Results of the first phase of a Ceramide Ring Trial have just been published in the renowned journal Nature Communications, representing a significant landmark in the field of lipidomics. This achievement, involving researchers at the University of Vienna and scientific teams in Singapore, Julich and Espoo, represents a groundbreaking advance in the establishment of ceramide reference values, plasma lipids involved in such as cardiovascular diseases. The ring trial was performed under the umbrella of the International Lipidomics Society ...

Seoul National University(SNU) College of Engineering announced that a joint research team led by Professor Ki Tae Nam from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at SNU and Professor Junil Choi from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) has developed a novel visible light communication encryption technology with high security using chiral nanoparticles.   Just as a lighthouse provides a guiding beam in the vast darkness of the sea, light-based information transmission has been a crucial means of communication throughout human history. ...

DURHAM, N.C. – Researchers from the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN) presented results from HPTN 091 (“I Am Study”) at the HIVR4P 2024 conference in Lima, Peru. The study examined the acceptability and feasibility of an integrated multicomponent strategy to enhance daily oral HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) uptake and adherence among transgender women in a randomized immediate versus deferred design. The integrated care strategy included the provision of gender-affirming hormone ...

INDIANAPOLIS --More than 8 million people, ages 40 and older, living in the U.S. are affected by peripheral arterial disease, a lifelong medical condition and the most common cause of limb amputation in the country. A data scientist, health services researcher and vascular surgeon who studies health equity, Andrew A. Gonzalez, M.D., J.D., MPH, of the Regenstrief Institute and the Indiana University School of Medicine, has received a 2024 Ralph W. and Grace M. Showalter Research Trust award to conduct a new study, Exploring Causes of Racial Disparities in Amputation Rates in Indiana. Dr. ...

Mount Sinai’s Department of Rehabilitation and Human Performance has announced the grand opening of the Cohen Center for Recovery From Complex Chronic Illnesses (CoRE), providing clinical care for patients with conditions such as long Lyme disease/Lyme+, long COVID, and other infection-associated complex chronic illnesses such as myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS). Supported by philanthropy from various donors, including an inaugural gift from Beth and ...

PHILADELPHIA— A $14M grant will fund research on gene-editing therapies for rare metabolic diseases at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). The research will focus specifically on developing therapies for urea cycle disorders, which impact roughly 1 in every 35,000 children. Using a form of CRISPR technology, the ultimate vision of the four-year grant is to create a platform for rapid development of personalized gene-editing therapies for ...

Imagine yourself sometime in the far future aboard a routine rocket to Mars. Someone just spilled their drink. Without gravity, it collects in floating blobs that ripple right before your eyes. Now freeze. What you see might look something like the above image from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s (CSHL’s) Cheadle lab. But those purple and green blobs aren’t the floating remains of somebody’s drink. They’re mysterious cells in the brain’s visual cortex called OPCs. The visual cortex processes everything we see. Incoming visual information is ...

In many countries in Africa, up to nine out of ten children suffer from a skin problem, and there are far too few local dermatologists. Artificial intelligence could help with diagnosis, but needs to be trained with the relevant images, so researchers have created a new data set for dark skin tones. Demand is high, the lack of dermatologists acute: in many countries in Africa, there is less than one dermatology specialist per one million people – compared to the World Health Organization (WHO) recommendation of ...

Smiling during conversations creates warmth, making people feel more comfortable and connected. For example, a friendly smile when meeting someone new can ease nervousness. A smile can soften tension in a debate, showing respect among the participants despite disagreement. In fact, extensive studies have been conducted in the past in an attempt to understand smiling interactions in a natural conversation. Despite these studies, however, little is known about the extent to which one’s smile influences or gets affected by the other person’s smile during a conversation. A new study sought to investigate this by quantifying ...

The British Heart Foundation (BHF) Data Science Centre, led by Health Data Research UK, is hosting an open challenge which invites competitors to explore the potential of Artificial Intelligence to improve the use of electrocardiogram (ECG) for cardiovascular disease patient care. The challenge has been co-designed with members of public and patients affected by cardiovascular disease. The BHF Data Science Centre is collaborating with experts from the University of Edinburgh to use a synthetic imaging dataset made up of approximately 20,000 simulated electrocardiogram (ECG) images. Competitors will be invited to develop algorithms which can make ...

Statement Highlights: Previous studies have found that 14-81% of patients with heart failure experience some degree of cognitive impairment affecting language, memory or executive function. Evidence also indicates that people with atrial fibrillation have a 39% increased risk of memory or thinking problems; adults with heart disease have a 27% higher risk of developing dementia; and up to 50% of individuals experience cognitive decline after a heart attack. Managing heart health from an early age is important, not only for preventing heart disease but also for protecting brain health and reducing the risk of cognitive impairment in later life. Embargoed until 4:00 a.m. CT/5:00 ...

In an era when online misinformation is seemingly everywhere and objective facts are often in dispute, UC Berkeley psychologists in a new study have presented a somewhat paradoxical partial solution: Expose young children to more misinformation online — not less.  Doing so in limited circumstances, and with careful oversight and education, can help children gain the tools they'll need to sort fact from fiction online, said Evan Orticio, a Ph.D. student in UC Berkeley’s Department of Psychology and lead author of a paper published today ...

In a revealing Genomic Press Interview published in Brain Medicine on October 10, 2024, Professor Celso Arango, a prominent psychiatrist and researcher, outlines his vision for the future of mental health care. Professor Arango, who serves as Director of the Institute of Psychiatry and Mental Health at Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón and Professor of Psychiatry at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, advocates for a paradigm shift towards primary prevention in psychiatry. Professor Arango's career trajectory, from his early exposure to ...

Bethesda, Maryland - 10 October 2024. In a revealing Genomic Press Interview published on 10 October 2024, Dr. Carlos A. Zarate Jr., NIH Distinguished Investigator and pioneer in rapid-acting antidepressant research, offers a glimpse into the personal motivations and scientific breakthroughs that have defined his career. The interview, part of the journal's Innovators and Ideas series, showcases Dr. Zarate's journey from a young tennis instructor in Argentina to a leading figure in psychiatric research at the National Institute ...

In modern office life, avoiding the onset of carpal tunnel syndrome might be a daily struggle. The worst case could mean needing surgery to alleviate compression of the nerves or to repair damaged nerves. Helping surgeons visually check the areas where neural blood flow has decreased due to chronic nerve compression can lead to improvements in diagnostic accuracy, severity assessments, and outcome predictions. With this in mind, an Osaka Metropolitan University-led research team involving Graduate School of Medicine student Kosuke Saito and Associate Professor Mitsuhiro Okada investigated the use of fluorescein angiography, a method employed in neurosurgery and ophthalmology ...

Procrastination, sleep deprivation and reduced focus are part of the price we pay for free mobile apps. This is according to researchers at Linköping University and RISE, who have investigated the costs hidden behind the free apps. Based on their results, they also have some advice for decision-makers.   Most of us are becoming aware that our digital attention is hard currency for companies like Google and Facebook. By analysing our digital behaviour patterns, they can target tailored advertising directly to our feeds. Our attention becomes the product that is sold to advertisers. For example, YouTube’s three billion monthly users generated ...

Temperature determines where species can live and if they are threatened by a warming climate. So, for a long time, biologists studied how heat tolerance affects survival. Yet, less is known about how thermal traits influence reproduction, which is directly linked to extinction risk. Now, researchers in the US have examined if males of dragonfly species that produce sexual signals in the form of dark coloration on their wings are more resistant to heat. They published their results in Frontiers in Ethology. “We show that dragonfly species that have evolved dark breeding coloration on ...

Dr. Ho-Il Ji from the Hydrogen Energy Materials Research Center at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST, President Sang-Rok Oh), along with Professor Sihyuk Choi's team from Kumoh National Institute of Technology, announced that they have developed a new synthesis method that can significantly reduce the sintering temperature required for the densification process of the electrolyte in next-generation high-efficiency protonic ceramic cells. Existing solid oxide cells (SOC) can produce electricity in fuel cell operation and hydrogen in ...

A new Tulane University study explains why politically charged content gets more engagement from those who disagree. Researchers found a “confrontation effect,” where people are more likely to interact with content that challenges their views than those that align with them. The study analyzed data from Twitter, Facebook, and online experiments over time, including during the 2020 U.S. presidential election, and found that users frequently react to opposing viewpoints with heightened engagement, often ...

To mark the upcoming International E-Waste Day, Oct. 14, consumers worldwide are urged to collect dead and/or unused electronics and electrical products and give them a second life through reuse or repair, or recycle them properly.   Above all: stop tossing them out in household waste bins. The Global E-waste Monitor 2024, authored by UNITAR in cooperation with ITU, reported almost a quarter of end-of-life electronic waste ends up in home trash, squandering billions of dollars worth of copper, gold and other precious metals, materials critical to the production of such products, along with valuable plastics, and glass. The 14 million tonnes of ...

Hospitals that are Understaffed for Infection Prevention and Control Have Higher Rates of Infection, Study Says Nearly 4 in 5 hospitals are not staffed at sufficient level to keep patients safe from preventable infections   Arlington, Va. — October 10, 2024 — Inadequate infection prevention and control staffing levels are associated with higher rates of healthcare-associated infections, according to a new study published today in the American Journal of Infection Control. The study, conducted by the APIC Center for Research, Practice & Innovation, summarizes a pilot project to evaluate a new online calculator aimed at providing facility-specific recommendations ...

A new study led by researchers at Queen Mary University of London reveals women would welcome the option to choose between self-sampling and traditional screening done by a nurse or doctor for human papillomavirus (HPV)-based cervical screening.  The study, published in the Journal of Medical Screening, assessed a group of 2,300 women aged 24-65 who had collected their own samples alongside having their standard cervical screening in 38 GP practices across England. Participants were asked about their screening preference and their attitudes toward being offered a choice between ...

With ongoing advancements in cervical cancer research, the global scientific community has gained a more comprehensive understanding of this significant threat to women's health. A research team led by Professor Weimin Kong has recently published a paper titled "Hotspots and frontiers in cervical cancer research: a bibliometric and visualization analysis from 2013 to 2022" in the internationally renowned journal Malignancy Spectrum. The study systematically analyzed the development trends and research hotspots in global cervical cancer research over the past decade using bibliometric methods. The research ...

Every kid who has read a comic book or watched a Spider-Man movie has tried to imagine what it would be like to shoot a web from their wrist, fly over streets, and pin down villains. Researchers at Tufts University took those imaginary scenes seriously and created the first web-slinging technology in which a fluid material can shoot from a needle, immediately solidify as a string, and adhere to and lift objects. These sticky fibers, created at the Tufts University Silklab, come from silk moth cocoons, which are boiled in solution and broken down into their building block proteins called fibroin. ...

Applied Microbiology International (AMI) is delighted to announce that its 2024 Honorary Fellowship goes to Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, who is Assistant Director General at the World Health Organization (WHO), leading the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence.  AMI Honorary Fellowships are given to individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to or impact on the field of applied microbiology. Honorary Fellows of AMI are nominated and chosen each year by the organisation’s membership.  Chikwe ...