Vision is a complex process. The visual perception of the environment is created by a combination of different wavelengths of light, which are decoded as colours and brightness in the brain. Photoreceptors in the retina first convert the light into electrical impulses: with sufficient light, the cones enable sharp, detailed, and coloured vision. Rods only contribute to vision in low light conditions allowing for different shades of grey to be distinguished but leaving vision much less precise. The electrical nerve impulses are finally transmitted to ganglion cells in the retina and then via the optic nerve to the visual cortex in the ...

Imagine a flying dragon that doesn’t spout fire, but instead extinguishes it with blasts of water. Thanks to a team of Japanese researchers, this new kind of beast may soon be recruited to firefighter teams around the world, to help put out fires that are too dangerous for their human teammates to approach. The blueprint of this novel firefighter robot, called the Dragon Firefighter, has now been published in Frontiers in Robotics and AI. And as it has been published as Open Science, roboticists around the world may freely ...

CORNELL UNIVERSITY MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE FOR RELEASE: Dec. 21, 2023 Kaitlyn Serrao 607-882-1140 kms465@cornell.edu     ITHACA, N.Y. – Cornell researchers partnered with New York livestock farmers to analyze transactions at farmers markets, finding that sales were better on Sundays, early in the morning, and during certain months of the year. The study, which researchers believe is the first peer-reviewed analysis of customer-level transaction data at farmers markets, gives new insights into how farmers can make markets more profitable for them. The researchers and farmers used point-of-sale devices that record sales ...

Less than half of patients with malignant ureteral obstruction (MUO) – a serious complication of advanced cancer, with a poor prognosis – receive palliative care (PC) for their condition, reports a paper in the January issue of Urology Practice®, an Official Journal of the American Urological Association (AUA). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.  Hospice care can promote patient comfort while avoiding aggressive and invasive treatments for MUO patients nearing the end ...

December 7, 2023 —The Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions (JCEHP) has published a supplement, "Conceptual Advances in Continuing Professional Development in the Health Professions," in which scholars of continuing professional development (CPD) creatively examine prevailing assumptions and propose new theoretical frameworks and empirical insights. Publication of the supplemental issue is supported by the Society for Academic Continuing Medical Education (SACME). JCEHP, the official journal of the Alliance for Continuing Education in the Health Professions, ...

Researchers at the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center have received a five-year, $3 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to identify novel cancer biomarkers and develop AI that can detect and predict aggressive prostate cancer to help avoid unnecessary treatments and their associated negative side effects. Despite recent advancements, prostate cancer remains a common and serious health issue for men, and current methods of screening and risk assessment can often lead to overdiagnosis and overtreatment. About 90% of people diagnosed with prostate cancer receive treatment, even though ...

Through an international collaboration, scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital leveraged data science, pharmacology and structural information to conduct an atomic-level investigation into how each amino acid in the receptor that binds adrenaline contributes to receptor activity in the presence of this natural ligand. They discovered precisely which amino acids control the key pharmacological properties of the ligand. The adrenaline receptor studied is a member of the G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) family, and this family is the target of one-third of all Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved drugs. Thus, understanding how ...

Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital revealed the complex structure of two Parkinson’s disease-related proteins, both of which are implicated in late-onset cases. Leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) is a protein kinase that modifies other proteins in a process called phosphorylation; Rab29, a member of the Rab GTPase family that regulates cellular trafficking, modulates the activity of LRRK2. How Rab29 and LRRK2 work synergistically to cause Parkinson’s disease remains ...

Doctors diagnosed Christopher Gregg, Ph.D., member of the Nuclear Control of Cell Growth and Differentiation Program at Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah (the U) and neuroscientist and professor of neurobiology and human genetics at the U, with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer in 2018. At that point, he started thinking of ways to improve his treatment. “The core problem of metastatic cancer is it evolves,” says Gregg. “There may be a treatment that works today but eventually ...

This photo of Saturn was taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope on October 22, 2023, when the ringed planet was approximately 850 million miles from Earth. Hubble's ultra-sharp vision reveals a phenomenon called ring spokes. Saturn's spokes are transient features that rotate along with the rings. Their ghostly appearance only persists for two or three rotations around Saturn. During active periods, freshly-formed spokes continuously add to the pattern. In 1981, NASA's Voyager 2 first photographed the ring spokes. NASA's Cassini orbiter also saw the spokes during its 13-year-long mission that ended in 2017. Hubble continues ...

A new snapshot of an ancient, far-off galaxy could help scientists understand how it formed and the origins of our own Milky Way.   At more than 12 billion years old, BRI 1335-0417 is the oldest and furthest known spiral galaxy in our universe.  Lead author Dr Takafumi Tsukui said a state-of-the-art telescope called ALMA allowed them to look at this ancient galaxy in much greater detail.  “Specifically, we were interested in how gas was moving into and throughout the galaxy,” Dr Tsukui said.  “Gas is a key ingredient for forming stars and can give ...

Professor Chen Shiyi's team at Huashan Hospital of Fudan University commented on the concept, policy, development and prospect of exercise prescription in the context of " Health for All", which was published in Research (10.34133/research.0284) under the title of " Exercise Prescription: Pioneering the “Third Pole” for Clinical Health Management". Modern lifestyles have led to reduced physical activity and a rise in chronic diseases from a young age. Exercise ...

Species throughout the animal kingdom feature vital interfaces between the outermost layers of their bodies and the environment. Intricate microscopic structures—featured on the outer skin layers of humans, as one example—are known to assemble in matrix patterns. But how these complex structures, known as apical extracellular matrices (aECMs) are assembled into elaborately woven architectures has remained an elusive question. Now, following years of research and the power of a technologically advanced instrument, University of California San Diego scientists have unraveled the underpinnings ...

Waltham — December 11, 2023 —   In recent years, clinical trial reports in major urology journals have been more likely to include data on harmful effects of treatments, 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.  "Our analysis finds a marked increase in reporting of potential harms in randomized treatment trials ...

Researchers have identified a previously unrecognized class of antibodies—immune system proteins that protect against disease—that appear capable of neutralizing multiple forms of flu virus. These findings, which could contribute to development of more broadly protective flu vaccines, will publish December 21st by Holly Simmons of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, US, and colleagues in the open access journal PLOS Biology. A flu vaccine prompts the immune system to make antibodies that can bind to a viral protein ...

Despite use of tecovirimat since the beginning of the 2022 mpox outbreak, few data have been published on its antiviral effect in humans; this study predicts the impact of early tecovirimat administration on the time to viral clearance in patients with mpox infection, using an integrative modeling approach combining pre-clinical and clinical data ##### In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Biology:   http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002249 Article Title: Early administration of tecovirimat shortens the time to mpox clearance ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A lot has changed in the world since the Endangered Species Act (ESA) was enacted 50 years ago in December 1973.   Two researchers at The Ohio State University were among a group of experts invited by the journal Science to discuss how the ESA has evolved and what its future might hold.   Tanya Berger-Wolf, faculty director of Ohio State’s Translational Data Analytics Institute, led a group that wrote on “Sustainable, trustworthy, human-technology partnership.”  Amy Ando, professor and chair of the university’s Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics, ...

New research, publishing December 21st in the open access journal in PLOS Biology, shows that tears from women contain chemicals that block aggression in men. The study led by Shani Agron at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, finds that sniffing tears leads to reduced brain activity related to aggression, which results is less aggressive behavior. Male aggression in rodents is known to be blocked when they smell female tears. This is an example of social chemosignaling, a process that is common in animals but less common—or less understood—in humans. To determine whether tears have the same affect in people, ...

Inspired by the structure of polar bear fur, researchers present a knittable aerogel fiber with exceptional thermal and mechanical properties. The fibers are washable, dyeable, durable, and well-suited to be used in advanced textiles. This allowed the researchers to test them in a sweater that demonstrated impressive thermal insulation, among other features. Aerogels are an ideal material for thermal insulation. They demonstrate high porosity and extremely low thermal conductivity. However, the application of ...

Racial disparities related to health and physical well-being motivate Americans to take action for social change more than racial disparities related to other factors, like economics, a new study finds. This is because health-related racial inequalities are perceived to be more unjust. The results suggest that framing racial disparities to tap into feelings of moral injustice may motivate policy reform – a finding of potential interest to policymakers, social movements, and citizens seeking to gain support for actions to reduce racial inequality. “…this work can help us understand ...

Genetic analyses of an Antarctic octopus show that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) collapsed during the Last Interglacial ~129,000 to 116,000 years ago when temperatures were only about 1 degree Celsius (°C) warmer than preindustrial levels. The findings suggest that WAIS collapse and resultant sea-level rise could be caused by even the minimal temperature rises projected by the most optimistic climate change mitigation plans. Climate change is driving unprecedented change to Earth’s cryosphere. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is considered particularly vulnerable to warming ...

In El Salvador, preference for cash and privacy fears deterred the widespread adoption of Bitcoin as an everyday currency, researchers report. The findings suggest that policies incentivizing cryptocurrency adoption as legal tender will likely fail unless populations are financially literate and already trust digital currencies. The introduction of digital currencies is one of the most important developments in monetary economics in the last decade. Unlike traditional digital currencies, which rely on central authorities such as governments or banks governed by regulations ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Mayo Clinic researchers mapped how the measles virus mutated and spread in the brain of a person who succumbed to a rare, lethal brain disease. New cases of this disease, which is a complication of the measles virus, may occur as measles reemerges among the unvaccinated, say researchers. Using the latest tools in genetic sequencing, researchers at Mayo Clinic reconstructed how a collective of viral genomes colonized a human brain. The virus acquired distinct mutations that drove the spread of the virus from the frontal cortex outward. "Our study provides compelling data that ...

Analysis of organic compounds – called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) – extracted from the Ryugu asteroid and Murchison meteorite has found that certain PAHs likely formed in the cold areas of space between stars rather than in hot regions near stars as was previously thought. The findings open new possibilities for studying life beyond Earth and the chemistry of objects in space. The only Australian members of an international research team, scientists from Curtin’s WA-Organic ...

Researchers at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME), Argonne National Laboratory, and the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia have developed a new computational tool to describe how the atoms within quantum materials behave when they absorb and emit light. The tool will be released as part of the open-source software package WEST, developed within the Midwest Integrated Center for Computational Materials (MICCoM) by a team led by Prof. Marco ...