh where public defenders were assigned to a limited number of initial bail hearings, is ...

New Haven, Conn. — When new COVID-19 vaccines were first administered two years ago, public health officials found an increase in cases of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, particularly among young males who had been vaccinated with mRNA vaccines. It was unclear, however, what exactly was causing this reaction. In a new study, Yale scientists have identified the immune signature of these heart inflammation cases. These findings, published May 5 in the journal Science Immunology, rule out some of the theorized causes of the heart inflammation and suggest potential ways to further ...

East Hanover, NJ – May 5, 2023 –Declines in the April job numbers for people with disabilities raise concerns about the future of the job market, according to today’s National Trends in Disability Employment – semi-monthly update (nTIDE), issued by Kessler Foundation and the University of New Hampshire’s Institute on Disability (UNH-IOD). To assess whether this change signals a slowing of job gains for people with disabilities, nTIDE experts will look closely at the direction of next month’s employment indicators.                                                                                                                        Month-to-Month ...

“AL amyloidosis is a fatal disease and systemic therapy is required to prevent deposition of amyloid in other organs and prevent progressive organ failure.” BUFFALO, NY- May 5, 2023 – A new review paper was published in Oncotarget's Volume 14 on April 26, 2023, entitled, “Systemic AL amyloidosis: current approach and future direction.” In this review, researchers Maroun Bou Zerdan, Lewis Nasr, Farhan Khalid, Sabine Allam, Youssef Bouferraa, Saba Batool, Muhammad Tayyeb, Shubham Adroja, Mahinbanu Mammadii, Faiz Anwer, Shahzad Raza, and Chakra P. Chaulagain from SUNY Upstate Medical University, University of Texas MD Anderson ...

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools can drive cars, monitor and adjust the temperature in your home, and chat with you online. AI could help public health officials, community workers, and clinics efficiently direct and allocate resources and better target interventions to improve health outcomes during disasters and public health emergencies.  “The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted a need for new approaches to resource allocation during public health crises—approaches that simultaneously serve our society’s most vulnerable communities, improve our overall health and well-being, and maximize impact,” ...

Des Plaines, IL — There are unlimited opportunities for career growth in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) health system and this option should be recognized by medical students considering emergency medicine as a potential career, and by emergency medicine residents as well. This is the message of a perspective piece titled, The hidden jewel of emergency medicine careers: Why it's time to explore the VA. The piece introduces the April 2023 special issue of Academic ...

  The Alliance Board of Directors has elected Evanthia Galanis, MD, as Group Chair-Elect of the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology at the 2023 Alliance Spring Virtual Group Meeting on May 5. Dr. Galanis will take office in November 2023 and will serve a six-year term.“I’m honored to be elected to serve as Group Chair of the Alliance,” Dr. Galanis said. “I am excited to lead an organization whose mission is to reduce the impact of cancer by uniting a broad community of scientists and clinicians who are committed to the prevention and treatment ...

DENVER — (MAY 5, 2023) For the past two decades, there has been a major resurgence in progressive massive fibrosis (PMF), (also known as black lung) among coal miners, leading researchers from National Jewish Health and across the country to examine what job duties might be putting them at risk. Current federal regulations require routine monitoring of dust levels in specific “high risk” jobs in underground coal mines, mainly jobs near the coal seam where coal is mined from surrounding rock. During the study, crystalline silica, a component of coal mine dust, was found in the lungs of coal miners whose jobs had not been targeted for exposure monitoring based on current ...

Football players who have had repetitive head trauma and concussion are at heightened risk for chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), an irreversible condition that leads to dementia. But not every case of cognitive decline means CTE, as illustrated by a new case study published by researchers from Mass General Brigham in Current Sports Medicine Reports. In the publication, Adam Tenforde, MD, a physician in Mass General Brigham’s Sports medicine program and medical director of the Spaulding National Running Center, co-authored a study that described the case ...

By Suhtling Wong | May 1, 2023 11:19 am Bacteria naturally adapt to various environmental stimuli and as they mutate, these changes can make them resistant to drugs that would kill or slow their growth. In a recent article published in PLoS Genetics, UCF College of Medicine microbiologist Dr. Salvador Almagro-Moreno uncovers the evolutionary origins of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in bacteria. His studies on the bacterium that causes ...

Led by Jizhong Zhou, Ph.D., the director of the Institute for Environmental Genomics at the University of Oklahoma, an international research team conducted a long term experiment that found that climate warming reduced the diversity of and significantly altered the community structure of soil archaea. Their findings are published in the journal Nature Climate Change. At the microbiological level, life can be described as belonging to one of three kingdoms – how species are described in relation to one another. Eukarya contains complex organisms like animals and ...

PHILADELPHIA (May 5, 2023) - Despite breastfeeding being recommended for at least two years, only 36 percent of all infants are still breastfed at their first birthday. Black/African American mothers are least likely to initiate breastfeeding with initiation rates of only 74 percent compared to 90 percent of Asian mothers with a national average of 84 percent. Given the disparities in breastfeeding initiation, there are likely to be equivalent disparities in breastfeeding duration. New research from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing (Penn Nursing) published in the journal Breastfeeding ...

NEWPORT NEWS, VA – Experts in high-performance computing and data management are gathering in Norfolk next week for the 26th International Conference on Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP2023). Held approximately every 18 months, this high-impact conference will be held at the Norfolk Marriott Waterside in Norfolk, Va., May 8-12. CHEP2023 is hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in nearby Newport News, Va. This is the first in-person CHEP conference to be held since 2019. Science is driven by data. As research has progressed, so has the sheer volume of scientific data. The CHEP2023 conference ...

”When pentacene is excited by light, the electrons in the material rapidly react,” explains Prof. Ralph Ernstorfer, a senior author of the study. “It was an open and very disputed question whether a photon excites two electrons directly or initially one electron, which subsequently shares its energy with another electron.” To unravel this mystery the researchers used time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, a cutting-edge technique to observe the dynamics of electrons on the femtosecond time scale, which is a billionth of a ...

New multi-institutional phase 3 clinical trial data published May 2 in Cell Reports Medicine found that a cancer stem cell test can accurately decide more effective treatments and lead to increased survival for patients with glioblastoma, a deadly brain tumor. The University of Cincinnati’s Soma Sengupta, MD, PhD, a co-first author of the research and a University of Cincinnati Cancer Center physician-researcher, said the research focused on patients whose glioblastoma had returned after initial treatment.  The trial tested the effectiveness ...

Toronto - Want to make a positive difference in the wage conditions of developing country factory workers churning out products for multinational firms? Paying them more seems an obvious first step. But research looking at the experience of clothing retailer H&M Group suggests a less direct approach — by intervening at the management practice level — can empower workers and significantly raise wages in sustainable ways, multiplying the impact of the company’s investment many times over. In 2013, following activist pressure for reform, H&M went to its suppliers and asked them to voluntarily implement ...

Anomaly detectors are used to distinguish differences between normal and abnormal data, which are usually implemented by evaluating and ranking the anomaly scores of each instance. A static unsupervised streaming anomaly detector is difficult to dynamically adjust anomaly score calculation. To solve the problem, a research team led by Prof. Zhiwen Yu published their new research on 15 April 2023 in Frontiers of Computer Science co-published by Higher Education Press and Springer Nature. The team proposed a human-machine interactive streaming anomaly detection method, named ISPForest, which can ...

Sons of women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) are three times more likely to develop obesity, according to a study published in Cell Reports Medicine. According to the researchers from Karolinska Institutet the findings highlight a previously unknown risk of passing PCOS-related health problems across generations through the male side of a family. PCOS is caused by the ovaries producing too much of the sex hormone testosterone. The disease affects around 15 per cent of women of childbearing age worldwide and is a condition that ...