“Every successful medicine has its origin story. And research like this is the soil from which new drugs are born,” says Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Professor Christopher Vakoc. For six years, Vakoc’s lab has been on a mission to transform sarcoma cells into regularly functioning tissue cells. Sarcomas are cancers that form in connective tissues like muscle. Treatment often involves chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation—procedures that are especially tough on kids. If doctors could transform cancer cells into healthy cells, it would offer patients a whole new treatment option—one that could spare them and their families a great deal of ...

The Dansgaard-Oeschger events are rapid Northern-Hemisphere temperature jumps of up to 15°C in Greenland that repeatedly occurred within a few decades during the last ice age. “These events are the archetype of abrupt climate changes and further increasing our understanding of them is crucial for more reliable assessments of the risk and possible impacts of future large-scale climate tipping events”, says Niklas Boers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the Technical University of Munich, one of the authors of the study to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences PNAS. In the ...

A major red tide event occurred in waters off Southern California in the spring of 2020, resulting in dazzling displays of bioluminescence along the coast. The spectacle was caused by exceedingly high densities of Lingulodinium polyedra (L. polyedra), a plankton species renowned for its ability to emit a neon blue glow. While the red tide captured the public’s attention and made global headlines, the event was also a harmful algal bloom. Toxins were detected at the height of the bloom that had the potential to harm marine life, and dissolved oxygen levels dropped to near-zero as the extreme biomass of the red tide decomposed. This lack of oxygen led to fish die-offs ...

Amsterdam, Netherlands – 27 Aug 2023: Intravascular imaging-guided percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) is associated with a lower rate of target lesion failure compared with angiography-guided PCI, according to late breaking research presented in a Hot Line session today at ESC Congress 2023.1   Numerous randomised trials have compared intravascular imaging-guided PCI with angiography-guided PCI. However, most of these prior trials have used intravascular ultrasound (IVUS). Optical coherence ...

Amsterdam, Netherlands – 27 Aug 2023: Pulsed field ablation (PFA) is as effective and safe as conventional thermal ablation for the treatment of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation (AF), according to late breaking research presented in a Hot Line session today at ESC Congress 2023.1   ESC guidelines recommend catheter ablation after failure of drug therapy in patients with paroxysmal AF.2 Conventional ablation technology uses thermal energy (either heat/radiofrequency energy or cold/cryothermal energy) to ablate the tissue. Unlike thermal ablation, PFA uses high energy electrical pulses to destroy tissue by a process called electroporation. Preclinical ...

Mazin To Study Ab Initio Engineering Of Doped-Covalent-Bond Superconductors  Igor Mazin, Professor of Practice for Advanced Studies in Theoretical Physics, Quantum Materials Center, Physics and Astronomy, is set to receive funding for the project: "Collaborative research: Ab Initio Engineering of Doped-Covalent-Bond Superconductors."  This EAGER award will support a joint computational and theoretical effort to guide the search for practical superconducting materials.   Superconductors carry electrical current without any resistance when cooled down below a certain material-dependent ...

Marasco Bridging Chemistry & AI-Empowered Imaging For Secure & Trustworthy Human Identity Verification  Emanuela Marasco, Assistant Professor, Center for Secure Information Systems, received funding for the project: "EAGER: SaTC: Sweaty Digits: Bridging Chemistry and AI-Empowered Imaging for Secure and Trustworthy Human Identity Verification."  Marasco seeks to characterize a person's extrinsic and intrinsic features for a more accurate representation of their identity by exploiting selected compounds ...

COS Researchers Transitioning Training Dataset Labeling Tool To Support Discoveries In Earth Science & Heliophysics  Chaowei Yang, Professor, Director, NSF Spatiotemporal Innovation Center, Geography and Geoinformation Science, and Jie Zhang, Professor, Physics and Astronomy, received funding for the project: "Transitioning a Training Dataset Labeling Tool (TDLT) to Support Discoveries in Earth Science and Heliophysics."  The researchers are creating a generalizable training dataset labeling tool for both Earth and heliophysics by ...

For years, scholars, advocates and journalists have highlighted the ongoing racism and segregation in the housing market, yet a segment of the housing market — government-subsidized housing — has been overlooked, until now. A new study from researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and other institutions is the first in decades to investigate racial inequality in the subsidized housing market. Using restricted 2017 American Housing Survey data provided by the U.S. Department ...

Amsterdam, Netherlands – 27 Aug 2023: A randomised trial involving all hospitals in London, UK, has found no difference in survival at 30 days in patients with resuscitated cardiac arrest in the community who were taken by ambulance to a cardiac arrest centre compared with those delivered to the geographically closest emergency department. That’s the finding of late breaking research presented in a Hot Line session today at ESC Congress 2023.1 The study also found no overall difference in neurological outcomes at discharge and at three months between groups.   Sudden ...

Amsterdam, Netherlands – 27 Aug 2023: Acoramidis improves outcomes in patients with transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy (ATTR-CM) compared with placebo, according to late breaking research presented in a Hot Line session today at ESC Congress 2023.1   ATTR-CM is a rare, progressive, and fatal disease characterised by the accumulation of misfolded transthyretin protein in the heart. It causes an infiltrative, restrictive cardiomyopathy resulting in clinical heart failure, usually with preserved ejection fraction. Previously, the ATTR-ACT trial of tafamidis in ATTR-CM demonstrated ...

Amsterdam, Netherlands – 27 Aug 2023: Women with breast cancer are set to be enrolled in a clinical trial examining the ability of behavioural and psychological interventions to reduce the heart damage from anti-cancer therapies. The innovative CARDIOCARE project is being conducted by a consortium of European partners including the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).   The latest updates from the project will be discussed on the ESC TV stage during ESC Congress,1 with further information provided in the Exchange ...

While radio waves emitted by radio and television broadcasting and CB radio can disrupt the magnetic compass of migratory birds, those used in mobile communication networks do not because the frequencies are too high to affect their sense of orientation. This was the key finding of a new study published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by a team of researchers led by Professor Dr Henrik Mouritsen of the University of Oldenburg and Professor Dr Peter Hore of the University of Oxford (UK). This finding also bolsters the researchers' theory that the magnetic compass sense in these birds is based on a quantum-mechanical ...

The SARS-CoV-2 virus swept across the globe at the beginning of 2020, and one of the earliest and hardest-hit areas of the United States was New Jersey.    Hackensack Meridian Health, the state’s largest and most comprehensive health network, played a major role in virus detection and tracking of the virus’s evolution and dynamics, due to the expertise of the Hackensack Meridian Center for Discovery and Innovation (CDI), the network’s research institute.   Now the CDI experts ...

The MIT Press and UC Berkeley School of Public Health proudly announce the launch of Rapid Reviews\Infectious Diseases (RR\ID). Building on the accomplishments of Rapid Reviews\COVID-19 (RR\C19), the Rapid Reviews editorial team is now setting their sights even higher.  “RR\C19 launched at a critical moment in global history and we are incredibly proud of the impact the journal has had so far,” said Stefano Bertozzi, editor-in-chief of RR\ID and Professor of Health Policy and Management at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. “But when monkeypox started to spread in ...

Researchers from Radboud University and the UMC Utrecht have succeeded in transforming brain signals into audible speech. By decoding signals from the brain through a combination of implants and AI, they were able to predict the words people wanted to say with an accuracy of 92 to 100%. Their findings are published in the Journal of Neural Engineering this month. The research indicates a promising development in the field of Brain-Computer Interfaces, according to lead author Julia Berezutskaya, researcher ...

When organisms pass their genes on to future generations, they include more than the code spelled out in DNA. Some also pass along chemical markers that instruct cells how to use that code. The passage of these markers to future generations is known as epigenetic inheritance. It’s particularly common in plants. So, significant findings here may have implications for agriculture, food supplies, and the environment. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Professors and HHMI Investigators Rob Martienssen and Leemor Joshua-Tor have been researching how plants pass along the markers that ...

EMBARGOED by JAMA Neurology until 11 a.m. EDT Aug. 28, 2023 Contact: Maria Ober, 617-224-8963, mpober@bu.edu (Boston)— A new BU Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) Center study has found that, among a sample of 152 young athletes exposed to repetitive head impacts (RHI) who were under age 30 at the time of death, 41.4% (63) had neuropathological evidence of CTE, a degenerative brain disease caused by RHI. The study published in JAMA Neurology includes the first American woman athlete diagnosed with CTE, a 28-year-old collegiate soccer player whose identity remains private. “This study clearly shows that the pathology of CTE starts early,” said corresponding ...

Living in a neighborhood with better access to resources such as high-quality housing, healthy food, parks and playgrounds, and clean air during the early stages of childhood was associated with lower asthma incidence in a new study from NIH’s Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program. Children born in high-opportunity neighborhoods had an asthma incidence rate of 23.3 cases per 1,000 children, while those born in very low and low-opportunity neighborhoods had rates of 35.3 per 1,000 ...

Scientists at the University of Sydney have, for the first time, used a quantum computer to engineer and directly observe a process critical in chemical reactions by slowing it down by a factor of 100 billion times. Joint lead researcher and PhD student, Vanessa Olaya Agudelo, said: “It is by understanding these basic processes inside and between molecules that we can open up a new world of possibilities in materials science, drug design, or solar energy harvesting. “It could also help improve ...

About The Study: In this study of hospitals reporting SARS-CoV-2 infections, there was an increase of hospital-onset SARS-CoV-2 infections when community-onset infections were higher, indicating a need for ongoing and enhanced surveillance and prevention efforts to reduce in-hospital transmission of SARS-CoV-2 infections, particularly when community-incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infections is high.  Authors: Kelly M. Hatfield, M.S.P.H., of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, is the ...

About The Study: In a large cohort of U.S. military veterans serving after 9/11, suicide rates increased more than 10-fold from 2006-2020, a significantly greater rate of change than in the U.S. adult population. Over the 15-year period, veterans with traumatic brain injury (TBI) had suicide rates 56% higher than veterans without TBI and three times higher than the U.S. adult population. Authors: Jeffrey T. Howard, Ph.D., of the University of Texas at San Antonio, 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/jamaneurol.2023.2893) Editor’s ...

About The Study: The findings of this systematic review and meta-analysis of 18 long-term randomized clinical trials involving 2.1 million individuals suggest that current evidence does not substantiate the claim that common cancer screening tests save lives by extending lifetime, except possibly for colorectal cancer screening with sigmoidoscopy.  Authors: Michael Bretthauer, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Oslo in Oslo, Norway, 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/jamainternmed.2023.3798) Editor’s ...

About The Study: This case series found that young brain donors exposed to repetitive head impacts were highly symptomatic regardless of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) status, and the causes of symptoms in this sample are likely multifactorial. Future studies that include young brain donors unexposed to repetitive head impacts are needed to clarify the association among exposure, white matter and microvascular pathologic findings, CTE, and clinical symptoms. Authors: Ann C. McKee, M.D., of the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs in Boston, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website ...

Due to intensifying sea-ice melting in the Arctic, sunlight is now penetrating deeper and deeper into the ocean. Since marine zooplankton respond to the available light, this is also changing their behaviour – especially how the tiny organisms rise and fall within the water column. As an international team of researchers led by the Alfred Wegener Institute has now shown, in the future this could lead to more frequent food shortages for the zooplankton, and to negative effects for larger species including seals and whales. The study ...