A new study led by Neda Jahanshad, PhD, a researcher at the USC Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute (Stevens INI), is set to illuminate the underexplored domain of brain aging and risk for Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) among Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) adults in the United States. Addressing this research gap is important because this population is projected to significantly influence global dementia prevalence. The study, ADRD Risk Factors in Middle Eastern and North African Immigrants in the U.S., marks a groundbreaking effort to understand the mechanisms ...

By fueling the growth of plants that become kindling, carbon dioxide is driving an increase in the severity and frequency of wildfires, according to a UC Riverside study. The worldwide surge in wildfires over the past decade is often attributed to the hotter, drier conditions of climate change. However, the study found that the effect of increasing levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) on plants may be a bigger factor. “It’s not because it’s hotter that things are burning, it’s because there’s ...

  Experts from the University of Exeter, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Estonia, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, and the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence have joined forces to address the urgent global challenge of clarifying and applying international law in cyberspace. As cyber operations continue to shape global security, the economy and politics the need for further discussions on how international law applies in the digital world is more pressing than ever. The project builds upon the University of Exeter’s significant prior research and contributions to the field ...

A massive new analysis of high seas salmon surveys is enhancing the understanding of salmon ecology, adding details about where various species congregate in the North Pacific Ocean and their different temperature tolerances. The project, led by researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, integrates numerous international salmon studies from the North Pacific dating back to the 1950s. Although many individual reports were published by nations and agencies that funded those efforts, they were never fully compiled into ...

Fires that blaze through the wildland-urban interface (WUI) are becoming more common around the globe, a trend that is likely to continue for at least the next two decades, new research finds. The research team, led by scientists at the U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR), used satellite observations and machine learning techniques to produce a unique database of WUI areas and fires worldwide, dating back about two decades. The overall number of all fires worldwide has declined, as has the total area burned.  However, the scientists ...

Canadians are no strangers to water main breaks. Aging equipment, increased demand and seasonal weather changes, along with many other factors, have added stress to the infrastructure of utilities across Canada. These challenges are not new, but the usual approach to studying them has often focused on pipe attributes and general protection strategies. In a new paper published in the journal Environmental Systems Research, a pair of Concordia researchers looks at the problem from a global, systemic perspective by identifying the driving factors behind water main breaks across Canada. They hope their work will help utilities develop better ...

MSU has a satellite uplink/LTN TV studio and Comrex line for radio interviews upon request. EAST LANSING, Mich. – Could being well-informed about politics mean you are less tolerant of differing political opinions? The answer might surprise you and be cause for pause before your next political conversation. New research from Michigan State University suggests that those who feel self-confident about their political abilities are more likely to discriminate against those who hold opposing political views. And those who are more skeptical of their political abilities ...

PLYMOUTH MEETING, PA [April 16, 2024] — New research in the April 2024 issue of JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network showcases the feasibility of improving early detection and prevention for pancreatic cancer. Global incidences of pancreatic cancer have risen dramatically in recent years, but the overall survival rate is currently only 12%. When pancreatic neoplasms are detected early enough for treatment with surgical resection, the survival rate climbs to better than 80%, but unfortunately the vast majority of patients are diagnosed with advanced-stage disease. The Pancreatic ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – Cornell University researchers are working to eliminate the rotten egg aroma that sometimes accompanies canned wine by ever-so-slightly altering the product’s formulation and packaging, which is also prone to corrosion. In recent research, the team – led by Gavin Sacks and Julie Goddard, both professors of food science – found that the choice of the ultrathin plastic coating inside aluminum cans can go a long way towards improving the aroma of the beverage and the lifespan of its container. The collaboration began ...

Building on the anti-tumor potential of Polθ inhibition in BRCA-deficient cancers, researchers at Insilico Medicine discovered a new class of orally bioavailable Polθ inhibitors designed using generative AI. For molecular generation, they used both ligand-based drug design (LBDD) and structure-based drug design (SBDD) strategies within the Chemistry42 generative chemistry engine. The new inhibitors demonstrated strong potency and promising druglike properties, highlighting AI’s potential in medicinal chemistry for precise molecular modifications. A crucial player in genomic integrity maintenance, DNA Polymerase Theta (Polθ) provides a potential synthetic lethal ...

Robots are increasingly being used in industry, and in future they will need to adapt to unforeseen events and changes in their environment much more than today, including when they work with humans. A new international research project is addressing this issue using artificial intelligence. The project is being funded by Horizon Europe, the EU framework programme for research and innovation, with a grant of DKK 56 million (EUR 7.5 million) and is called RoboSapiens (Robotic Safe Adaptation In Unprecedented Situations). The RoboSapiens project will reduce ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — As artificial intelligence continues to boom, scaling algorithms to ever-increasing data sets also becomes a bigger hurdle. Such is the case in the domain of natural language processing (NLP), or, the effort to get machines to understand and communicate with human language (think: ChatGPT, search engines and other text-based modalities). “A key challenge in this domain is the tradeoff between scalability and accuracy,” said UC Santa Barbara computer scientist ...

Irvine, Calif., April 16, 2024 — Arctic and boreal latitudes are warming faster than any other region on Earth. In three new studies, Earth system scientists at the University of California, Irvine report how the ecosystems in these regions are changing.   In a study published in Global Change Biology, a team led by Earth system science Ph.D. candidate Jinhyuk Kim from the lab of James Randerson, professor of Earth system science, reveals how wildfires are increasing rates of photosynthesis in Canada and Alaska.    They find that increasing wildfires are wiping out black spruce forests that grow relatively slowly and contribute to the organic layer of the underlying ...

Scientists have found a way to transform metal waste into a highly efficient catalyst to make hydrogen from water, a discovery that could make hydrogen production more sustainable. A team of researchers from the University of Nottingham's School of Chemistry and Faculty of Engineering have found that the surface of swarf, a byproduct of the metal machining industry, is textured with tiny steps and grooves on a nanoscale level. These textures can anchor atoms of platinum or cobalt, leading to an efficient electrocatalyst ...

For Immediate Release April 16, 2024 Microplastics, algal blooms, seafood safety are public health concerns addressed by new Oceans and Human Health Centers    NIH and NSF jointly fund new research centers to better understand how ocean-related exposures affect people’s health.  To address plastics and other problems that could affect human health, the NIH and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) are jointly funding four new Centers for Oceans and Human Health and renewing two centers as part of a marine-related health research program. Each Center will focus on a different aspect ...

Almost one-fifth of the global land surface is classified as highly susceptible to rainfall-triggered landslides. According to the World Health Organization, landslides are more widespread than any other geological hazard to occur worldwide and are increasing because of climate change.  Alba Yerro-Colom, assistant professor in the Charles E. Via, Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is motivated to advance the understanding of these natural occurrences while considering how vegetation and changes in rainfall patterns could better predict their potential damage. She ...

Researchers from the University of Michigan Health Rogel Cancer Center have created a urine-based test that detects pieces of DNA fragments released by head and neck tumors. The test could potentially facilitate early detection of this cancer type, which currently does not have a reliable screening method. Human papillomavirus (HPV) is widely recognized for causing cervical cancer, but is increasingly found to cause cancers in the mouth, throat and other head and neck regions. Early detection is critical because detecting a cancer at ...

TAMPA, Fla. — Moffitt Cancer Center has treated its first patient in an investigator-initiated, phase 1 clinical trial investigating the safety and efficacy of a chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR T) therapy for prostate cancer that has metastasized to the bone. Roughly 90% of men with advanced prostate cancer will develop bone metastases. The disease significantly impacts patients, causing extreme bone pain. The CAR T-cell therapy, developed in the lab of Moffitt immunologist Daniel Abate-Daga, PhD, utilizes gamma delta T cells to target a tumor biomarker highly expressed in bone metastatic prostate cancer called prostate stem cell antigen. ...

 Wiley, one of the world’s largest publishers and a global leader in research and learning, today announced the 2024 release of its Wiley Identifier of Natural Products (AntiBase Library + ChemWindow). With an extensive collection of over 95,000 compounds, this growing natural products database serves as a powerful drug discovery screening tool to narrow down possible novel compounds having antimicrobial, antitumor, or other desired effects. Additionally, it finds applications in food and cosmetics, agriculture, pesticides, and ...

NEWPORT, Ore. – Researchers who created “family trees” for nearly 10,000 fish found that first-generation, wild-born descendants of hatchery-origin Chinook salmon in an Oregon river show improved fitness. The finding, based on data collected over 13 years, is encouraging for Chinook salmon recovery efforts, said Kathleen O’Malley, an associate professor at Oregon State University and the study’s senior author. In this study, fitness is measured by the number of adult offspring a fish produces, with higher fitness leading to more offspring. “Previous studies have shown that hatchery-origin Chinook salmon have lower reproductive success ...

“Break a leg!” is a welcome blessing of good luck, but who wants to hear that they have actually broken a bone? What’s worse, fractures that are displaced or complex require surgery and possibly lengthy recovery times while the patient remains partly or wholly immobilized. Aiming to shorten recovery times, an Osaka Metropolitan University-led research group is focusing on plasma irradiation as a treatment method to speed up bone healing. The Department of Orthopedic Surgery’s Kosuke Saito, a graduate student in the Graduate School of Medicine, Associate Professor Hiromitsu Toyoda, and Professor Hiroaki ...

Scientists at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC) have identified the mechanisms through which anthracyclines, a widely used class of anticancer drugs, damage the hearts of patients receiving this treatment. The study, published in the journal JACC: CardioOncology, also identifies possible treatments for this complication, which affects an estimated one third of cancer survivors.   More than 4 million people in Europe are diagnosed with cancer every year. Fortunately, survival rates have increased significantly thanks to improved treatments and advances in diagnosis. Anthracyclines, ...

Young male blue tits are less successful in fathering offspring outside their breeding pair, not because of a lack of experience, but because they are outcompeted by older males, Bart Kempenaers and colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence in Germany report in a study publishing April 16th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology. Many birds form breeding pairs but will also mate and produce offspring outside of that pairing — known as “extra-pair” paternity. Inexperienced males in their first year of breeding ...

A new study examines the development of two machine learning models to classify the immunophenotype of a cancer specimen. The digital pathology approach presented can characterize and classify cancer immunophenotypes in a reproducible and scalable fashion, holding promise for the application of such a. method to identify patients that may benefit from immunotherapy in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to the study published in the peer-reviewed journal AI in Precision Oncology. Click here to ...

A nearby supernova in 2023 offered astrophysicists an excellent opportunity to test ideas about how these types of explosions boost particles, called cosmic rays, to near light-speed. But surprisingly, NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected none of the high-energy gamma-ray light those particles should produce. On May 18, 2023, a supernova erupted in the nearby Pinwheel galaxy (Messier 101), located about 22 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. The event, named SN 2023ixf, is the most luminous nearby supernova discovered since Fermi launched in ...