About The Study: In this study of 81,755 Medical College Admission Test examinees, American Indian or Alaska Native, Black, and Hispanic students reported lower parental educational levels, greater educational and financial barriers, and greater discouragement from pre-health advisers than white students. These barriers may deter groups underrepresented in medicine from applying to and matriculating at medical school.  Authors: Jessica Faiz, M.D., M.S.H.P.M., of the Veterans Affairs Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System and UCLA in Los Angeles, is the corresponding ...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) experts have been challenged to help a new space mission to investigate Earth’s place in the universe. The Ariel Data Challenge 2023, which launches on 14 April, is inviting AI and machine learning experts from industry and academia to help astronomers understand planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets.  Dr Ingo Waldmann, Associate Professor in Astrophysics, UCL (University College London) and Ariel Data Challenge lead said:  “AI has revolutionised many fields of science and industry in the past years. The field of exoplanets has fully arrived in the era of big-data and cutting edge AI is needed to break ...

The researchers of the FinEst Centre for Smart Cities of Tallinn University of Technology (Estonia, Europe) developed the DigiAudit platform to monitor and analyse energy use and indoor climate indicators of buildings and large real estate portfolios in real time. Thinnect, an Estonian IoT start-up company, will help sell the solution and market it worldwide.  We can only reach zero-emission buildings when we have reliable data The European Union has set a target for all buildings to be zero-emission, or near-zero energy, by 2050. However, there is no reliable data on the energy consumption of many buildings, so it is not possible to monitor the condition ...

Researchers from the University of Eastern Finland, the University of Turku, and Tampere University have developed an artificial intelligence-based method for virtual staining of histopathological tissue samples as a part of the Nordic ABCAP consortium. Chemical staining has been the cornerstone of studying histopathology for more than a century and is widely applied in, for example, cancer diagnostics. “Chemical staining makes the morphology of the almost transparent, low-contrast tissue sections visible. Without it, analysing tissue morphology is almost impossible for human vision. Chemical staining is irreversible, and in most ...

Québec City, April 14, 2023 - Fuchs' endothelial corneal dystrophy, a degenerative eye disease, causes progressive vision loss that can induce blindness. It is the leading cause of corneal transplantation, but the scarcity of grafts hinders its treatment. A research team from Université Laval and Université de Montréal has identified a way to slow the disease and even avoid transplantation if diagnosed at an early stage.  In people with the disease, the endothelial cells at the back of the cornea die more quickly than in healthy people. "Everyone loses them at a slow rate, slow enough to make it to the end of our lives ...

A new study published in the journal PeerJ by Robert W. Boessenecker (CofC), Brian L. Beatty (NYIT), and Jonathan H. Geisler (NYIT) reports a wealth of new fossils of the early toothed baleen whale Coronodon from Oligocene (23-30 million years old) rock layers near Charleston, South Carolina. These include five new skulls, representing two new species: Coronodon planifrons and Coronodon newtonorum, and young juveniles of Coronodon havensteini – first named from a single skull by this team in 2017. Coronodon is one of the most primitive members ...

While the wheel does not need to be reinvented, there are benefits to the development of new nano-wheels, according to a multi-institute research team based in China. The group fabricated a novel family of metallic compounds, each of which exhibit unique properties desirable for next-generation technologies, such as advanced sensors.   Their findings were made available online on March 12 in Polyoxometalates.   “Polymetallic complexes are of great interest not only for their appealing molecular structure but also ...

There is a need for new drugs. For example, many of the antibiotics that we have been using for a long time are becoming less effective. Chemists and pharmaceutical scientists are frantically searching for new active substances, especially those that can penetrate cell membranes, as these are the only ones that patients can take orally in the form of a tablet or syrup. Only these active ingredients pass through the intestinal wall in the small intestine and enter the bloodstream to reach the affected area in the body. For active ingredients that cannot penetrate the cell membrane, physicians have no choice but to inject them directly into ...

Cancers are notoriously known for their high mortality rate and increasing incidence worldwide. Among them, lung cancer is arguably one of the most devastating ones. According to the World Cancer Research Fund International, lung cancer was the second most common cancer around the world in 2020, with more than 2.2 million new cases and 1.8 million deaths.   However, lung cancer, like other cancers, is easier to treat if caught earlier. “The reported 1-year survival rate for stage V is just 15% to 19% compared with 81% to 85% for stage I, which means that the early ...

Chemotherapy is associated with an increased risk of treatment-related heart damage, including heart failure and cerebrovascular disease, for many patients. But a new meta-analysis, presented at the American College of Cardiology’s Advancing the Cardiovascular Care of the Oncology Patient 2023 conference, finds that Black patients or patients of African ancestry have 71% higher odds of cardiotoxicity following cancer treatment compared to White patients. Cardiotoxicity is any heart damage stemming from cancer treatment or drugs, including ...

WASHINGTON—On World Quantum Day, Optica Publishing Group announced it will begin publishing a new journal in September 2023 dedicated to highly selective results in quantum information science and technology (QIST).  The new journal, Optica Quantum, joins the Society’s portfolio of the most-cited journals in optics and photonics and will provide the community with articles of the same exceptional standards for quality, novelty, and significance as its parent journal, Optica. The concept of quantum light serves as a foundation for many quantum technologies and ongoing ...

The alnus ambrosia beetle Xylosandrus germanus, also known as the black stem borer, was accidentally introduced by humans from its native east Asia to North America and Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. X. germanus is a so-called ambrosia beetle, which means that it farms its own food: a specialized fungal symbiont which it ‘sows’ and tends inside the galleries that it digs inside wood. It is a destructive invasive pest, known to attack more than 200 species from 51 families of broadleaf and conifer trees. While it prefers to colonize dead ...

The demand for precious metals and rare earths is expected to continue increasing in the future. Due to limited production areas, recycling from precision equipment and recovering from seawater and hot spring water are needed to ensure a stable supply. A research group led by Professor Masayuki Azuma and Associate Professor Yoshihiro Ojima of the Osaka Metropolitan University Graduate School of Engineering has successfully developed an adsorbent material that can selectively recover rare earth elements (REEs) using environmentally friendly and inexpensive baker’s yeast and trimetaphosphate, which is used as a food additive. The research group conducted experiments using ...

**Note: the release below is from the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID 2023, Copenhagen, 15-18 April). Please credit the conference if you use this story** Did the recent mpox (formerly known as monkeypox) outbreak end because of “network immunity”?  That’s the theory being put forward by Belgian researchers at this year’s European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) in Copenhagen, Denmark (15-18 April). 2022 saw a global outbreak of mpox, a viral ...

Peer-reviewed / Observational study / People The Lancet Public Health: Hearing aids may protect against a higher risk of dementia associated with hearing loss, study suggests Study of 437,704 people suggests those experiencing hearing loss and not using hearing aids may have a higher risk of dementia than people without hearing loss. Those using hearing aids did not appear to be at an increased risk of dementia. After adjusting for other factors, study analysis suggests a 1.7% risk of dementia in people with hearing loss who are not using hearing aids, compared to 1.2% among those without hearing loss ...

*Note: this is a joint press release from the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) and The Lancet Infectious Diseases.  Please credit both the congress and the journal in your stories* Since September, 2022, bivalent mRNA vaccines – which contain elements from both the original wild type COVID strain and an updated component from the omicron strain – have replaced older style monovalent boosters in the USA, Israel, and other countries. These vaccines were designed to help improve vaccine-induced immunity against the omicron variant and subsequent subvariants. A new study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases and ...

Adding fuel to The University of Texas at Austin’s startup engine, alumnus William “Billy” Freed, BBA ’81, and his family have given $1 million to the Herb Kelleher Entrepreneurship Center in the McCombs School of Business. The gift establishes the Freed Family Entrepreneurship Excellence Fund and endows the Freed Family Pitch Competition, previously called DisrupTexas. Freed’s wife Cheryl, BA ’82, JD ’84; sons Tyler, BS ’17, and Russell, BBA ’21; and daughter-in-law Leslie Lugrin Freed, BS ’17, ...

How can Marvel movie character Ant-Man produce such strong energy out of his small body? The secret lies in the “transistors” on his suit that amplify weak signals for processing. Transistors that amplify electrical signals in the conventional way lose heat energy and limit the speed of signal transfer, which degrades performance. What if it were possible to overcome such limitation and make a high-performance suit that is light and small but without loss of heat energy?   A POSTECH team of Professor Kyoung-Duck Park and Yeonjeong Koo from the Department of Physics and a team from ...

PITTSBURGH, April 13, 2023 – In a paper published today in Molecular Psychiatry, a team of scientists from the University of Pittsburgh in collaboration with researchers in Italy described shared patterns of sleep disturbances and irregularities in daily rhythms of rest and activity across patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorder, or SSD. By using wrist monitors that measured activity and rest as proxies of wakefulness and sleep, researchers found that individuals with SSD who resided in psychiatric hospitals and those who manage their condition in outpatient settings had erratic sleep patterns, dysregulated transitions between sleep ...

A stop smoking mobile app that senses where and when you might be triggered to light up could help people quit – according to University of East Anglia research. Quit Sense is the world’s first Artificial Intelligence (AI) stop smoking app which detects when people are entering a location they used to smoke in. It then provides support to help manage people’s specific smoking triggers in that location. Funding for the Quit Sense app has come from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) and the Medical Research Council. A study published today shows how the new ...

A University of South Australia nursing lecturer has used her own COVID-19 experience to inform research into a little-known side effect of the virus – sudden deafness. Kim Gibson, a registered nurse with a clinical background in neonatal intensive care, has documented her experience with sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSNHL) five weeks after testing positive to COVID-19. She was fully vaccinated. Her findings and recommendations are published in the latest edition of the British Medical Journal Case Reports. Gibson developed acute hearing loss in one ear, along with ...

SINGAPORE, 14 April 2023 – A preclinical study using stem cells to produce progenitor photoreceptor cells—light-detecting cells found in the eye—and then transplanting these into experimental models of damaged retinas has resulted in significant vision recovery. This finding, by scientists at Duke-NUS Medical School, the Singapore Eye Research Institute and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, marks a first step towards potentially restoring vision in eye diseases characterised by photoreceptor loss. “Our laboratory has developed a novel method that enables the production of photoreceptor ...

In celebration of World Quantum Day (14th April), IOP Publishing (IOPP) is launching a special collection of its most popular, cutting-edge quantum research published in the last two years.   The IOPP quantum collection is openly available for anyone to read and showcases world-class quantum research published in the academic journals Materials for Quantum Technology, Quantum Science and Technology, New Journal of Physics and Reports on Progress in Physics. The special collection will also include unique perspectives from women in quantum and their contributions to this popular field.    Quantum research and technology is evolving ...

Tokyo – April 13, 2023 – Toppan (TYO: 7911), a global leader in communication, security, packaging, décor materials, and electronics solutions, and Hokkaido University have launched the “Comprehensive Dementia Research Unit,” an industry creation section that will collaborate with the Hokkaido University Collaborative Project Center’s Cognitive Science Research Center, which conducts comprehensive research on diagnosis technologies for dementia. Fusing Toppan’s Digital ICA™1 technology for high-sensitivity ...

 The development of biomaterials for artificial organs and tissues is active due to an increase in accidental injuries and chronic diseases, along with the entry into a super-aged society. 3D bioprinting technology, which uses cells and biomaterials to create three-dimensional artificial tissue structures, has recently gained popularity. However, commonly used hydrogel-based bioinks can cause cytotoxicity due to the chemical crosslinking agent and ultraviolet light that connect the molecular structure of photocuring 3D-printed bioink. Dr. Song Soo-chang's research team at ...