Language skills are strong predictors of academic, socioemotional and behavioral outcomes when children enter school. They learn language in preschool years by interacting with others, especially their parents. Book sharing is a popular way parents engage young children in conversation. However, not all parents are comfortable with book sharing and not all children like having books read to them.  A new study on “parent talk” by Florida Atlantic University, in collaboration with Aarhus University in Denmark, provides ...

Lincoln, Nebraska, Feb. 19, 2024 — A Husker research duo was named a first-round winner in a National Institutes of Health competition aimed at generating solutions for delivering genome-editing technology to the cells of people with rare and common diseases. Janos Zempleni, Willa Cather Professor of molecular nutrition, and Jiantao Guo, professor of chemistry, were selected as Phase 1 winners in the NIH’s Targeted Genome Editor Delivery Challenge. The challenge is a three-phase competition with prizes totaling $6 million; the University of Nebraska–Lincoln team was among 30 initial recipients announced in December ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Until recently, Orthacanthus gracilis could have been considered the “John Smith” of prehistoric shark names, given how common it was.   Three different species of sharks from the late Paleozoic Era – about 310 million years ago – were mistakenly given that same name, causing lots of grief to paleontologists who studied and wrote about the sharks through the years and had trouble keeping them apart.   But now Loren Babcock, a professor of earth sciences at The Ohio State University, has finished the arduous task of renaming two of the three sharks – and in the process rediscovered a wealth ...

A rapid scoping review has been conducted which reveals five common ways in which the health of homeless pet owners and their companion animals is improved. Ten percent of homeless people keep pets. But little information exists on specific intervention strategies for improving the health of homeless people and their pets who are often the only source of unconditional love or companionship in their life. The study, published in the Human-Animal Interactions journal, found that the most common ways ...

Potassium deficiency in agricultural soils is a largely unrecognised but potentially significant threat to global food security if left unaddressed, finds new research involving researchers at UCL, University of Edinburgh and the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology. The study, published in Nature Food, found that more potassium is being removed from agricultural soils than is being added, throughout many regions of the world. It also gives a series of recommendations for how to mitigate the issue. Potassium is a vital nutrient for plant growth that ...

How does our intestine, which can be at least 15 feet long, fit properly inside our bodies? As our digestive system grows, the gut tube goes through a series of dramatic looping and rotation to package the lengthening intestine. Failure of the gut to rotate properly during development results in a prevalent, but poorly understood, birth anomaly called intestinal malrotation. Now, in a study published in the journal Development, scientists from North Carolina State University have uncovered a potential cause of this life-threatening condition.   Intestinal malrotation affects 1 in 500 births but the underlying causes are not well understood. ...

Niigata, Japan – Dr. Yamamoto et al. found the several uremic toxins as one of causes of itching in hemodialysis patients. Hemodialysis patients commonly experience itching on a daily basis, which is distributed throughout their bodies. They developed a "PBUT score" based on highly protein-bound uremic toxins (PBUT) that increase in the body with end-stage kidney disease. The PBUT score was associated with itching in hemodialysis patients. I. Background of the Study Patients with advanced chronic kidney disease (CKD) require kidney replacement therapy, such as hemodialysis, to manage their condition. Hemodialysis patients often experience various symptoms, ...

Communities must be better prepared for flooding in their homes and businesses, an expert warns, as climate change predictions suggest more extreme flooding globally. Floods still inflict major costs to the economies, livelihoods and wellbeing of communities, with flood risks and impacts set to increase further due to climate change (IPCC, 2021). Professor of Environmental Management, Lindsey McEwen explains how many experts now believe local communities have critical roles as key actors within flood risk management and disaster risk reduction. Professor McEwen, author of Flood ...

Link to video and sound (details below): https://spaces.hightail.com/receive/JwM0o5gQdq The reproduction of giant sea spiders in Antarctica has been largely unknown to researchers for more than 140 years, until now. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa scientists traveled to the remote continent and saw first-hand the behaviors of these mysterious creatures, and their findings could have wider implications for marine life and ocean ecosystems in Antarctica and around the world. Sea spiders, or ...

A few years ago, MIT researchers invented a cryptographic ID tag that is several times smaller and significantly cheaper than the traditional radio frequency tags (RFIDs) that are often affixed to products to verify their authenticity. This tiny tag, which offers improved security over RFIDs, utilizes terahertz waves, which are smaller and travel much faster than radio waves. But this terahertz tag shared a major security vulnerability with traditional RFIDs: A counterfeiter could peel the tag off a genuine item and reattach it to a fake, and the authentication system would be none the wiser. The researchers have now surmounted ...

DENVER – Armed with a catalog of hundreds of thousands of DNA and RNA virus species in the world’s oceans, scientists are now zeroing in on the viruses most likely to combat climate change by helping trap carbon dioxide in seawater or, using similar techniques, different viruses that may prevent methane’s escape from thawing Arctic soil. By combining genomic sequencing data with artificial intelligence analysis, researchers have identified ocean-based viruses and assessed their genomes to find that they “steal” genes from other microbes or cells that process carbon in the sea. Mapping microbial ...

Embargoed until 1:30 p.m. ET, Saturday Feb. 17, 2024 DENVER – Imageomics, a new field of science, has made stunning progress in the past year and is on the verge of major discoveries about life on Earth, according to one of the founders of the discipline.   Tanya Berger-Wolf, faculty director of the Translational Data Analytics Institute at The Ohio State University, outlined the state of imageomics in a presentation on Feb. 17, 2024, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.   “Imageomics ...

Tokyo, Japan – Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University crafted replica stone age tools and used them for a range of tasks to see how different activities create traces on the edge. They found that a combination of macroscopic and microscopic traces can tell us how stone edges were used. Their criteria help separate tools used for wood-felling from other activities. Dated stone edges may be used to identify when timber use began for early humans.   For prehistoric humans, improvements in woodworking technology were revolutionary. While Paleolithic (early stone age) artifacts point to the use of wood for simple tools such as spears ...

Two innovative design techniques lead to substantial improvements in performance in fractional-N phase locked loops (PLLs), report scientists from Tokyo Tech. The proposed methods are aimed to minimize unwanted signals known as fractional spurs, which typically plague PLLs used in many modern radar systems and wireless transceivers. These efforts could open doors to technological improvements in wireless communication, autonomous vehicles, surveillance, and tracking systems in beyond 5G era. Many emerging and evolving technologies, such as self-driving vehicles, target tracking systems, and remote sensors, rely on the high-speed and error-free operation ...

DENVER — Young physician investigators interested in research careers in pulmonology, allergy and immunology, pediatric and related programs, are encouraged to submit basic science or clinical research abstracts by June 3, 2024, to be considered for participation in the 20th Annual Respiratory Disease Young Investigators’ Forum. This year’s Forum will take place October 17-20, 2024, in Denver. The annual event provides career development and research opportunities for fellows and early career faculty. The Forum is a celebration of talent and ingenuity in respiratory medicine. Physician-scientists in fellowship ...

In an article published in the Journal of Pediatrics, researchers based in Brazil describe the case of a nine-year-old boy admitted to hospital with multiple symptoms and overlapping conditions that made diagnosis difficult, such as short stature, thin tooth enamel (dental enamel hypoplasia), moderate mental deficiency, speech delay, asthma, mildly altered blood sugar, and a history of recurring infections in infancy.  The team used exome sequencing, in which only the protein-coding portion of the genome is analyzed, to look for genetic mutations, and found them in GCK and BCL11B. ...

MIAMI, FLORIDA (Feb. 15, 2024) – Prominent oncologist and researcher Damian Green, M.D., will join Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University Miami Miller School of Medicine this spring to lead its transplantation and cellular therapy services. Green will serve as chief of Sylvester’s Division of Transplantation & Cellular Therapy, as well as assistant director of Translational Research, beginning March 1. He joins Sylvester from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, where he built a distinguished track record in research and ...

By Wynne Parry WOODS HOLE, Mass. – Like humans struggling to get through the COVID-19 pandemic, bacterial cells need social distancing to thwart viruses. But in some situations, such as inside elevators or within the candy-colored bacterial structures known as “pink berries,” staying apart just isn’t feasible. Looking like spilled Nerds or Pop Rocks, the communal, multicellular pink berries  litter the submerged surface of salt marshes in and around Woods Hole. New research conducted at the Marine Biological ...

Hospital-acquired acute kidney injury (HA-AKI) is a common complication in hospitalized patients that can lead to chronic kidney disease and is associated with longer hospital stays, higher health care costs and increased mortality. Given these negative consequences, preventing HA-AKI can improve hospitalized patient outcomes. However, anticipating HA-AKI onset is difficult due to a large number of contributing factors involved. Researchers from Mass General Brigham Digital tested a commercial machine learning tool, the Epic Risk of HA-AKI predictive model, and found it was moderately successful at predicting risk of HA-AKI in recorded patient data. ...

(Toronto, February 16, 2024) JMIR Publications is pleased to announce that JMIR Bioinformatics and Biotechnology has passed the Scientific Quality Review by the US National Library of Medicine (NLM) for PubMed Central (PMC). This decision reflects the scientific and editorial quality of the journal. All articles published from 2022 onward will be found on PMC and PubMed after their technical evaluation.  Launched in 2020, JMIR Bioinformatics and Biotechnology is a sister journal of Journal of Medical Internet Research ...

Standard chemotherapy regimens, which are mostly based on testing in relatively young and healthy patients, may do more harm to older adults with cancer who often struggle with other health issues. New research, published yesterday in JAMA Network Open, shows that lowering the dose and adjusting the schedule of how chemotherapy is given to older adults with advanced cancer can make life better for patients, without compromising their treatment goals. The study, which was led by researchers from the University of Rochester Medical Center’s Wilmot Cancer Institute, focuses on how well older people tolerate chemotherapy. More than 30 percent of patients benefitted from treatment regimen ...

HOUSTON – (Feb. 16, 2024) – Rice University computer science researchers have found bias in widely used machine learning tools used for immunotherapy research. Ph.D. students Anja Conev, Romanos Fasoulis and Sarah Hall-Swan, working with computer science faculty members Rodrigo Ferreira and Lydia Kavraki, reviewed publicly available peptide-HLA (pHLA) binding prediction data and found it to be skewed toward higher-income communities. Their paper examines the way that biased data input affects the algorithmic recommendations being ...

A study co-led by Professor Kelly Metcalfe of the Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, and researchers at the Familial Breast Cancer Research Unit at Women’s College Hospital, finds risk-reducing mastectomies (RRM) in women with a BRCA1 or BRCA2 genetic variant, significantly reduces the risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer and lowers the probability of death. The study, published in the British Journal of Cancer, examined how RRM affects the rate of death of women with a pathogenic variant but no cancer diagnosis. To date, there has been only one other study published by researchers in the Netherlands that examines the impact ...

The Hope Foundation for Cancer Research, the public charity supporting SWOG Cancer Research Network, has recently established the Frank and Linda Meyskens Annual Endowed Lectureship on Advances in Cancer Prevention. Since the early 1980’s, Dr. Meyskens has been a leader in the recognition, development, and clinical usage of Prevention in the management of cancer. Frank and Linda have directed the development of this lectureship to advance the explosion of knowledge that is expanding opportunities to engage Prevention in personalized medicine, including early detection and genetically ...

A female White-eared opossum (Didelphis albiventris) found dead in 2021 in Bosque dos Jequitibás Park in the center of Campinas, one of the largest cities in São Paulo state, Brazil, died from rabies meningoencephalitis, according to a group of researchers at the University of São Paulo (USP) and Adolfo Lutz Institute (IAL), the regional reference laboratory, working with health professionals affiliated with public institutions in São Paulo city and Campinas.  Reported in an article published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, the finding serves as an alert to the presence of the virus, which is deadly to humans, ...