Irvine, Calif., Feb. 27, 2023 — A new brain connection discovered by University of California, Irvine researchers can explain how early-life stress and adversity trigger disrupted operation of the brain’s reward circuit, offering a new therapeutic target for treating mental illness. Impaired function of this circuit is thought to underlie several major disorders, such as depression, substance abuse and excessive risk-taking. In an article recently published online in Nature Communications, Dr. Tallie Z. Baram, senior author and UCI Donald Bren Professor and Distinguished Professor in the Departments of Anatomy & Neurobiology, ...

Investigators at Cedars-Sinai have received a $2 million grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to develop a new cell therapy that helps improve quality of life for patients with degenerated discs and chronic lower back pain.  Dmitriy Sheyn, PhD, assistant professor in the departments of Orthopaedics, Surgery and Biomedical Sciences at Cedars-Sinai leads this new project in collaboration with Debiao Li, PhD, director of the Biomedical Imaging Research Institute and professor of Biomedical Sciences and Imaging at Cedars-Sinai; and Hyun Bae, MD, professor of Orthopaedics and co-medical ...

New Study Key Takeaways: A new algorithm is identified to allow robots and humans to work together efficiently and profitably. Robots bring shelves of inventory to associates to pick for customer orders. The adoption of the algorithm cuts down on distance traveled by pods as well as the storage footprint for the company. The fulfillment operation with the new algorithm results in a half a billion dollars in savings.   BALTIMORE, MD, February 27, 2023 – Amazon has identified a financially beneficial way for robots and humans to coexist, and it’s saving the online enterprise half a billion dollars per year. Using robots to bring ...

“The definition of low-risk WNT-pathway medulloblastoma may need to be refined in light of recent clinical data and newer biological information.”  BUFFALO, NY- February 27, 2023 – A new research perspective was published in Oncotarget's Volume 14 on February 7, 2023, entitled, “WNT-pathway medulloblastoma: what constitutes low-risk and how low can one go?” Novel biological insights have established that medulloblastoma is a heterogenous disease comprising four broad molecular subgroups - WNT, SHH, Group 3, and Group 4 respectively, resulting in the incorporation of molecular/genetic information in 5th edition ...

Researchers may be able to predict cardiovascular disease – such as arterial fibrillation and heart failure – in patients by using artificial intelligence (AI) to examine the genes in their DNA, according to a new Rutgers study.   “With the successful execution of our model, we predicted the association of highly significant cardiovascular disease genes tied to demographic variables like race, gender and age.” said Zeeshan Ahmed, a core faculty member at the Rutgers Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – To encourage more active lifestyles, public health agencies recommend mixed-use neighborhoods and “complete” streets that are friendlier to walkers and bikers, but new Cornell University research finds that while those strategies increase physical activity, an urban bias limits their applicability in many parts of the country. Planners in suburban and rural communities should focus more on promoting recreational programs, expanding transportation options and creating safer environments to help an aging population get more exercise, according to the researchers’ analysis of more than 1,300 U.S. counties and cities. “These ...

By returning to spawn in the Sacramento River at different ages, Chinook salmon lessen the potential impact of a bad year and increase the stability of their population in the face of climate variability, according to a new study by scientists at UC Santa Cruz and NOAA Fisheries. Unfortunately, spawning Chinook salmon are increasingly younger and concentrated within fewer age groups, with the oldest age classes of spawners rarely seen in recent years. The new study, published February 27 in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, suggests changes in hatchery practices and fishery management ...

Yasemin Ipek, Assistant Professor, Global Affairs Program, received funding to write a book on diverse meanings and implications of being an activist in Lebanon. The book, titled: "Crisiswork: Activism, Class-Making, and Bounded Futures in Lebanon," will be a study of the emergent forms of activism and political subjectivity in contemporary Lebanon in relation to lived experiences of crisis.  Ipek aims to answer the question: "How has the recent mobilization of civil society activism shaped politics and everyday life in Lebanon?"  She intends to answer that question by ethnographically studying activism as a contentious ...

Cynthia Lum, Professor and Director, Evidence-Based Crime Policy (CEBCP), Criminology, Law and Society, and Christopher Koper, Associate Professor, Criminology, Law and Society, received funding for: "Application of Evidence-Based Policing to Investigations in the Seattle Police Department."  The purpose of this contract is to provide the Seattle Police Department with an evidence-based assessment of its investigations practices and to make recommendations on improving the alignment of the agency with evidence-based approaches in this area.  Lum and Koper received $121,363 from ...

Recently, a team led by Prof. LU Junling collaborating with Prof. LI Weixue’s and Prof. WEI Shiqiang’s team, revealed the conjugated dual size effect of core-shell bimetallic nanocatalysts for the first time, with the activity of the catalysts increases with the core size in the benzyl alcohol oxidation reaction. Their work was published in Nature Communications. Bimetallic catalysts are widely used in different chemical synthesis for their bimetallic synergy varying with compositions and structures. Compared to alloy catalysts, the peculiar lattice ...

Babies born preterm decreased and stillborn rates remained unchanged during the first four months of COVID-19 lockdowns, according to a largescale international study. The research of 52 million births from 26 countries, published in Nature Human Behavior, reported a 3-4 per cent reduction overall in preterm births, averting almost 50,000 preterm pregnancies during the first month of lockdown alone. But the decrease in preterm births was limited to only high-income countries including Australia. The International Perinatal Outcomes in the Pandemic (iPOP) Study, ...

The number of specialized immune cells available for fighting skin cancer doubled when a new treatment blocked their escape from melanoma tumors, experiments in mice and human cells show.  Researchers at NYU Langone Health and its Perlmutter Cancer Center who led the study found that combining a chemical blocker of immune cell exit with another drug type, an immunotherapy, stopped melanoma tumor enlargement in more than half of mice tested. Immunotherapy alone had previously failed to prevent the cancers’ growth. Recent advances in immunotherapies, medications designed to help the body’s immune defense system ...

Researchers have discovered that channeling ions into defined pathways in perovskite materials improves the stability and operational performance of perovskite solar cells. The finding paves the way for a new generation of lighter, more flexible, and more efficient solar cell technologies suitable for practical use. Perovskite materials, which are defined by their crystalline structure, are better at absorbing light than silicon is. That means that perovskite solar cells can be thinner and lighter than silicon solar cells without sacrificing the cell’s ...

Monday, February 27, 2023, Cleveland: New Cleveland Clinic research showed that erythritol, a popular artificial sweetener, is associated with an increased risk of heart attack and stroke. Findings were published today in Nature Medicine. Researchers studied over 4,000 people in the U.S. and Europe and found those with higher blood erythritol levels were at elevated risk of experiencing a major adverse cardiac event such as heart attack, stroke or death. They also examined the effects of adding erythritol to either whole blood or isolated platelets, which are cell fragments that clump together to stop bleeding and contribute to blood clots. Results revealed that ...

Patients receiving care from for-profit hospices have substantially worse care experiences than patients who receive care from not-for-profit hospices, according to a new RAND Corporation study.   Analyzing surveys completed by family caregivers of patients treated by more than 3,100 hospices nationally, RAND researchers found that family members reported worse care experiences on average from for-profit hospices across all of the domains assessed, including help for pain and other symptoms and getting timely care.   The study found ...

About The Study: The results of this study of 1.65 million doses of BNT162b2 (Comirnaty [Pfizer-BioNTech]) vaccinations among adolescents in Ontario, Canada, suggest that there was variation in the reported incidence of myocarditis or pericarditis. However, the risk of these events after vaccination remains very rare and should be considered in relation to the benefits of COVID-19 vaccination.  Authors: Sarah E. Wilson, M.D., M.Sc., of Public Health Ontario in Toronto, is the corresponding ...

About The Study: A high level of cardiovascular health (CVH) was associated with substantially longer life expectancy free of four major chronic diseases (cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, and dementia) in both men and women in this study of 135,000 adults from the UK Biobank study. The disease-free life expectancy was similar between low and other socioeconomic groups among participants with high CVH. These findings support improvement in population health by promoting a high CVH level, which may also narrow health disparities associated with socioeconomic status.  Authors: Lu Qi, M.D., Ph.D., of Tulane University ...

About The Study: The Massachusetts comprehensive menthol flavor ban in 2020 was followed by a greater reduction in current cigarette smoking in the state than comparison states overall and among males and Hispanic females while increasing among Black females, according to information from statewide surveys. As the Food and Drug Administration plans to eliminate menthol as a characterizing flavor in cigarettes, interventions should address possible increases in cigarette smoking among Black females.  Authors: Samuel Asare, Ph.D., of the American Cancer Society in Atlanta, ...

Glaciers - giant blocks of moving ice - along Antarctica’s coastline are flowing faster in the summer because of a combination of melting snow and warmer ocean waters, say researchers.  On average, the glaciers travel at around one kilometre a year. But a new study has found a seasonal variation to the speed of the ice flow, which speeded up by up to 22 % in summer when temperatures are warmer. This gives an insight into the way climate change could affect the behaviour of glaciers and the role they could play in raising sea levels.  Up to now, study of the rugged Antarctic peninsula ...

Textbooks will tell you that in dividing cells, the production of new DNA peaks during the S-phase, while production of other macromolecules, such as proteins, lipids, and polysaccharides, continues at more or less the same level. Molecular biologists at the University of Groningen, led by professor Matthias Heinemann, have now discovered that this is not true: protein synthesis shows two peaks, and lipid synthesis peaks once. These shifts could explain the metabolic oscillations that lead up to cell division, ...

More than 60% of adults in the United States report accessing the Internet for health-related questions. Social media and content platforms like YouTube offer a vast wealth of content on sleep health, from tips on how to get a good night's sleep to managing sleep disorders and insomnia. A new study from researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, identifies an alarming amount of medical misinformation in videos about sleep disorders on YouTube. Researchers identified that “popular” videos created by bloggers garnered significantly more views than expert-led videos and contained ...

Experts from the University of Barcelona, the Institute for Advanced Chemistry of Catalonia (IQAC-CSIC), the Institute of Microelectronics of Barcelona (IMB-CNM-CSIC) and the Aragon Nanoscience and Materials Institute of Aragon (INMA) —a joint institute of the CSIC and the University of Zaragoza— have developed a new method to detect RNA viruses based on the triplex-forming probe technology. This innovative methodology opens up new options for detecting viruses such as SARS-CoV-2, the influenza A virus (H1N1) or the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a pathogen that ...

Chaotic behavior is typically known from large systems: for example, from weather, from asteroids in space that are simultaneously attracted by several large celestial bodies, or from swinging pendulums that are coupled together. On the atomic scale, however, one does normally not encounter chaos – other effects predominate. Now, for the first time, scientists at TU Wien have been able to detect clear indications of chaos on the nanometer scale – in chemical reactions on tiny rhodium crystals. The results have been published in the journal ...

The most recent generation of chatbots has surfaced longstanding concerns about the growing sophistication and accessibility of artificial intelligence. Fears about the integrity of the job market — from the creative economy to the managerial class — have spread to the classroom as educators rethink learning in the wake of ChatGPT. Yet while apprehensions about employment and schools dominate headlines, the truth is that the effects of large-scale language models such as ChatGPT will touch virtually every corner of our lives. ...

(Boston)—Many pregnancy complications are associated with future heart disease. Such complications include gestational diabetes, preterm birth, fetal growth restriction and hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (gestational hypertension, preeclampsia and related disorders), and together they are referred to as adverse pregnancy outcomes (APOs).  Although APOs are recognized as a useful way to identify individuals with increased risk for future heart disease, it is not known how often APOs occur before traditional heart ...