From the 20-foot-long jawbones of the filter-feeding blue whale to the short, but bone-crushing, jaws of the hyena and the delicate chin bones of a human, the pair of lower jawbones characteristic of mammals have evolved with amazing variation. But at first glance, having a single bone on each side of the head — which creates a stiff lower jaw, or mandible — doesn't appear to give mammals an advantage over other vertebrates, which have at least two and as many as 11 bones comprising each side of the lower jaw. Crocodiles, for example, have an edge over hyenas when it comes to their bite strength relative to ...

MIAMI, FLORIDA (June 27, 2023) – Cancer patients with unmet supportive care needs are more likely to experience worse clinical outcomes, including more emergency department (ED) visits and hospitalizations, according to new research from Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. The study, published June 21 in JAMA Network Open, also found that Black race, Hispanic ethnicity and factors such as anxiety, depression, pain, poor physical function and low health-related quality-of-life ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Diabetes is a progressive disease that affects one’s ability to control blood sugar levels. For many patients, the condition becomes more severe over time and blood sugar levels grow more difficult to manage. Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists, such as semaglutide, have granted patients more control in lowering of blood sugar. John Buse, MD, PhD, the Verne S. Caviness Distinguished Professor of Medicine in the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism, and an international team of researchers have presented new findings about new higher-dose formulations ...

The age of those who are distressed because of a mismatch between their biological sex and their gender identity—known as gender dysphoria—has been steadily falling, reveals research published in the open access journal General Psychiatry. And it’s lower for those assigned female sex at birth than those assigned male, the findings indicate. Recent studies suggest that gender dysphoria is becoming more common, particularly among those assigned female sex at birth. But these studies have been hampered by small sample sizes, short monitoring periods, or outdated datasets.  In a bid to get round these limitations, the researchers drew on data submitted ...

The role of mediation in preventing disputes between parents and doctors about a seriously ill child’s medical treatment from escalating to litigation may be more limited than hoped for, suggests an analysis of rulings, published online in the Archives of Disease in Childhood. It might have avoided only just under half of these published court cases heard since 1990 in England and Wales, the analysis suggests. Contested medical treatment decisions for children litigated in the courts of England and Wales may be on the rise, say the researchers.   While 10 and 11 such ...

Governments and companies planning to pursue the circular economy need to involve scientists more directly, states a new report published by the International Society for Industrial Ecology, and led by UCL’s Dr Stijn van Ewijk. The report, published today, draws attention to the weight of relevant expertise found in the field of industrial ecology, a discipline that has been focusing on the minimisation of waste, predicting the impacts of new products, and designing environmentally friendly systems for decades.  The ...

In a significant development in the fight against fatal cancers, University of Otago researchers have pinpointed a key feature that leads to the aggressive spread of colon cancer. Led by Associate Professor Aniruddha Chatterjee and Drs Euan Rodger and Rachel Purcell, researchers discovered abnormalities in the DNA instruction code that lead to the aggressive spread of colorectal (bowel) cancer – Aotearoa’s second highest cause of cancer death. Dr Rodger says the finding – published in the Cell Press journal ...

The Center for Health Outcomes and Population Equity (HOPE) at Huntsman Cancer Institute and the University of Utah (the U), in partnership with the Montana State University Center for American Indian and Rural Health Equity (CAIRHE), received a grant for Cancer Control in Persistent Poverty Areas from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health. The new grant is part of the National Cancer Moonshot, led by the Biden-Harris Administration, and it will bring together the expertise of the Center for HOPE and CAIRHE to expand their impact through two initiatives that ...

Irony has become a medium for the spread of toxic ideas online, new analysis shows. The use of irony is growing in both contemporary politics and radical online communities because it helps people to make sense of and navigate major political and economic changes, researchers have said. Ideas, jokes, memes, images are emerging as an animating force for new social movements and are now inextricably intertwined with the rise of the alt-right. The study says examining irony can help understand how recent influential political ...

June 26, 2023 - New Orleans - Ochsner Digital Medicine has achieved Validation for Savings by the Validation Institute, an independent non-profit organization. The Institute confirmed in a new propensity-matched study that members of Ochsner Connected Health’s chronic disease management program have lower per member per month costs than similar non-participants. "The Validation Institute has recognized what our clients and thousands of Ochsner Digital Medicine members know – this digital platform empowers members to save money, which is achieved through managing their chronic conditions ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. ¾ A Mayo Clinic study published in Journal of Translational Medicine evaluated the use of genomic testing broadly for rare diseases. With the increased use of genomic testing such as multi-gene panels, exome sequencing and genome sequencing in the past decade, there is a greater opportunity to better diagnose and treat patients with rare diseases. According to the National Institutes of Health, as many as 10,000 distinct rare diseases exist and an estimated 25-30 million Americans are affected by one of them. In the four-year Mayo Clinic study, researchers evaluated 1,152 patients with rare ...

The ISSCR supports research with embryo models derived from human pluripotent stem cells that is conducted with scientific and ethical rigor. ISSCR encourages researchers to continue to follow the ISSCR Guidelines for Stem Cell Research and Clinical Translation when considering research in this emerging area. Recent work presented at the ISSCR 2023 Annual Meeting in Boston, USA this month and additional research posted online as preprints shortly thereafter highlights the rapid pace of progress in the development of stem cell-based ...

The gigantic, slimy salamanders known as hellbenders, once the apex predators of many freshwater streams, have been in decline for decades, their population constantly shrinking. No one knew why. William Hopkins, professor in the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation and director of the Global Change Center at Virginia Tech, suspected the hellbenders’ plight had connections with environmental changes engineered by humans. Hellbender males select nesting sites on stream bottoms and guard the eggs laid there by females — and occasionally the salamander dads snack on the eggs, consuming ...

Embargoed for release until 5:00 p.m. ET on Monday 26 June 2023 Annals of Internal Medicine Tip Sheet @Annalsofim Below please find summaries of new articles that will be published in the next issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The summaries are not intended to substitute for the full articles as a source of information. This information is under strict embargo and by taking it into possession, media representatives are committing to the terms of the embargo not only on their own behalf, but also on behalf of the organization they represent. ---------------------------- 1. ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The rate at which women eliminate alcohol from their bloodstream is largely predicted by their lean body mass, although age plays a role, too, scientists found in a new study. Women with obesity – and those who are older – clear alcohol from their systems 52% faster than women of healthy weights and those who are younger, the study found. Lean body mass is defined in the study – published in the journal Alcohol Clinical and Experimental Research – as one’s ...

Many of the world’s largest aquatic food producers are highly vulnerable to human-induced environmental change, with some of the highest-risk countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa demonstrating the lowest capacity for adaptation, a landmark study has shown.  The study shows that more than 90% of global “blue” food production, in both capture fisheries and aquaculture, faces substantial risks from environmental change, with several leading countries in Asia and the United States set to face the greatest threats to production. The authors behind the new paper produced the first-ever global analysis ...

Some truffle producers in the eastern U.S. intending to grow European black truffles –scientific name, Tuber melanosporum — are also accidentally cultivating winter truffles — Tuber brumale — a related species that looks nearly identical but sells at a lower price, according to a new study from truffle researchers at the University of Florida and Michigan State University. In the U.S. and around the globe, European black truffles are produced commercially in truffle orchards, which contain trees ...

GeneDx (Nasdaq: WGS), a leader in delivering improved health outcomes through genomic and clinical insights, today published a paper in Nature Methods, titled “Multiscale analysis of pangenomes enables improved representation of genomic diversity for repetitive and clinically relevant genes,” in which researchers developed a new computational tool, the PanGenome Research-Tool Kit (PGR-TK), for scalable analysis of clinically relevant genes that were previously too complex to analyze. “While ...

Dennis Charney, MD, the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and President for Academic Affairs of the Mount Sinai Health System, has received the prestigious Donald Klein Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society for Clinical Psychopharmacology (ASCP). The award was presented to Dr. Charney during the ASCP’s annual meeting on Wednesday, May 31. The award is presented annually to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the field of clinical psychopharmacology. It is named in honor of Dr. Klein, who brought a rational and pragmatic approach ...

Faced with a drought of data concerning Appalachian drinking water quality and resulting health outcomes, researchers dug deeply to find what trickles they could. Alasdair Cohen, assistant professor of environmental epidemiology in public health, has studied drinking water and health challenges in rural areas internationally and in California. Since arriving at Virginia Tech in 2019, he has been studying similar issues in rural Appalachia. “My first few years at Virginia Tech, I reached out to academics, nonprofits, and state and local government agencies to try and better understand what was known about water quality in the region,” ...

Guilt. It’s a horrible feeling that causes us to question our worth as human beings. But while it’s something that induces sleepless nights and stress-related physical symptoms in individuals, for society at large, the tendency toward guilt might have some benefits. “People who are prone to feeling guilt in their everyday lives are less likely to take bribes,” said UC Santa Barbara psychology professor Hongbo Yu, who specializes in how social emotions give rise to behaviors. He is a senior author of a paper that appears in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science. In a study he conducted ...

University of North Florida faculty member Dr. Barry Albright is part of a research team led by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) who have unlocked new evolutionary information following the discovery of a 94-million-year-old mosasaur in the gray shale badlands of the National Park Service Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in southern Utah. Mosasaurs are fully marine-adapted reptiles that swam the seas while dinosaurs ruled the land. The ground-breaking research was just published in Cretaceous Research. The journey began nearly 11 years ago as Scott Richardson, a trained volunteer working under Dr. Albright, searched for fossilized remains of creatures ...

Efforts to improve sage grouse habitat through conventional management practices may be ineffective -- and even counterproductive -- according to research by University of Wyoming and other scientists. Sagebrush reduction strategies, including mowing and herbicide application, are often employed to enhance habitat for the greater sage grouse and other sagebrush-dependent species. The theory is that clearing large sagebrush shrubs improves food sources in sage grouse nesting and brood-rearing habitats by allowing ...

Researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine have led a study to examine a potential new treatment option for patients with nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH)-related fibrosis.  The results, published in the June 24, 2023, online edition of The New England Journal of Medicine, found that a drug that mimics a hormone in the body improved both liver fibrosis, or scarring of the liver, and liver inflammation in patients with NASH.  “Identifying an effective drug for NASH is extremely promising for patients as currently there are no FDA-approved therapies for this condition,” said Rohit Loomba, MD, the ...

BELLINGHAM, Washington, USA — The Journal of Applied Remote Sensing (JARS) has honored four of its best papers published in 2022. The awards recognize the journal’s best student paper, as well as papers in interdisciplinary applications, theoretical innovation, and photo-optical instrumentation and design. JARS is published online in the SPIE Digital Library by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, and optimizes the communication of concepts, information, and progress among the remote-sensing ...