MIT neuroscientists have found that the brain’s sensitivity to rewarding experiences — a critical factor in motivation and attention — can be shaped by socioeconomic conditions. In a study of 12 to 14-year-olds whose socioeconomic status (SES) varied widely, the researchers found that children from lower SES backgrounds showed less sensitivity to reward than those from more affluent backgrounds. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the research team measured brain activity as the children played a guessing game in which they earned extra money for each correct ...

During the past decade, there has been significant development of new sulfur containing compounds that are used in various industries, including pharmaceuticals and agricultural products. Sulfoximines, sulfonimidoyl fluorides and sulfonimidamides are types of sulfur-containing chemical compounds that have wide-ranging potential as therapeutic drugs. However, the synthesis process for these compounds is complex and has several limitations. In a new article published in Nature Chemistry, Moffitt Cancer Center researchers describe their ...

We are tasking our computers with processing ever-increasing amounts of data to speed up drug discovery, improve weather and climate predictions, train artificial intelligence, and much more. To keep up with this demand, we need faster, more energy-efficient computer memory than ever before.  Researchers at Stanford have demonstrated that a new material may make phase-change memory—which relies on switching between high and low resistance states to create the ones and zeroes of computer data—an improved option for future AI and data-centric systems. ...

Joint research led by Ayaka Matsumoto and Yuichi Iino of the University of Tokyo demonstrated that temporal decrease in salt concentration leads to the activation of the neck motor neuron of roundworms only in a specific phase of its activity. The activation adjusts the roundworm's trajectory toward higher salt concentrations. The finding pinpoints the neural mechanism by which roundworms integrate sensory and motor information, a first step toward understanding the neural mechanisms of navigation in more complex animals. The findings were published in the journal Proceedings ...

“Stability and wealth of nations and our civilisation depends on the stability of critical Earth system functions that operate beyond national borders. At the same time, human activities push harder and harder on the planetary boundaries of these pivotal systems. From the Amazon rainforest to the Greenland ice masses, there are rising risks of triggering irreversible and unmanageable shifts in Earth system functioning. As these shifts affect people across the globe, we argue that tipping elements should be ...

EMBARGOED: NOT FOR RELEASE UNTIL 3:00 P.M. U.S. EASTERN TIME ON JANUARY 22, 2024 Scientists and engineers have been pushing for the past decade to leverage an elusive ferroelectric material called hafnium oxide, or hafnia, to usher in the next generation of computing memory. A team of researchers including the University of Rochester’s Sobhit Singh published a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study outlining progress toward making bulk ferroelectric and antiferroelectric hafnia available for use in a variety of applications. In a specific crystal phase, hafnia exhibits ferroelectric properties—that is, electric polarization that can be changed in one direction ...

State-of-the-art neural networks heavily rely on linear operations, such as matrix-vector multiplications and convolutions. While dedicated processors like GPUs and TPUs exist for these operations, they have limitations in terms of power consumption and bandwidth. Optics is better suited for such operations because of its inherent parallelism, large bandwidth, and computation speed. Diffractive deep neural networks (D2NN), also known as diffractive networks, constitute an emerging optical computing architecture. ...

Winston Salem, NC – January 22, 2024 - The Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, part of Wake Forest University School of Medicine, has been selected to lead the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine (AFIRM) Consortium. The project - a $40 million, five year-long award from the Defense Health Agency (DHA) - will focus on taking regenerative medicine solutions for battlefield injuries to the next level, and ultimately to the general public. Regenerative medicine is a science that takes advantage of the body's natural abilities to restore or replace damaged tissue and organs. WFIRM has managed two prior AFIRM consortia since ...

A decade that began with a global shutdown is a third of the way done. Its finale — a major deadline for reducing U.S. carbon emissions to slow climate change — approaches at the usual clip. With the decade’s halfway mark in view, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) awarded seven new vouchers to companies and national laboratories working to develop and commercialize clean nuclear energy projects. Nuclear energy is considered central to efforts to minimize carbon emissions and still reliably meet rising ...

Rutgers researchers can predict which patients will benefit from a popular prostate cancer drug – and have devised a strategy that may make the treatment work longer. “This work should help doctors know which patients’ prostate cancers will and won’t respond to the androgen deprivation therapy enzalutamide, which can slow prostate cancer growth by disrupting androgen receptor signaling,” said Antonina Mitrofanova, associate professor of Biomedical and Health Informatics, associate dean for research at the Rutgers School of Health Professions, researcher at Rutgers Cancer ...

Lettuce and other leafy green vegetables are part of a healthy, balanced diet — even for astronauts on a mission. It’s been more than three years since the National Aeronautics and Space Administration made space-grown lettuce an item on the menu for astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Alongside their space diet staples of flour tortillas and powdered coffee, astronauts can munch on a salad, grown from control chambers aboard the ISS that account for the ideal temperature, amount of water and light ...

Toronto, ON – While there has been much public scrutiny and research on police interactions and violence towards sexual minorities in the United States, there is a gap in the current literature on how sexual minorities fare with law enforcement contact in Canada. A new study published in the Annals of Epidemiology aims to fill this research gap by examining the relationship between sexual orientation and experiences with police contact, including intrusion and harassment from the police, in Canada. Among a sample of 940 adolescents and young adults across Canada, the study found that the prevalence of police contact was highest among persons ...

CLEVELAND -- Joseph Welles Henderson, MD, of University Hospitals has been named an InterStim™ Center of Excellence by Medtronic (NYSE: MDT), the world’s largest medical device manufacturer. The designation is awarded to caregivers who have demonstrated particular expertise in the use of the InterStim™ system to treat overactive bladder, as well as non-obstructive urinary retention and chronic fecal incontinence. Dr. Henderson is an OBGYN and urologist, and specializes in female pelvic medicine and reconstruction ...

SAN ANTONIO, Jan. 22, 2024 — A ribbon of brain tissue called cortical gray matter grows thinner in people who go on to develop dementia, and this appears to be an accurate biomarker of the disease five to 10 years before symptoms appear, researchers from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (also called UT Health San Antonio) reported. The researchers, working with colleagues from The University of California, Davis, and Boston University, conducted an MRI brain imaging study published ...

Qiang Zeng, Associate Professor, Computer Science, received funding for the project:  "Towards Lifetime Supply Chain Security for Internet of Things: Testing an Update Before Trusting It." The global Internet of Things (IoT) market size is expected to rise substantially by 2029. IoT devices are manufactured by various companies around the world, and thus, should not be trusted by default. Zeng aims to ensure lifetime supply chain security of IoT devices. To attain this objective, he is proposing to test an IoT device and every firmware update through ...

Md Tanvir Arafin, Assistant Professor, Cybersecurity Engineering, received funding for the project: "Securing Chiplet-based Semiconductor Manufacturing from Untrusted Supply Chains." Monolithic integrated circuit (IC) design is reaching the physical limit to accommodate the ever-increasing demand of cramming more transistors in a chip. To address this, novel design primitives that move from monolithic design practices to heterogeneous integration of IC primitives in a 2.5 or 3D structure have emerged. ...

Low back pain is a major cause of disability around the globe, with more than 570 million people affected. In the United States alone, health care spending on low back pain was $134.5 billion between 1996 and 2016, and costs are increasing.   "The good news is that most episodes of back pain recover, and this is the case even if you have already had back pain for a couple of months," University of South Australia Professor Lorimer Moseley says.   "The bad news is that once you have had back pain for more than a few months, the chance ...

Organic mixed ionic–electronic conductors (OMIECs) are a highly sought-after class of materials for non-conventional applications, such as bioelectronics, neuromorphic computing, and bio-fuel cells, owing to their two-in-one electronic and ionic conduction properties. To ensure a much wider acceptance of these fascinating materials, there is a need to diversify their properties and develop techniques that allow application-specific tailoring of the features of OMIEC-based devices. A crucial aspect of this process is to develop strategies for evaluating the various properties of these ...

SPOKANE, Wash. – Researchers have identified a receptor protein known as CHRM1 as a key player in prostate cancer cells’ resistance to docetaxel, a commonly used chemotherapy drug to treat advanced cancer that has spread beyond the prostate. The discovery opens the door to new treatment strategies that could overcome this resistance. This could ultimately help extend the lives of those with prostate cancer, one of the leading causes of cancer deaths among men.   Led by a team of scientists at Washington State University, ...

About The Study: The findings of this study of 398,000 UK Biobank participants support the improvement of social isolation and loneliness in people with obesity to decrease obesity-related excess risk of mortality. Authors: Lu Qi, M.D., Ph.D., of the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans, 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.2023.52824) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, ...

About The Study: The results of this study including 2,261 and 1,940 infants ages 12 and 18 months, respectively, suggest that COVID-19 vaccination was safe during pregnancy from the perspective of infant neurodevelopment to 18 months of age. Additional longer-term research should be conducted to corroborate these findings and buttress clinical guidance with a strong evidence base.  Authors: Eleni G. Jaswa, M.D., M.Sc., of the University of California, San Francisco, 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/jamapediatrics.2023.5743) Editor’s ...

Key takeaways: A new 3D-printable material called “supramolecular ink” replaces costly scarce metals with inexpensive, Earth-abundant materials.  The organic material requires far less energy to manufacture than conventional methods. It could also enhance the sustainability of 3D-printable wearable devices, lighting technologies, and luminescent art and sculpture. A research team led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has developed “supramolecular ink,” a new technology for use in OLED (organic light-emitting ...

Commencing in January, the Urban Future Lab (UFL) at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, in collaboration with Greentown Labs, will serve as the supportive entry point in the U.S. for the fourth cohort of Innovate UK’s Global Incubator Programme: Clean Growth edition. This initiative is specifically designed to foster and assist the establishment of innovative climate technology companies demonstrating significant potential for international scalability into new markets. The annual program extends the opportunity to eight U.K.-based businesses, enabling them to explore the U.S. market and gain access to esteemed mentors over a six-month period.  "We’re ...

The Korea Institute of Energy Research (KIER) promotes active collaborations with prominent European institutions, including leading 'Research & Technology Organisations (RTO), prestigious universities, and small & medium-sized enterprises (SME). KIER has consistently stressed the importance of international collaborations in developing evolving and advanced green technologies. As a consequence, the consortium entitled "Scalable High-power Output and Low-Cost MAde-to-measure Tandem Solar Modules Enabling Specialized PV Applications (SOLMATES)", in which KIER participated and worked as a partner with 13 other ...

A breakthrough technology has been developed that enables the production of green hydrogen in a more cost-effective and environmentally friendly manner, bringing us closer to a carbon-neutral society by replacing expensive precious metal catalysts. Led by Professor Jungki Ryu in the School of Energy and Chemical Engineering at UNIST and Professor Dong-Hwa Seo from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at KAIST, a joint research team has successfully developed a bifunctional water electrolysis catalyst for the high-efficiency and stable production of high-purity green hydrogen. The newly-developed catalyst exhibits exceptional durability even in highly corrosive acidic environments. ...