New York, NY—June 8, 2023—Energy storage plays a crucial role in our transition to cleaner and more sustainable energy sources. It enables us to store excess energy when it’s available, from renewable sources like wind and solar, and use it when demand is high or supply is limited. This helps stabilize the grid, reduces reliance on fossil fuels, and mitigates the impact of intermittent energy sources. Balancing consumer demands with power system capacities In many parts of the ...

A study of the DNA of more than 55,000 people worldwide has shed light on how we maintain healthy blood sugar levels after we have eaten, with implications for our understanding of how the process goes wrong in type 2 diabetes. The findings, published today in Nature Genetics, could help inform future treatments of type 2 diabetes, which affects around 4 million people in the UK and over 460 million people worldwide. Several factors contribute to an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, such as older age, being overweight or having obesity, physical inactivity, and genetic predisposition. If untreated, type 2 diabetes can lead to complications, including eye and foot problems, ...

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are considered ideal electrochemical energy storage materials due to their high electrical conductivity, large theoretical surface area, and good chemical stability. However, CNTs tend to aggregate due to strong van der Waals forces, which reduces their electrochemically active area. This problem is even worse for single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) due to their high length-to-diameter ratio. Recently, a joint research team led by Dr. WANG Xiao from the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese ...

Cephalopods are a large family of marine animals that includes octopuses, cuttlefish and squid. They live in every ocean, from warm, shallow tropical waters to near-freezing, abyssal depths. More remarkably, report two scientists at University of California San Diego in a new study, at least some cephalopods possess the ability to recode protein motors within cells to adapt “on the fly” to different water temperatures.     Writing in the June 8, 2023 edition of Cell, first author Kavita J. Rangan, ...

Prostate cancer is the most common non-skin cancer in men worldwide. According to international estimates about one in six men will get prostate cancer during their lifetime and worldwide, over 375’000 patients will die from it each year. Tumor resistance to current therapies plays an essential role in this and new approaches are therefore urgently needed. Now an international research team from the University of Bern, Inselspital Bern and the University of Connecticut (USA) has identified a previously unknown weak spot in prostate cancer ...

June 8, 2023 — Showing people how their behavior compares to their peers is a commonly used method to improve behavior. But in the wake of a global pandemic that exacerbated health care providers’ job dissatisfaction and burnout, questions remain about the potentially negative effects of peer comparison on the well-being of clinicians. A new study from the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics reveals fresh insights into the relationship between peer comparison and job satisfaction among clinicians. Published in JAMA Network Open, the study challenges prior findings that such feedback increases job dissatisfaction and burnout.   Researchers ...

Researchers led by CHEN Yuhang and ZHOU Jianmin from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have shown how plants resist clubroot, a major root disease that threatens the productivity of Brassica crops such as rape. The study, which uncovers novel mechanisms underlying plant immunity and promises a new avenue for crop breeding, was published in Cell. Clubroot, a soil-borne disease, is the most devastating disease of Brassica crops. In China, approximately 3.2–4 million hm2 of agricultural land is affected by clubroot each year, resulting in a 20%–30% yield ...

A team of researchers from IRB Barcelona and CNAG identifies the IL-17 protein as a determining factor in skin ageing. Blocking the function of IL-17 reduces the pro-inflammatory state and delays the appearance of age-related features in the skin. Published in the journal Nature Aging, the work opens up new perspectives in the development of therapies to improve skin ageing health.   A team of scientists from the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) in collaboration with the National ...

Each year, about 200,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with a bulge in the lower part of the aorta, the main artery in the body, called an abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA). New research from the University of Cincinnati examines the role a particular metabolite plays in the development of AAA and could lead to the first treatment of the condition. The research was published in the journal Circulation. “We started the study by examining whether AAA patients themselves had an increase in trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO).  We examined an American and Swedish ...

Actin filaments — protein structures critical to living movement from single cells to animals — have long been known to have polarity associated with their physical characteristics, with growing “barbed” and shrinking “pointed” ends. The ends of the filament are also different in the way they interact with other proteins in cells. However, the mechanism that determines these differences has never been entirely clear to scientists. Now, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have revealed key atomic structures of ...

Nutrition is an important part of any top athlete’s training program. And now, a new study by researchers from the University of Georgia proposes that supplementing the diet of athletes with colorful fruits and vegetables could improve their visual range. The paper, which was published in Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews, examines how a group of plant compounds that build up in the retina, known as macular pigments, work to improve eye health and functional vision. Previous studies done by UGA researchers Billy R. Hammond and ...

A new framework for making better and more transparent decisions about the use of our land could help to balance society’s demands upon it with protecting and enhancing the environment. Researchers led by the University of Leicester have proposed a framework for decisions on land use, from nationwide policymaking to building happening at street level, that would involve the most representative range of stakeholders, from those with financial interests in the land to the local communities who use it and more besides. Now published in the journal People and Nature, it encourages decisionmakers ...

Patients suffering from the “most horrible” rare brain tumour are falling through the cracks of mental health provision, University of Essex researchers have found.   A recent study which interviewed patients and clinicians discovered survivors struggle to access therapy available for other serious illnesses, such as cancer, and there was a lack of specialised support.   For the first time, the mental health of British rare brain tumour patients was examined by psychologists and now researchers are calling for urgent changes to the health service.   Dr Katie Daughters hopes her findings –published in ...

PHILADELPHIA— Historically, scientists have studied how cells develop and give rise to specialized cells, such as heart, liver, or skin cells, by examining specific proteins. However, it remains unclear how many of these proteins influence the activity of hundreds of genes at the same time to turn one cell type into another cell type. For example, as the heart develops, stem cells and other specialized cells will give rise to heart muscle cells, endothelial cells (lining of blood vessels), smooth muscle cells, and cardiac fibroblasts. But the details of this process remain mysterious. As a result of a $6 million, seven-year ...

Philadelphia — Collaborating researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine and the Adams School of Dentistry and Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina have discovered that a bacterial species called Selenomonas sputigena can have a major role in causing tooth decay. Scientists have long considered another bacterial species, the plaque-forming, acid-making Streptococcus mutans, as the principal cause of tooth decay—also known as dental caries. However, in the study, which appeared 22 May in Nature Communications, the Penn Dental Medicine and UNC researchers showed that S. sputigena, previously associated ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Like many ecological scientists, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign plant biology professor James O’Dwyer has spent much of his career searching for ways to measure and predict how specific plant communities will fare over time. Which species in a diverse population will persist and coexist? Which will decline? What factors might contribute to continuing biodiversity? In a new study reported in the journal Nature, O’Dwyer and his colleague, U. of I. graduate student Kenneth Jops, report the development of a method for determining ...

The Princess Máxima Center's Board of Directors, Research management and the clinical directors warmly invite you to attend our interdisciplinary symposium, to celebrate the first five years existence of the Princess Máxima Center for Pediatric Oncology. This 2-day Scientific Symposium will take place on June 12th and 13th 2023 in the Jaarbeurs in Utrecht. There will be presentations from well-known speakers covering the various disciplines within the field of pediatric oncology and beyond, showcasing latest developments and technologies. This event will create ...

INDIANAPOLIS – The pandemic has placed a spotlight on public health -- its workforce, infrastructure and underlying information systems designed to collect, analyze and manage public health data.  Informatics, health information technology and public health experts from across the nation convened at an American College of Medical Informatics symposium concluded that how information is received and shared by public health agencies is overdue for “a strategically designed, technology-enabled, information infrastructure for delivering day-to-day essential public health services and to respond effectively to ...

Quantum computing uses the principles of quantum mechanics to encode and elaborate data, meaning that it could one day solve computational problems that are intractable with current computers. While the latter work with bits, which represent either a 0 or a 1, quantum computers use quantum bits, or qubits – the fundamental units of quantum information. “With applications ranging from drug discovery to optimization and simulations of complex biological systems and materials, quantum computing has the potential to reshape vast areas of science, industry, and society,” says ...

Eczema is an inflammatory skin condition that often affects infants as young as one to two months. Among the various types of eczema seen in infants, early-onset atopic dermatitis (AD), characterized by psychological stress and sleep disorders, is particularly concerning. Studies have, in fact, identified that if left untreated, AD can increase the risk of allergic diseases such as food allergies and asthma—a progression also known as the “atopic march”. Early diagnosis and intervention of early-onset AD is needed to ensure the infant’s psychological and physical ...

The skies aircraft fly through are bumpier today than four decades ago, scientists have found, after producing a new analysis showing that turbulence has increased as the climate changed.  New research from the University of Reading shows that clear-air turbulence, which is invisible and hazardous to aircraft, has increased in various regions around the world.  At a typical point over the North Atlantic – one of the world’s busiest flight routes – the total ...

Washington, June 8, 2023—For years, parents looking for data to compare the academic quality of schools for their children had one primary measure to turn to: average student scores on standardized tests. However, these scores are often related to factors that have nothing to do with instructional quality—such as family income or racial and ethnic background—and push parents toward schools that are Whiter and more affluent, exacerbating school segregation in the U.S. As a result, many education ...

A University of Massachusetts Amherst public health researcher has updated and validated the widely used Pregnancy Physical Activity Questionnaire (PPAQ) to improve the measurement performance of this self-report physical activity method. Lisa Chasan-Taber, professor and chair of biostatistics and epidemiology, and her research group used novel and innovative tools – an advanced accelerometer and wearable camera – to assess PPAQ performance. The researchers developed the PPAQ in 2004 as the first validated pregnancy physical activity questionnaire. Listed on the UMass Amherst timeline ...

A team led by University of Minnesota Twin Cities scientists and engineers discovered a new method for tuning the thermal conductivity of materials to control heat flow ”on the fly.” Their tuning range is the highest ever recorded among one-step processes in the field, and will open a door to developing more energy-efficient and durable electronic devices. The researchers’ paper is published in Nature Communications, a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering the natural sciences. Just as electrical ...

An international team led by researchers at Nankai University in China and at University of Zagreb in Croatia, along with team at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) in Canada, led by Roberto Morandotti has made an important breakthrough in the study of topological phases. Their findings were recently published in Nature Physics – a journal published by Nature Publishing Group. In the last decade, topological photonics has attracted increasing attention due to the unique prospects to achieve light manipulation with high performance in terms of robustness and stability. Discoveries in topological photonics ...