NEW ORLEANS, March 19, 2024 — At first glance, Rabih O. Al-Kaysi’s molecular motors look like the microscopic worms you’d see in a drop of pond water. But these wriggling ribbons are not alive; they’re devices made from crystallized molecules that perform coordinated movements when exposed to light. With continued development, Al-Kaysi and colleagues say, their tiny machines could be used by physicians as drug-delivery robots or engineered into arrays that direct the flow of water around submarines. The ...

Researchers have revealed new insights into how the brain processes speech and listening during conversations through advanced investigations using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In a groundbreaking study published in the esteemed journal Cerebral Cortex, researchers compared brain activity in individuals while both speaking and listening during natural conversational situations. Conversational interactions are central to the everyday human experience. During conversation, we use language, together with social, and other cognitive skills to flexibly switch between the roles of speaker and listener. In research on ...

In a new book, experts in a variety of fields explore nocebo effects – how negative expectations concerning health can make a person sick. It is the first time a book has been written on this subject. “I think it’s the idea that words really matter. It’s fascinating that how we communicate can affect the outcome. Communication in health care is perhaps more important than the patient recognises,” says Charlotte Blease, who is a researcher at the Department of Women’s and Children’s Health ...

Patients who may have been mis-labelled as allergic to penicillin could be safely offered a dose of the oral antibiotic to demonstrate that they could take it without harm, following a new trial.   In a new study published in the Journal of Infection funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), academics and clinicians ran a study in three UK hospitals to assess the feasibility of non-allergy specialist healthcare professionals delivering direct oral penicillin ‘challenges’, without doing allergy tests, where low risk patients ...

We all know that getting a good night’s sleep is vital for physical and mental health. Yet many people share a bed with a partner who can’t help disturb their sleep. For example through their insomnia, frequently going to the bathroom, snoring, or a tendency to toss and turn in bed. Unsurprisingly, research has shown that poor sleep can lead to increased anger and decreased satisfaction with the relationship. But can we avoid falling in this trap, short of sleeping in separate bedrooms? Yes, if we are naturally good – or learn to be so – at goal disengagement, the mental ...

Osaka, Japan – Organic electronics is a field that has garnered significant interest in academic and industrial circles due to its potential applications in OLEDs and organic solar cells, offering advantages such as lightweight design, flexibility, and cost-efficiency. These devices are made by depositing a thin film of organic molecules onto a substrate that acts as an electrode, and function by controlling the transfer of electrons between the thin film and the substrate. Therefore, understanding electron behavior at the interface between the substrate ...

For decades, people with diabetes have relied on finger pricks to withdraw blood or adhesive microneedles to measure and manage their glucose levels. In addition to being painful, these methods can cause itching, inflammation and infection. Researchers at TMOS, the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems, have taken an important step towards eliminating this discomfort. Their RMIT University team has discovered new aspects of glucose’s infrared signature and have used this information to develop a miniaturised optical sensor only 5mm in diameter that could one day be used to provide continuous non-invasive glucose monitoring in diabetes ...

A new study in people undergoing surgery to treat seizures related to epilepsy shows that pauses in speech reveal information about how people’s brains plan and produce speech. Led by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, the study results add to evidence that neighboring brain regions, the inferior frontal gyrus and the motor cortex, play an important role in such planning before words are said aloud. Both are part of the folded top layers of the brain, or cerebral cortex, which has long been known to control the muscle (motor) movements in the throat and mouth needed to produce speech. Less ...

Cancer is characterized by abnormal metabolic processes different from those of normal cells. Therefore, cancer metabolism has been extensively studied to develop effective diagnosis and treatment strategies. Notable achievements of cancer metabolism studies include the discovery of oncometabolites* and the approval of anticancer drugs by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that target enzymes associated with oncometabolites. Approved anticancer drugs such as ‘Tibsovo (active ingredient: ivosidenib)’ and ‘Idhifa (active ingredient: enasidenib)’ ...

Imaging being able to wear your smartphone on your wrist, not as a watch, but literally as a flexible band that surrounds around your arm. How about clothes that charge your gadgets just by wearing them? Recently, a collaborative team led by Professor Jin Kon Kim and Dr. Keon-Woo Kim of Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Professor Taesung Kim and M.S./Ph.D. student Hyunho Seok of Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU), and Professor Hong Chul Moon of University of Seoul (UOS) has brought a step closer to making this realty. This research work was published in Advanced Materials. Mesoporous ...

A five-day course of once-daily inorganic nitrate reduces the risk of a serious complication following a coronary angiogram, in which the dye used causes damage to the kidneys. The clinical trial, led by Queen Mary University of London and funded by Heart Research UK, also showed that the five-day course improves renal outcomes at three months and major adverse cardiac events (MACE) at one year compared to placebo.  Contrast-induced nephropathy (CIN), also known as contrast associated acute kidney injury (CA-AKI), is an uncommon but serious complication following ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE  6 p.m. PT / 9 p.m. ET, March 18, 2024  To coincide with publication in The Gerontologist  Media Contact: Suzanne Leigh (415) 680-5133  Suzanne.Leigh@UCSF.edu   Subscribe to UCSF News     People with dementia and those who care for them should be screened for loneliness, so providers can find ways to keep them socially connected, according to experts at UC San Francisco and Harvard, who made the recommendations after finding that both groups experienced declines in social well-being as the disease progressed.      The patients, whose ...

Since the 1970s, the federal government has listed the active ingredients in mushrooms—psilocybin and psilocin—as illegal and having no accepted medical use. However, in recent years, medical professionals have found that these substances are safe and effective for treating stubborn conditions such as treatment-resistant depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Some jurisdictions now allow for the medical use of mushrooms, while others are considering permitting or at least decriminalizing their recreational use. Clinicians now find themselves needing to carefully ...

Irvine, Calif., March 18, 2024 — A research team led by the University of California, Irvine has discovered the key role that the APOBEC3A and APOBEC3B enzymes play in driving cancer mutations by modifying the DNA in tumor genomes, offering potential new targets for intervention strategies. The study, published today online in the journal Nature Communications, describes how the researchers identified the process by which APOBEC3A and APOBEC3B detect specific DNA structures, resulting in mutations at distinct positions within the tumor genome. “It’s critical to understand how cancer cells accumulate mutations leading to ...

The blue whale genome was published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, and the Etruscan shrew genome was published in the journal Scientific Data. Research models using animal cell cultures can help navigate big biological questions, but these tools are only useful when following the right map. “The genome is a blueprint of an organism,” says Yury Bukhman, first author of the published research and a computational biologist in the Ron Stewart Computational Group at the Morgridge Institute, an independent research organization that works in affiliation with the University of Wisconsin–Madison in emerging fields ...

Water pollution from dyes used in textile, food, cosmetic and other manufacturing is a major ecological concern with industry and scientists seeking biocompatible and more sustainable alternatives to protect the environment. A new study led by Flinders University has discovered a novel way to degrade and potentially remove toxic organic chemicals including azo dyes from wastewater, using a chemical photocatalysis process powered by ultraviolet light. Professor Gunther Andersson, from the Flinders Institute for NanoScale Science and Technology, says the process involves creating metallic ‘clusters’ of just nine gold (Au) atoms chemically ‘anchored’ ...

*This is an early press release from the European Congress on Obesity (ECO 2024) Venice 12-15 May. Please credit the Congress if using this material* Food companies’ sponsorship of children’s sports may encourage children to buy their products, new research to be presented at the European Congress on Obesity (ECO 2024) (Venice 12-15 May), has found. The Canadian research also found that many children view food companies that sponsor or give money to children’s sports as being “generous” ...

To democratize access to lab-grown organ-like structures known as organoids and other advanced stem cell and transcriptomic technologies, USC will launch the CIRM ASCEND Center, dedicated to “Advancing Stem Cell Education and Novel Discoveries.” Funded by a $3.95 million grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), the voter-created state agency charged with distributing public funding to support stem cell research and education, ASCEND joins a network of shared resources laboratories ...

MADISON –– Scientists have been measuring global methane emissions for decades, but the boreal arctic —with a wide range of biomes including wetlands that extend across the northern parts of North America, Europe and Asia — is a key region where accurately estimating highly potent greenhouse gas emissions has been challenging. Wetlands are great at storing carbon, but as global temperatures increase, they are warming up. That causes the carbon they store to be released into the atmosphere in the form of methane, which contributes to more global warming. Now, researchers — including the University ...

The Lundquist Institute is proud to announce that Wei Yan, MD, PhD, a distinguished professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and Lundquist investigator, has been appointed by the American Society of Andrology and the European Academy of Andrology as the new Editor-in-Chief of Andrology, the highly-respected journal in the field of reproductive medicine.   Dr. Yan's appointment to Andrology is a testament to his dedication to reproductive medicine. With extensive editorial experience, including his previous roles as ...

Researchers at the Institute of Human Virology (IHV) at the University of Maryland School of Medicine published a new study in the Journal of Infectious Diseases investigating the antibody response following SARS-CoV-2 infection.   Long-lived plasma cells are responsible for durable antibody responses that persist for decades after immunization or infection.  For example, infection with measles, mumps, rubella, or immunization with vaccines against tetanus or diphtheria elicit antibody responses that can last for many decades.  By contrast, other infections and vaccines elicit short-lived antibody responses that last only a few ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- The humble peat bog conjures images of a brown, soggy expanse. But it turns out to have a superpower in the fight against climate change. For thousands of years, the world’s peatlands have absorbed and stored vast amounts of carbon dioxide, keeping this greenhouse gas in the ground and not in the air. Although peatlands occupy just 3% of the land on the planet, they play an outsized role in carbon storage -- holding twice as much as all the world’s forests do. The fate of all that carbon is uncertain in the face of climate change. And ...

New research published in Nature Human Behavior suggests that text nudges encouraging people to get the COVID-19 vaccine, which had proven effective in prior real-world field tests, are also effective at prompting people to get a booster. The key in both cases  is to include in the text a sense of ownership in the dose awaiting them. The paper, led by Hengchen Dai, an associate professor of management and organizations and behavioral decision making at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, and Silvia Saccardo, an associate professor of social and decision sciences at Carnegie Mellon University, draws on previous research published in Nature that examined the effectiveness ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – The brain is an incredibly complex and active organ that uses electricity and chemicals to transmit and receive signals between its sub-regions. Researchers have explored various technologies to directly or indirectly measure these signals to learn more about the brain. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), for example, allows them to detect brain activity via changes related to blood flow. Yen-Yu Ian Shih, PhD, professor of neurology and associate director of UNC’s Biomedical Research Imaging Center, and his fellow lab members have long been curious about how neurochemicals in the brain regulate and influence neural activity, ...

Embargoed for release until 5:00 p.m. ET on Monday 18 March 2024    Annals of Internal Medicine Tip Sheet     @Annalsofim    Below please find summaries of new articles that will be published in the next issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The summaries are not intended to substitute for the full articles as a source of information. This information is under strict embargo and by taking it into possession, media representatives are committing to the terms of the embargo not only on their own behalf, but also on behalf of the organization they represent.    ----------------------------    1. Digital reminders for flu vaccination improves ...