September 12, 2023 – As researchers increasingly recognize that causes for health issues are structural and interrelated, real-world, innovative case studies demonstrate the value of applying systems science to evaluate health interventions and address health inequities as seen in a special supplement, supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, in the October/December issue of Family & Community Health. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.   Systems science offers an effective paradigm for examining and addressing various health issues to improve outcomes and reduce health inequities. The case ...

Philadelphia, September 12, 2023 – Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a neurological disorder characterized by repeated behaviors such as cleaning and checking despite clear objective evidence of cleanliness, orderliness, and correctness. Although the disease is often mischaracterized as a disorder of “fussiness,” the disorder actually stems from difficulty in processing uncertainty. However, the neural underpinnings of that aberrant processing remains unknown. Now, a new study in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, published by Elsevier, uses brain imaging to get a closer look at the underpinnings of uncertainty processing ...

The Association for Psychological Science (APS) has awarded the 2024 APS Lifetime Achievement Awards to 15 psychological scientists whose contributions have advanced understanding of topics ranging from how to alleviate human suffering to cultural differences and similarities in mental processes. APS’s four lifetime achievement awards—the APS James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award, the APS Mentor Award, the APS William James Fellow Award, and the APS James S. Jackson Lifetime Achievement Award for Transformative Scholarship—are the association’s highest honors, and their recipients are among the field’s most accomplished and respected ...

September 12, 2023—(BRONX, NY)—The newly renamed Montefiore Einstein Comprehensive Cancer Center (MECCC) has been awarded comprehensive designation by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the National Institutes of Health, the ultimate standard achieved by only 55 other NCI cancer centers in the U.S. Through NCI’s peer-review process, MECCC was nationally recognized for its paradigm-shifting, practice-changing, policy-impacting cancer-focused science. As a result, MECCC was awarded a five-year, $20 million Cancer Center Support Grant to advance the translation of novel cancer research into new treatments, new screening and diagnostic tools, and equitable access ...

Replacing 50% of meat and milk products with plant-based alternatives by 2050 can reduce agriculture and land use relatedgreenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 31% and halt the degradation of forest and natural land, according to new research. According to the study just published in Nature Communications, additional climate and biodiversity benefits could accrue from reforesting land spared from livestock production when meat and milk products are substituted by plant-based alternatives, more than doubling the climate benefits and halving future declines of ecosystem integrity by 2050. The restored area could contribute ...

About The Study: In this study of prospectively collected data of 49,000 adults age 60 or older participating in the UK Biobank, more time spent in sedentary behaviors was significantly associated with higher incidence of all-cause dementia. Future research is needed to determine whether the association between sedentary behavior and risk of dementia is causal. Authors: David A. Raichlen, Ph.D., of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2023.15231) Editor’s ...

A major study published in JAMA led by researchers at Karolinska Institutet suggests that a possible cause of spontaneous brain haemorrhage could be transmitted via blood transfusion. At the same time, it is very unlikely that anyone should suffer a brain haemorrhage after receiving donated blood. A common cause of spontaneous, recurring brain haemorrhages is the vascular disease cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA), in which proteins accumulate along the tiny blood vessels of the brain. Several studies have shown that CAA can be transferred from one individual ...

About The Study: This meta-analysis including individual participant data from 34,000 older adults in 17 studies found that antihypertensive use was associated with decreased dementia risk compared with individuals with untreated hypertension through all ages in late life. Individuals with treated hypertension had no increased risk of dementia compared with healthy controls. Authors: Matthew J. Lennon, M.D., of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/  (doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.33353) Editor’s ...

·Stress heightens risk for many psychiatric disorders·Finding opens new avenue for drug development to treat psychiatric disorders ·Amygdala releases endogenous cannabinoid molecules under stress ·Finding opens new avenue for drug development to treat psychiatric disorders CHICAGO --- When you are under stress, your brain may release its own cannabinoid molecules to calm you down, activating the same brain receptors as THC derived from cannabis plants.  But the brain activity patterns and neural circuits that are regulated by these brain-derived ...

Adults aged 60 and older who spend more time engaging in sedentary behaviors like sitting while watching TV or driving may be at increased risk of developing dementia, according to a new study by USC and University of Arizona researchers. Their study showed the risk of dementia significantly increases among adults who spend over 10 hours a day engaging in sedentary behaviors like sitting — a notable finding considering the average American is sedentary for about 9.5 hours each day. The study, published on Tuesday, September 12 in ...

Replacing 50% of meat and milk products with plant-based alternatives by 2050 can reduce agriculture and land use related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 31% and halt the degradation of forest and natural land, according to new research. According to the study just published in Nature Communications, additional climate and biodiversity benefits could accrue from reforesting land spared from livestock production when meat and milk products are substituted by plant-based alternatives, more than doubling the climate benefits and halving future declines of ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. – The risks of smoking during pregnancy for both maternal and fetal health are well documented, but only about half of pregnant people quit smoking on their own. To learn more about how e-cigarette or nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) influences smoking cessation later in pregnancy, University at Buffalo researchers compared abstinence rates in the two groups. They found that those using e-cigarettes before pregnancy were more likely to abstain from smoking later in pregnancy.   Published in JAMA Network Open on Sept. 12, the research was conducted as an observational study of data gathered from 1,329 pregnant people through the U.S. ...

New research co-led by Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia shows that amplified global warming in the Canadian High Arctic drove a profound shift in the structure of a river network carved into a permafrost landscape in only 60 years. Documenting a powerful interplay among climate change, the freeze-thaw dynamics of polygonal ground and the delivery of surface water by floods as well as snow and ice melting, the team developed a new view of the physical controls governing the speed and pattern of river channel development in these fragile landscapes. “One ...

Researchers led by Prof. LI Hanjie from the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have unveiled the dynamics of human macrophage specification across 19 different tissues from early embryonic stages. The study was published in Cell on Sept. 12. Macrophages, i.e., pivotal immune cells, have long been enigmatic in terms of their diversity and roles during human development. Based on findings in rodents, the scientific community has gained some insights into the diversity, developmental origins, and tissue-specific formation of macrophage subtypes. However, it was not clear whether these findings are conserved in humans. In this ...

Researchers discover genes behind antibiotic resistance in deadly superbug infections   Australian researchers have uncovered new genetic insights into Staphylococcus aureus, revealing what makes the bacterium so dangerous when it enters the blood.     While common, Staphylococcus aureus infections – known as Golden staph – can be life-threatening if the bacteria enter the bloodstream, causing sepsis. Golden staph is notorious for its ability to become resistant to antibiotics, making it hard to treat, which can lead to adverse health outcomes for patients infected with a drug-resistant ...

About The Study: In this study of Medicare beneficiaries with comorbid chronic low back pain and opioid use disorder (OUD), receipt of physical therapy and chiropractic care was low overall and lower across most racial and ethnic minority groups compared with non-Hispanic white persons. The findings underscore the need to address inequities in guideline-concordant pain management, particularly among Black or African American and Hispanic persons with OUD. Authors: Patience Moyo, Ph.D., of the Brown University School of Public Health in ...

Milan, Italy: Particular combinations of bacteria found in dust at day care facilities have been linked to wheezing in young children in a study presented at the European Respiratory Society International Congress in Milan, Italy [1]. Wheezing in young children is often an early sign of asthma.   Children may spend many hours in day care each week and research suggests that conditions in day care settings can have an impact on respiratory health in early childhood. The new research offers some clues ...

During the Dutch Hunger Winter Famine, infants experienced the highest absolute and relative mortality of all children under 14 years of age. These are findings from a new study at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Wageningen University & Research and the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute in the Hague. the Netherlands. In the famine cities, infant mortality increased to one percent or 922 deaths per 10,000 compared to 109 deaths per 10,000 children between the ages of one and four, and 27 deaths per 10,000 deaths at ages 5 to 14. ...

New research published today in Blood Advances reveals that since the introduction of pneumococcal conjugate vaccines, PCV7 and PCV13, invasive pneumococcal infection (IPD) rates among children living with sickle cell disease (SCD) have declined significantly. The study explores the efficacy of existing and emerging vaccines to protect children living with SCD from life-threatening infections. SCD is the most common inherited red blood cell disorder in the United States, affecting an estimated 100,000 people. ...

A groundbreaking discovery has been made by Professor Hyug Moo Kwon and his research team in the Department of Biological Sciences at UNIST, in collaboration with Professor Jaeseok Yang from Yonsei University. Their study sheds new light on the protein called ‘TonEBP,’ revealing its significant role in the development of lupus and lupus nephritis. This breakthrough not only enhances our understanding of these conditions, but also opens up potential avenues for future treatment options. Lupus is an autoimmune disorder characterized by autoreactive B cells and dysregulation of various immune cells, including myeloid cells. Lupus nephritis (LN), which ...

COVID-19 mRNA vaccination protects babies and young children against COVID-19-associated emergency department/urgent care visits, according to a multistate study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s VISION Network. The study found that children, age five and younger, who received the original COVID-19 vaccine and the updated vaccine were protected against the need for medical care for COVID in an emergency department or urgent care facility. Emergency department/urgent care visits are considered indicators of moderate disease. The small number of hospitalizations for children ages six months to five years old limited the assessment of vaccine ...

Multimorbidity describes the state of having more than one disease. Anthony Webster sought to untangle a puzzle at the heart of multimorbidity: does having had disease make a patient more likely to have another disease, independent of broad risk factors, such as age, smoking status, or weight? Webster applied a Poisson-Binomial distribution with a Weibull model to predict the incidence of 222 common diseases for approximately 500,000 individuals within the UK Biobank cohort, taking into account their age and established risk factors, but ignoring their history of previous disease or pre-existing conditions. Webster then compared the expected number ...

A research paper by scientists at the University of Coimbra proposed a soft robotic hand that composed of soft actuator cores and an exoskeleton, featuring a multimaterial design aided by finite element analysis to define the hand geometry and promote finger’s bendability. The new research paper, published on Aug. 8 in the journal Cyborg and Bionic Systems, presented the development, fabrication, and control of a bioinspired soft robotic hand and demonstrated finite element analysis can serve as a valuable tool to support the design and control of the hand’s fingers. “Recent research led to impactful achievements in functional designs, modeling, ...

Multi-impulse orbital rendezvous is a classical spacecraft trajectory optimization problem, which has been widely studied for a long time. Numerical optimization methods, deeplearning (DL) methods, reinforcement learning (RL) methods have been proposed. However, for the numerical optimization methods, they need long computation time, and they are usually not valid for the many-impulse rendezvous case with the magnitude constraints. For the machine learning (ML) methods, the DL method needs large amounts of data, and the RL method has the weakness of low efficiency. Nevertheless, ML demonstrates more accurate predictions ...

SAN ANTONIO — September 12, 2023 —The Association of Old Crows (AOC), an international organization for the electronic warfare (EW) community, has recognized three early-career Southwest Research Institute engineers for their achievements in EW research and development. Two honorees received back-to-back Electronic Warfare Professional Outstanding Young Crow Awards. AOC named one engineer a 2023 Future 5, a designation for innovative professionals building EW careers. EW technology detects and defeats enemy signals on the electromagnetic spectrum to protect U.S. and allied forces. Recipients of the international AOC EW Professional Outstanding Young Crow Award demonstrate outstanding ...