A new study from the Texas A&M University School of Public Health found that only 9 percent of older Americans had been vaccinated against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) prior to this fall and winter, despite the threat of increased rates of hospitalization and deaths nationwide from the virus. “RSV—along with COVID-19 and influenza—form the current ‘tripledemic’ found across the United States this fall and winter,” said Simon Haeder, PhD, the study’s author. “While the elderly, as well as the very young and those with chronic health conditions, typically are affected ...

1. A NIMS research team has developed an AI technique capable of expediting the identification of materials with desirable characteristics. Using this technique, the team was able to discover high-performance water electrolyzer electrode materials free of platinum-group elements—substances previously thought to be indispensable in water electrolysis. These materials may be used to reduce the cost of large-scale production of green hydrogen—a next-generation energy source. 2. Large-scale production of green ...

After one of the most intense cyclones in world history tore through the Pacific island of Tanna in Vanuatu, new research led by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa showed the resilience of the island’s forests. In the Pacific islands, climate change is expected to increase the intensity and frequency of cyclones, causing huge potential risks to forests and the people who depend on them. In March 2015, Cyclone Pam touched down on the island of Tanna as the strongest Pacific island cyclone in history ...

The same weather system that led to the spread of the devastating Labor Day wildfires in 2020 brought record-breaking cold and early-season snowfall to parts of the Rocky Mountains. Now, new research from Portland State is shedding light on the meteorology behind what happened and the impacts of such an extreme weather event. “It’s really interesting to see such an amplified pattern result in opposing extremes in the Pacific Northwest and the Rocky Mountains,” said Emma Russell, a master’s student in geography ...

HOUSTON – (March 1, 2024) – Yonglong Xie, assistant professor of physics at Rice University, has been awarded a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The $888,555 grant over five years will support Xie’s research into harnessing magnons, quantum mechanical wavelike objects in magnetic materials, to create synthetic matter and develop next-generation quantum devices and sensors. The CAREER program offers NSF’s most prestigious awards in support of early career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education. Xie’s project focuses ...

In an ironic twist, a treasure trove of critical minerals is dumped out with water considered too polluted and expensive to clean. Texas A&M University researcher Dr. Hamidreza Samouei is investigating the components of produced water and says this waste byproduct of oil and gas operations contains nearly every element in the periodic table, including those of significant interest to national economies. His goal is to treat the water using unwanted carbon dioxide (CO2) in stages to recover these valuable elements and ultimately produce fresh water for agricultural use once the processes are complete. “Recognizing the latent value ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- When participating in research studies, moderately anxious or highly anxious children from minoritized groups are likely to be hypervigilant to threat, further compounding the effects of their general state of anxiety, a research study led by a University of California, Riverside, psychologist reports. The study, which involved the participation of 46 Inland Southern California preadolescent Latina girls (8–13 years), has implications also for children from families with low socioeconomic status.  “Psychological research is often conducted in white, educated, and affluent communities,” said Kalina Michalska, ...

An orca (killer whale) has been observed, for the first-ever time, individually consuming a great white shark – and within just two minutes. “The astonishing predation, off the coast of Mossel Bay, South Africa, represents unprecedented behavior underscoring the exceptional proficiency of the killer whale”, remarks Dr. Alison Towner from Rhodes University, who led an international research team into the discovery. Their findings are published today in the peer-reviewed African Journal of Marine Science. The groundbreaking insight is the latest from Dr. Towner and the team, who, in 2022 in the same journal, ...

By David L. Chandler WOODS HOLE, Mass. -- Antibiotic resistance is a significant and growing medical problem worldwide. Researchers at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) and collaborators have found a novel genetic arrangement that may help a common bacterium in the human gut, Bacteroides fragilis, protect itself from tetracycline, a widely used antibiotic. While these findings will not lead directly to new ways of combating tetracycline-resistant bacteria, the researchers have discovered previously unseen genetic arrangements that confer antibiotic resistance. Such understanding might help in developing new ways to limit the spread of antibiotic resistance genes, through genetic ...

Smoking changes the way genes are expressed, which later contributes to the development of lung cancer and other smoking-related illnesses. But the link between epigenetics (the study of mechanisms that impact gene expression) and smoking is not fully understood, especially in terms of differences across racial and ethnic groups. “We know that smoking affects people differently based on their race and ethnicity, but identifying epigenetic signatures of smoking would help us better predict risk for smoking-related diseases,” said Brian Huang, PhD, an assistant professor in the department of population ...

Dr. Pieter Gunnink from the Institute of Physics at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) has been awarded a EUR 190,000 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship by the European Commission. The grant is an individual award for Gunnink's outstanding achievements in the field of spintronics and provides financial support for his research over a period of 24 months. Modern information processing relies heavily on the use of electrical current, the transport of which requires large amounts of energy. The field of ...

Associate Professor Ron Korstanje, Ph.D., has been named the Evnin Family Chair at The Jackson Laboratory. An expert in the genetics of kidney function and disease, Korstanje’s appointment marks a new chapter in his 20 years of service to JAX’s mission.   “Ron’s exceptional contributions to JAX have advanced research discoveries and nurtured generations of future scientists,” said President and CEO Lon Cardon, Ph.D., FMedSci. “His appointment as the Evnin Family ...

In a collaborative effort to improve the food industry, Dr. Mustafa Akbulut, professor of chemical engineering, and Dr. Luis Cisneros-Zevallos, professor of horticultural science, have developed a two-step coating solution for galvanized steel that is more hygienic and reduces the risk of corrosion. Galvanized steel containers and surfaces are used for harvested produce because of their durability, strength and lower cost compared to stainless steel. However, bacteria residing in storage containers can cause corrosion. The ...

DURHAM, N.C. – A perplexing problem for people with recurring urinary tract infections (UTIs) is persistent pain, even after antibiotics have successfully cleared the bacteria.   Now Duke Health researchers have identified the likely cause - an overgrowth of nerve cells in the bladder.   The finding, appearing March 1 in the journal Science Immunology, provides a potential new approach to managing symptoms of recurring UTIs that would more effectively target the problem and reduce unnecessary antibiotic usage.   “Urinary tract infections account for almost 25% of infections in women,” said senior author Soman Abraham, Ph.D., professor in the departments ...

T follicular helper cells (Tfh) are essential for strong antibody-mediated reactions of our immune system during infections and vaccinations. However, if they get out of control, this can cause diseases such as autoimmunity, allergies or cancer. Researchers from the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) and the Cluster of Excellence ImmunoSensation2 at the University of Bonn investigated the underlying mechanisms of Tfh cell development in a mouse model and thus decoded their internal networking. They hope that this will lead to new strategies for the development of highly effective vaccines and new therapies to combat various diseases. The results have ...

More than half of smokers in England wrongly believe that vaping is more harmful or as harmful as smoking, according to a new study led by UCL (University College London) researchers. The study, published in the journal JAMA Network Open and funded by Cancer Research UK, looked at survey responses from 28,393 smokers in England between 2014 and 2023. The research team found that public perceptions of e-cigarettes had worsened considerably over the past decade, with an overall increase in the perceived harm of e-cigarettes since 2021, coinciding with a sharp rise in vaping among young ...

WHAT: Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have identified antibodies targeting a hard-to-spot region of the influenza virus, shedding light on the relatively unexplored “dark side” of the neuraminidase (NA) protein head. The antibodies target a region of the NA protein that is common among many influenza viruses, including H3N2 subtype viruses, and could be a new target for countermeasures. The research, led by scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ Vaccine Research Center, part of NIH, was published today in Immunity. Influenza, or flu, sickens millions ...

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center announced 12 recipients of the 2024 Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award, which recognizes exceptional achievement in graduate studies in the biological sciences.  This year’s recipients come from U.S. and international research institutions with thesis topics that include brain signals related to learning and emotion, bacterial pathogens and health, AI algorithms in rare disease diagnosis and treatment, and immune cells involved in brain tumors.  “Weintraub awardees showcase how scientists are using advancements in technology to explore questions that have been out of reach,” said Jihong Bai, ...

STARKVILLE, Miss. -- Mississippi State University's Department of Computer Science and Engineering has launched a new open-access academic journal focused on advancements in artificial intelligence. The journal AI Letters aims to fill a gap in peer-reviewed publications covering AI research. Department Head Shahram Rahimi and Assistant Research Professor Noorbakhsh Amiri Golilarz, editors-in-chief of the journal, saw the need for a publication that could quickly share new ideas and insights in AI, a hot topic ...

Over the last four decades, warming climate and ocean temperatures have rapidly altered the Greenland Ice Sheet, creating concern for marine ecosystems and weather patterns worldwide. The environment has challenged scientists in their attempts to measure how water moves around and melts the ice sheet because equipment can be destroyed by icebergs floating near the glaciers. Collected using a novel approach, research from the University of Maine has unearthed new information to help scientists better understand circulation patterns of ocean water around glaciers. A group of pioneers in glacial research attached GPS devices to icebergs and used their mobility to understand fjord circulation, ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Putting off a burdensome task may seem like a universal trait, but new research suggests that people whose negative attitudes tend to dictate their behavior in a range of situations are more likely to delay tackling the task at hand. The psychological term to describe this mental process is called valence weighting bias, which describes people’s tendency to adapt in new circumstances by drawing more strongly from either their positive or negative attitudes – or, in the context of approaching an unpleasant task, whether negative or positive internal “signals” carry the most weight in guiding the final behavior.   “And ...

Suppose two speakers of the same language are playing a guessing game where each has the same color swatches, and Player 1 tries to get Player 2 to guess a hue by naming the color. If the second player consistently guesses correctly as often as possible, that indicates their language has an efficient color naming system. Past research has shown that efficient color vocabularies are constrained both by how people perceive colors and by how much they want or need to communicate about a given color. For example, Penn researchers found in a 2021 study that the need to communicate about reds and yellows is high across languages, while greens are more important in some languages. Now, ...

Score another one for artificial intelligence. In a recent study, 151 human participants were pitted against ChatGPT-4 in three tests designed to measure divergent thinking, which is considered to be an indicator of creative thought. Divergent thinking is characterized by the ability to generate a unique solution to a question that does not have one expected solution, such as “What is the best way to avoid talking about politics with my parents?” In the study, GPT-4 provided more original and elaborate answers than the human participants. The study, “The current state of artificial intelligence generative ...

Boston, MA – Results from a new nationwide cohort study show that, despite strong recommendations in favor of consuming omega-3 fatty acids for optimal pregnancy outcomes and offspring health, 25% of participants reported rarely, or never eating fish during pregnancy, with fewer taking omega-3 supplements. The study, “Demographic and health characteristics associated with fish and n-3 fatty acid supplement intake during pregnancy: results from pregnancy cohorts in the ECHO program” was led by investigators at the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute and published February 27 in Public Health Nutrition. The study is timely, ...

March 1, 2024, Port St. Lucie, Fla: Cleveland Clinic researchers have discovered a key mechanism used by Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV), also known as human herpesvirus 8 (HHV8), to induce cancer. The research points to effective new treatment options for KSHV-associated cancers, including Kaposi’s sarcoma, primary effusion lymphoma, and HHV8-associated multicentric Castleman disease.   “Our findings have significant implications: viruses cause between 10% to 20% of cancers worldwide, a number that is constantly increasing ...