“Eco-friendly” paper drinking straws contain long-lasting and potentially toxic chemicals, a new study has concluded.    In the first analysis of its kind in Europe, and only the second in the world, Belgian researchers tested 39 brands of straws for the group of synthetic chemicals known as poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).      PFAS were found in the majority of the straws tested and were most common in those made from paper and bamboo, the study, published ...

Enormous amounts of sediment, or sand and mud, flowed through Houston waterways during Hurricane Harvey in 2017, due in part to modifications made by humans to bayous, rivers and streams over the past century, that could seriously impact future flooding events and be costly to the City of Houston. New analysis by geology researchers at the University of Houston found 27 million cubic meters of sediment, or 16 Astrodomes, moved through 12 Houston waterways and Addicks and Barker reservoirs during Harvey, the largest rainfall event in U.S. history. After the storm, up to five feet ...

A stem cell patch developed by USC researchers for patients with macular degeneration will soon be tested in a phase 2b clinical trial. This latest milestone in the patch’s development was made possible by a combined $21 million in support from a state organization, a nonprofit foundation and the university. Last month, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) awarded an estimated $12.4 million to the USC-supported startup Regenerative Patch Technologies (RPT) to test the safety and efficacy ...

For the first time, researchers have used a surface normal nonlinear photodetector (SNPD) to improve the speed and energy efficiency of a diffractive optical neural network (ONN). The new device lays the groundwork for large-scale ONNs, which can perform high-speed processing at the speed of light in an extremely energy efficient manner. Farshid Ashtiani from Nokia Bell Labs will present this research at Frontiers in Optics + Laser Science (FiO LS), which will be held 9 – 12 October 2023 at the Greater Tacoma Convention ...

Smoothies can be a tasty and convenient way to get the important fruits and vegetables you need for a healthy diet. But is a banana and blueberry smoothie the best combo? Researchers at the University of California, Davis, suggest that blending certain ingredients in smoothies can influence whether your body is getting a nutritional boost. The study, published today in the Royal Society of Chemistry’s journal Food and Function, used smoothies to test how various levels of polyphenol oxidase, an enzyme in many fruits and vegetables, affects the levels of flavanols in food to be absorbed by the body. Flavanols ...

Alcohol-associated liver disease accounts for 50% of liver-related deaths, and its rates are rising worldwide. But one of the best treatment options, early liver transplantation (ELT)—transplants done with no mandatory period of abstinence from alcohol—is also one of the most controversial, partly because of concerns that patients will relapse to alcohol after transplantation. Part of the problem is that livers for transplants are in short supply, and researchers lack data to determine who will benefit most from ELT. Studies show that decisions about who gets a transplant can, at times, be influenced by bias or unsystematic. ...

An examination of the SCALE-UP Counts program was recently published in the journal Pediatrics. This analysis, led by Yelena Wu, PhD, investigator at Huntsman Cancer Institute and associate professor in the department of dermatology at the University of Utah (the U), and David Wetter, PhD, MS, investigator at Huntsman Cancer Institute and professor in the department of population health sciences at the U, received support from RADx-Underserved Populations (RADx-UP) and funding from the National Institute of Health (NIH). The SCALE-UP Counts program was designed to promote COVID-19 testing through collaboration ...

At a time of nature crisis driven by unparalleled rates of biodiversity loss, a new interconnected system to monitor biodiversity around the world is urgently needed to direct and focus conservation action. "The lethal combination of habitat loss, the exploitation of natural populations, pollution, and climate change is causing species extinction rates not seen since the last mass extinction 65 million years ago," said Prof. Andrew Gonzalez, Liber Ero Chair in Conservation Biology at McGill University, and co-Chair of GEO BON. "We lack the means to monitor these impacts ...

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (08/24/2023) — Researchers from the University of Minnesota Medical School and College of Pharmacy have found that high costs for hepatic encephalopathy treatment in patients with end-stage liver disease were associated with decreased treatment retention for patients. The study results were recently published in Hepatology Communications. Hepatic encephalopathy is the loss of brain function that occurs in people with severe liver disease. The condition is associated with high morbidity and mortality. ...

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (08/24/2023) —Lung cancer is the deadliest cancer in the United States, and 80% of lung cancer deaths are linked to one risk factor: smoking. While lung cancer screenings are a critical part of prevention and treatment for the disease and 15 million Americans qualify for yearly screenings, over half those eligible for screenings are still actively smoking. Without standard smoking cessation measures in place, the benefits of the screenings have not been fully realized.  New ...

A new approach to quantum light emitters generates a stream of circularly polarized single photons, or particles of light, that may be useful for a range of quantum information and communication applications. A Los Alamos National Laboratory team stacked two different, atomically thin materials to realize this chiral quantum light source. “Our research shows that it is possible for a monolayer semiconductor to emit circularly polarized light without the help of an external magnetic field,” ...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A team at Sandia National Laboratories developed a molecule that helps change the way some materials react to temperature fluctuations, which makes them more durable. It’s an application that could be used in everything from plastic phone cases to missiles. Polymers, which include various forms of plastics, are made up of many smaller molecules, bonded together. This bond makes them especially strong and an ideal product to be used to protect delicate components in a wide variety of items. But with time, use and exposure to different environments, all materials begin to deteriorate. Hot ...

Woods Hole, Mass. (August 23, 2023) -- Scientific exploration of the deep ocean has largely remained inaccessible to most people because of barriers to access due to infrastructure, training, and physical ability requirements for at-sea oceanographic research. Now, a new and innovative framework for oceanographic research provides a way for shore-based scientists, citizen scientists, and the general public to seamlessly observe and control robotic sampling processes. The Shared Autonomy for Remote Collaboration (SHARC) framework “enables remote participants to conduct shipboard operations and control ...

ROCHESTER, Minnesota — Pre-eclampsia, a life-threatening surge in blood pressure, is an enigmatic condition. Each year, it causes the deaths of more than 70,000 women worldwide. Because scientists do not know what causes it, they lack targeted strategies to treat it. Delivery, the only available therapy, is not the cure it is often made out to be, according to Vesna D. Garovic, M.D., Ph.D., a nephrologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, who has devoted her career to studying this common pregnancy complication. "Even after delivery, women ...

URBANA, Ill. — A new analysis from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the USDA-Agricultural Research Service (ARS) has identified the top factors accounting for yield variability in processing sweet corn (used for canned and frozen products), including one within the control of processors.  “We used a very robust approach to account for sweet corn yield with field-level data across some 16,000 fields and 27 years. Year and production region were the two most important variables, which makes ...

Scientists have created a new test for identifying people at risk of developing acute myeloid leukaemia and related cancers, years before they do. The new platform, ‘MN-predict’, will allow doctors and scientists to identify those at risk and to design new treatments to prevent them from developing these potentially lethal cancers.   Researchers at the Wellcome-MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute (CSCI), the University of Cambridge’s Department of Haematology, and Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria del Principado de Asturias (ISPA) analysed data from more than 400,000 individuals participating ...

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (August 24, 2023) — Van Andel Institute scientists have identified a series of processes that help the brain adapt to damage caused by breakdowns in circuits that govern movement, cognition and sensory perception. Because such breakdowns contribute to Parkinson’s disease, the findings may one day help researchers optimize current treatments or develop new ones that repair or bypass the broken circuits. A study describing the findings published this week in the journal Science Advances. “Our work highlights the importance ...

New research from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) and the Sloan Kettering Institute — a hub for basic science and translational research within MSK — suggests a method for revealing DNA repair “scars” could help make treatment decisions in BRCA1- and BRCA2-deficient cancers; modified a bacteria-made compound to target mutant KRAS-driven cancers; and shed new light on brain metastasis in non-small cell lung cancer. New method for revealing DNA repair “scars” ...

In a new study co-led by investigators at the United States Department of Veterans Affairs and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, a global team of scientists conducted one of the largest genetic association studies on heart failure to date. Using genomic data from over 90,000 heart failure patients and more than a million controls, the team identified 39 genetic mutations associated with heart failure, 18 of which had not been reported previously. The researchers also pinpointed seven druggable proteins that, when targeted with specially ...

Inflammation is a standard part of our bodies’ immune system response. But sometimes this response becomes hyperactivated in our lungs, causing inflammation to continue unchecked, which can be fatal. Many deaths from COVID-19 have been due to excessive inflammation, which results in acute lung injury. A group of researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago have investigated how lungs counterbalance inflammation. Their work points to cells in the lung that reduce inflammation by removing ...

A study led by Dr. Hyun Kyoung Lee, associate professor at Baylor College of Medicine and investigator at the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children’s Hospital, has discovered a new biological mechanism to regenerate and repair myelin, a protective sheath that insulates neuronal fibers and plays a vital role in ensuring rapid and accurate neurotransmission. The Duncan NRI team found novel roles for the Dishevelled associated activator of morphogenesis 2 (Daam2) protein and CK2α kinase in regulating myelin repair and regeneration. The study was published in the Proceedings of the National ...

PHILADELPHIA (August 24, 2023) – A bitter taste in the mouth is often a symptom or side effect of illness, which may be the result of how the body reacts to pathogens. A new study published in iScience, by Hong Wang, PhD, an Associate Member at the Monell Chemical Sense Center, and colleagues sheds light on the mechanisms involved in the complex interplay between taste perception and immune function. Their work also highlights the potential of a sequencing tool for investigating epigenetic mechanisms that affect taste-cell gene expression. Epigenetics is the study of how and when genes are expressed rather than alteration of the genetic ...

Researchers have developed an engineered adeno-associated virus (AAV) vector that yields high transduction of brain vascular pericytes and smooth muscle cells. The study describing the characterization of this novel AAV capsid is published in the peer-reviewed journal Human Gene Therapy. Click here to read the article now. In the current study, Servio Ramirez, from Temple University School of Medicine, Patricia Musolino, from Massachusetts General Hospital, and Casey Maguire, from Harvard Medical School, and coauthors, characterize AAV-PR, the capsid that demonstrated high transduction of the brain vasculature. AAV-PR offers the ...

INDIANAPOLIS—Researchers from Indiana University School of Medicine have discovered a neglected brain region that could play a critical role in how likely a person with drug use disorders is to relapse, even after a long withdrawal period. Their findings were published recently in Biological Psychiatry. “Past studies in the field of addiction research have focused on the medial prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain that controls decision making, but no effective prevention or treatment for drug relapse is available,” said Yao-Ying Ma, MD, PhD, associate professor of pharmacology ...

SAN ANTONIO (Aug. 24, 2023) — Urine levels of adenine, a metabolite produced in the kidney, are predictive and a causative biomarker of looming progressive kidney failure in patients with diabetes, a finding that could lead to earlier diagnosis and intervention, researchers from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (also called UT Health San Antonio) reported Aug. 24 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. Elevated adenine was also associated with all-cause mortality. The study results are significant because until now, the most important ...