NORMAN, OKLA. – University of Oklahoma engineering researcher Sangpil Yoon, Ph.D., has been awarded a $2.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, for his project titled “Development of protein-based nanostructures activated by ultrasound.” The five-year grant is part of the NIH’s Research Project Grant (R01) program, which supports cutting-edge health-related research and development initiatives. Yoon’s funding, totaling $363,919 for ...

As sea levels rise, coastal groundwater is lifted closer to the ground surface while also becoming saltier and more corrosive. A recent study by earth scientists at the University of Hawai‘i (UH) at Mānoa compiled research from experts worldwide showing that in cities where there are complex networks of buried and partially buried infrastructure, interaction with this shallower and saltier groundwater exacerbates corrosion and failure of critical systems such as sewer lines, roadways, and building foundations.  “While it has been recognized that shallowing groundwater will eventually result in chronic flooding as it surfaces, ...

As one of the first health systems in the country to pilot the use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) to draft replies to patient messages inside the Epic Systems electronic health record, UC San Diego Health is a pioneer in shaping the future of digital health. The results of a new University of California San Diego School of Medicine study indicate that, although AI-generated replies did not reduce physician response time, they have contributed to relieving cognitive burden by starting an empathetic draft, which physicians can edit rather than starting from scratch.  The study, published in the April 15, 2024 online edition of the Journal of ...

PHILADELPHIA— Mitchell A. Lazar, M.D., Ph.D., the Rhoda and Willard Ware Professor in Diabetes and Metabolic Disease, and Director of the Institute for Diabetes, Obesity, and Metabolism in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, is the 2025 recipient of the George M. Kober Medal from the Association of American Physicians (AAP). Lazar will receive the honor in Chicago at the AAP’s annual meeting which takes place April 25-27, 2025. The AAP, an elected society of the nation’s most distinguished physician scientists, was founded in 1885 by seven physicians, including Sir William ...

DALLAS (SMU) – The challenge is to connect the dots for high school students between the technology in their cell phones and the career options manufacturing the devices. To that end, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded an Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) grant to SMU professor Lin Lipsmeyer and colleagues toward developing one of the first game-based semiconductor curricula for high school students. The online game-based semiconductor curriculum will be made available to a wide range of students through a collaboration with Dallas-based gaming company Stimuli. Additional ...

Researchers developing the next generation of computing technology aim to bring some light to the field — literally. Optical computing, which relies on particles of light called photons, is expected to provide alternatives to traditional electronic approaches. Such systems — or light-based components of hybrid systems that also retain electronic parts — could be faster, consume less energy and compute visual information more efficiently through simultaneous, parallel processing. To date, ...

In a speech to a group of religious broadcasters in February, Donald Trump promised to create a task force to counter “anti-Christian bias,” which he said would investigate the “discrimination, harassment and persecution against Christians in America.” It’s not the first time Trump has claimed that Christians are being persecuted, and he’s not alone. As more politicians repeat these statements, researchers from the University of Washington investigated whether anti-Christian bias claims can also be ...

While April showers bring May flowers, these months also kick off road construction season — when cracks and potholes that developed over the winter get fixed. But recent advances could make future roadways safer and repairs more sustainable, thanks to smart pothole monitoring, snail shells and graphene. The new approaches can be found in three papers recently published in ACS journals. Reporters can request free access to these papers by emailing newsroom@acs.org. A smart pothole monitoring system for cars. By harnessing the vibrations that shake a vehicle as it drives over uneven pavement, researchers have created a system that ...

Alyssa Ryan, an assistant professor of civil and architectural engineering and mechanics, in the University of Arizona College of Engineering, is leading a national study to identify disparities in traffic safety for all transportation users, including drivers, bicyclists and walkers.  "Transportation engineering is very focused on people and impacting society and how people interact with the world," said Ryan. "If you don't have transportation, you can't do anything." With a $467,000 ...

Chicago (April 15, 2024) – New research published on Monday, April 15 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) identifies how gentrified parts of a city have notably more urban wildlife than ungentrified parts of the same city, further limiting marginalized communities’ opportunity to connect with nature. The study, led by Lincoln Park Zoo’s Urban Wildlife Institute, analyzed data from 23 cities across the continental U.S., collected by partners of the Urban Wildlife Information Network ...

Scientists at UC Riverside have demonstrated a new, RNA-based vaccine strategy that is effective against any strain of a virus and can be used safely even by babies or the immunocompromised. Every year, researchers try to predict the four influenza strains that are most likely to be prevalent during the upcoming flu season. And every year, people line up to get their updated vaccine, hoping the researchers formulated the shot correctly. The same is true of COVID vaccines, which have been reformulated to target sub-variants of the most prevalent strains ...

A drug used to treat children with epilepsy prevents brain tumor formation and growth in two mouse models of neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1), according to a study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. NF1 is a genetic condition that causes tumors to grow on nerves throughout the body, including the optic nerves, which connect the eyes to the brain. The findings lay the groundwork for a clinical trial to assess whether the drug, lamotrigine, can prevent or delay brain tumors in children with NF1. The study is online in the journal Neuro-Oncology. “Based on these data, the Neurofibromatosis Clinical Trials Consortium is considering launching a first-of-its-kind ...

The idea that the Universe is expanding dates from almost a century ago. It was first put forward by Belgian cosmologist Georges Lemaître (1894-1966) in 1927 and confirmed observationally by American astronomer Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) two years later. Hubble observed that the redshift in the electromagnetic spectrum of the light received from celestial objects was directly proportional to their distance from Earth, which meant that bodies farther away from Earth were moving away faster and the universe must be expanding. A surprising new ingredient was added to the model in 1998 when observations of ...

Leuven (Belgium), 16 April 2024 – Alzheimer's disease (AD) remains one of the most challenging and prevalent neurodegenerative disorders, affecting millions of individuals worldwide. In a new study published in Developmental Cell, researchers from the lab of Wim Annaert (VIB-KU Leuven) have identified a novel mechanism potentially connected to the early stages of AD. They demonstrated that a fragment of the amyloid precursor protein (APP), called APP-CTF, disrupts communication between cellular compartments crucial for calcium storage and waste disposal, which ...

Nations battling for Olympic success in a global sporting ‘arms race’ has led to elite coaches migrating to Western countries as they bid to escape antiquated and restrictive coaching regimes in their home countries, reveals a new study funded by the International Olympic Committee’s Olympic Studies Centre. National teams pursuing Olympic gold medals are increasingly recruiting foreign elite coaches from the leading countries, as they try to close the gap between themselves and the top medal-winners in particular ...

Leveraging gamers and video game technology can dramatically boost scientific research according to a new study published today in Nature Biotechnology. 4.5 million gamers around the world have advanced medical science by helping to reconstruct microbial evolutionary histories using a minigame included inside the critically and commercially successful video game, Borderlands 3. Their playing has led to a significantly refined estimate of the relationships of microbes in the human gut. The results of this collaboration will both substantially advance our knowledge of the microbiome ...

Manufacturing nations in the Global North are stockpiling energy and emission problems by outsourcing energy-intensive industrial processes to countries in the Global South, a new study reveals. Global North countries use their advantages in capital and technology to grab a large amount of energy through outsourcing - creating a ‘false decoupling’ of energy consumption from economic growth. But backward production technologies in the Global South tend to result in more energy consumption per unit of output – leading to greater carbon emissions ...

ROCHESTER, Minnesota — Mayo Clinic researchers recently invented a new class of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms called hypothesis-driven AI that are a significant departure from traditional AI models which learn solely from data. In a review published in Cancers, the researchers note that this emerging class of AI offers an innovative way to use massive datasets to help discover the complex causes of diseases such as cancer and improve treatment strategies. "This fosters a new era in designing targeted and informed AI algorithms to solve scientific questions, ...

Scientists used a neural network, a type of brain-inspired machine learning algorithm, to sift through large volumes of particle collision data. Particle physicists are tasked with mining this massive and growing store of collision data for evidence of undiscovered particles. In particular, they’re searching for particles not included in the Standard Model of particle physics, our current understanding of the universe’s makeup that scientists suspect is incomplete. As part of the ATLAS collaboration, scientists ...

Digital Science solutions metaphacts and Dimensions are excited to announce the highly anticipated launch of the Dimensions Knowledge Graph, a large ready-made knowledge graph powering AI solutions in the pharmaceutical and life sciences industries.  The Dimensions Knowledge Graph, powered by metaphactory, is an all-in-one knowledge graph solution, ready-made for easy integration with customers’ data infrastructure and existing internal knowledge graphs. At its core is an explicitly defined and flexible semantic model that can be easily extended to include internal data (which can range from domain expert knowledge or data from internal documents) ...

Philadelphia, April 15, 2024 – Since the implementation of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act in 2010, school meals in the United States have significantly improved. Several factors have been reported to impact student participation in school meals, including parental perceptions of school breakfast and lunch. A recent research article in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, published by Elsevier, assessed the association between parent perspectives on the school meal program and student participation. Researcher ...

Although their primary purpose is to look for exoplanets, observatories like the Kepler Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) have supplied a vast amount of data on stellar flares, detected with high-precision photometry by broadband filters in the visible light spectrum. The stars are so far away that they appear only as points of light to these telescopes, and the phenomena interpreted as stellar flares are abrupt increases in the brightness of these points. There is also a lack of data in other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, and most studies of these events focus on irradiated ...

It’s happening every day. From our water, our food and even the air we breathe, tiny plastic particles are finding their way into many parts of our body. But what happens once those particles are inside? What do they do to our digestive system? In a recent paper published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, University of New Mexico researchers found that those tiny particles – microplastics – are having a significant impact on our digestive pathways, making their way from the gut and into the tissues of the kidney, liver and brain. Eliseo Castillo, PhD, an associate professor in the Division of Gastroenterology ...

A team of researchers has unveiled a novel approach to accurately characterizing tree height composition in forests using the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology. This study marks a significant advancement in our understanding of forest ecosystems, shedding light on the intricacies of tree height variability and its implications for ecological studies and climate change mitigation efforts. Tree height composition, a vital ecological attribute, plays a significant role in influencing forest ecosystems, impacting biodiversity, carbon ...

Canada will not reach the original World Health Organization's (WHO) target of eliminating the Hepatitis C virus (HCV) by 2030 and lags in comparison to other developed countries, a new study led by researchers at the University of Waterloo has found.  HCV is an infection that poses a major public health threat that affects an estimated 250,000 Canadians – despite having a highly effective medication.   When gone unscreened, HCV is a highly debilitating infection that causes liver failure and could lead to death. Due ...