Corneal transplants can be the last step to returning clear vision to many patients suffering from eye disease. Each year, approximately 80,000 corneal transplantations take place in the U.S. Worldwide, more than 184,000 corneal transplantation surgeries are performed annually.  However, rejection rates for the corneal grafts can be as high as 10%. This is largely due to poor patient compliance to the medications, which require frequent administrations of topical eyedrops over a long period of time.  This becomes especially acute when patients ...

The diet quality of fish across large parts of the world’s oceans could decline by up to 10 per cent as climate change impacts an integral part of marine food chains, a major study has found. QUT School of Mathematical Sciences researcher Dr Ryan Heneghan led the study published in Nature Climate Change that included researchers from the University of Queensland, University of Tasmania, University of NSW and CSIRO. They modelled the impact of climate change on zooplankton, an abundant and extremely diverse group of microscopic animals accounting for about 40 per cent ...

URBANA, Ill. – The U.S. dairy industry operates a comprehensive data collection program that records herd production information from farmers nationwide. The program provides crucial input for cattle breeding and genetics, and its cooperative structure ensures benefits for producers and scientists alike. A new study from the University of Illinois explores the program’s century-old history, highlighting its relevance for modern agriculture and digital data collection. “The National Cooperative Dairy Herd Improvement Program (NCDHIP) is an interesting case study because it illustrates how to translate the benefits ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — U.S. college students’ knowledge of bees focuses primarily on honey bees and pollination services, according to Penn State researchers, who said findings from their recent study could help in designing campaigns to generate support for protecting threatened pollinators. Wild and managed bee populations have been in steep decline worldwide in recent years, noted study co-author Christina Grozinger, Publius Vergilius Maro Professor of Entomology and director of the Center for Pollinator Research in ...

VANCOUVER -- Deep brain stimulation (DBS) has become an increasingly common treatment for patients with advanced Parkinson’s disease, but the procedure still carries significant risks. A new probe that performs two types of spectroscopy could make the procedure safer and improve success rates by helping doctors more accurately navigate instruments inside the brain. The research team identified white and grey matter using principal component analysis (PCA), proving that spectroscopic measurements could be suitable for neuronavigation. For DBS, surgeons place electrodes in the brain to disrupt the errant signals that cause debilitating tremors and stiffness associated ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The success of North American crops from corn to Christmas trees partly depends on a relatively invisible component of the food web — ground beetles. Nearly 2,000 species of ground beetle live in North America. New research led by Penn State shows that some of these insects could thrive while others could decline as the climate changes. The team found that the response will largely depend on the species’ traits and habitats and could have significant implications for conservation efforts. “We know that climate change influences everything from coral reefs in the ocean to trees on land, but there’s ...

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health contributed to a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that found a continued rise in the overall prevalence of autism among 8-year-olds in 2020, the year the data was collected, as well as notable sex and racial/ethnic trends. In Maryland, the autism rate among 8-year-olds also rose, but it was the lowest prevalence among 11 sites that contributed to the study. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disorder that can be characterized by social and communication challenges, along with limited interests and repetitive behaviors. The prevalence of ASD has risen steadily ...

A recent U.S. federal court ruling that removes a requirement for employers to provide insurance coverage for the HIV prevention medications known as Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis, or PrEP, could result in more than 2,000 entirely preventable HIV infections in the coming year, according to a new study led by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health. The study addresses the potential consequences of a September 2022 decision by U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor of Texas in a case known as Braidwood Management v. Becerra. O’Connor ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, a group of Christian business owners who claimed that federal mandates requiring private insurance ...

The University of Southern California (USC) is collaborating with Auransa Inc., on a phase 1 clinical trial to evaluate a new kind of treatment for cancers of the liver and solid tumors with liver dominant disease. The drug, known as AU409, was developed by Auransa, a clinical stage drug development company focused on identifying novel drug candidates for oncology, inflammatory diseases and diseases of the central nervous system. In preclinical trials, AU409, has been shown to work in a unique fashion by limiting the cancer cell’s ability to translate the message from various genes ...

March 23, 2023 – Washington, DC, New York, NY, and London, England – A group of natural history museums, organized by the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, the American Museum of Natural History Museum in New York City, and the Natural History Museum in London, has mapped the total collections from 73 of the world’s largest natural history museums in 28 countries. This is the first step of an ambitious effort to inventory global holdings that can help scientists and decisionmakers find solutions to urgent, wide-ranging issues such as climate ...

Metabolic pathways consist of a series of biochemical reactions in cells that convert a starting component into other products. There is growing evidence that metabolic pathways coupled with external stress factors influence the health of cells and tissues. Many human diseases, including retinal or neurodegenerative diseases, are associated with imbalances in metabolic pathways. Elisabeth Knust leads a team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) in Dresden, Germany, who describe an essential role for one ...

The medicinal secrets of the Chilean soapbark tree have been laid bare, unlocking a future of more potent, affordable, and sustainably sought vaccines. The evergreen species, Quillaja saponaria has, for decades, been highly prized for producing molecules called QS saponins, which are used in the food and drinks industry as foaming agents. More recently an important new function has emerged with saponins obtained from the tree’s bark used as potent adjuvants in the production of vaccines. Adjuvants play a critical role in some vaccines, working to boost the potency of a vaccine by enhancing the host immune response. Molecules extracted from soapbark tree are ...

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows the rates and demographics of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are changing in the United States.  In the latest analysis, 1 in 36 8-year-old children (2.8%) have been identified as having ASD. This figure is higher than the previous estimate published in December 2021, which found a prevalence of 1 in 44 (2.3%) children, and considerably higher than the CDC’s first autism prevalence report published in 2007 noting a prevalence of 1 in 150 (0.7%).  Prevalence estimates also differed across the 11 data collection sites, ranging from 1 in 43 children (2.3%) in Maryland, to 1 in 22 (4.5%) ...

Using artificial intelligence, researchers have discovered how to screen for genetic mutations in cancerous brain tumors in under 90 seconds — and possibly streamline the diagnosis and treatment of gliomas, a study suggests. A team of neurosurgeons and engineers at Michigan Medicine, in collaboration with investigators from New York University, University of California, San Francisco and others, developed an AI-based diagnostic screening system called DeepGlioma that uses rapid imaging to analyze tumor specimens taken during an operation and detect genetic mutations more rapidly. In a study of more than 150 patients ...

ST. LOUIS – Research published in Environmental Research Letters has shown that methane emissions from urban areas are underestimated by a factor of three to four and that untreated wastewater may be a contributing factor. The study, “Investigating high methane emissions from urban areas detected by TROPOMI and their association with untreated wastewater,” was led by Benjamin de Foy, Ph.D., professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Saint Louis University, and published online on ...

The impact of multi-storey building design considerations on embodied carbon emissions, cost, and operational energy has been revealed for the first time. Using a computer model, researchers estimate that up to six gigatonnes of carbon could be saved by 2050 if new multi-storey buildings follow certain recommendations during the design process. All these recommendations, which could also save between 28 and 44% of annual heating and cooling costs, use technology that is currently available. Construction and operation of buildings account for more than one-third ...

EL PASO, Texas (March 23, 2023) – The University of Texas at El Paso has joined a project led by NASA to leverage 3D-printing processes with the aim of manufacturing rechargeable batteries using lunar and Martian regolith, which is the top layer of materials that covers the surface of the moon and Mars. “UTEP is a national leader in additive manufacturing for space applications,” said Kenith Meissner, Ph.D., dean of the UTEP College of Engineering. “I congratulate the team of UTEP researchers involved in this important work. I am confident their work will add significant value ...

MADISON – While recent studies and polls indicate the nation is in the midst of a mental health crisis, the situation in academia is even more grim: Within the high-stress, high-pressure, often socially isolated world of advanced education, graduate students experience depression and anxiety at six times the rate of the general population.   Normalizing mindfulness practices within the graduate student experience may be an answer, according to a three-year study conducted by University of Wisconsin–Madison ...

Scientists from Swansea University ‘s Institute for Innovative Materials, Processing and Numerical Technologies (IMPACT) and Japan have been awarded £1.3 million to develop a new “point of care testing” kit that can detect biomarkers for Alzheimer's Disease. The project follows Dr Sanjiv Sharma’s ground-breaking work in this area and the development of the world’s first COVID-19 ‘smart patch’. Compared to hypodermic single needles, a ‘smart patch’ consists of a collection of tiny needles - microneedles - created to break the skin barrier in a minimally invasive ...

New federal studies coauthored by autism experts at Rutgers found that more children have been diagnosed with autism than at any time since monitoring began more than two decades ago.   According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 4 percent of 8-year-old boys and 1 percent of 8-year-old girls, have autism in the U.S. These estimates are the highest since the CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network was created in 2000.   Biennial studies from the ADDM Network, which analyzed ...

A research study has shed new light on how congenital muscular dystrophies such as Walker-Warburg syndrome progress, bringing hope for better understanding, early diagnosis and treatments of these fatal disorders. Published in March in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, the research was led by scientists in the lab of Vlad Panin, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics in the Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. The study is titled “Protein tyrosine phosphatase 69D is a substrate of protein O-mannosyltransferases 1-2 that is required for the wiring of sensory axons in Drosophila.” ...

According to a study published in Nature Materials, a collaborative research team from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the University of Science and Technology of China has developed a research platform to study superconducting magnetic detection and magnetic phase transitions of hydrides under high pressure. High-resolution in-situ magnetic measurement under high pressure has been a challenge. It has limited the progress of research on the Meissner effect of superconductivity and on magnetic phase transition behavior under high pressure. Using the optically detected ...

Genes and the regulation relationships among them create complex networks that determine cell differentiation trajectories. However, we still cannot understand and predict the cell-fate-decision process using network topology in a bottom-up manner. Recently, a research group led by Prof. FU Xiongfei from the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has revealed how the global regulation factor, cellular growth rate, reshapes the cell-fate-decision landscape. The ...

New research published by investigators at Cedars-Sinai advances scientific understanding of how the brain weighs decisions involving what people like or value, such as choosing which book to read, which restaurant to pick for lunch—or even, which slot machine to play in a casino. Published today in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Human Behaviour, this study involved recording the activity of individual human neurons.  The study examined decisions called value-based choices, where there is ...

Microplastic pollution reduces energy production in a microscopic creature found in freshwater worldwide, new research shows. Paramecium bursaria contain algae that live inside their cells and provide energy by photosynthesis. The new study, by the University of Exeter, tested whether severe microplastic contamination in the water affected this symbiotic relationship.   The results showed a 50% decline in net photosynthesis – a major impact on the algae’s ability to produce energy and release ...