Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has appointed Professor Ernst Kuipers, a renowned gastroenterologist, healthcare executive, and former Minister of Health, Welfare and Sport for The Netherlands, as NTU Singapore’s new Vice President (Research). Prof Kuipers will also be appointed to the tenured faculty rank of Distinguished University Professor, the highest faculty rank at NTU bestowed upon faculty members with extraordinary scholarly achievements that typically span multiple disciplinary boundaries. Announcing this new appointment, NTU President Prof Ho Teck Hua said: “We warmly welcome ...

A detailed survey of the volcanic underwater deposits around the Kikai caldera in Japan clarified the deposition mechanisms as well as the event’s magnitude. As a result, the Kobe University research team found that the event 7,300 years ago was the largest volcanic eruption in the Holocene by far. In addition to lava, volcanos eject large amounts of pumice, ashes and gases as a fast-moving flow, known as “pyroclastic flow,” and its sediments are a valuable data source on past eruptions. For volcanoes on land, geologists understand the sedimentation mechanism of pyroclastic flows well, but the sediments themselves get lost easily ...

Mass General Brigham pediatric clinicians created 45 videos on pediatric care topics including how-to for surgical procedures, best practices for intubation and intensive care, and translated them to Spanish through GPT-4 large language model. Videos distributed to clinicians in Guatemala and Colombia AI can offer health care professionals worldwide an inclusive resource for elevating pediatric standards of care, according to authors A team of pediatric clinicians at Mass General Brigham have turned to generative artificial intelligence (AI) to tackle problems plaguing child medical care delivery in resource-poor countries that increase risk for poor outcomes and mortality. The ...

A new computer model mimics Moon dust so well that it could lead to smoother and safer Lunar robot teleoperations. The tool, developed by researchers at the University of Bristol and based at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, could be used to train astronauts ahead of Lunar missions. Working with their industry partner, Thales Alenia Space in the UK, who has specific interest in creating working robotic systems for space applications, the team investigated a virtual version of regolith, another name for Moon dust. Lunar regolith is ...

WASHINGTON (Feb. 22, 2024)--A new study finds women in healthcare occupations endure significantly more stress and burnout compared to their male counterparts. The analysis by researchers at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences also found that job satisfaction and better work-life balance can protect women healthcare professionals from harmful stress.   “Human beings are not equipped to handle the combined, intense pressures in healthcare in part due to the pressure to not take time to care for yourself,” Leigh A. Frame, associate director of the GW Resiliency & Well-being Center, ...

University of Waterloo researchers have developed a new blood testing method that can detect potent opioids much faster than traditional approaches and potentially save lives.  The method, the latest effort by Waterloo researchers and entrepreneurs to lead health innovation in Canada, can simultaneously analyze 96 blood samples that could contain opioids such as fentanyl in under three minutes – twice as quickly as other techniques.  "The difference between our blood testing method and traditional methods used in laboratories and hospitals is that we can do it faster ...

The Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) has discovered a giant ultra-high-energy gamma-ray bubble structure in the Cygnus star-forming region, which is the first time that the origin of cosmic rays with energy higher than 10 Peta-Electronvolt (PeV, 1PeV=1015eV) has been discovered. This achievement was published in the form of a cover article in Science Bulletin on Feb. 26. The research was completed by the LHAASO Collaboration led by Prof. CAO Zhen as the spokesperson from the Institute of High Energy Physics of the ...

Imagine doubling the processing power of your smartphone, tablet, personal computer, or server using the existing hardware already in these devices.  Hung-Wei Tseng, a UC Riverside associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, has laid out a paradigm shift in computer architecture to do just that in a recent paper titled, “Simultaneous and Heterogeneous Multithreading.”  Tseng explained that today’s computer devices increasingly have graphics processing units (GPUs), hardware accelerators for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), or digital signal processing units as essential components. These components ...

Home health care use in the last three years of a patient’s life is associated with a higher likelihood of hospice care at the end of life, according to a Rutgers Health study.   Researchers, whose findings are published in the Journal of Palliative Medicine, examined the home health care and hospice care experiences of more than 2 million people.   “In addition to benefits for the patient, hospice care also provides resources and support to help family caregivers cope with the physical, emotional and practical challenges of caring for a loved one at the end of life,” said Olga Jarrín, senior author of the ...

For the first time researchers have identified patterns of risk for several different types of cancer in men with fertility problems and their families.   The study, which is published today (Thursday) in Human Reproduction [1], one of the world’s leading reproductive medicine journals, found that families of men who have very few or no sperm in their semen have a higher risk of developing cancer, including developing cancer at younger ages, compared to families of fertile men.   The risk and the type of cancer varied greatly depending on whether the men had low numbers of sperm (oligozoospermic) or none (azoospermic), with several cancers identified ...

1. Background Many proteins within the body form complexes with other proteins, determining the fate of cells. Therefore, the analysis of protein-protein interactions (PPI) is a crucial process for understanding the biological function of target proteins. Membrane proteins, which account for over 30% of human genes, play a vital role in cell functions. Many membrane proteins are known to form complexes to exert their functions, making the elucidation of membrane protein PPIs essential for understanding protein function. However, the development of technologies to analyze PPIs, especially extracellular protein–protein interactions (exPPIs) of living cells, has ...

PHILADELPHIA—(Feb. 21, 2024)—The Wistar Institute’s associate professor Mohamed Abdel-Mohsen, Ph.D., has demonstrated, with his lab and collaborators, a connection between viral damage to the gut and premature biological aging. The group found that this pro-aging connection can contribute to both gut permeability and premature systemic & intestinal tissue aging in people living with chronic HIV infection, and their discovery is detailed in the newly published paper titled, “Distinct Intestinal Microbial Signatures Linked to Accelerated Systemic and Intestinal Biological Aging,” published in the journal Microbiome. When people's bodies age faster ...

Key points: Chronic exposure to fine particulate air pollutants (PM2.5) may increase seniors’ risk of cardiovascular hospitalization, with disproportionate impacts on residents of socioeconomically deprived neighborhoods. The findings suggest that to protect heart health, there is no safe threshold for chronic PM2.5 exposure, and that the EPA’s newly updated standard for the U.S.’s annual average PM2.5 level isn’t low enough to reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease or protect public health overall. Boston, MA—Chronic exposure to fine particulate air pollutants ...

A UCL-developed app that provides speech therapy for people with the language disorder aphasia has been found to significantly improve their ability to talk. iTalkBetter, developed by the Neurotherapeutics Group at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, provides users the digital platform to practice over 200 commonly used words, in their own time and without any limits on the amount of therapy they receive. While employing games to maintain engagement, the app’s integrated speech recogniser analyses speech in real time to give the user feedback on whether they have named the displayed item correctly. A new study, published in eClinicalMedicine, ...

Using intravascular imaging to guide stent implantation during percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in heart disease patients significantly improves survival and reduces adverse cardiovascular events compared to angiography-guided PCI alone, the most commonly used method. These are the results from the largest and most comprehensive clinical study of its kind comparing two types of intravascular imaging methods (intravascular ultrasound, or IVUS, and optical coherence tomography, or OCT) with angiography-guided PCI. The study, published Wednesday, February 21, in The Lancet, is the first to show that these two methods of ...

Short and long term exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution is linked to an increased risk of hospital admission for major heart and lung diseases, find two large US studies, published by The BMJ today. Together, the results suggest that no safe threshold exists for heart and lung health. According to the Global Burden of Disease study, exposure to PM2.5 accounts for an estimated 7.6% of total global mortality and 4.2% of global disability adjusted life years (a measure of years lived in good health). In light of this extensive evidence, the World Health Organization ...

Children born in October are both more likely to be vaccinated against influenza and least likely to be diagnosed with influenza compared with children born in other months, finds a US study published by The BMJ today. The results suggest that birth month is associated with both timing of flu vaccination and the likelihood of a flu diagnosis - and that October is the optimal time for young children to have a flu shot, in line with current recommendations. Annual influenza vaccination is particularly important for young children, who are at higher risk of flu and severe ...

UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 6:30 PM EST, Feb. 21, 2024 A UCLA Health-led study found a combination of interventions of one-on-one telehealth coaching, peer support forums, and automated text messages more than doubled the use of the HIV prevention strategy, called PrEP, among younger, at-risk Americans, a group that historically has had low use of the medication. The randomized controlled trial results, published in the journal Lancet Digital Health, tested combinations of interventions to improve HIV prevention behaviors, including pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, among younger Americans who have historically ...

Seaports act as hubs for the global spread of MtrBTN2,1 a rare contagious cancer affecting mussels. In this disease, cancer cells can be transmitted, like parasites, from one mussel to another nearby. While, in nature, such contagion mainly occurs between mussels in the same bed, ports and maritime transport facilitate the spread of MtrBTN2 to other locations, through biofouling, whereby diseased mussels attach themselves to ship hulls. This finding, the fruit of research by a team led by scientists from the CNRS and the University of Montpellier,2 will be published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B ...

In their ‘letter to the world’ they say that cancer is a ‘defining health issue of our time’ that requires a united and collective worldwide response on a par with Covid-19. The scientists argue that we’re at a ‘tipping point’ that could transform how we understand and treat cancer – but more support for life-saving research is required to beat the disease.   The letter is published as Cancer Research UK launched its More Research, Less Cancer campaign ...

Before orally administered drugs can make their way throughout the body, they must first bind to membrane proteins called drug transporters, which carry compounds across the intestinal tract and help them reach their intended targets. But because one drug can bind to several different drug transporters, they may struggle to get past this gut barrier, potentially leading to decreased drug absorption and efficacy. If another drug is added to the mix, interactions between the two compounds and their transporters can cause dangerous side effects. Researchers ...

University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers have devised a way to remotely detect large landslides within minutes of occurrence and to quickly determine whether they are close to open water and present a tsunami hazard. They write in a new paper that their method of determining a landslide’s location, volume and potential impact is rapid enough to support the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s goal of issuing a tsunami warning within 5 minutes of a landslide.  “The warming climate is causing glaciers to retreat, leaving behind valleys whose mountainsides and hillsides have lost their ...

Mars was once a wet world. The geological record of the Red Planet shows evidence for water flowing on the surface – from river deltas to valleys carved by massive flash floods.   But a new study shows that no matter how much rainfall fell on the surface of ancient Mars, very little of it seeped into an aquifer in the planet’s southern highlands. A graduate student at The University of Texas at Austin made the discovery by modeling groundwater recharge dynamics for the aquifer using a range of methods ...

Though artificial intelligence decreases human error in experimentation, human experts outperform AI when identifying causation or working with small data sets.  To capitalize on AI and researcher strengths, ORNL scientists, in collaboration with colleagues at National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan, and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, developed a human-AI collaboration recommender system for improved experimentation performance.  During experiments, the system’s machine learning algorithms, described in npj Computational Materials, display preliminary ...

Longstanding challenges in biomedical research such as monitoring brain chemistry and tracking the spread of drugs through the body require much smaller and more precise sensors. A new nanoscale sensor that can monitor areas 1,000 times smaller than current technology and can track subtle changes in the chemical content of biological tissue with sub-second resolution, greatly outperforming standard technologies. The device, developed by researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, is silicon-based and takes advantage of techniques developed for microelectronics manufacturing. ...