Researchers from The University of Queensland have launched the world’s biggest drug survey, to gain insight into drug use around the globe. The Global Drug Survey was founded by Professor Adam Winstock from University College London and has been running annually since 2012. This year the survey is led by Dr Cheneal Puljevic from UQ’s School of Public Health. “The aim of the Global Drug Survey is to make drug use safer for people, regardless of the drug’s legality,” Dr Puljevic said. “We hope to gain insight ...

Sixty percent of US physicians serving as panel and task force members for the American Psychiatric Association’s official manual of psychiatric disorders received payments from industry totalling $14.24m, finds a study published by The BMJ. Because of the enormous influence of diagnostic and treatment guidelines, the researchers say their findings “raise questions about the editorial independence of this diagnostic manual.” Often referred to as the ‘bible’ of psychiatric disorders, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition, text revision (DSM-5-TR) ...

Women who suffer depression during or after pregnancy have a higher risk of death by both natural and unnatural causes, a new study of childbirth in Sweden published in The BMJ reports. The increased risk peaks in the month after diagnosis but remains elevated for as long as 18 years afterwards. Women who develop perinatal depression, which is to say depression during pregnancy or shortly after childbirth, are generally twice as likely to die of natural or, as in most cases, unnatural causes. They are six times more likely to commit than women without this form of depression. The increase ...

Study shows that combining whole genome sequence and clinical data together at scale supports the delivery of precision cancer care, where cancer diagnosis and treatment is tailored to the individual patient Results support increased use of genomic testing in cancer care via the NHS Genomic Medicine Service The research shows the value of data from the ground-breaking 100,000 Genomes Project to improve understanding of cancer and help researchers to develop new treatments. In the largest study of its kind, scientists today report how combining health data with whole genome sequence (WGS) data in patients with cancer can help doctors provide more tailored care for ...

A Rutgers biophysical chemist and his brother, a political scientist on the West Coast, have joined intellectual forces, realizing a long-standing dream of co-authoring an article that bridges their disciplines involving cells and society. In their paper, they have proposed that powerful parallels exist between the microscopic, natural world of cells and molecules and the human-forged realm of organizations and political systems. Taking it a step further, the brothers – eminent scholars who have served as top leaders of their respective institutions – have proposed that humankind can draw lessons from what the microscopic and macroscopic worlds have in common. Ideally, ...

A new wave of communication technology is quickly approaching and researchers at UBC Okanagan are investigating ways to configure next-generation mobile networks. Dr. Anas Chaaban works in the UBCO Communication Theory Lab where researchers are busy analyzing a theoretical wireless communication architecture that will be optimized to handle increasing data loads while sending and receiving data faster. Next-generation mobile networks are expected to outperform 5G on many fronts such as reliability, coverage and intelligence, explains Dr. Chaaban, an Assistant Professor ...

MIAMI, FLORIDA (Jan. 10, 2024) – Researchers with Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine have received funding to better understand how personalized nutrition and exercise programs can improve quality of life after cancer treatment. The three-year, approximately $700,000 grant from the Applebaum Foundation with added support by Sylvester, will fund the On Precision Oncology Interventions in Nutrition and Training (OnPOINT) clinical study to develop individualized diet and activity programs ...

January 10, 2024, New Orleans, LA - College students interested in pursuing a career in cancer research are urged to apply to The Louisiana Cancer Research Center’s 8-week Summer Undergraduate Cancer Research Experience, SUCRE. Selected students can explore and develop their interests by working in a research lab with an assigned faculty mentor from member institutions Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center - New Orleans, Tulane School of Medicine and Xavier University of Louisiana.   The program runs from Thursday, June 3 through Friday, July 26, 2024. ...

Beta Pictoris, a young planetary system located just 63 light-years away, continues to intrigue scientists even after decades of in-depth study. It possesses the first dust disk imaged around another star — a disk of debris produced by collisions between asteroids, comets, and planetesimals. Observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope revealed a second debris disk in this system, inclined with respect to the outer disk, which was seen first. Now, a team of astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to image the Beta Pictoris system (Beta Pic) has discovered a new, previously unseen structure. The ...

Texas A&M AgriLife Research received more than $5.2 million in grant funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture for a project to address multiple aspects of the southern U.S. onion harvest system.   Subas Malla, Ph.D., Texas A&M AgriLife Research associate professor at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center in Uvalde, will serve as director for a short-day onion project. (Texas A&M AgriLife photo by Paul Schattenberg) The director for the “Ensuring Future Economic Viability of U.S. Short-Day ...

Key points: According to two trials of 11,000 pregnant women in India and in Tanzania, low-dose calcium supplementation (500 milligrams per day) appears as effective at reducing the risk of preeclampsia and preterm birth as high-dose calcium supplementation (1,500 milligrams per day). The World Health Organization currently recommends high-dose calcium supplementation—equivalent to three calcium pills a day—for pregnant women in contexts with low-calcium diets, predominantly low- and middle-income countries. Lowering the pill burden to one 500mg ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. – The U.S. health care response during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic unveiled challenges in public health reporting systems and electronic clinical data exchange. A new study led by John (Xuefeng) Jiang, Eli Broad Endowed Professor of Accounting in MSU’s Broad College of Business, examines U.S. hospitals’ experiences in public health reporting, accessing clinical data from external providers for COVID-19 patient care, and their success in reporting vaccine-related ...

The holidays may be over, but neuroscientists are getting a special gift to kick off the new year: access to a greatest hits collection from one of Janelia’s longest running and successful Project Teams. Janelia’s FlyLight Project Team, which has worked for more than a decade to create tools to study the fly brain, is making a core collection of their best genetically engineered fly strains available to researchers worldwide through the Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center. The brain images of these flies, along with hundreds of thousands of images from thousands of additional fly lines, are also now freely accessible through Janelia websites. These ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Moore's Law, a fundamental scaling principle for electronic devices, forecasts that the number of transistors on a chip will double every two years, ensuring more computing power — but a limit exists. Today's most advanced chips house nearly 50 billion transistors within a space no larger than your thumbnail. The task of cramming even more transistors into that confined area has become more and more difficult, according to Penn State researchers. In a study ...

Hummingbirds use two distinct sensory strategies to control their flight, depending on whether they’re hovering or in forward motion, according to new research by University of British Columbia (UBC) zoologists.  “When in forward fight, hummingbirds rely on what we call an ‘internal forward model’—almost an ingrained, intuitive autopilot—to gauge speed,” says Dr. Vikram B. Baliga, lead author of a new study on hummingbird locomotion published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. ...

Environmental epidemiologists at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, in collaboration with an interdisciplinary team of researchers at Oregon State University, Pacific Northwest National Labs, and Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, report on the findings of a new study of air pollution exposures collected using personal wristband monitors worn by pregnant individuals in New York City matched with data from a questionnaire. Factors predictive of exposures to air pollution include income, time spent outdoors, maternal age, country of birth, transportation type, and season. The researchers examined an unprecedented number ...

URBANA, Ill. — Urban agriculture has the potential to decentralize food supplies, provide environmental benefits like wildlife habitat, and mitigate environmental footprints, but researchers have identified knowledge gaps regarding both the benefits and risks of urban agriculture and the social processes of growing more food in urban areas. In a new paper published in Nature Food, an interdisciplinary group of experts, including a researcher from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, survey ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 10, 2024 MINNEAPOLIS – Black people consistently had a higher rate of stroke than white people over a recent 22-year period, according to a study published in the January 10, 2024, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study also found that the average age of Black people experiencing stroke was nearly 10 years younger than that of white people, another inequity that grew over time. “We found that the rate of stroke is decreasing over time in both Black and white people—a very encouraging trend for U.S. prevention efforts,” said study ...

The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology today announced its 2024 class of fellows. The honorific program recognizes scientists who have made outstanding contributions to the field through their research, teaching, mentoring or other forms of service. Edward Eisenstein, an associate professor of bioengineering at the University of Maryland and ASBMB Membership Committee chair, and Judith Bond, an adjunct professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and ...

In nature, organic molecules are either left- or right-handed, but synthesizing molecules with a specific “handedness” in a lab is hard to do. Make a drug or enzyme with the wrong “handedness,” and it just won’t work. Now chemists at the University of California, Davis, are getting closer to mimicking nature’s chemical efficiency through computational modeling and physical experimentation.   In a study appearing Jan. 10 in Nature, Professor Dean Tantillo, graduate students William DeSnoo and Croix Laconsay, and colleagues at the Max Planck ...

Overdose deaths in North America have skyrocketed, primarily because of the spread of illegally manufactured fentanyl. In a new study, researchers analyzed an early and prominent fentanyl-selling operation on the dark web. The organization sustained a significant growth rate, which allowed it to offer consumers steep discounts. In light of these findings, the authors conclude that it might be challenging to constrain supply by shuttering individual organizations since remaining organizations could grow rapidly to fill unmet demand. The study was conducted by researchers at Carnegie ...

Waltham — January 10, 2024 — Bottled water marketed as "alkaline water" is unlikely to be an effective alternative for prevention of recurrent urinary stones, reports a study in the January issue of The Journal of Urology®, an Official Journal of the American Urological Association (AUA). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.  "While alkaline water products have a higher pH than regular water, they have a negligible alkali content – ...

WACO, Texas (Jan. 10, 2024) – A first-of-its-kind tactile learning device developed by Baylor University chemistry professors to make science accessible to students with blindness or low vision (BLV) has opened the possibility of the transfer of any scientific data or images for sighted students into functional, thorough formats for students with blindness. The study was published today in the journal Science Advances. The latest research from Bryan F. Shaw, Ph.D., professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Baylor, focused on the development of a codex using lithophane – an ancient art form – to convert images from scientific textbooks into tactile ...

Photonics offers various advantages, including enablement of high-speed and low-loss communication by leveraging light properties in optical data communication, biomedical applications, automotive technology, and artificial intelligence domains. These advantages are realized through complex photonic circuits, comprising diverse photonic elements that are integrated on a photonic chip. Electronic chips are then added to supplement the photonic chips for certain functions, such as light source operation, modulation, and amplification. The close integration of electronic and photonic chips on a substrate is a critical aspect of photonic packaging. Photonic packaging plays a vital role in ...

PITTSBURGH, Jan. 10, 2024 – University of Pittsburgh Schools of Medicine researchers uncovered a fundamental mechanism that controls the body’s response to limited oxygen and regulates blood vessel disease of the lung. By combing through genomes of more than 20,000 individuals in the U.S., France, England and Japan and combining the results with molecular studies in the lab, the team discovered a shared genetic trait that could predict a higher risk of small lung vessel disease called pulmonary hypertension and its more severe ...