Lyon, France: Lithium is becoming the new gold, with rocketing use in lithium-ion batteries in electric cars, computers, and portable devices driving up the price and affecting the supply of the relatively rare metal. Scientists are on the verge of developing a way of using sodium to replace some of the lithium, so driving down costs and guaranteeing the supply. Recently scientists have looked at dispensing with lithium altogether and instead using sodium or other elements in high quality batteries. Sodium is cheaper and more available (it’s found in seawater, as sodium chloride), but they have ...

This year’s Presidential Symposium places plant science within a larger context, spotlighting the connections between plants and humanity. Accordingly, ASPB President Gustavo MacIntosh selected speakers with a broad array of backgrounds and expertise. Yet when the Presidential Symposium takes place Saturday, August 5, at 1:30 pm, you’ll find they agree on critical fundamentals.  “Humans are totally dependent on plants for food,” began Barbara Schaal of Washington University.  “When it comes to agriculture, plants and people are really ...

Tiny fish called Trinidadian guppies have surprised scientists when faced with the so-called “volunteer’s dilemma”. The idea of the dilemma is that individuals are less likely to cooperate if they are in a large group. Various studies have demonstrated this in humans – but guppies appear to buck the trend. In the new study, by the University of Exeter, guppies in larger groups were more likely to risk approaching a predator to gather information for the shoal. “When faced with a possible predator, guppies have to balance risks,” said Rebecca Padget, from Exeter’s Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour. “At least one ...

An investment of £53 million in six research centres will drive forward change in the energy system and help to meet the UK’s net zero target by 2050.  The energy research centres will boost knowledge, create innovative green technologies and reduce demand for energy to achieve greener, cleaner domestic, industrial and transport energy systems. UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has awarded:  £15 million for a new Energy Demand Research Centre that will provide solutions for energy demand reduction, understand the impact on consumers, and enable equitable policy decision-making.  £17.5 ...

Mars rovers have teams of human experts on Earth telling them what to do. But robots on lander missions to moons orbiting Saturn or Jupiter are too far away to receive timely commands from Earth. Researchers in the Departments of Aerospace Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign developed a novel learning-based method so robots on extraterrestrial bodies can make decisions on their own about where and how to scoop up terrain samples. “Rather than simulating how to scoop every possible type of rock or granular material, ...

An estimated 50 million individuals in the United States struggle with the challenges of cocaine or alcohol use disorders, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Beyond the well-documented health risks, addiction to these substances detrimentally affects our cognitive flexibility, which is the ability to adapt and switch between different tasks or strategies. Although previous research has hinted at this connection, the underlying reasons for this cognitive impairment remain elusive. Cognitive flexibility is a crucial element in various domains of our life, including ...

AURORA, Colo. (July 11, 2023) – Researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus have found that cannabidiol (CBD), often used to treat anxiety and nausea, can potentially harm a developing fetus. The paper was published in Molecular Psychiatry today. People consume cannabis or a non-psychoactive component cannabidiol (CBD) to help with nausea and anxiety during pregnancy because they think it is safe and healthy. But CBD crosses the placenta and accumulates in the fetal brain. Until now, no one knew how fetal exposure to CBD affected brain development, said Emily ...

Fine particulate matter comes from wood burning, power generation, motor vehicles and other combustion sources that emit tiny particles into the air. At only 2.5 micrometers or smaller, these particles are small enough to be inhaled and cause lasting damage to the heart and lungs. Known as PM2.5, exposure to these particles is a leading mortality risk factor in India and the surrounding region of South Asia. A new study by researchers in Randall Martin’s lab in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis evaluated the contribution of various emission sectors and fuels to PM2.5 mass for 29 states in India ...

Daniel Becker, Ph.D., an assistant professor of Biology in the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences, has received an Oak Ridge Associated Universities Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award for his continued research on bat migration in western Oklahoma. “We’re studying migratory Mexican free-tailed bats and the pathogens they might carry that are possible threats to human or wildlife health,” Becker said. “This award allows us to purchase the microchips we implant in the bats and ...

MIAMI, FLORIDA (July 11, 2023) – “Please, please do it (cancer screening), if not for yourself, then for the next generation. We need to see the day when we end cancer.” Those are the impassioned words of Charinus Johnson-Davis, who was diagnosed with breast cancer a dozen years ago but is now cancer-free after a double-mastectomy and 28 rounds of chemotherapy plus radiation. She is on a mission to help address cancer disparities affecting Black women and men, and is one of the first to enroll in the African Cancer Genome Registry, a new study at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer ...

New York (July 11, 2023)  — The American Geriatrics Society (AGS) supports the recently announced decision from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to require the collection of real-world information via a registry to study monoclonal antibodies directed against amyloid for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. This decision applies to monoclonal antibodies that receive traditional approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Currently, lecanemab (trade name ...

11 July 2023 The Geological Society of America Release no. 23-25 Contact: Justin Samuel +1-303-357-1026 jsamuel@geosociety.org For immediate release GSA Connects 2023: A Premier International Scientific Meeting The Geological Society of America visits Pittsburgh Boulder, Colo., USA: Media registration is open now for The Geological Society of America’s Connects 2023 meeting, to be held 15–18 October 2023 at the David L Lawrence Convention Center (1000 Fort Duquesne Blvd) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. The organizing committee is pleased to be planning a dynamic meeting centered around ...

The same AI technology used to mimic human art can now synthesize artificial scientific data, advancing efforts toward fully automated data analysis. Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have developed an AI that generates artificial data from microscopy experiments commonly used to characterize atomic-level material structures. Drawing from the technology underlying art generators, the AI allows the researchers to incorporate background noise and experimental imperfections into the generated ...

With an estimated 75 million active users each month, Tinder is the most popular dating app in the world. But a new study by Stanford Medicine researchers and collaborators has found, surprisingly - though perhaps not to users of the app - that many users are not swiping for dates. In a survey of more than a thousand Tinder users, half said they were not interested in meeting offline, and nearly two-thirds were already married or "in a relationship." In fact, the psychological motivations behind people's use of the app varied widely and had a strong influence on their satisfaction with the app and the dates it led to, according to the study published June 23 ...

URBANA, Ill. — Food waste is a major problem around the world. In the United States, an estimated 30 to 40% of edible food is lost or wasted, costing billions of dollars each year. One potential solution is to divert food waste from landfills to renewable energy production, but this isn’t done on a large scale anywhere. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign investigates the feasibility of implementing energy production from food waste in the state of Illinois. “We have a large amount of organic waste in the U.S., which eventually enters landfills and emits greenhouse gasses. However, this material ...

“To date, no studies have directly measured [hydrogen sulfide] production in Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome [...]” BUFFALO, NY- July 11, 2023 – A new research paper was published in Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 15, Issue 12, entitled, “Hepatic hydrogen sulfide levels are reduced in mouse model of Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome.” Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome (HGPS) is a rare ...

New research from Cedars-Sinai Cancer investigators could warrant reconsideration of current screening guidelines to include a poorly recognized cause of Lynch syndrome, the most common cause of hereditary colorectal and endometrial cancers. Their study, published today in the JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, concluded that the guidelines leave a significant number of patients undiagnosed. “When patients with Lynch syndrome—whose first cancers generally appear at an early age—aren’t diagnosed promptly, they don’t get appropriate follow-up or surveillance,” said Megan Hitchins, ...

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (07/11/2023) — Researchers at the University of Minnesota Medical School recently received a four-year award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA’s) Neural Evidence Aggregation Tool program. The goal of their project— titled Fast, Reliable Electrical Unconscious Detection (FREUD)—is to develop tools to better detect early symptoms of depression, psychosis and suicidality, with the intent that treatment can be started as early in a condition’s trajectory as possible. “It’s exactly those early moments when getting someone therapy or mental health services could save their life or ...

DENVER — Recently published research suggests that despite showing clear symptoms of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), many African Americans are not officially diagnosed with the disease due to flaws in diagnosis methods.  The Research was led by National Jewish Health and recently published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine from the COPDGene study.  Fixed-ratio spirometry, a standard method of measuring respiratory capacity, has long been used as a method of detecting COPD. ...

Each year, too many kids in the East Bay suffer needlessly from pain related to long-term serious illness, including migraines, joint and abdominal pain, sickle cell anemia and more. A new UCSF Health pain clinic in Walnut Creek is opening to provide relief. The new clinic extends the reach of the Stad Center for Pediatric Pain, Palliative & Integrative Medicine beyond UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland. The Center is one of the nation’s most innovative and comprehensive integrative ...

Genome-wide screen in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans reveals potential targets to delay motor aging, including the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase VPS-34; genetic and pharmacological partial inhibition of VPS-34 improves neurotransmission and muscle integrity through increased PI(3)P-PI-PI(4)P conversion, ameliorating motor aging in both worms and mice. ##### In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Biology:   http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002165 Article ...

GRAND FORKS, N.D., July 11, 2023   ̶  Scientists at the USDA Agricultural Research Service’s (ARS) Grand Forks Human Nutrition Research Center led a study that demonstrates it is possible to build a healthy diet with 91 percent of the calories coming from ultra-processed foods (as classified using the NOVA scale) while still following the recommendations from the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA). The study highlights the versatility of using DGA recommendations in constructing healthy menus. “The study is a proof-of-concept that shows a more balanced view of healthy ...

The body’s blood glucose level needs to be maintained in a relatively narrow range. It cannot be too high, as it can lead to diabetes, and it cannot be too low because it can cause fainting or even death. “There are many glucose-sensing neurons in the brain that are thought to actively participate in detecting small changes of glucose levels in the body and then trigger responses accordingly to return the level to a healthy range,” said Dr. Yong Xu, professor of pediatrics – nutrition, ...

In 2020, Tufts Wildlife Clinic Director Maureen Murray, V03, published a study that showed 100% of red-tailed hawks tested at the clinic were positive for exposure to anticoagulant rodenticides (ARs). Such exposure occurs when these chemicals are used to kill mice or rats, which eat the poison, and the birds eat the poisoned prey. Now, Murray is expanding that research with a new study published recently in the journal Environmental Pollution, which found that another type of rodenticide—a neurotoxicant called bromethalin—also ...

ANN ARBOR, Michigan — A new analysis finds that up to millions of dollars could be saved annually on cancer immunotherapy treatments across the Veterans Health Administration by reconsidering how those drugs are delivered.   It’s a concept that could be applied to all cancer centers nationwide. Immune checkpoint inhibitors were initially tested and approved at weight-based dosages but then moved to one-size-fits-all flat doses, in part to reduce drug waste. But researchers from the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center found that if vials intended for a single ...