Receiving a heart transplant is a matter of life and death for many patients. Every time a heart becomes available, a “match run” is created to generate a list of transplant candidates ranked by an algorithm based on medical urgency, geography and pediatric status. Unfortunately, deceased donor organs are very scarce in the United States – so much so that some patients aren’t even placed on waitlists because it’s too unlikely that a heart will become available to them. A research team led by experts at the University of Chicago Medicine developed a new risk score designed to predict the likelihood that ...

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. – A new study led by researchers at the Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine sheds light on the intricate interplay of brain regions involved in nicotine's effects on the human brain. The research, published in eNeuro, an open-access, peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the Society for Neuroscience, explores how nicotine influences key areas associated with reward and aversion, showcasing a nuanced relationship that varies based on dosage, sex and distinct brain regions. The medial ...

Philadelphia, February 13, 2024 – Identification of specific gene fusions is critical for the successful targeted treatment of pediatric cancer patients. Researchers at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles have developed a novel assay that automatically integrates the data from multiple fusion identification tools (callers) and efficiently and accurately identifies clinically relevant gene fusions in pediatric tumors. Their results are reported in The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics, published by ...

CLEVELAND -- A recent study from researchers at University Hospitals (UH) Connor Whole Health and UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital describes a quality improvement project where pain screening procedures were embedded within an outpatient pediatric sickle cell disease (SCD) clinic. The study examined (1) the feasibility of routine pain screening, (2) the prevalence of various clinical pain presentations, and (3) what integrative health and medicine modalities were preferred by youth aged 8 to 18 with SCD. The study, entitled “Pain Screening in Youth with Sickle Cell Disease: A Quality Improvement ...

New York, NY – February 13, 2024 – The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research and the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation (SWCRF) have selected six investigators to receive three grants for their collaborative, two-year program aimed at improving our understanding of the links between aging and cancer. With additional support from the Melanoma Research Alliance (MRA), $1.5 million will fund three innovative projects, each pairing one lab focused on aging with another working on cancer research.   Aging is a major risk factor for developing and dying of cancer. In fact, 90 percent of cancer diagnoses and deaths occur in people ...

Millions of U.S. households would benefit from heat pumps, but the cost of installing the technology needs to come down to make their use a more attractive proposition, according to researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The findings, detailed in the journal Joule, quantify the costs and benefits of air-source heat pumps across the United States and consider various climates, heating sources, and types of homes. The researchers based their conclusions on simulations of 550,000 statistically ...

By Ann Kellett, Texas A&M University School of Public Health A research team led by Junhyoung “Paul” Kim, Ph.D., an associate professor of health behavior in the School of Public Health at Texas A&M University, has been awarded a two-year grant from a Korean foundation to design mobile technology to help older Chinese American and Korean American adults in the United States prevent dementia. The project is in line with the National Institute on Aging’s priority on increasing participation by Asian Americans in dementia care. This cohort is the nation’s ...

AMHERST, Mass. – Issues such as abrupt changes in speed limits and incomplete lane markings are among the most influential factors that can predict road crashes, finds new research by University of Massachusetts Amherst engineers. The study then used machine learning to predict which roads may be the most dangerous based on these features. Published in the journal Transportation Research Record, the study was a collaboration between UMass Amherst civil and environmental engineers Jimi Oke, assistant ...

In a study involving nearly 1,000 patients seen at the Baltimore Convention Center Field Hospital (BCCFH) during a five-month period in 2022 — researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine, the University of Maryland School of Medicine and five other collaborators report that a rapid antigen test (RAT) for detecting SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, can be used at home with accuracy comparable to the same test being administered by a health care professional. The study was first posted online Feb. 13, 2024, in the American Society ...

Honey bees carrying nectar have the remarkable ability to adjust their flight behavior to avoid overheating when air temperatures increase, according to research led by a University of Wyoming scientist. Jordan Glass, a postdoctoral research associate in UW’s Department of Zoology and Physiology, conducted the study to determine how high air temperatures may limit the ability of honey bees to forage for nectar. His research findings appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, one of the world’s most prestigious multidisciplinary scientific journals covering the biological, physical ...

CLEVELAND – Jeanne Lackamp, MD, DFAPA, FACLP, has been selected to serve as Chair of Department of Psychiatry, Psychiatrist in Chief for University Hospitals (UH), and Director of the UH Behavioral Health Institute. The need for behavioral health services continues to increase locally and across the country. The population is still struggling with the effects of the pandemic, while more people report a sense of isolation and depression. An unprecedented number of Americans are dying from drug overdoses. From popular media to medical literature, calls to address behavioral health needs are on the rise. “Behavioral health is health. It’s ...

ANN ARBOR, MI – A collaborative partnership dedicated to improving statewide cardiovascular care and outcomes — hosted at Michigan Medicine — received national recognition for efforts in patient safety and quality Tuesday. The Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Cardiovascular Consortium, also known as BMC2, earned the 2023 John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality Award in the local level innovation category. The honor is presented annually by The Joint Commission and the National Quality Forum (NQF). BMC2 received the award for its significant improvements in the documentation of radiation use, a decrease in high-dose radiation ...

When a human-AI conversation involves many rounds of continuous dialogue, the powerful large language machine-learning models that drive chatbots like ChatGPT sometimes start to collapse, causing the bots’ performance to rapidly deteriorate. A team of researchers from MIT and elsewhere has pinpointed a surprising cause of this problem and developed a simple solution that enables a chatbot to maintain a nonstop conversation without crashing or slowing down. Their method involves a tweak to the key-value cache (which is like a conversation memory) at the core of many large language models. In some methods, when this cache needs to hold ...

A group of international mycology experts led by Professor Dr Oliver A. Cornely at the University of Cologne has jointly drafted a guideline for the diagnosis and treatment of cryptococcosis, which aims at improving infection management and thus the survival rate of patients. Cryptococcosis is a fungal infection of mainly the lungs that might lead to meningitis. The article ‘Global guideline for the diagnosis and management of cryptococcosis’ was published in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases. Cryptococcosis, ...

Like a Valentine’s Day dinner or a box of chocolates, male fruit flies have their own rituals for wooing a potential mate. As part of a complex courtship behavior, male flies vibrate their wings to produce a distinctive song that conveys a message to nearby females. Using internal information and cues from females and the environment, males decide moment to moment whether to sing and how. Although scientists now know a lot about how fly movements produce songs, it was still not clear which cells and circuits in the fly’s nervous system enable the behavior. Now, using a suite of novel tools, ...

PULLMAN, Wash. – More time stranded on land means greater risk of starvation for polar bears, a new study indicates. During three summer weeks, 20 polar bears closely observed by scientists tried different strategies to maintain energy reserves, including resting, scavenging and foraging. Yet nearly all of them lost weight rapidly: on average around 1 kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, per day. Some have speculated that polar bears might adapt to the longer ice-free seasons due to climate warming by acting like their grizzly bear relatives ...

Key takeaways Diabetes remission: Gastric bypass surgery results in high rates of Type-2 diabetes remission five years after the operation, even after patients regain a significant amount of weight.   Gastric bypass vs. sleeve gastrectomy: Patients who underwent sleeve gastrectomy and regained their weight were five times more likely to see their diabetes return than patients who had gastric bypass surgery and regained their weight.   CHICAGO (February 13, 2024): Adults who have obesity and Type 2 diabetes are much more likely to see their diabetes stay in remission if they undergo gastric ...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 13, 2024 — Breast cancer is on the rise, but new tools for early detection could save lives. In Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology B, by AIP Publishing, researchers from the University of Florida and National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University in Taiwan reported successful results from a hand-held breast cancer screening device that can detect breast cancer biomarkers from a tiny sample of saliva. Their biosensor design uses common components, such as widely available glucose testing strips and ...

University of Queensland-led research has shown there is more coral reef area across the globe than previously thought, with detailed satellite mapping helping to conserve these vital ecosystems. Dr Mitchell Lyons from UQ’s School of the Environment, working as part of the Allen Coral Atlas project, said scientists have now identified 348,000 square kilometres of shallow coral reefs, up to 20-30 metres deep. “This revises up our previous estimate of shallow reefs in the world’s oceans,” Dr Lyons said. “Importantly, the high-resolution, up-to-date mapping satellite technology also allows us to see what these habitats ...

About The Study: In this study of 61,000 adults age 45 or older, those who adhered to physical activity guidelines before the pandemic had lower odds of developing or being hospitalized for COVID-19. Thus, higher prepandemic physical activity levels may be associated with reduced odds of SARS-CoV-2 infection and hospitalization for COVID-19. Authors: Dennis Muñoz-Vergara, D.V.M., M.P.H., of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School in Boston, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/  (doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.55808) Editor’s Note: Please ...

About The Study: Maternal tobacco use during pregnancy was associated with enduring deficits in childhood neurocognition in this study including 11,000 children. Continued research on the association of maternal tobacco use during pregnancy with cognitive performance and brain structure related to language processing skills and episodic memory is needed. Authors: Hongying Daisy Dai, Ph.D., of the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website ...

Smelling a familiar scent can help depressed individuals recall specific autobiographical memories and potentially assist in their recovery, discovered a team of University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine researchers and UPMC social workers in a study published today in JAMA Network Open. The study showed that scents are more effective than words at cueing up a memory of a specific event and could even be used in the clinical setting to help depressed individuals get out of the negative thought cycles and rewire thought patterns, ...

A cohort study of older adults found that those who followed recommended exercise guidelines before the pandemic had significantly lower odds of being infected or hospitalized from COVID-19 than those who did not follow guidelines Need another reason to keep up with your exercise routine? Staying active just might protect you from infection and hospitalization from COVID-19. A new study led by investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of Mass General Brigham, suggests that higher levels of physical activity before the pandemic began in 2020 were associated with a lower likelihood of contracting ...

Type 2 diabetes alters the behavior of discs in the vertebral column, making them stiffer, and also causes the discs to change shape earlier than normal. As a result, the disc’s ability to withstand pressure is compromised. This is one of the findings of a new study in rodents from a team of engineers and physicians from the University of California San Diego, UC Davis, UCSF and the University of Utah.  Low back pain is a major cause of disability, often associated with intervertebral disc degeneration. People with Type 2 diabetes face ...

Ophthalmologists at New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai (NYEE) have created a novel protocol to rapidly diagnose eye stroke and expedite care to prevent irreversible vision loss. Their study, published Tuesday, February 13, in Ophthalmology, describes using high-resolution retinal imaging in the emergency room, along with rapid remote consultation to confirm diagnosis and expedite care, improving outcomes for eye stroke patients and preserving vision. “The protocol implements highly sensitive retinal imaging at the patient’s point of entry into the medical system, reducing the need for onsite ophthalmology ...