DURHAM, N.C. – Adults with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have smaller cerebellums, according to new research from a Duke-led brain imaging study. The cerebellum, a part of the brain well known for helping to coordinate movement and balance, can influence emotion and memory, which are impacted by PTSD. What isn’t known yet is whether a smaller cerebellum predisposes a person to PTSD or PTSD shrinks the brain region. “The differences were largely within the posterior lobe, where a lot of the more cognitive functions attributed to the cerebellum seem to localize, as well as the vermis, which is linked to a lot of emotional processing ...

Psilocybe fungi, known colloquially as “magic mushrooms,” have held deep significance in Indigenous cultures of Mesoamerica for centuries. They captured the wider world’s attention as a psychedelic staple in the 60s and 70s. Now, these infamous organisms are at the forefront of a mental health revolution. Psilocybin and psilocin, the psychoactive compounds found in nearly all species of Psilocybe, have shown promise as a treatment for conditions including PTSD, depression, and for easing end-of-life care. To ...

A sex-specific panel of 10 proteins can pick up 18 different early stage cancers, representing all the major organs of the human body, finds a proof of concept study published in the open access journal BMJ Oncology. The findings could kick-start a new generation of screening tests for early detection of the disease, say the researchers, particularly as there are many sex specific differences in cancer—including age at occurrence, cancer types, and genetic alterations—points out a linked editorial. Cancer accounts for 1 in every 6 deaths around the globe, with nearly 60% of these deaths ...

A predominantly plant-based or vegetarian diet is linked to 39% lower odds of COVID-19 infection, finds research published in the open access journal BMJ Nutrition Prevention & Health.   The findings prompt the researchers to suggest that a diet high in vegetables, legumes, and nuts, and low in dairy products and meat may help to ward off the infection. Several studies have suggested that diet may have an important role in the evolution of COVID-19 infection, as well as in the factors that heighten the risk of its associated ...

Early menopause—before the age of 45—taking hormone replacement therapy (HRT), and having 4 or more children are among several hormonal and reproductive factors linked to a heightened risk of rheumatoid arthritis in women, finds a large long term study published in the open access journal RMD Open.   Women are more susceptible to this autoimmune disease than men, note the researchers. They are 4–5 times as likely as men to develop rheumatoid arthritis under the age of 50, and twice as likely to do so between the ages of 60 and 70. And the disease seems to take a greater physical toll on women than it does on men. While ...

LOS ANGELES — Physicians at City of Hope, one of the largest cancer research and treatment organizations in the United States, in cooperation with the Children’s Oncology Group (COG), have conducted the largest clinical trial to date seeking to reduce the risk of people who have survived childhood cancer from developing heart failure. The findings published in The Lancet Oncology show that the blood vessel relaxing medication carvedilol is safe for childhood cancer survivors to take and may improve important markers of heart injury sustained as a result of chemotherapy exposure. One devastating ...

New York, January 9, 2024 — A research paper published in Royal Society’s Biology Letters on January 10 has revealed that picrodontids —an extinct family of placental mammals that lived several million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs—are not primates as previously believed. The paper—co-authored by Jordan Crowell, an Anthropology Ph.D. candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center; Stephen Chester, an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center; ...

Frontline healthcare workers in busy hospitals feel that they are “just rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic” according to new research into the impact of under-resourced and high-pressure emergency hospital departments in the UK. A study from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine and University of Bath, led by clinical psychologist Dr Jo Daniels in collaboration with colleagues at UWE Bristol and the University of Bristol, argues that hospitals need better leadership to help change cultures and support people’s basic needs. In addition to reflections ...

The acidity of Antarctica’s coastal waters could double by the end of the century, threatening whales, penguins and hundreds of other species that inhabit the Southern Ocean, according to new research from the Univeristy of Colorado Boulder. Scientists projected that by 2100, the upper 650 feet (200 meters) of the ocean—where much marine life resides—could see more than a 100% increase in acidity compared with 1990s levels. The paper, appeared Jan. 4 in the journal Nature Communications.  “The findings are critical for our understanding ...

HOUSTON (Jan 9, 2024)— A breakthrough study led by Dr. Mehdi Razavi at The Texas Heart Institute (THI), in collaboration with a biomedical engineering team of The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) Cockrell School of Engineering led by Dr. Elizabeth Cosgriff-Hernandez, sets the foundation of a ground-breaking treatment regimen for treating ventricular arrhythmia.  Their study published in Nature Communications demonstrates the design and feasibility of a new hydrogel-based pacing modality. The urgent need for an effective therapeutic ...

JUPITER, Fla. — Like the Greek mythological beast with a snake’s tail and two ferocious heads, a potential Parkinson’s medicine created in the lab of chemist Matthew Disney, Ph.D., is also a type of chimera bearing two heads. One seeks out a key piece of Parkinson’s-causing RNA, while the other goads the cell to chop it to pieces for recycling. The research is described in the Jan. 9 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, or PNAS. Parkinson’s is a frustrating and all too common disease. Slowly, people with Parkinson’s lose brain cells and other neurons needed to make the neurotransmitter dopamine. This progressive ...

In the fascinating world of plant biology, an innovative study recently featured on the cover of The Plant Journal has been turning heads. The research delves into the intricate defense mechanisms of tomatoes against the notorious bacterial pathogen, Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato (Pst). It's a classic tale of nature's arms race: as pathogens evolve to outsmart plant defenses, plants counter with more sophisticated immune responses. The study is based on research conducted by scientists in Dr. Greg Martin’s lab ...

Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have found a brown dwarf (an object more massive than Jupiter but smaller than a star) with infrared emission from methane, likely due to energy in its upper atmosphere. This is an unexpected discovery because the brown dwarf, W1935, is cold and lacks a host star; therefore, there is no obvious source for the upper atmosphere energy. The team speculates that the methane emission may be due to processes generating aurorae. These findings are being presented at the 243rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in New Orleans. To help explain the mystery of the infrared ...

Beer pong. Quarters. Flip cup. The drinking games college students play can seem like an alcohol-laced version of intramural sports. When college-aged drinkers imbibe too heavily, the risk for physically harming a romantic partner rises considerably. What if there was a way for heavy drinkers to monitor their alcoholic intake and blood-alcohol levels in real time, before an intimate situation cascades into physical violence? Or, as Virginia Tech researcher and assistant professor of psychology Meagan Brem put it: “If we can identify ...

Led by researchers from Université de Montréal's Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx), a team of astronomers has harnessed the power of the revolutionary James Webb Space Webb Telescope (JWST) to study the "hot Saturn" exoplanet HAT-P-18 b. Their findings, published last month in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, paint a complete picture of the HAT-P-18 b's atmosphere while exploring the great challenge of distinguishing its atmospheric signals from the activity of its star. HAT-P-18 b is located over 500 light-years away ...

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a common infection in children and senior adults, can also infect nerve cells and trigger inflammation leading to nerve damage, according to a new Tulane University study. RSV can cause mild symptoms such as coughing, sneezing and fever or lead to more severe conditions such as pneumonia or bronchiolitis. But since the disease was first discovered in 1956, it has been thought to only infect the respiratory tract. This study, published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases, is the first to prove that RSV can penetrate nerve cells and may provide the ...

https://www.ninds.nih.gov/news-events/press-releases/common-marker-neurological-diseases-may-play-role-healthy-brainsResearchers have discovered that a protein called phosphorylated α-synuclein, which is associated with several neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease and Lewy body dementia, is also involved in the normal processes of how neurons communicate with each other in a healthy brain. The research, published in Neuron, was funded in part by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), a part of the National Institutes of Health.   Phosphorylation is a process where a phosphate ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – Ask ChatGPT to find a well-known poem and it will probably regurgitate the entire text verbatim – regardless of copyright law – according to a new study by Cornell University researchers. The study showed that ChatGPT was capable of “memorizing” poems, especially famous ones commonly found online. The findings pose ethical questions about how ChatGPT and other proprietary artificial intelligence models are trained – likely using data scraped from the internet, researchers said. “It’s generally not good for large language models to memorize large chunks of text, in part because it’s a privacy concern,” ...

Despite the fact that people with sickle cell disease have a much higher risk of serious illness or death if they develop COVID-19, a new study shows they’re also much less likely than those without sickle cell disease to have gotten vaccinated against coronavirus.  Completion of the initial COVID-19 vaccination series was nearly two times lower for adults with sickle cell disease as others their age, the analysis of data in Michigan shows.  In in teens and children over 5, who overall have lower rates of COVID-19 vaccination, those with sickle cell disease were far less likely than other young people to have gotten their doses by summer 2022, the analysis ...

The Brookline Housing Authority (BHA) has partnered with Hebrew SeniorLife, New England’s largest nonprofit provider of senior health care and living communities, and the only senior care organization affiliated with Harvard Medical School, to provide community life services including resident services, fitness, social programming, and nursing in BHA’s senior housing sites. Hebrew SeniorLife brings to the BHA its model of housing with services called the Right Care, Right Place, Right Time (R3) program. This model uses a preventive approach to resident services, focused on one-on-one relationship building, community-wide ...

  MIAMI, FLORIDA (EMBARGOED UNTIL JAN. 9, 2024 AT 4 PM EST) – A multicenter collaboration led by researchers at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine has produced the first computational model for newly diagnosed multiple myeloma that predicts an individual’s personalized prognosis based on their tumor genomics and treatments. The prediction model for individualized risk in newly diagnosed multiple myeloma, or IRMMa, improves on previous prognostic tools because it takes into account ...

“Identifying plasma proteins that regenerate aged or damaged ovaries could lead to more effective, targeted and/or preventive therapies for patients.” BUFFALO, NY- January 9, 2024 – A new research paper was published in Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 15, Issue 24, entitled, “Systemic changes induced by autologous stem cell ovarian transplant in plasma proteome of women with impaired ovarian reserves.” Patients with poor ...

People who own electric vehicles (EVs) are more likely to go a step further and add solar panels to their home, according to an analysis of a behavioral study by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Conversely, the impact of owning solar panels also has a bearing on whether a homeowner buys an electric vehicle but not as strongly. The study relied on a survey of 869 households in the San Francisco Bay Area. NREL’s Shivam Sharda, lead author of the newly published research paper that analyzes the ...

University of Colorado Cancer Center member Sana Karam, MD, PhD, has received a translational research grant from the V Foundation for Cancer Research, co-founded by ESPN and legendary basketball coach Jim Valvano, to study a new therapeutic that may help pancreatic cancer patients overcome resistance to radiation therapy.  “Pancreatic cancer is deadly. The only treatment that can cure it is surgery to fully remove the tumor, but that is only an option when the cancer is caught early, which is rare,” Karam explains. “Radiation alone to shrink tumors before surgery has been tried, but with limited benefit. By studying patient ...

New research overseen by University of Colorado Cancer Center member Rebecca Schweppe, PhD, could lead to improved treatment for people with thyroid cancer characterized by a mutation in the BRAF gene — a mutation also responsible for some types of melanoma, colorectal cancer, leukemia, lymphoma, and ovarian cancer.   “The BRAF mutation is a common mutation in thyroid cancer,” Schweppe says. “It has a high prevalence of mutations in two different subtypes — papillary thyroid cancer, or PTC, and anaplastic thyroid cancer, or ATC — and there's a lot of interest in targeting this pathway. Other tumor types, like melanoma ...