Results from a phase II clinical trial indicate that psilocybin, a hallucinogenic chemical found in certain mushrooms of the genus Psiloybe, may benefit individuals with cancer and major depression. Trial participants treated with psilocybin not only experienced a lessening of depressive symptoms but also spoke highly of the therapy when interviewed at the end of the trial. The findings are published by Wiley in two articles appearing online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society. By binding to a specific subtype of serotonin receptor in the brain, psilocybin can cause alterations to mood, ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. –  Among many parents’ top resolutions for the New Year: More patience, less time on phones, better consistency with discipline and healthier family habits. Their tweens and teens are setting goals too – including achievements related to grades and school, success in an activity, exercise and nutrition and earning money, according to the University of Michigan Health C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health. Nearly three in four parents polled report making ...

In the week following any hospital visit for an overdose, only 1 in 18 people with opioid use disorder begin a treatment known to be highly effective in reducing illness and deaths, according to new research in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) https://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.231014. “These results highlight critical missed opportunities to prevent future mortality and morbidity related to opioid use, despite connection to health care for many patients in the days after a toxicity event,” writes Dr. Tara Gomes, a researcher at ...

Experts today call for more value to be given to patients’ ‘lived experiences’ as a study of over 1,000 patients and clinicians found multiple examples of patient reports being under-valued. The research, led by a team at the University of Cambridge and Kings’ College London, found that clinicians ranked patient self-assessments as least important in diagnostic decisions, and said that patients both over- and under-played their symptoms more often than patients reported doing so. One patient shared the common feeling of being disbelieved ...

Embargoed for release: Friday, December 15, 6:30 PM ET Key points: Using national data between 1993 and 2021, researchers observed that India’s national prevalence of child marriage—defined by the study as marriage before age 18—declined throughout the study period.  The decade between 2006 and 2016 saw the largest magnitude of reduction in child marriage, while the years between 2016 and 2021 saw the smallest. During these latter years, six Indian states/union territories saw increases in the prevalence of girl child marriage and eight saw increases in boy child marriage. The study is among the first to examine how the prevalence of child marriage ...

In a clinical trial of patients with chronic kidney disease, an experimental drug significantly reduced albuminuria — albumin in urine, a sign of kidney damage — for 50% of participants. When the experimental drug was paired with a standard-care medication, 70% of participants reportedly experienced a significant reduction in albuminuria. The findings are published today in The Lancet. The paper’s lead author is Dr. Katherine Tuttle, a clinical professor of nephrology at the University of Washington School of Medicine and executive director for research at Providence ...

HOUSTON – (Dec. 15, 2023) – Materials with enhanced thermal conductivity are critical for the development of advanced devices to support applications in communications, clean energy and aerospace. But in order to engineer materials with this property, scientists need to understand how phonons, or quantum units of the vibration of atoms, behave in a particular substance. “Phonons are quite important for studying new materials because they govern several material properties such as thermal conductivity and carrier properties,” said Fuyang Tay, a graduate student in applied physics working with the Rice ...

The National Science Foundation has awarded Lehigh University $6 million to increase the translation of scientific discoveries by faculty, graduate students and postdoctoral researchers into prototypes, products and programs that will benefit society. The NSF’s Directorate for Technology Innovation and Partnerships (founded in 2022) provided the four-year award to an interdisciplinary, university-wide team led by John Coulter, senior associate dean for research in the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science, as part of the new federal Accelerating Research Translation (ART) program.  The award ...

Vinod Namboodiri, joint faculty member of Lehigh University’s College of Health and P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science, has been awarded Phase 2 funding from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Convergence Accelerator to further develop a digital app to help persons with disabilities navigate indoor environments successfully. MABLE: Mapping for Accessibility in BuiLt Environments provides persons with disabilities independence to experience large events, conferences and educational programs. Using crowdsensing, AI and robotics, MABLE empowers individuals with responsive ...

In a first-of-its-kind study for North America, scientists accumulated a list of potential invasive species for Florida, and researchers deemed 40 pose the greatest threat. A team of experts, led by University of Florida scientists, evaluated terrestrial, aquatic and marine species with characteristics that make them particularly adept at invasion. Their list includes 460 vertebrates, invertebrates, algae and plants. “Invasive species management tends to be reactive, instead of preventative,” said Deah Lieurance, ...

Virginia Tech researchers have discovered limitations in ChatGPT’s capacity to provide location-specific information about environmental justice issues. Their findings, published in the journal Telematics and Informatics, suggest the potential for geographic biases existing in current generative artificial intelligence (AI) models. ChatGPT is a large-language model developed by OpenAI Inc., an artificial intelligence research organization. ChatGPT is designed to understand questions and generate text responses based on requests from users. The technology has a wide range of applications from content creation and information gathering to data analysis and language translation. A ...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The Arctic is remote, with often harsh conditions, and its climate is changing rapidly — warming four times faster than the rest of the Earth. This makes studying the Arctic climate both challenging and vital for understanding global climate change. Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories are using an existing fiber optic cable off Oliktok Point on the North Slope of Alaska to study the conditions of the Arctic seafloor up to 20 miles from shore. Christian Stanciu, project lead, will present their latest findings on Friday, Dec. 15 at AGU’s Fall ...

“Our findings suggest that the omicron variant, in particular, leads to premature senescence in in vitro, ex vivo, and in lung tissue models.” BUFFALO, NY- December 15, 2023 – A new research paper was published on the cover of Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 15, Issue 23, entitled, “Uncovering a unique pathogenic mechanism of SARS-CoV-2 omicron variant: selective induction of cellular senescence.” SARS-CoV-2 variants are constantly emerging with a variety of changes in the conformation of the spike ...

The University of Chicago Medicine Comer Children’s Hospital will be among the first in the country to offer gene therapy for sickle cell disease in patients 12 years and older, after federal regulators approved two new treatments on December 8, 2023. Thousands of patients with sickle cell disease experience vaso-occlusive crises (VOCs), which are often painful and frequently require hospitalization. The two new potentially curative treatments show promise for eliminating VOCs and offer an alternative to bone marrow transplants, which can be arduous and carry risk of rejection even if a matching donor is found. People ...

Northwestern University researchers have developed the first physics-based metric to predict whether or not a person might someday suffer an aortic aneurysm, a deadly condition that often causes no symptoms until it ruptures.   In the new study, the researchers forecasted abnormal aortic growth by measuring subtle “fluttering” in a patient’s blood vessel. As blood flows through the aorta, it can cause the vessel wall to flutter, similar to how a banner ripples in the breeze. While stable flow predicts normal, natural growth, unstable flutter is highly predictive of future abnormal growth and potential rupture, the researchers found.   Called ...

In a new study, researchers at the University of Chicago were able to predict postoperative infections in liver transplant patients by analyzing molecules in their poop. Their analysis represents a key leap forward in exploring the connection between the gut microbiome — the bacteria that inhabit the human body — and overall health. “Antibiotic resistance is growing every year and getting worse. Without antibiotics that work, we can't do things like perform surgeries, protect premature infants or treat cancer,” said Christopher Lehmann, MD, ...

SAN FRANCISCO – Wildfire management systems outfitted with remote sensing technology could improve first responders’ ability to predict and respond to the spread of deadly forest fires. To do this, researchers at The Ohio State University are testing the use of Synthetic Aperture Radar, or SAR, to help with wildfire detection. For many ecosystems, fires are vital tools that help to clear away plant waste, provide safer habitats for smaller species and burn off disease. Yet as Earth continues to experience warmer, drier conditions, the likelihood and severity of large, uncontrolled fire incidents that result in widespread ...

Because of warming waters and melting glaciers, the sea level at Virginia’s Eastern Shore has risen almost 3 inches since 2016, and the projected trajectory looks ominous. The region, sandwiched between the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, has one of the highest rates of relative sea-level rise on the Atlantic coast. The Virginia Institute of Marine Science’s Center for Coastal Resource Management projects a relative sea-level rise between 4.5 to 7 feet by 2100, which is three to four times the global average. Hampton, Virginia — its neighbor across the bay — ranks second only to New Orleans as the largest population center ...

SAN FRANCISCO – As efforts to transition away from fossil fuels strengthen the hunt for new sources of low-carbon energy, scientists have developed a deep learning model to scan the Earth for surface expressions of subsurface reservoirs of naturally occurring free hydrogen.  Researchers used the algorithm to help narrow down the potential whereabouts of ovoids or semicircular depressions (SCDs) in the ground that form near areas associated with natural or “gold hydrogen” deposits. Though these circular ...

To what extent methodological limitations and incomplete data impact the revenue estimations of cybercriminal groups using the Bitcoin blockchain was largely unknown. A new study, conducted by IMDEA Software Institute researchers Gibran Gomez, Kevin van Liebergen, and Juan Caballero challenges existing figures regarding cybercriminals' Bitcoin earnings to date. The study, entitled "Cybercrime Bitcoin Revenue Estimations: Quantifying the Impact of Methodology and Coverage", recently presented at the ...

Under the Defense University Research Instrumentation Program, Dr. Patrick Shamberger and a research team from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering received a grant from the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) to acquire instrumentation for thermal energy storage research. The grant, administered through the Office of Naval Research, will support the acquisition of a high-sensitivity multi-modal calorimeter for advanced research and education on tunable energy storage materials. This equipment will allow cutting-edge research to study the capability of pressure and humidity to control how well these materials can store ...

Arabidopsis thaliana is a species grown worldwide for genetic research and was the first plant to have its complete set of chromosomes (its genome) sequenced. The initial genome sequence, released in the year 2000, had numerous gaps, but technological improvements in the years since closed the gaps, one by one, until only two remained: large undefined regions on chromosomes 2 and 4 where genes encoding ribosomal RNAs are repeated in hundreds of copies. These ribosomal RNA gene clusters, known as nucleolus organizer regions (NORs), are not just difficult to define in Arabidopsis; gaps remain at ...

Many ocular diseases involve changes in the structure and function of different regions of the back of the eye, also known as the “eye fundus.” For example, fluorescent pigments and tiny yellowish deposits called drusen accumulate under the retina in age-related macular degeneration, and the degeneration of neurons called ganglion cells is a defining characteristic of glaucoma. Interestingly, changes in the eye fundus are not restricted to vision-related diseases only. Certain neurological diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s can cause changes in retinal nerves and ...

Sepideh Dolatshahi, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Virginia, is spearheading an exploration of systems immunology in its crucial development phase — during pregnancy. Systems immunology is about unraveling concealed patterns within the human immune system, said Dolatshahi, whose approaches to her research span computational modeling, systems serology and cutting-edge spatial analysis techniques to investigate immune interactions between mother and fetus during pregnancy that could later support early childhood immunity.   Designing Tailored and Effective Vaccine Plans Babies are immunocompromised ...

A new study finds that radiation therapy (RT) suppresses a key protein called bone morphogenetic protein and activin membrane-bound inhibitor (BAMBI) and activates immune suppressive cells. These effects dampen the capacity of cancer-fighting immune cells and decrease the effectiveness of radiation, inducing therapy resistance in cancer patients, according to a paper published December 15, 2023 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. Radiation therapy is a common cancer treatment that kills cancer cells and activates immune cells to fight cancer. Yet this process also ...