When certain connections in the brain do not function correctly, disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, dystonia, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and Tourette’s syndrome may result. Targeted stimulation of specific areas in the brain can help alleviate symptoms. To pinpoint the exact therapeutic target areas of the brain, a team led by researchers from Charité – Universitätsmedizin and Brigham and Women’s Hospital analyzed data from patients across the globe who had undergone implantation of tiny electrodes to stimulate ...

Join Gunther Eysenbach, the founder, CEO, and executive editor of JMIR Publications, in this new video as he reflects on the company's 25th anniversary and its remarkable journey in the scholarly publishing industry. Eysenbach discusses the inception of the Journal of Medical Internet Research and the driving forces behind creating an open access eHealth journal. He emphasizes the significance of innovation both in content and form, highlighting the company's early adoption of internet-based technologies ...

URBANA, Ill. – Black Americans experience racial discrimination as a chronic stressor that influences their quality of life. But it exists in conjunction with other social factors that may modify the impact in various ways. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign explores how discrimination, gender, and social class affect individual well-being and relationship quality for Black Americans. “It’s well documented that discrimination negatively impacts individual quality of life, but research on how it affects relationships is mixed. Some studies find it has a negative effect, others that it has no effect, and some even find a positive effect, ...

Compound vital for all life likely played a role in life’s origin A chemical compound essential to all living things has been synthesised in a lab in conditions that could have occurred on early Earth, suggesting it played a role at the outset of life, finds a new study led by UCL researchers. The compound, pantetheine, is the active fragment of Coenzyme A. It is important for metabolism - the chemical processes that maintain life. Earlier studies failed to synthesise pantetheine effectively, leading to suggestions that it was absent at life’s origin. In the new ...

New York, NY (February 22, 2024)—Recent developments in cancer research have highlighted the vital role of the immune system, particularly in the notable successes of cancer immunotherapy. Now, a paradigm-shifting study led by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York in collaboration with the University of Helsinki and Massachusetts General Hospital sheds light on how variations in immune genetics influence lung cancer risk, potentially paving the way for enhanced prevention strategies and screening. The findings were described in the February 22 online issue of Science [DOI number: 10.1126/science.adi3808]. The investigators ...

Cedars-Sinai investigators have discovered why some injured kidneys heal while others develop scarring that can lead to kidney failure. Their findings, detailed in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Science, could lead to the development of noninvasive tests to detect kidney scarring and, eventually, new therapies to reverse the condition. “The key to this discovery was our ability to directly compare injured kidney cells that successfully regenerated with those that did not,” said Sanjeev Kumar, MD, PhD, a nephrologist-scientist in the Board of Governors Regenerative Medicine Institute and the Department of Medicine at Cedars-Sinai and senior author ...

Data from a series of randomized trials in the United States suggests that if teachers move genetics instruction toward more complex genomics concepts, they can help students have a more scientifically accurate understanding of race. This can protect students from believing in unscientific notions of genetic essentialism, including the idea that inequality is genetic. People who believe in genetic essentialism believe – among other ideas – that most racial differences are determined by genes. Essentialist ...

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have found conclusive evidence of a neutron star in the remnant of Supernova 1987A, the only supernova visible to the naked eye in the last 400 years and the most studied supernova in history. Although Supernova 1987A has been observed for more than three decades, scientists have not seen the compact object expected to have been produced during the explosion. Some indirect evidence had suggested that the supernova produced a neutron star, but a black hole wasn’t ruled ...

Roughly a third of the climate cooling that forests achieve by removing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere is offset through changes to atmospheric composition and decreased surface reflectivity, researchers report. The findings suggest that the benefits of wide-scale forestation efforts may be overestimated and do not represent a single solution for addressing climate change. They also highlight the urgency of simultaneously focusing on emissions reductions. Planting trees has been widely promoted as a nature-based solution to remove anthropogenic CO2 from the atmosphere to help mitigate ...

More than 100 million years ago, the ancestors of the first snakes were small lizards that lived alongside other small, nondescript lizards in the shadow of the dinosaurs.   Then, in a burst of innovation in form and function, the ancestors of snakes evolved legless bodies that could slither across the ground, highly sophisticated chemical detection systems to find and track prey, and flexible skulls that enabled them to swallow large animals.   Those changes set the stage for the spectacular diversification of snakes over the past 66 million years, allowing them to quickly exploit new opportunities ...

  The side effects of large-scale forestation initiatives could reduce the CO2 removal benefits by up to a third Researchers at the University of Sheffield used computer models, which simulate the land, ocean and atmosphere, to investigate the impact of forestation under future climate scenarios While forestation increases atmospheric CO2 removal, it also changes atmospheric composition and darkens the land surface, reducing its potential to tackle climate change Combining forestation with other climate mitigation ...

New Haven, Conn. — Nearly 30 years ago, scientists discovered a unique class of anticancer molecules in a family of bryozoans, a phylum of marine invertebrates found in tropical waters. The chemical structures of these molecules, which consist of a dense, highly complex knot of oxidized rings and nitrogen atoms, has attracted the interest of organic chemists worldwide, who aimed to recreate these structures from scratch in the laboratory. However, despite considerable effort, it has remained an elusive task. Until now, that is. A team of Yale chemists, writing in the journal Science, ...

A new study, published in Science and co-authored by Dr Patrick Kavanagh of Maynooth University’s Department of Experimental Physics in Ireland, has provided the first conclusive evidence for the presence of the elusive neutron star produced in the supernova SN 1987A. Supernovae are the spectacular end result of the collapse of stars more massive than eight to ten times the mass of the sun. Besides being the main sources of chemical elements such as the carbon, oxygen, silicon, and iron that make life possible, they are also responsible for creating the ...

Scientists can finally show that a neutron star formed from our most well-studied supernova, SN 1987A. The breakthrough was made possible thanks to the James Webb telescope. Supernovae are the spectacular end result of the collapse of stars more massive than 8-10 times the mass of the sun. Besides being the main sources of chemical elements such as carbon, oxygen, silicon, and iron that make life possible, they are also responsible for creating the most exotic objects in the universe, neutron stars and black holes. In 1987, supernova 1987A (SN 1987A) ...

Understanding complex biological and biomedical systems is greatly aided by 3D imaging, which provides much more detailed information than traditional two-dimensional methods. However, live cell and tissue imaging remain challenging due to factors like limited imaging speed and significant scattering in turbid environments. In this context, multimodal microscopy techniques are notable. Specifically, nonlinear techniques like CRS (coherent Raman scattering) use optical vibrational spectroscopy, providing precise chemical imaging in tissues and cells in a label-free way. Furthermore, stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA — Experimental computer memories and processors built from magnetic materials use far less energy than traditional silicon-based devices. Two-dimensional magnetic materials, composed of layers that are only a few atoms thick, have incredible properties that could allow magnetic-based devices to achieve unprecedented speed, efficiency, and scalability. While many hurdles must be overcome until these so-called van der Waals magnetic materials can be integrated into functioning computers, MIT researchers took an important step in this direction by demonstrating precise control of a van der ...

When you’re an autistic teenager living with chronic pain, getting treatment for your pain can be a challenging experience. That’s according to a group of young people who’ve spoken to Dr. Abbie Jordan of the Department of Psychology and Centre for Pain Research at The University of Bath about their experiences. Teenagers mention sensory issues, a lack of autism awareness among staff, or feeling “doubly different” compared to their peers, making receiving “one-size-fits-all” psychologically focused treatment for their chronic pain ...

Worsening human-induced climate change may have effects beyond the widely reported rising sea levels, higher temperatures, and impacts on food supply and migration – and may also extend to influencing mental distress among high schoolers in the United States. According to a representative survey of 38,616 high school students from 22 public school districts in 14 U.S. states, the quarter of those adolescents who had experienced the highest number of days in a climate disaster within the past two years and the past five years – such as hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, droughts, and wildfire – had 20% higher odds of developing mental ...

One of the great unresolved mysteries of human evolution is how pro-social, cooperative behavior could have evolved. What led to the establishment of a behavior that prioritizes the benefit of the community over that of the individual in a world where materially successful individuals reproduce, and others slowly perish? The prevailing theory suggests that this occurred due to repeated interactions. Over generations, humans learned that cooperative behavior pays off in the long run. People collaborate because they anticipate interacting with the same individuals ...

New Haven, Conn. — Luke Skywalker’s childhood might have been slightly less harsh if he’d grown up on a more temperate Tatooine — like the ones identified in a new, Yale-led study. According to the study’s authors, there are more climate-friendly planets in binary star systems — in other words, those with two suns — than previously known. And, they say, it may be a sign that, at least in some ways, the universe leans in the direction of orderly alignment rather than chaotic misalignment. For the study, ...

TAMPA, Fla. — Hurricanes and other extreme weather events pose immediate threats to life and property and have long-lasting impacts on health outcomes, particularly for cancer survivors. In a mini-review published today in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal from the American Association for Cancer Research, Moffitt Cancer Center researchers shed light on the significant gaps in understanding and addressing the effects of hurricanes and extreme weather events on biological, psychosocial and clinical outcomes among cancer survivors. Researchers ...

Researchers have paired a deep learning model with experimental data to “decode” mouse neural activity. Using the method, they can accurately determine where a mouse is located within an open environment and which direction it is facing just by looking at its neural firing patterns. Being able to decode neural activity could provide insight into the function and behavior of individual neurons or even entire brain regions. These findings, publishing February 22 in Biophysical Journal, could also inform the design of intelligent machines that currently ...

A large language model (LLM) artificial intelligence (AI) system can match, or in some cases outperform, human ophthalmologists in the diagnosis and treatment of patients with glaucoma and retina disease, according to research from New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai (NYEE). The provocative study, published February 22, in JAMA Ophthalmology, suggests that advanced AI tools, which are trained on vast amounts of data, text, and images, could play an important role in providing decision-making support to ophthalmologists in the diagnosis and management of cases involving glaucoma and retina ...

"Trans masculine people are people born female but do not identify as such, for example they feel male, gender fluid or non-binary. Our examination of their ovarian tissue shows that 33% of them show signs of recent ovulation, despite being on testosterone and no longer menstruating," says Joyce Asseler, PhD candidate at Amsterdam UMC.   Trans masculine people often use hormone treatment with testosterone to masculinize physically. This hormone usually stops them from menstruating. In that ...

A new study led by investigators from Mass General Brigham demonstrated the use of deep brain stimulation (DBS) to map a ‘human dysfunctome’ — a collection of dysfunctional brain circuits associated with different disorders. The team identified optimal networks to target in the frontal cortex that could be used for treating Parkinson’s disease, dystonia, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and Tourette's syndrome. Their results are published in Nature Neuroscience. “We were able to use brain stimulation to precisely identify and target circuits for the optimal treatment of four different ...