PULLMAN, Wash. – The bright lights of big cities could be causing an evolutionary adaptation for smaller eyes in some birds, a new study indicates. Researchers found that two common songbirds, the Northern Cardinal and Carolina Wren, that live year-round in the urban core of San Antonio, Texas, had eyes about 5% smaller than members of the same species from the less bright outskirts. Researchers found no eye-size difference for two species of migratory birds, the Painted Bunting and White-eyed Vireo, no matter which part of the city ...

An upconversion organic light-emitting diode (OLED) based on a typical blue-fluorescence emitter achieves emission at an ultralow turn-on voltage of 1.47 V, as demonstrated by researchers from Tokyo Tech. Their technology circumvents the traditional high voltage requirement for blue OLEDs, leading to potential advancements in commercial smartphone and large screen displays. Blue light is vital for light-emitting devices, lighting applications, as well as smartphone screens and large screen displays. However, it is challenging to develop efficient blue organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) ...

A new longitudinal study published online in the International Journal of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease found that older adults with COPD had a heightened risk of depression during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Researchers examined a sample of 875 individuals with COPD from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging, a national study of Canadian older adults. Using longitudinal data, researchers were able to differentiate between 369 respondents with COPD who had a pre-pandemic history of depression and 506 respondents who had never experienced ...

Recent evidence strongly implicates infection by the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) as the trigger for development of multiple sclerosis (MS).  An international research team is now gathering to unveil the role of EBV in the onset and progression of the MS disease. The team has ambitious goals:  “We aim to find out why only a few EBV infected people develop MS, and define the underlying mechanism of this process”, explains the principal investigator (PI), Professor Kjell-Morten Myhr of the University of Bergen. “Our research will also seek to investigate if targeting the EBV infection with antiviral treatments can improve the disease course or even stop ...

In a recent randomized clinical trial of patients with fibromyalgia, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)—which uses structured techniques to alter distorted thoughts and negative moods—was superior to a matched education treatment in reducing the interfering effects of pain and other aspects of fibromyalgia on daily living. Within the group that received CBT in the trial, which is published in Arthritis & Rheumatology, improvements were at least partly attributable to reductions in what’s known as catastrophizing, a state comprised of cognitive and emotional processes such as helplessness, rumination, and magnification of ...

The amino acid creatine is essential for muscle and brain health, and people commonly use creatine supplements to improve exercise performance and increase muscle mass. Results from a recent clinical trial published in Food Science & Nutrition indicate that dietary creatine may also benefit individuals experiencing post-COVID-19 fatigue syndrome (also known as long COVID). In the trial, 12 people with post-COVID-19 fatigue syndrome were randomized to take a placebo or 4 grams of creatine monohydrate per day for ...

Investigators recently studied several species of freshwater mussels, which are endangered and are especially sensitive to changes in water quality, to explore the ramifications of sea-level rise in coastal rivers. The research published in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry determined the concentration of sea salt that would harm the viability of young mussels. The study focused on the ecosystems along the southeastern US coast, where sea-level measurements have indicated rising waters from 2 to 6mm per year. By detailing the levels in which salt water is toxic to mussels at various life stages, the results can provide guidance for conservation programs ...

A new study published in the Journal of Orthopaedic Research indicates that an artificial intelligence–based model trained on basic blood and lab test data as well as basic demographic data can predict a patient’s risk of death within 1-, 5-, and 10-years of experiencing a hip fracture. In the analysis of 3,751 hip fracture patient records from two in‐hospital database systems at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, the 1‐year mortality rate for all patients was 21% and for those aged 80 years and older was 29%. After assessing 10 different machine learning classification ...

Humans negatively impact the health of grizzly bear populations through top-down influences like direct mortality associated with forestry roads (from conflict or illegal killings) and displacement from high quality habitats, and through bottom-up influences like reducing availability of food resources. Research published in Wildlife Monographs reveals the relationship between these forces, informing a strategic conservation program. Investigators radio-collared and followed numerous grizzly bears over multiple years in southeastern British Columbia. They found an interesting interplay between the most important bottom-up factor, ...

Patients living with fibromyalgia (FM) – a disease that predominantly affects women and is characterized by chronic pain, fatigue and brain fog – often find limited treatment options and a scarcity of explanations for their symptoms. Research led by Mass General Brigham investigators has found that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can significantly reduce the burden of FM by, in part, reducing pain-catastrophizing, a negative cognitive and emotional response that can intensify pain through feelings of helplessness, rumination and intrusive thoughts. This finding is backed by neuroimaging ...

A new paper in Genome Biology and Evolution, published by Oxford University Press, shows that rapid evolution in bats may account for the animals’ extraordinary ability to both host and survive infections as well as avoid cancer.  Bats are exceptional among mammals for not only their ability to fly but also their long lives, low cancer rates, and robust immune systems. Bats are also thought to have played a role in the emergence of SARS-CoV-2. The ability of bats to tolerate viral infections may stem from unusual features ...

【Summary】 　A research group led by Professor Kazuki Kurimoto and Assistant Professor Hiroki Ikeda from the Department of Embryology at Nara Medical University has developed a highly sensitive method for quantitative single-cell transcriptome analysis, which enables the precise examination of cells extracted from tissue sections using laser capture microdissection (LCM), and named the method DRaqL (Direct RNA recovery and quenching for LCM). Moreover, this method allows quantification of exon-exon junctions of mRNA. In an application of DRaqL to mouse ovarian sections, the research group established a predictive model for oocyte transcriptomes based on their diameter. Remarkably, ...

As climate change accelerates, it is becoming increasingly important to study the impact of climate change on human health. A new thesis from the University of Gothenburg examines church records and historical weather data in the Nordic countries to show that the risk of dying from malaria was higher if the previous summer was a hot one. The growing impact of climate change on human health is an acute global threat in the 21st century. The rise in certain types of extreme weather events is not only affecting individuals, but also putting ecosystems that are closely linked to our health under pressure. “As the climate grows warmer, there is a risk of insect-borne ...

Over the past two decades, coral reefs have declined at unprecedented rates. This is in part because of extreme weather events, which cause wide-spread coral bleaching, a process during which corals lose their color because of stressors, including changes in water temperature, light, or nutrient availability. One of the worst mass bleaching events occurred in 2016 and 2017 on the Great Barrier Reef, causing bleaching on 91% of the system’s reefs. As frequency and severity of mass bleaching events are expected to increase in the future, researchers are looking for ways to protect corals from excessive radiation and temperatures. As part of the Cooling and Shading ...

Microcombs can help us discover planets outside our solar system and track new diseases in our bodies. But current microcombs are inefficient and unable to reach their full potential. Now, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have scored a world first with their solution to make microcombs ten times more efficient. Their breakthrough opens the way to new discoveries in space and healthcare and paves the way for high-performance lasers in a range of other technologies. Laser frequency ...

Doctors urgently need better international guidance on treating attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in the over 50s, conclude world-leading experts reviewing current research on this increasing issue globally. Published in the peer-reviewed journal Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics, the team’s findings highlight a ‘striking’ gap in knowledge about older people as existing guidelines focus on children and young adults. “Our analysis concludes that better approaches are urgently required to screen and diagnose people aged from around age 50 to 55,” says lead author Dr Maja Dobrosavljevic ...

Philadelphia, September 20, 2023 – In the largest study to date exploring the relationship between severe psoriasis and coronary microvascular dysfunction, researchers have found further evidence that patients with severe psoriasis are at higher cardiovascular risk. The results are published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, published by Elsevier. Psoriasis is a chronic systemic immune-mediated inflammatory disease that affects 1-3% of the global population. In this study, a total of 503 patients with psoriasis, and without clinical cardiovascular disease, underwent transthoracic Doppler echocardiography to evaluate coronary microcirculation. ...

Applying Google’s own nutrition advertising policy to the US market would slash the number of products from the country’s top 25 food and beverage manufacturers that could be marketed to children online, according to new research from The George Institute for Global Health.  Published today in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the findings suggest the global company could play a significant role in improving the health of future generations by reducing their exposure to, and preference for, unhealthy foods and drinks.  Lead author Dr Elizabeth Dunford, Research ...

Expanding newborn screening (NBS) to include identifying genes associated with an increased risk for neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD) would cause more harm than good, according to an article published in Pediatrics. While some experts believe early identification of NDDs in the newborn period would provide an equitable way to flag and treat disabilities early, the authors of the new paper contend that broader genomic sequencing would worsen existing health disparities.    “The benefit of early genomic screening hinges upon the ability ...

Overview A research team led by Assistant Professor Mizuki Takeda from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Toyohashi University of Technology, has developed a technique to generate training data for robots that operate based on estimations of the user’s state using machine learning. To date, some methods based on machine learning have been proposed to estimate the state of a robot users using candidate points for the position of the center of gravity. However, for such learning, training data corresponding to when the robot is used to support movements are required. The above-mentioned research ...

Bard, Google’s AI chatbot, based on LaMDA and later PaLM models, was launched with moderate success in March 2023 before expanding globally in May. It’s a generative AI that accepts prompts and performs text-based tasks like providing answers, and summaries, and creating various forms of text content. On 13 July 2023, Google Bard announced a major update which allowed providing images as inputs together with textual prompts. It was claimed that Bard can analyze visual content and provide a description (e.g., image captions) or answer questions using visual ...

Prof. John Speakman from the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, alongside Prof. Kevin Hall from the National Institutes of Health (U.S.), Prof. Thorkild Sorensen from the University of Copenhagen and Prof. David Allison from Indiana University (U.S.), has published a perspective article on potential mechanisms of obesity pathogenesis. It was based on an academic conference held by The Royal Society, with experts and scholars in the field of obesity research discussing the potential pathogenesis of obesity. This article was published in Science on Aug. 31. Governments ...

Osaka, Japan – When your wounds heal and your liver detoxifies a poison such as histamine you ingested, you can thank the class of enzymes known as copper amine oxidases for their assistance. Identifying the exact positions of the smallest hydrogen atoms in these enzymes is challenging with commonly used technologies, but is critical to engineering improved enzymes that exhibit unusual yet useful biochemical reactivity. Now, in a study recently published in ACS Catalysis, a team led by researchers ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- In previous research, Andrew Subica and his colleagues found exceptionally high rates of alcohol use disorder (or alcohol abuse) and alcohol-related harms among Pacific Islander young adults. Now Subica, an associate professor in the UC Riverside School of Medicine’s Department of Social Medicine, Population, and Public Health, has received a $3 million grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, or NIAAA, of the National Institutes of Health to conduct research aimed at preventing these disorders and harms in Pacific ...

A research group led by Professor Emeritus Michio Homma (he, him) and Professor Seiji Kojima (he, him) of the Graduate School of Science at Nagoya University, in collaboration with Osaka University and Nagahama Institute of Bio-Science and Technology, have made new insights into how locomotion occurs in bacteria. The group identified the FliG molecule in the flagellar layer, the ‘motor’ of bacteria, and revealed its role in the organism. These findings suggest ways in which future engineers could build nanomachines with full control over their movements. They published the study in iScience.    As nanomachines become ...