NEID (rhymes with fluid) is a high-precision radial-velocity spectrograph that is designed to measure the extremely minute wobble of nearby stars using the radial velocity effect. This effect results from the mutual gravitational force between a planet and its host star which causes the star’s position to shift very slightly as the planet travels around it. With this powerful capability, one of NEID’s main science goals is to confirm exoplanet candidates found by other exoplanet missions. NEID is funded by the NASA/NSF Exoplanet Exploration Program (NN-EXPLORE) and is mounted on the WIYN 3.5-meter Telescope at ...

“[…] topical ABT-263 effectively reduced several senescence markers in aged skin, thereby priming the skin for improved subsequent wound healing.”   BUFFALO, NY—February 4, 2025 — A new research paper was published by Aging (Aging-US) on December 3, 2024, in Volume 17, Issue 1, titled “Topical ABT-263 treatment reduces aged skin senescence and improves subsequent wound healing.” Researchers Maria Shvedova, Rex Jeya Rajkumar Samdavid Thanapaul,  Joy Ha, Jannat ...

How do predators use their vision to both navigate through the terrain whilst tracking prey running for its life? Pursuing prey through a complex environment is a major challenge for the visual system as not only do the prey constantly change direction, sometimes in the opposite direction to the pursuer, but running after something evokes self-induced motion-blur which degrades vision. In a study, published in Current Biology, researchers reconstructed the visual fields of freely moving ferrets as they chased a fleeing target. They discovered that the eye saccades, like those that normally track objects when sitting still, aligned the motion of the environment, ...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 4, 2025 – Playing music has long been a way for expectant parents to connect with their children in the womb, but a group of researchers has found evidence it can calm fetal heart rates, potentially providing developmental benefits. In Chaos, by AIP Publishing, researchers from the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico, the Metropolitan Autonomous University, the General Hospital Nicolás San Juan, and the National Institute of Cardiology Ignacio Chávez studied the effect of classical music on a fetal heartbeat. The team used mathematical analysis tools to identify patterns in heart rate variability. Typical measures ...

Ottawa, ON, February 4, 2025 – The proportion of new cases of schizophrenia associated with a cannabis use disorder has risen from 4% pre-legalization to 10% after cannabis legalization in Ontario, according to new research.   A new study from researchers at ICES, The Ottawa Hospital, University of Ottawa’s Department of Family Medicine, and Bruyère Health Research Institute and published in the journal JAMA Network Open used data capturing the healthcare visits of everyone living in Ontario, Canada to track whether the liberalization of medical cannabis in 2015 and legalization of non-medical ...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 4, 2025 – It’s no secret that there is a mental health crisis in the United States. As of 2021, 8.3% adults had major depressive disorder (MDD) and 19.1% had anxiety disorders (AD), and the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated these statistics. Despite the high prevalence of AD/MDD, diagnosis and treatment rates remain low – 36.9% for AD and 61.0% for MDD – due to a variety of social, perceptual, and structural barriers. Automated screening tools can help. In JASA Express Letters, published on behalf of the Acoustical Society ...

<Overview> A research team led by Professor Kazuaki Sawada and Project Assistant Professor Hideo Doi of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Information Engineering, Toyohashi University of Technology has developed a semiconductor sensor enabling the real-time observation of two types of biomolecule dynamics in solutions. By using semiconductor technology to pattern a thin metal film functioning as a neurotransmitter-sensitive membrane on sensor pixels arranged two-dimensionally in a 2 µm pitch, the sensor captures the movement of hydrogen ions and lactate ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – A new study found severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection was associated with the rapid growth of plaque in the coronary arteries and an increased risk of cardiovascular events. The results were published today in Radiology, a journal of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). “COVID-19, caused by SARS-CoV-2, is initially characterized by acute lung injury and respiratory failure,” said the study’s senior author, Junbo Ge, M.D., professor and director of the Cardiology Department at Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University in Shanghai, ...

New assessment warns area the size of the USA will become too hot during extreme heat events for even healthy young humans to maintain a safe body temperature if we hit 2°C above preindustrial levels. For those aged over 60, the same 2°C rise would see more than a third of the planet’s land mass cross this critical ‘overheating’ threshold  An international group of scientists, led by King’s College London, has revealed how continued global warming will lead to more parts of the planet becoming too ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- Addressing patients’ health-related social needs such as housing instability, food insecurity, transportation barriers and financial strain is important to improving health outcomes yet can be challenging.  A new study from Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University Indianapolis Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health investigates the best approach to predicting likely need for one or more health-related social need services. To identify emergency department (E.D.) patients needing these services, researchers ...

WASHINGTON—Body-weight cycling (also known as yo-yo dieting) has been shown to significantly increase the risk of kidney disease in people with type 1 diabetes, regardless of body mass index (BMI) and other traditional risk factors, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. Yo-yo dieting is defined as repeatedly losing and gaining weight multiple times over the years. Its prevalence is reported to be as high as 35% in men and 55% in women. This patten of dieting has been shown to increase risks of cardiovascular events ...

A study combining remote sensing and administrative data finds that since the mid-20th century, large, growing cities have ceased to be centers of upward social and economic mobility.  Cities have been celebrated as places of innovation and social mobility but also as hotspots of inequality and poverty. Dylan Shane Connor and colleagues measured how the size, density, and connectedness of urban areas in an American’s birth county predicted their social mobility across the 20th century. The results tell a tale of a waning relationship between ...

People who feel financially comfortable are more likely to report prosocial actions like donating money and prosocial attitudes than people in a tough financial situation, according to a study. Prosociality—preferences and behaviors that benefit others—is essential to human society. In practice, it is determined by both the desire and the ability to help. Paul Vanags and colleagues analyzed data from the Global Preferences Survey and the Gallup World Poll, including 80,337 people in 76 countries with incomes ranging from about $200 a year to about $380,000 per year, adjusted to be equivalent across the different countries ...

A broadly distributed migratory butterfly travels varying distances, influenced by environmental conditions rather than following genetically coded instructions, according to a study. The Afro-Palearctic population of the painted lady butterfly, Vanessa cardui, is a single freely interbreeding, or ‘panmictic’ population.  Vanessa cardui is a renowned world traveler, undertaking multigenerational migrations throughout Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America. The winter breeding range of painted ladies in the Afro-Palearctic includes areas north and south of the Sahara ...

Painted lady butterflies are world travelers. The ones we encounter in Europe fly from Africa to Sweden, ultimately returning to areas north and south of the Sahara. But what determines whether some butterflies travel long distances while others travel short distances? A group of scientists, including from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), shows that the different migration strategies are shaped by environmental conditions rather than being encoded in the butterfly’s DNA. It is a warm summer day in June. A group of scientists with sunhats and nets is hiking along a trail in the Catalan mountains. They meticulously search for painted ladies—vibrant orange ...

PLYMOUTH MEETING, PA [February 4, 2025] — The National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) is joining people and organizations across the globe to commemorate World Cancer Day today. World Cancer Day is a global initiative to improve awareness and knowledge of cancer risks and actions for better prevention, detection, and treatment. It is led and organized by the Union of International Cancer Control (UICC) every February 4.  World Cancer Day 2025 marks the start of the ‘United by Unique’ campaign to highlight how every experience with cancer is unique, even as people touched by cancer ...

Medical implants have transformed healthcare, offering innovative solutions with advanced materials and technologies. However, many biomedical devices face challenges like insufficient cell adhesion, leading to inflammatory responses after their implantation in the body. Apatite coatings, particularly hydroxyapatite (HA)—a naturally occurring form of apatite found in bones, have been shown to promote better integration with surrounding tissues. However, the biocompatibility of artificially synthesized apatite nanoparticles often falls short of expectations, primarily due to the nanoparticles’ limited ability to bind effectively with biological tissues. To overcome ...

A new study debunks claims that a magnitude 4.5 earthquake in Iran was a covert nuclear weapons test, as widely alleged on social media and some mainstream news outlets in October 2024, a period of heightened geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. Led by Johns Hopkins University scientists, the study warns about the potential consequences of mishandling and misinterpreting scientific information, particularly during periods of international conflict. The findings appear in the journal Seismica. “There was a concerted misinformation and disinformation campaign around this event that promoted the idea this was a nuclear test, ...

Physicists have performed a groundbreaking simulation they say sheds new light on an elusive phenomenon that could determine the ultimate fate of the Universe.  Pioneering research in quantum field theory around 50 years ago proposed that the universe may be trapped in a false vacuum – meaning it appears stable but in fact could be on the verge of transitioning to an even more stable, true vacuum state.  While this process could trigger a catastrophic change in the Universe's structure, experts agree that predicting the timeline ...

How Hungry Fat Cells Could Someday Starve Cancer to Death  Scientists transformed energy-storing white fat cells into calorie-burning ‘beige’ fat. Once implanted, they outcompeted tumors for resources, beating back five different types of cancer in lab experiments. Liposuction and plastic surgery aren’t often mentioned in the same breath as cancer.  But they are the inspiration for a new approach to treating cancer that uses engineered fat cells to deprive tumors of nutrition.  Researchers at UC San Francisco used the gene editing technology CRISPR to turn ordinary white fat cells into “beige” fat cells, which voraciously consume calories to make ...

  Brain cancer is the second-leading cause of death in children in the developed world. For the children who survive, standard treatments have long-term impacts on their development and quality of life, particularly in small children and infants.   Research out of Emory University and QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Queensland, Australia, has shown that a potential new targeted therapy for childhood brain cancer is effective in infiltrating and killing tumor cells in preclinical models tested in mice.   In ...

Scientists at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) have discovered a way to stop tumour growth before it starts for a subtype of medulloblastoma, the most common childhood malignant brain cancer.  Brain cancer presents a unique set of challenges for researchers – by the time a person experiences symptoms, the tumours are often so complex that the fundamental mechanisms driving the tumour growth are no longer easy to identify. A research team led by Dr. Peter Dirks is working to combat ...

Preventing the cell’s protein factories from making the notorious cancer-causing protein MYC could stop out-of-control tumors. For decades, scientists have tried to stop cancer by disabling the mutated proteins that are found in tumors. But many cancers manage to overcome this and continue growing.  Now, UCSF scientists think they can throw a wrench into the fabrication of a key growth-related protein, MYC, that escalates wildly in 70% of all cancers. Unlike some other targets of cancer therapies, MYC can be dangerous simply due to its abundance. In a paper that appears Feb. 4 in Nature Cell Biology, researchers at UC San Francisco ...

SPOKANE, Wash. — Washington State University scientists have created genetically-engineered mice that could help accelerate anti-aging research. Globally, scientists are working to unlock the secrets of extending human lifespan at the cellular level, where aging occurs gradually due to the shortening of telomeres–the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes that function like shoelace tips to prevent unraveling. As telomeres shorten over time, cells lose their ability to divide for healthy ...

The new EU-funded consortium “ForMovFluid” will study how fluids transformed the materials inside the Earth's crust. Thanks to the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action Doctoral Networks programme, ForMovFluid will fund the doctoral studies of 18 researchers, and train them to become elite experts in the field of geoscience. Moreover, this project will allow us to understand the origin of the so-called critical raw materials, of vital importance for the energy transition. Over a period of four years, ForMovFluid “Marie Curie” researchers ...