In the United States, an average of three people die every day waiting for a liver transplant, which resulted in nearly 1,200 lives lost in 2021. Liver allocation policy has undergone major modifications in the last 10 years. In a new study, researchers examined these policies, finding that despite the changes, geographic inequity persists. The authors recommend a more efficient and equitable way to allocate livers. The study, by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and the University of Maryland (UMD), is forthcoming in Manufacturing & Service Operations Management. “We suggest policymakers move away from the ‘one- size-fits-all’ approach of current ...

Joan Casey lived through frequent wildfire-season power outages when she lived in northern California. While waiting for the power to return, she wondered how the multi-day blackouts affected a community’s health. “For me it was an inconvenience, but for some people it could be life-threatening,” said Casey, now an assistant professor in the University of Washington’s Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences. “If you had an uncle that ...

Amid historically high suicide rates and mental health care provider shortages, new research from Incite @ Columbia University suggests that interventions to alleviate mental health care access disparities can prevent unnecessary death and suffering. In an article pending publication in PNAS next week, “Differential Spatial-Social Accessiblity to Mental Health Care and Suicide," Daniel Tadmon and Peter S. Bearman find that in the United States improved access to mental health care is associated with reductions in suicide risk. To enable this research, Tadmon and Bearman developed new methods of measuring access ...

EMBARGO UNTIL: May 1, 2023 at 3 PM ET Gene-editing therapy aimed at two targets – HIV-1, the virus that causes AIDS, and CCR5, the co-receptor that helps the virus get into cells – can effectively eliminate HIV infection, new research from the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University and the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) shows. The study, published online in the journal The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), is the first to combine a dual gene-editing strategy with antiretroviral ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA — For many decades, neuroscientists believed there was a “critical period” in which the brain could learn to make sense of visual input, and that this window closed around the age of 6 or 7. Recent work from MIT Professor Pawan Sinha has shown that the picture is more nuanced than that. In many studies of children in India who had surgery to remove congenital cataracts beyond the age of 7, he has found that older children can learn visual tasks such as recognizing ...

Fast facts: Congenital cataracts are the leading cause of treatable blindness in children worldwide. In nations where the surgery is widely available, surgery occurs during infancy and there is a good prognosis for the recovery of visual function. It is widely accepted that the window for surgical intervention for congenital cataracts closes by the time a child reaches the ages of six to eight years old, as that is a critical period for visual brain development. Restoration of the visual input later in life is generally ...

[EMBARGOED UNTIL May 1, 2023 at 3:00 PM U.S. Eastern time] Reports of near-death experiences--with tales of white light, visits from departed loved ones, hearing voices, among other attributes—capture our imagination and are deeply engrained in our cultural landscape. The fact that these reports share so many common elements begs the question of whether there is something fundamentally real underpinning them—and that those who have managed to survive death are providing glimpses of a consciousness that does not completely disappear, even after the heart stops ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A new study reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences assessed changes in the reproductive output of 104 bird species around the world between 1970 and 2019. The study reveals that a warming climate appears to have more worrisome effects on larger birds and migratory birds than on smaller, sedentary species. Study co-author Jeffrey Hoover, an avian ecologist at the Illinois Natural History Survey describes the findings in an interview with University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign life sciences editor Diana Yates. Some highlights: Increasing local temperatures during the chick-rearing part of the ...

Coal trains and terminal operations add a significant amount of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) pollution to urban areas, more so than other freight or passenger trains, according to a study conducted in Richmond, California, by the University of California, Davis. The paper, published in the journal Air Quality, Atmosphere & Health, is the first study of coal train particulate pollution in a U.S. urban area. It’s also the first to use artificial intelligence technologies to verify that the source of air pollution detected comes from coal. It found that passing trains carrying ...

HOUSTON – Several high-performance thermoelectric materials have been discovered over the past two decades, but without efficient devices to convert the energy they produce into emission-free power, their promise has been unfulfilled. Now an international team of scientists led by a University of Houston physicist and several of his former students has reported a new approach to constructing the thermoelectric modules, using silver nanoparticles to connect the modules’ electrode and metallization layers. The ...

For people with cancer, chemotherapy saves lives, but for some patients, the treatment comes with a side effect—heart damage. Screening cancer drugs for cardiotoxicity has been an ongoing challenge as heart cells don’t naturally grow in a dish, requiring researchers to do this critical testing using cardiac tissue from rodent models. A new study from researchers at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University and Tufts Medical Center reports that heart tissue obtained through organ donations from dogs dying of other causes are a promising platform for testing cancer drug toxicity, offering scientists a new alternative. The ...

The most common stars in the universe are red dwarf stars, which means that rocky exoplanets are most likely to be found orbiting such a star. Red dwarf stars are cool, so a planet has to hug it in a tight orbit to stay warm enough to potentially host liquid water (meaning it lies in the habitable zone). Such stars are also active, particularly when they are young, releasing ultraviolet and X-ray radiation that could destroy planetary atmospheres. As a result, one important open question in astronomy is whether a rocky planet could maintain, or reestablish, an atmosphere in such a harsh environment.   To help answer that question, astronomers ...

Cancer patients who use cannabis to address their symptoms have less pain and sleep better, according to new University of Colorado Boulder research. But they also experience another, unexpected, benefit: After a few weeks of sustained use, they seem to think more clearly. “When you’re in a lot of pain, it’s hard to think,” said senior author Angela Bryan, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at CU Boulder and a cancer survivor. “We found that when patients’ pain levels came down after using cannabis for a while, their cognition got better.” The small but groundbreaking study, published ...

A rapid, at-home test that can diagnose acute Lyme disease? That is the goal for researcher Brandon Jutras and his team at Virginia Tech’s Fralin Life Sciences Institute.  Through the support of a recent $1.2 million multiyear therapeutic/diagnostic research tick-borne disease grant awarded by the Department of Defense, Jutras' vision may one day become a reality. This research award aims to improve patient care and quality of life for military service members, veterans, and their beneficiaries as well as the American public living with Lyme disease and other tick-borne diseases. “Current ...

The police murder of George Floyd sparked nationwide protests in the summer of 2020 and revived claims that public outcry over such high-profile police killings perpetuates a violent “war on cops.” In a new study, researchers assessed if and how patterns of firearm assault on police officers in the United States were influenced by the police murder of Floyd. The study found that Floyd’s murder was associated with a three-week spike in firearm assaults on police, after which the trend in such assaults dropped to levels slightly above those predicted by pre-Floyd ...

WASHINGTON — The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is melting rapidly, raising concerns it could cross a tipping point of irreversible retreat in the next few decades if global temperatures rise 1.5 to 2.0 degrees Celsius (2.7 to 3.8 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. New research finds that 6,000 years ago, the grounded edge of the ice sheet may have been as far as 250 kilometers (160 miles) inland from its current location, suggesting the ice retreated deep into the continent after the end of the last ice age and re-advanced before modern retreat began. “In the last few thousand years before we started watching, ...

Young women who experience a heart attack have more adverse outcomes and are more likely to end up back in the hospital compared to men of a similar age in the year following discharge. According to a study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, second heart attack and chest pain due to the heart are the most common causes of rehospitalization, but non-cardiac hospitalizations showed the most significant disparity. “This all begins with public awareness towards preventing heart attacks and screening ...

Women aged 55 years and younger have nearly double the risk of rehospitalization in the year immediately after a heart attack compared to men of similar age, according to a study supported by the National Institutes of Health. Higher rates of risk factors such as obesity, heart failure, and depression among women most likely contributed to the disparity.   The findings suggest a need for closer health monitoring of the approximately 40,000 American women aged 18 to 55 years who have heart attacks each year following hospital discharge, and a better understanding of the reasons behind ...

The infrastructure that brings drinking water to homes is an investment. For millions of people, forests are part of the system behind their faucets. Over the coming decades, many forested watersheds could be lost to development, lowering water quality and raising water treatment costs, according to a new study published in the journal Science of the Total Environment. The research team focused on the forest-water connection in the southern U.S., a complex, heterogeneous region and, unfortunately, an ideal place for studying forest loss and worsening water quality. ...

Epilepsy affects approximately 1-in-26 people and the most common form, known as temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), often cannot be adequately treated with anti-seizure medications. Patients with this form of epilepsy may require neurosurgery to provide relief from seizures. The condition’s origins and progression are not well understood, and it has been unclear if genetic mutations may contribute to TLE. A new study by investigators from Mass General Brigham, in collaboration with colleagues at Boston Children’s Hospital, sheds new light on the role of somatic mutations in TLE — DNA alterations that occur after conception — and suggests the potential ...

May 1, 2023, Mountain View, CA – One of the world’s most powerful radio telescope arrays is joining the hunt for signals from other galactic civilizations. The National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), situated about 50 miles west of Socorro, New Mexico, is collecting data that scientists will analyze for the type of emissions that only artificial transmitters make, signals that would betray the existence of a technically accomplished society. “The VLA is the ...

Cancer is a disease of ripples – from symptoms that precede a diagnosis to treatment, side effects, and goals for long-term survival. It can impact every facet of life, for the person who receives the diagnosis as well as the person who is their caregiver. For caregivers, the economic impacts of cancer can be particularly acute, not just because cancer is an expensive disease, but because their ability to work may be significantly impacted. Building on an extensive foundation of previous research studying employment and outcomes related to cancer, newly published ...

Fish aren’t impacted by borders, and neither are the subsidized fishing fleets that follow them. A recent UBC study quantified the number of harmful fisheries subsidies that support fishing in the high seas, domestic and foreign waters and found that between 20 and 37 per cent of these subsidies supported fishing in waters outside the jurisdictions of their home nation; these subsidies also primarily originated from developed nations yet disproportionately impacted developing countries, leading to environmental and societal impacts all around the globe. “Harmful subsidies often lead to a fishing fleet being able to go out fishing even if ...

In the United States, almost 74% of adults age 20 and older have overweight or obesity, and of that number almost 42% have obesity. Not only are overweight and obesity complex and serious diseases, but clinicians and researchers are continuing to learn how they can impact health outcomes – from heart and musculoskeletal health to risk for disease, including cancer. New research published in the journal SURGERY shows that obesity is also associated with increased risk of complications following surgery, including ...

A longstanding approach to surgeries for children with kidney tumors has been an abundance of caution. While a growing body of evidence demonstrates that children who have extended lymph node sampling during surgery experience better outcomes, some have questioned whether removing more lymph nodes as part of the cancer staging is worth the risk of side effects such as lymphatic fluid leakage into the abdomen. However, recently published research shows that pediatric patients who receive more extended lymph node sampling during surgery for Wilms tumor, and other types of pediatric renal tumors, do not experience any more ...