A Pulse of Innovation: AI at the Service of Heart Research  Columbia biomedical engineers use AI to build a transformative new tool to study and diagnose heart function Understanding heart function and disease, as well as testing new drugs for heart conditions, has long been a complex and time-consuming task. A promising way to study disease and test new drugs is to use cellular and engineered tissue models in a dish, but existing methods to study heart cell contraction and calcium handling require a good deal of manual work, are prone to errors, and need expensive specialized equipment. There clearly is a critical medical ...

Despite having an overall survival rate of 94%, B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL), the most common childhood cancer, can prove challenging to treat, with survival among relapsed or resistant cases falling between 30-50%. Recent work by St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists discovered which tumor cells resist treatment and why. This enabled the rational design of a combination therapy that better controlled high-risk subtypes of B-ALL in mouse models. The findings were published today in Cancer Cell.  “We found a new explanation of B-ALL ...

Key takeways UCLA psychologists asked experiment participants to choose to receive $40 in seven days or $60 in 30 days, for example, under a variety of time constraints. The experiment showed that people tend to make more impulsive decisions if they think about time delays first, and more patient decisions if they think about the greater reward associated with waiting longer. The findings could be applied where people are being encouraged to make life choices that will benefit them in the long run, such as eating healthier, exercising or saving for retirement, by emphasizing the future large rewards and deemphasizing ...

EMBARGOED UNTIL APRIL 8, 2024 AT 3:00 PM U.S. ET/ 12:00 PM PT Over the past four years, many of us have become accustomed to a swab up the nose to test for COVID-19, using at-home rapid antigen tests or the more accurate clinic-provided PCR tests with a longer processing time. Now a new diagnostic tool developed by UC Santa Cruz Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Holger Schmidt and his collaborators can test for SARS-CoV-2 and Zika virus with the same or better accuracy as high-precision PCR tests in a matter of hours. In a new paper in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Schmidt ...

Pregnancy may carry a cost, reports a new study from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. The research, carried out among 1735 young people in the Philippines, shows that women who reported having been pregnant looked biologically older than women who had never been pregnant, and women who had been pregnant more often looked biologically older than those who reported fewer pregnancies. Notably, the number of pregnancies fathered was not associated with biological aging among same-aged cohort ...

    University of Michigan researchers have discovered that a worm commonly used in the study of biology uses a set of proteins unlike those seen in other studied organisms to protect the ends of its DNA.   In mammals, shelterin is a complex of proteins that "shelters" the ends of our chromosomes from unraveling or fusing together. Keeping chromosomes from fusing together is an important job: chromosomes carry our body's DNA. If chromosome ends fuse, or if they fuse with other chromosomes, ...

One of the most abundant and deadliest organisms on earth is a virus called a bacteriophage (phage). These predators have lethal precision against their targets – not humans, but bacteria. Different phages have evolved to target different bacteria and play a critical role in microbial ecology. Recently, ADA Forsyth scientists exploring the complex interactions of microbes in the oral microbiome discovered a third player influencing the phage-bacterial arms race – ultrasmall bacterial parasites, called Saccharibacteria or TM7. In the study, which appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ...

Some deeper areas of the Great Barrier Reef are insulated from harmful heatwaves – but that protection will be lost if global warming continues, according to new research. High surface temperatures have caused mass “bleaching” of the Great Barrier Reef in five of the last eight years, with the latest happening now. Climate change projections for coral reefs are usually based on sea surface temperatures, but this overlooks the fact that deeper water does not necessarily experience the same warming as that at the surface. The new study – ...

Researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy have developed a new method to predict the financial impacts climate change will have on agriculture, which can help support food security and financial stability for countries increasingly prone to climate catastrophes.  The study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, uses climate and agricultural data from Brazil. It finds that climate change has a cascading effect on farming, leading to increased loan defaults for ...

MSU has a satellite uplink/LTN TV studio and Comrex line for radio interviews upon request. EAST LANSING, Mich. – The prevalence of early knee osteoarthritis (OA) symptoms faced by patients after anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction is staggering — but not much is being done to address it according to new research published by scholars from Michigan State University’s Department of Kinesiology. The study – published by the Journal of Athletic ...

Conspiracy theorists get a bad rap in popular culture, yet research has shown that most Americans believe conspiracy theories of some sort. Why then, if most of us believe conspiracies, do we generally think of conspiracy theorists as loony?   New research from the University of Illinois Chicago found that it’s because people are quite bad at identifying what is or isn’t a conspiracy theory when it’s something they believe. The finding held true whether people self-identified as being liberal ...

By Beth Miller Pulse oximeters send light through a clip attached to a finger to measure oxygen levels in the blood noninvasively. Although the technology has been used for decades — and was heavily used during the COVID-19 pandemic — there is increasing evidence that it has a major flaw: it may provide inaccurate readings in individuals with more melanin pigment in their skin. The problem is so pervasive that the U.S. Food & Drug Administration recently met to find new ways to better evaluate the accuracy and performance of the devices in patients with more pigmented skin. Christine O’Brien, assistant professor of biomedical ...

Children’s literature became a distinct category during the Progressive Era in the United States, largely through the work of professional “book women” like children’s librarians, publishers, and teachers. In a chapter in a new book, researchers examine one of the first attempts to formalize a selection of existing literature into a canon of children’s books, the 1882 pamphlet Books for the Young by Caroline M. Hewins. They also analyze the books selected by Hewins, with a focus on books designated for boys only and for girls only. The ...

Another decline in net farm income is projected for the Show-Me State, according to the Spring 2024 Missouri Farm Income Outlook released by the University of Missouri’s Rural and Farm Finance Policy Analysis Center (RaFF). The report offers a state-level glimpse at projected farm financial indicators, including farm receipts, production expenses and other components that affect net farm income. Projections from the report suggest that declining market receipts and lower crop prices play a role in the estimated $0.8 billion decrease in net farm income for 2024. “Although decreased production expenses offer some relief, reduced livestock inventories ...

Our muscles are nature’s perfect actuators — devices that turn energy into motion. For their size, muscle fibers are more powerful and precise than most synthetic actuators. They can even heal from damage and grow stronger with exercise.  For these reasons, engineers are exploring ways to power robots with natural muscles. They’ve demonstrated a handful of “biohybrid” robots that use muscle-based actuators to power artificial skeletons that walk, swim, pump, and grip. But for every bot, there’s a very different build, and no general blueprint for how to get the most out of muscles ...

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. -- Couples feel more understood and cared for when their partners show positive support skills – and it’s evidenced by levels of the stress hormone cortisol in the body – according to new research from Binghamton University, State University of New York.  A team of Binghamton University researchers including Professor of Psychology Richard Mattson conducted a study of 191 heterosexual married couples to find out if better communication skills while giving and receiving social support led to lower cortisol levels ...

For heart attack patients, treating only the coronary artery that caused the infarction works just as well as preventive balloon dilation of the other coronary arteries, according to a new large study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet and others. The results are published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Heart attack is a common disease with risks of serious complications. It has long been unclear what the best strategy is for treating narrowings in coronary arteries separate from the specific vessel that caused the infarction. A new large Swedish study has investigated ...

A new study introduces the Hybrid Global Annual 1-km International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) Land Cover Maps for the period 2000-2020. This innovative dataset, free to access, marks a significant step forward in global land cover mapping, addressing longstanding issues of disagreement and incompatible classification systems among existing land cover products. Global land cover data, essential for environmental research, are plagued by inconsistencies across different datasets, complicating global change studies. The diversity in classification systems and methodologies challenges the creation of a unified, accurate land ...

As telehealth visits become more prevalent, physicians can sometimes struggle to help patients effectively demonstrate a musculoskeletal exam through a screen. At the University of Michigan Health C.S. Mott Children's Hospital, one physician found a way to help pediatric patients demonstrate different joint movements using a Barbie doll. While on telehealth appointments with patients, Alecia Daunter, M.D., an assistant professor of pediatric rehabilitation medicine at U-M Health, found that verbally ...

Half of all patients discharged from hospital after a heart attack are treated with beta-blockers unnecessarily. This is according to a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. "I am convinced that this will influence future practice", says Tomas Jernberg, Professor at Karolinska Institutet and lead researcher of the study. Today, when patients are discharged from hospitals after an acute heart attack, they are regularly treated with beta-blocker drugs such as metoprolol and bisoprolol. Now new research shows that about half of them do not benefit from the treatment and should not receive it at all. ...

Save the Date for the 15th World Mitochondria Society Annua Meeting on October 29-31, 2024, at DoubleTree by Hilton Berlin Ku’damm, Berlin, Germany. The WMS is pleased to announce the participation of two distinguished keynote speakers for the Targeting Mitochondria 2024 conference in Berlin this October.   Keynote Speaker of Day 1: Prof. Eric Schon Professor Eric Schon from Columbia University, USA will deliver a presentation titled "Mitochondria in Alzheimer disease: it's not what you think". Prof. Schon challenges the conventional understanding ...

ABSTRACT CT013 SAN DIEGO ― Combining the KRAS G12C inhibitor adagrasib with the anti-EGFR antibody cetuximab demonstrated promising anti-tumor effects in patients with KRAS G12C-mutated metastatic colorectal cancer (CRC), according to pooled results from the Phase I/II KRYSTAL-1 trial reported by researchers from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The findings were presented today in a plenary session at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2024 by Scott Kopetz, M.D., Ph.D., professor of Gastrointestinal ...

ABSTRACT CT014 SAN DIEGO – The first-in-class PARP1-selective inhibitor saruparib demonstrated encouraging early efficacy and a favorable safety profile in patients with homologous recombination repair (HRR)-deficient breast cancers, according to results from the Phase I/II PETRA trial led by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Results from the first-in-human trial were presented today at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2024 by Timothy Yap, M.B.B.S., Ph.D., professor ...

LOS ANGELES — Researchers with City of Hope®, one of the largest cancer research and treatment organizations in the United States, will present more than 70 abstracts and sessions on innovative clinical trial results, breakthrough diagnostic techniques and advances in treatment options as well as share their expertise on molecular profiling and the microbiome at the AACR Annual Meeting, which started April 5 and ends April 10 in San Diego.  In addition to City of Hope’s robust data being presented throughout the meeting, John D. Carpten, Ph.D., the Irell & Manella Cancer Center Director’s ...

SAN DIEGO – A combination of the KRASG12C inhibitor adagrasib (Krazati) and the anti-epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) antibody cetuximab (Erbitux) showed clinical activity and promising survival outcomes in a cohort of patients with metastatic, heavily pretreated, KRASG12C-mutated colorectal cancer, according to results from the phase I/II KRYSTAL-1 trial presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2024, held April 5-10. The study was simultaneously published in Cancer Discovery. KRASG12C mutations occur in around 4% of colorectal cancers and are associated with a poor prognosis. Drugs targeting KRASG12C, such as adagrasib, have emerged ...