The University of Houston is proud to announce the appointment of two distinguished professionals to key leadership roles within the Office of Technology, Transfer, and Innovation (OTTI) under the Division of Energy and Innovation. These appointments mark a significant step forward in the University's continued commitment to fostering entrepreneurship, innovation and partnerships between academia and industry. Haleh Ardebili, the Kamel Salama Endowed Professor of Mechanical Engineering, has been appointed as the new assistant vice president of Entrepreneurship and Startup Ecosystem. Michael Harold, ...

The ice-encrusted oceans of some of the moons orbiting Saturn and Jupiter are leading candidates in the search for extraterrestrial life. A new lab-based study led by the University of Washington in Seattle and the Freie Universität Berlin shows that individual ice grains ejected from these planetary bodies may contain enough material for instruments headed there in the fall to detect signs of life, if such life exists. “For the first time we have shown that even a tiny fraction of cellular material could be identified by a mass spectrometer onboard a spacecraft,” said lead author Fabian Klenner, a UW postdoctoral researcher in Earth and space sciences. ...

Archaeological analysis of a near unique animal cemetery discovered in London nearly 30 years ago has revealed the international scale of horse trading by the elites of late medieval and Tudor England. Using advanced archaeological science techniques, including studying chemical composition, researchers have been able to identify the likely origins of several physically elite horses and the routes they took to reach British shores during the formative years of their life. These animals – akin to modern supercars – were sourced from a variety of locations across ...

Francis Crick Institute press release Under strict embargo: 18:00hrs GMT Friday 22 March 2024 Peer reviewed Experimental study Animals Researchers uncover protein interactions controlling fertility in female mice Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute have shed light on the proteins controlling the development of ovaries in mice before and after birth. This could lead to a better understanding of how female infertility develops. Following their research identifying the gene responsible for initiating the development ...

An international team of scientists have warned against relying on nature providing straightforward ‘early warning’ indicators of a climate disaster, as new mathematical modelling shows new fascinating aspects of the complexity of the dynamics of climate. It suggests that the climate system could be more unpredictable than previously thought. By modelling the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, one of the main ocean current systems, the team which included mathematicians from the University of Leicester have found that the stability of ...

As part of a new multi-million-euro academic research programme at University College Dublin (UCD) funded by Met Éireann (the Irish National Meteorological Service) to support the further development of weather and climate services for Ireland using data science and Artificial Intelligence (AI), UCD is seeking to appoint a Full Professor of Data Science for Weather and Climate. This exciting new senior academic post is a permanent position in the UCD School of Mathematics and Statistics arising from a funding award of €5 million over five years from Met Éireann, ...

Researchers have for the first time discovered evidence of microplastic contamination in archaeological soil samples. The team discovered tiny microplastic particles in deposits located more than seven metres deep, in samples dating back to the first or early second century and excavated in the late 1980s. Preserving archaeology in situ has been the preferred approach to managing historical sites for a generation. However, the research team say the findings could prompt a rethink, with the tiny particles potentially compromising the preserved remains. Microplastics are small plastic particles, ranging from 1μm (one thousandth of a millimetre) ...

Researchers at the University of Toronto and Sinai Health have created a new platform to identify proteins that can be co-opted to control the stability of other proteins — a new but largely unrealized approach to the treatment of disease. The researchers developed a method to interrogate the entire human proteome for ‘effector’ proteins, which can influence the stability of other proteins via induced proximity. The study marks the first time researchers have searched for effector proteins on this scale, and has identified many new effectors that could be used therapeutically. “We found more than 600 new effector proteins in 14,000 ...

      Attention editors: Under embargo by the journal Nature Machine Intelligence until Friday, March 22, 12 p.m. eastern     Hamilton, ON, Mar. 22, 2024 – Researchers at McMaster University and Stanford University have invented a new generative artificial intelligence model which can design billions of new antibiotic molecules that are inexpensive and easy to build in the laboratory.   The worldwide spread of drug-resistant bacteria has created an urgent need for new antibiotics, but even modern AI methods are limited ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Eating one avocado per day may improve overall diet quality, according to a team led by researchers in Penn State’s Department of Nutritional Sciences. Poor diet quality is a risk factor for many diseases, including heart disease, and many American adults have poor diet quality and do not meet key dietary recommendations provided by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. This study was led by Kristina Petersen, associate professor of nutritional sciences, and Penny ...

AURORA, Colo. (March 22, 2024) – The health impacts of a complex protein that plays a major role in the development of Alzheimer’s disease and heart conditions can be lessened by three kinds of drug inhibitors, according to scientists at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. In an overview of the protein and the inhibitors published today in the journal Cell Reports, the CU researchers discussed the best ways to use the interventions. The protein, CaMKII, is ubiquitous in cells throughout the body but is perhaps best known for its prominent role in the brain and the heart. It is critical in learning and memory but if misregulated can ...

From photons to atheism to Churchill’s extraterrestrial musings, the stunning breadth of Carlo Rovelli’s work has spurred readers to think deeply about the intersection of science and culture, transforming staggering complexity into widely accessible writing along the way. For this artful ability to educate and engage, Rovelli will be presented with the 2024 Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science at The Rockefeller University on April 9. Named after its first recipient, noted physician-scientist and essayist Lewis Thomas, the prize was ...

It’s no surprise that your dog can learn to sit when you say “sit” and come when called. But a study appearing March 22 in the journal Current Biology has made the unexpected discovery that dogs generally also know that certain words “stand for” certain objects. When dogs hear those words, brain activity recordings suggest they activate a matching mental representation in their minds. “Dogs do not only react with a learned behavior to certain words,” says Marianna Boros (@FamDogProject) of the Department of Ethology at the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary, one of the paper’s co-first authors. “They also don’t ...

It’s no surprise that dogs can learn to understand and respond to human words. Your dog can learn to sit when you say “sit” and come when called. But a new study has made the surprising discovery by recording brain activity that dogs generally also know that certain words “stand for” certain objects. When they hear those words, they activate a matching mental representation in their minds.  “Dogs do not only react with a learned behavior to certain words,” says Marianna Boros of the Department of Ethology at the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary. “They also don’t just associate that word with an object ...

CNIO researchers provide a new hypothesis to understand the origin of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. It would be triggered by a similar problem to that occurring in a group of rare diseases called ribosomopathies. In ALS patients, motor neurons would accumulate an excess of non-functional ribosomal proteins that eventually collapse the cell's clearance systems and cause toxicity. The study also opens a new front in aging research. The authors provide experimental evidence that formally proves a kind of stress called ‘nucleolar stress’ cause aging in mammals. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a degenerative disease. ...

On the surface, the movement disorder amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and the cognitive disorder frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD), which underlies frontotemporal dementia, manifest in very different ways. In addition, they are known to primarily affect very different regions of the brain. However, doctors and scientists have noted several similarities over the years, and a new study in Cell reveals that the diseases have remarkable overlaps at the cellular and molecular levels, revealing potential targets that could yield therapies applicable ...

About The Study: In this study of 5,437 U.S. adults with health care visits in 2022, many patients, including those with the greatest care needs, chose telemedicine even after in-person visits were available. These findings support continuing this care delivery approach as an option valued by patients. Differences were not observed by most common measures of socioeconomic status. Continued monitoring of telemedicine use is needed to ensure equitable access to health care innovations.  Authors: Eva ...

About The Study: The results of this study of Medicare enrollees suggest that although nationally, Black and Hispanic individuals and individuals of other racial groups received more telemedicine visits during the pandemic and disproportionately lived in geographic regions with higher telemedicine use, after controlling for geographic region, Black and Hispanic individuals and individuals of other racial groups received fewer telemedicine visits than white individuals.  Authors: Felippe O. Marcondes, M.D., M.P.H., of Massachusetts General ...

More than half of all new doctors face some form of sexual harassment in their first year on the job, including nearly three-quarters of all new female doctors and a third of males, a new study finds.   That’s actually down somewhat from the percentage of new doctors who experienced the same five or six years before, according to the paper published in JAMA Health Forum by a team from the University of Michigan Medical School and Medical University of South Carolina.   And today’s ...

Academics are proposing a new and improved way to help researchers discover when consciousness emerges in human infancy. When over the course of development do humans become conscious? When the seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes was asked about infant consciousness by his critics, he eventually suggested that infants might have thoughts, albeit ones that are simpler than those of adults. Hundreds of years later, the issue of when human beings become conscious is a question which remains a challenge for psychologists and philosophers alike.  But now, in response to a recent ...

A computational method for finding transition states in chemical reactions, greatly reducing computational costs with high reliability, has been devised. Compared to the most widely used existing method, the present method reduces the total computational cost by approximately 50 to 70%. The development, available on GitHub, is poised to accelerate advancements in material science, making the exploration of chemical reactions more accessible and efficient. This could lead to faster scientific discoveries and technological innovations. In chemical reactions, substances ...

There were multiple unsafe sleep practices at play in more than three-quarters of Sudden Unexpected Infant Deaths reported in 23 jurisdictions between 2011 and 2020, a new study reveals. The researchers say the findings underscore the need for more comprehensive safe-sleep education for new parents, including from healthcare providers. Of 7,595 infant deaths reviewed, almost 60% of the infants were sharing a sleep surface, such as a bed, when they died. This practice is strongly discouraged by sleep experts, who warn that a parent or other bed partner could unintentionally ...

HOUSTON ― The Institute for Data Science in Oncology (IDSO) at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center today announced the appointment of its inaugural cohort of IDSO Affiliates. These 33 talented scientists, clinicians and staff bring diverse expertise to help IDSO leadership and focus area co-leads advance collaborative data science projects and align the institute’s efforts with MD Anderson’s mission to end cancer.     “We are proud to welcome these exceptional individuals to the growing IDSO community, and we look forward ...

Toughening has always been an important research direction of structure ceramics. The addition of secondary phases to the ceramic matrix to prepare composite ceramics is an effective toughening pathway in the field of structure ceramics. Both phase-type and microstructure of the secondary phases play a decisive role in the toughening effect of the ceramic matrix. Being different from the conventional independent phase as the secondary phase, B4C@TiB2 core–shell structural unit has been purposely designed as an innovative kind of secondary phase to toughen the Al2O3 ceramic matrix, providing a new concept for the toughening studies of structural ceramics.   A ...

Messenger RNA (mRNA) made its big leap into the public limelight during the pandemic, thanks to its cornerstone role in several COVID-19 vaccines. But mRNAs, which are genetic sequences that instruct the body to produce proteins, are also being developed as a new class of drugs. For mRNAs to have broad therapeutic uses, however, the molecules will need to last longer in the body than those that make up the COVID vaccines.  Researchers from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and MIT have engineered a ...