A new study documents how Southern Californians are chronically being exposed to toxic airborne chemicals called plasticizers, including one that’s been banned from children’s items and beauty products.  Plasticizers are chemical compounds that make materials more flexible. They are used in a wide variety of products ranging from lunchboxes and shower curtains to garden hoses and upholstery.  “It’s not just for drinking straws and grocery bags,” said David Volz, environmental sciences professor at UC Riverside, ...

The Department of Defense (DOD) has awarded a $9 million contract to the University of Maine for research that will significantly expand efforts to quantify snowpack properties, explore the impact of snowmelt on the surrounding terrestrial environments of Alaska and Maine, and expand training opportunities in polar science.  The project is led by School of Earth and Climate Sciences and Climate Change Institute faculty member Seth Campbell, who will collaborate with more than a dozen other scientists from UMaine and other institutions. The effort builds on a related and existing ...

SETI Institute Awards Education Grant through the STRIDE Program   October 1, 2024, Mountain View, CA – The SETI Institute awarded its first education grant through its Support Technology, Research, Innovation, Development and Education (STRIDE) program. The grant supports a new project called Encountering Stars in an Inflatable Planetarium, which will offer immersive astronomy and astrobiology experiences for elementary and middle school students in low-income areas and high school and adult audiences interested in STEM-related experiences. The program also includes a training workshop for K-12 teachers ...

New York University historian Jennifer L. Morgan, whose work focuses on the institutionalization of race-based slavery in early America and the Black Atlantic, has been named a 2024 MacArthur Fellow by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. MacArthur Fellows are recipients of the foundation’s “genius grants,” who each receive $800,000 over a five-year period to pursue intellectual, social, and artistic endeavors. “The 2024 MacArthur Fellows pursue rigorous inquiry with aspiration and purpose,” says MacArthur Fellows Director ...

Outdoor air pollution from power plants, fires and cars continues to degrade human, animal and environmental health around the globe. New research shows that even pollution levels that are below government air-quality standards are associated with differences in children’s brains. A University of California, Davis, research team systematically analyzed 40 empirical studies, the majority of which had found that outdoor air pollution is associated with differences in children’s brains. These differences include volumes of white matter, which is associated with ...

Are there planets beyond Earth where humans can live? The answer is maybe, according to a new study from University of Texas at Arlington physicists examining F-type star systems. Stars fall into seven lettered categories according to their surface temperature. They also differ in other factors including mass, luminosity, and radius. F-types are in the middle of the scale, hotter and more massive than our sun. F-type stars are yellowish white in color and have surface temperatures of more than 10,000 degrees. A habitable zone (HZ) is the distance from a star at which water could exist on orbiting planets’ surfaces. In the research led by doctoral student Shaan Patel ...

LA JOLLA, CA—Some proteins in the human body are easy to block with a drug; they have an obvious spot in their structure where a drug can fit, like a key in a lock. But other proteins are more difficult to target, with no clear drug-binding sites. To design a drug that blocks a cancer-related protein, Scripps Research scientists took a hint from the protein’s paralog, or “twin.” Using innovative chemical biology methods, the scientists pinpointed a druggable site on the paralog, and then used that knowledge to characterize drugs that bound to a similar—but more difficult to detect—spot on its twin. Ultimately, they found drugs ...

Cambridge, MA, Sept. 26, 2024 –Insilico Medicine, a clinical-stage generative AI-driven drug discovery company, announced today that Fierce Life Sciences and Fierce Healthcare have named Insilico Medicine as one of 2024’s Fierce 50 honorees. The Fierce 50 showcases 50 individuals and companies driving advancements in medicine, fostering innovation and shaping the future of biopharma and healthcare. “The annual Fierce 50 special report highlights individuals and companies that are driving progress in the pharmaceutical, healthcare and biotechnology industries,” said Ayla Ellison, Editor-in-Chief of Fierce Life Sciences and Healthcare. “These 50 outstanding ...

A Cleveland Clinic-led research collaboration between Timothy Chan, MD, PhD, Chair of Cleveland Clinic’s Global Center for Immunotherapy, and Bristol Myers Squibb has published the most comprehensive overview to date of how the immune system reshapes tumor architecture in response to immune checkpoint therapy.  The eight-year study, published in Nature Medicine, outlines how cancer immunotherapy induces tumor recognition through neoantigens to reshape the tumor ecosystem. Neoantigens are small peptides produced when cancer cells mutate and are a primary marker for the immune system to recognize cancer cells as different ...

Utilizing the potential of quantum computers and achieving a real advantage for practical applications — this goal is being pursued worldwide. In Baden-Württemberg, the Competence Center Quantum Computing Baden-Württemberg (KQCBW) has dedicated itself to this goal over the past four years. Great progress has been made in various areas of quantum computing in successful joint projects. The success of the KQCBW is now to be continued and the unique quantum computing ecosystem in the state further expanded. The KQCBW will be continued in a ten-month transfer project ...

In traditional electronics, information is transferred using the charge of electrons. However, future technologies may rely on a different property of electrons—their intrinsic angular momentum. Historically, the focus has been on electron spin, a form of build-in angular momentum that creates a magnetic moment, as the leading candidate for next-generation devices. Now, researchers are exploring the potential of orbitronics, a field that utilizes the angular momentum of electrons generated as they orbit the atomic nucleus. Orbitronics holds great promise ...

LA JOLLA, CA—Scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) have developed six lines of humanized mice that can serve as valuable models for studying human cases of COVID-19.  According to their new study in eBioMedicine, these mouse models are important for COVID-19 research because their cells were engineered to include two important human molecules that are involved in SARS-CoV-2 infection of human cells—and these humanized mice were generated on two different immunologic backgrounds. ...

A study led by researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center found that breast milk provides protection against rotavirus, a common gastrointestinal disease that causes diarrhea, vomiting and fever in infants. Babies whose mothers had high levels of specific antibodies in their breast milk were able to fend off the infection for a longer period than infants whose mothers had lower levels. The findings are expected to drive future research to improve infant health through optimized breastfeeding practices. Published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the study also ...

When the phone rang on a September afternoon, University of Cincinnati's Shailaja Paik, PhD, tired from a full day of meetings and teaching, did not expect to hear news that would leave her “ears numb.” “I had been named a (MacArthur) fellow, and I wasn’t sure I was hearing correctly, but I tried to keep my cool,” she remembers, chuckling. “I thought, ‘Is this right? I’m going to ask her to repeat herself.’ “I was ecstatic.” The MacArthur Fellows Program, also ...

The genome inside each of our cells is modelled by tension and torsion — due in part to the activity of proteins that compact, loop, wrap and untwist DNA — but scientists know little about how those forces affect the transcription of genes. “There are a lot of mechanical forces at play all the time that we never consider, we have very little knowledge of, and they’re not talked about in textbooks,” said Laura Finzi, the Dr. Waenard L. Miller, Jr. ’69 and Sheila M. Miller Endowed Chair in Medical Biophysics at Clemson University. Transcription is the process by which a cell makes an RNA copy of a segment of DNA. One ...

This new model accounts for a wide range of ion-electrode interactions and predicts a device's ability to store electric charge. The model's theoretical predictions align with the experimental results. Data on the behaviour of the electric double layer (EDL) can aid in the development of more efficient supercapacitors for portable electronics and electric vehicles. The study has been published in ChemPhysChem. Many devices store energy for future use, with batteries being among the most well-known examples. They can consistently release energy, maintaining steady power output regardless of existing conditions or load, until fully ...

UK ParkRun participants report improved life satisfaction six months later, with most benefit for the least active people, and an estimated value between £16.70 and £98.50 for every £1 of running costs.  #### Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/globalpublichealth/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgph.0003580 Article Title: The impact of parkrun on life satisfaction and its cost-effectiveness: A six-month study of parkrunners in the United Kingdom Author Countries: United Kingdom Funding: This study was funded by Sheffield Hallam University (SJH and AB) and by The University of Sheffield (HQ). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, ...

The voice people use to address their dogs isn’t just because of their big puppy eyes. Humans slow their own speech when talking to their dogs, and this slower tempo matches their pets’ receptive abilities, allowing the dogs to better understand their commands, according to a study published October 1st in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Eloïse Déaux of the University of Geneva in Switzerland and colleagues. Dogs respond to human speech, even though they themselves cannot produce human sounds. To better understand how people ...

Of current and former cheerleading athletes in Sweden, 29% reported being subjected to psychological abuse in the sport, according to a new study from Linköping University, Sweden. The study shows that dissatisfaction with leadership, injuries, high expectations and bad atmosphere in the team are major reasons why athletes give up the sport. “It’s similar to what we see in other sports: that it’s primarily psychological abuse that stands out,” says Carolina Lundqvist, docent in psychology and sports science and licensed psychotherapist at the Department of Behavioural Sciences at Linköping ...

The rise of authoritarian populism in Brazil weakened structures that stabilise democracy – mirroring trends in wider global society and potentially making it harder for the country to strengthen its democracy in future, a new study reveals.  The experiences of Brazilians in recent years under the administration of former President Jair Bolsonaro highlight the weakening of welfare systems and human rights protections critical in maintaining democratic stability.  This, in turn, contributed to the rise of militarism ...

A new survey of climate experts reveals that a majority believes the Earth to be headed for a rise in global temperatures far higher than the 2015 Paris Agreement targets of 1.5 to well-below 2°C. The study was published in the Nature journal Communications Earth & Environment. It also shows that two-thirds of respondents — all of them authors on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — believe we may succeed ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Anu™, a health and wellness brand developing innovative controlled-environment agriculture systems, won first place and $20,000 among 10 small businesses at the national SCORE 60th Anniversary Pitch Competition in Des Moines, Iowa. SCORE, or Service Corps of Retired Executives, is a resource partner of the U.S. Small Business Administration. Purdue University alumni Scott Massey and Ivan Ball founded anu. The company has received financial support from the Purdue Research Foundation. “This funding ...

As artificial intelligence continues to expand its footprint across society, some researchers are raising questions about the potential negative impact of this technological transformation. Associate professor Mar Hicks and assistant professor Jess Reia of the University of Virginia’s School of Data Science are partnering with Tamara Kneese and the Data and Society Research Institute to examine this critical issue in a project that the National Science Foundation recently awarded a two-year, $300,000 grant. Working with the Data ...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Using a sophisticated brain-imaging system, neuroscientists at Johns Hopkins Medicine say they have successfully reactivated a specific memory circuit in mice, causing them to seek out shelter when no shelter is actually present. The researchers say the study, published Sept. 27 in Nature Neuroscience, advances understanding of how memories are structured in the mammalian brain. The findings could one day point to new ways of slowing down or preventing the memory loss that accompanies ...

The Fannie and John Hertz Foundation, a nonprofit organization that funds, supports, connects and catalyzes the nation’s top PhD students in science and technology, today announced that Wendy Connors, currently its chief development officer, will begin as president on Jan. 1, 2025. Connors will succeed current president Robbee Baker Kosak, who will retire after almost 10 years in the role. Appointed by the Hertz Foundation board of directors, Connors is the sixth president of the foundation and second woman to hold the position since it was founded in 1957. She brings more than 25 years’ experience as an accomplished nonprofit executive ...