Hop in the car to meet your lover for dinner and a flood of dopamine— the same hormone underlying cravings for sugar, nicotine and cocaine — likely infuses your brain’s reward center, motivating you to brave the traffic to keep that unique bond alive. But if that dinner is with a mere work acquaintance, that flood might look more like a trickle, suggests new research by University of Colorado Boulder neuroscientists. “What we have found, essentially, is a biological signature of desire that helps us explain why we want to be with some people more than other people,” said senior author Zoe Donaldson, associate professor ...

About The Study: Although U.S. age-adjusted cancer mortality rates declined significantly between 2000 and 2020, substantial racial and ethnic disparities persisted for many common and preventable cancers, including female breast and male colorectal cancer. Cancer disparities arise from a confluence of factors, including structural racism, medical mistrust, health care access inequities, poor socioenvironmental conditions, aggressive tumor biology, and genetic ancestry. Authors: Tomi Akinyemiju, Ph.D., M.S., of the Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website ...

About The Study: In this study of nearly 15,000 adults with non–small cell lung cancer, Medicaid expansion was associated with declines in 30- and 90-day postoperative mortality following hospital discharge. These findings suggest that Medicaid expansion may be an effective strategy for improving access to care and cancer outcomes in this population.  Authors: Leticia M. Nogueira, Ph.D., M.P.H., of the American Cancer Society in Atlanta, 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.2023.51529) Editor’s ...

You may be familiar with yeast as the organism content to turn carbs into products like bread and beer when left to ferment in the dark. In these cases, exposure to light can hinder or even spoil the process.  In a new study published in Current Biology, researchers in Georgia Tech’s School of Biological Sciences have engineered one of the world’s first strains of yeast that may be happier with the lights on. “We were frankly shocked by how simple it was to turn the yeast into phototrophs (organisms that ...

Globally 2023 was the warmest year in a series stretching back to 1850, according to figures released today by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia.  2023 is the tenth year in succession that has equalled or exceeded 1.0 °C above the pre-industrial period (1850-1900).   The global average temperature for 2023 was 1.46 °C above the pre-industrial baseline; 0.17 °C warmer than the value for 2016, the previous warmest year on record in the HadCRUT5 global temperature dataset which runs from 1850.  Dr Colin Morice is a Climate ...

In recent years, ultrasmall metal nanoclusters have unlocked advances in fields ranging from bioimaging and biosensing to biotherapy thanks to their unique molecular-like properties. In a study published in the journal Polyoxometalates on December 11, 2023, a research team from Qingdao University of Science and Technology proposed a design to synthesize atomically precise, water-soluble alloy nanoclusters.   “The novelty of this study is in a new strategy for the synthesis of water-soluble alloy nanoclusters and a further contribution ...

In a recent study, scientists have been investigating the accuracy of AI models that predict whether people with schizophrenia will respond to antipsychotic medication. Statistical models from the field of artificial intelligence (AI) have great potential to improve decision-making related to medical treatment. However, data from medical treatment that can be used for training these models are not only rare, but also expensive. Therefore, the predictive accuracy of statistical models has so far only been demonstrated in a few ...

U of A physics professor Paul Thibado received a commitment of $904,000 from the WoodNext Foundation, administered by the Greater Houston Community Foundation. The five-year grant will support Thibado’s development of graphene energy harvesters.  “We have successfully developed a process for building graphene energy harvesting device structures,” Thibado said, “but current structures do not harvest enough power. This proposal will allow us to optimize these structures to harvest nanowatts of power, which is enough energy to run sensors.”   Thibado and his colleagues will develop graphene energy harvesting ...

East Hanover, NJ – January 12, 2024 – A research scientist at Kessler Foundation has been awarded a highly competitive Mentored Patient-Oriented Research Career Development Award (K23) from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This $704,054, five-year grant will support one of the first mixed-methods studies aimed at examining barriers to healthcare, cardiovascular risk factors, and accelerated brain aging in Latinos with multiple sclerosis (MS). The Principal Investigator and grant recipient, Cristina A. F. Román, PhD, is currently a research ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Lifestyle and genetics, and a range of other factors within and outside our control, are known to contribute to development of metabolic syndrome, a cluster of conditions that add up to increased risk for serious health problems. A new study has found that stress, through its propensity to drive up inflammation in the body, is also linked to metabolic syndrome – leading researchers to suggest that cheap and relatively easy stress-management techniques may be one way to help improve biological health outcomes. “We were specifically examining people in midlife – ...

The National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health has awarded Weill Cornell Medicine a $1.8 million five-year grant to fund a new post-baccalaureate research education program that aims to cultivate scientists and physician-scientists who hail from groups traditionally underrepresented in science and medicine. Advancing Success and Persistence in Research Education, or ASPiRE, will support college graduates who hope to attend professional and graduate school. The program will train four scholars each year for the first three years, and five scholars in years four and five. The program’s duration is designed to be flexible to the ...

Physicians who are notified that a patient has died of a drug overdose are more judicious in issuing controlled substances if the notification includes a plan for what to do during subsequent patient visits, according to a study published today in Nature Communications. Compared to a letter with demonstrated effectiveness at improving prescribing safety, physicians who received notifications with additional planning guidance reduced prescriptions of opioids by nearly 13%. They also reduced prescriptions of the anxiety medications benzodiazepines and by more than 8%. Together these drugs constitute the bulk of prescription drug overdoses. The results suggest that the guidance, known ...

Newcastle University research turns to ancient hot springs to explore the origins of life on Earth. The research team, funded by the UK’s Natural Environmental Research Council, investigated how the emergence of the first living systems from inert geological materials happened on the Earth, more than 3.5 billion years ago. Scientists at Newcastle University found that by mixing hydrogen, bicarbonate, and iron-rich magnetite under conditions mimicking relatively mild hydrothermal vent results in the formation of a spectrum of organic molecules, most notably including ...

(Boston)—Tuberculosis (TB) is the leading infectious killer worldwide, with 10.6 million cases and 1.6 million deaths in 2021 alone. One in five incident TB cases were attributable to malnutrition, more than double the number attributed to HIV/AIDS. Like HIV/AIDS, malnutrition is a cause of secondary immunodeficiency, known as nutritionally acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (N-AIDS). However, N-AIDS remains the neglected cousin of HIV/AIDS in global TB elimination efforts.   In a review paper led by Madolyn Dauphinais, MPH, researchers at Boston University Chobanian ...

(WASHINGTON, January 12, 2024) – Individuals with obesity are more likely to have monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS), a benign blood condition that often precedes multiple myeloma, according to new research published in Blood Advances. Multiple myeloma is a blood cancer of the plasma cells, a type of white blood cells that produce antibodies to fight infection. MGUS, characterized by an abnormal protein produced by plasma cells, is a known precursor to multiple myeloma. Most people with MGUS exhibit no significant symptoms and are not immediately ill. Rather, the presence of MGUS serves as a warning to monitor for the potential ...

Highlights: Previous studies have connected severe gum disease to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. Bacteria play a critical role, but the details remain unclear. A new study shows how periodontitis, an oral disease, activates immune cells associated with aggravated progression of COPD. The findings suggest that periodontitis and COPD together worsen COPD, and point to gum disease management as a potential treatment for COPD. Washington, D.C.—Severe gum disease has been linked to the progression of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, but an understanding ...

Washington, D.C.—The American Society for Microbiology (ASM) announces the launch of its new fully open access journal, ASM Case Reports, which will begin publishing case reports in 2025 and accepting submissions starting mid-2024. ASM Case Reports will be a dedicated platform for the prompt publication of high-quality case reports in clinical microbiology and infectious diseases, an extensive and rapidly growing body of research.  ASM Case Reports will explore new diseases, elaborate disease progressions, the detailed actions and effects of pharmaceuticals, ...

With the potential to transform the future of global wireless networks, Rice University engineers are developing a cutting-edge testing framework to assess the stability, interoperability, energy efficiency and communication performance of software-based machine learning-enabled 5G radio access networks (RANs). As 5G networks evolve toward more software-centric architectures, there is a critical need for advanced testing methods to ensure robust real-time performance. Funded by a $1.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information ...

Barcelona, 12 January 2024 – Global fungal infections, which affect one billion people and cause 1.5 million deaths each year, are on the rise due to the increasing number of medical treatments that heighten vulnerability. Patients undergoing chemotherapy or immunosuppressive treatments after organ transplant often present compromised immune systems. Given the emergence of resistant strains, the limited variety of current antifungal drugs as well as their cost and side effects, the treatment of these infections is challenging and brings about an urgent need for more effective treatments. In this context, a team from the Institute for ...

New research from Oregon Health & Science University for the first time reveals the function of a little-understood junction between cells in the brain that could have important treatment implications for conditions ranging from multiple sclerosis to Alzheimer’s disease, to a type of brain cancer known as glioma. The study published today in the journal Nature Neuroscience. Neuroscientists focused on the junction, or synapse, connecting neurons to a non-neuronal cell, known as oligodendrocyte precursor cells, or OPCs. OPCs can differentiate into oligodendrocytes, which produce a sheath around nerves known as myelin. Myelin is ...

NEW YORK, January 12, 2024 — Proteins do the heavy lifting of performing biochemical functions in our bodies by binding to metabolites or other proteins to complete tasks. To do this successfully, protein molecules often shape-shift to allow specific binding interactions that are needed to perform complex, precise chemical processes.    A better understanding of the shapes proteins take on would give researchers important insight into stopping or treating diseases, but current methods for revealing these dynamic, three-dimensional forms offer scientists limited information. To address this knowledge ...

An international scientific team made up of more than 40 authors from seven different countries, led by the researcher at the University of Malaga Juan Pascual Anaya, has managed to sequence the first genome of the myxini –also known as ‘hagfish’–, the only large group of vertebrates for which there was no reference genome of any of its species yet. This finding, published in the scientific journal ‘Nature Ecology & Evolution’, has allowed deciphering the evolutionary history of genome duplications –number of times a ...

In a study published online in Cell Reports, DU Jiulin’s group at the Institute of Neuroscience, Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the collaborators, created a zebrafish model for in vivo labeling of brain pericytes and systematically explored the developmental dynamics of brain pericytes during the early embryonic stage. The researchers revealed the promoting effect of blood flow on the proliferation of pericytes after ingress into the brain and showed that this process ...

Soil aciditification is widely occurring in diverse terrestrial ecosystems and soil microbial communities have been reported to be highly sensitive to changes in soil pH. Soil microbes could regulate their physiological conditions to make them survive under the aciditifying conditions. This study demonstrates that ten Bacillus strains are able to regulate the antioxidative system differently in response to the decreasing environmental pH condition, and therefore have different acid tolerance capacity. The researchers’ ...

Researchers from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have developed a sensor array design technology inspired by the human auditory system. By mimicking the human ear's ability to distinguish sounds through tonotopy, this innovative sensor array approach could optimize the application of sensor arrays in fields such as robotics, aviation, healthcare, and industrial machinery. Traditional sensor arrays face challenges such as complex wiring, limited reconfigurability, and low damage resistance. The design developed by the HKUST team, led by Associate Professor YANG Zhengbao from the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace ...