ROCHESTER, Minn. — Obesity and its associated cardiometabolic issues are a major health concern in the U.S. and internationally. According to a study published in 2017, 12% of the world's adult population was affected by obesity in 2016, double the percentage from 30 years earlier. With obesity comes an increasing risk of cardiovascular disease, including stroke, congestive heart failure and myocardial infarction. Fortunately, obesity is a multifactorial disease that results from an energy balance dysregulation and often is a modifiable risk factor for cardiovascular disease. "Body ...

HOUSTON – (April 18, 2023) – Perturbing electron spins in a magnet usually results in excitations called “spin waves” that ripple through the magnet like waves on a pond that’s been struck by a pebble. In a new study, Rice University physicists and their collaborators have discovered dramatically different excitations called “spin excitons” that can also “ripple” through a nickel-based magnet as a coherent wave. In a study published in Nature Communications, ...

Between 13% and 84% of postmenopausal women experience vaginal pain during sex Causes of pain other than vaginal dryness are often undiagnosed and untreated Pain during sex can harm relationships, self-esteem and contribute to depression, anxiety Safe, effective therapies exist but condition is rarely evaluated or treated CHICAGO --- Between 13% and 84% of postmenopausal women experience dyspareunia—vaginal pain during sex—but the condition is rarely evaluated or treated despite the availability of safe and effective therapies. With life expectancy increasing and the functional health of older adults improving, ...

Professor Stephen Garrett to discuss why the UK needs to up its game in maths education He has a particular interest in the development of mathematical and computational solutions to real-world problems Lecture will take place on Thursday 27 April at Aston University.       18 April 2023 | Birmingham, UK   The latest inaugural lecture at Aston University is to explore why the UK’s low level of mathematical skills don’t add up to a positive digital future.   Professor Stephen Garrett will discuss why school-level mathematics is so important in many areas of life and will discuss how ...

Polycystic ovarian syndrome, or PCOS, can cause a range of symptoms, including disrupted menstrual cycles, abdominal obesity, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes. It’s also one of the biggest causes of infertility — in fact, many people don’t discover they have the condition until they try to become pregnant. One of the hallmarks of PCOS are elevated levels of hormones produced by the ovaries called androgens. Androgens play important roles in puberty and reproduction in people with ovaries and people with testes. Researchers are trying to understand why PCOS develops and how androgens lead to negative symptoms. A recent study led by Alexandra ...

In the fight against sepsis, one of the leading causes of death in hospitalized patients, clinicians are increasingly reliant on prediction tools trained on massive amounts of data stored in electronic health records. One of the most popular tools comes from Epic Systems and is used in more than half of United States hospitals. However, research has shown that its performance varies depending on the hospital in which it’s being used. In a recent research letter published in JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers from U-M, Oregon Health and Sciences University, and Washington University looked for a possible explanation for this variation. Using more than 800,000 ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, TUESDAY, APRIL 18, 2023 MINNEAPOLIS – People who have an irregular heartbeat called atrial fibrillation that is treated with a procedure called catheter ablation may have a reduced risk of dementia compared to those who are treated with medication alone. The preliminary study released April 18, 2023, will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 75th Annual Meeting being held in person in Boston and live online from April 22-27, 2023. Catheter ablation uses radiofrequency through a tube into the heart to destroy small areas of heart tissue that may be causing the abnormal heartbeat. “Previous studies have ...

“To our knowledge, there are no studies evaluating the prognostic importance of CEA and Ca 19-9 in patients with DA [duodenal adenocarcinoma].” BUFFALO, NY- April 18, 2023 – A new research paper was published in Oncotarget's Volume 14 on April 15, 2023, entitled, “Importance of carbohydrate antigen (CA 19-9) and carcinoembrionic antigen (CEA) in the prognosis of patients with duodenal adenocarcinoma: a retrospective single-institution cohort study.” Duodenal adenocarcinoma (DA) is a rare ...

Since the start of 2023, a record number of anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced into state legislatures. According to University of Maryland Associate Professor Ethan Mereish, such current events add to the list of daily thoughts and experiences that lead LGBTQ+ teens to report having suicidal and non-suicidal self-harm thoughts. Mereish recently led a first-of-its-kind study, published in the Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science, that asked 12-19 year-old LGBTQ+ teens to fill out a brief “daily dairy” survey for 28 days. The teens were asked to identify the unique kinds of stress they experience as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, ...

Added-sugar warning labels reduced the likelihood that consumers would order items containing high amounts of added sugar in an online experiment led by University of California, Davis, researchers. Menu labels can help inform consumers about the surprisingly high amount of added sugar in even the smallest sizes of soda or in unexpected items like salad dressings and sauces. In a randomized controlled trial, researchers found that warning labels reduced the probability of ordering a high-added-sugar item by 2.2%.  However, only 21% of the consumers exposed to the added-sugar warning labels noticed them. Among those who noticed ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – About one in five cases of child abuse and neglect is committed by both mothers and fathers, but nearly all the research attention has been focused on when just one parent is involved.   A new study that aimed to shine a light on risk factors for mistreatment coming from both parents found some surprising results.   For example, mothers and fathers who were substance users had lower odds of both being involved in physical or sexual abuse. Couples in which at least one of the parents was a prior abuse perpetrator also had lower odds of physical abuse.   These and other results suggest that the factors that ...

The University of California, Davis, is releasing five new strawberry varieties that are resistant to the soilborne disease Fusarium wilt, have high yields and improved fruit quality. UC Eclipse, UC Golden Gate, UC Keystone, UC Monarch and UC Surfline are available for sale to California nurseries from Foundation Plant Services. Roughly 88% of strawberries grown in the nation come from California. Fusarium wilt is one of the most common reasons for crop loss and death, and yet 55% to 59% of cultivars planted in the state since 2014 have not been resistant, according to UC Davis research. This is the first release ...

ORLANDO, Fla. ― In a new study, researchers from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center created the largest single-cell atlas of brain metastases from renal cell carcinoma (RCC) with matched primary and extracranial metastases, enabling the discovery of key biological mechanisms driving an immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment in the brain distinct from that of the kidney or other metastatic sites. Findings were presented today at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2023. The study, led by Elshad Hasanov, M.D., Ph.D., medical oncology fellow at MD Anderson, provides further insights ...

Coral reefs are more than just a vital part of the ocean. They can also reveal clues about the past. Analyzing coral skeletons can paint a rich picture of the environmental history of an ecosystem, from temperature variability to land-use changes. On the U.S. Virgin Island of St. Croix, the ruins of a Danish sugar plantation built from harvested coral bricks could be the key to understanding how and why the area was decimated by the 18th-century transatlantic slave trade. With funding from the National Geographic Society, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) will travel to ...

A nanocellulose wound dressing that can reveal early signs of infection without interfering with the healing process has been developed by researchers at Linköping University, Sweden. Their study, published in Materials Today Bio, is one further step on the road to a new type of wound care. The skin is the largest organ of the human body. A wound disrupts the normal function of the skin and can take a long time to heal, be very painful for the patient and may, in a worst case scenario, lead to death if not treated correctly. Also, hard-to-heal wounds pose a great burden on society, representing about half of all costs in out-patient care. In traditional wound care, ...

CLEVELAND—Even as biomedical engineer Anirban Sen Gupta refines artificial platelets to stem traumatic bleeding, he and his colleagues are seeking new uses for their synthetic solution.   The latest application to show promise involves providing synthetic platelets to treat a genetic condition that prevents blood from clotting, Von Willebrand disease (VWD). The most common of all bleeding disorders, VWD is found in up to 1% of the U.S. population (roughly 3 million people), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.    “There simply hasn’t been any study ...

Whether an animal is flying, running or swimming, its traveling speed is limited by how effectively it sheds the excess heat generated by its muscles, according to a new study led by Alexander Dyer from the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) and the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany published April 18th in the open access journal PLOS Biology. An animal’s capacity to travel is a crucial part of its survival and dictates where – and how far – it can migrate, find food and mates, and spread into new territories. This becomes even more challenging in a human-dominated world ...

Tuesday, April 18, 2023, CLEVELAND: A Cleveland Clinic landmark study on obesity and cancer, led by Ali Aminian, M.D., director of Cleveland Clinic’s Bariatric & Metabolic Institute, was recognized with a 2023 Top Ten Clinical Research Achievement Award by the Clinical Research Forum (CR Forum). The award-winning paper, the SPLENDID study that was published in JAMA, also received an additional recognition as a Distinguished Clinical Research Awardee. The Top 10 Clinical Research Achievement Awards honor groundbreaking achievements in ...

April 18, 2023—BRONX, NEW YORK – Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is surging among U.S. children. The number of youths under age 20 living with the disease has nearly doubled between 2001 and 2017, and yet—aside from increases in childhood obesity—the reasons for this disturbing increase are not clear. The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has awarded the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore (CHAM) and Albert Einstein College of Medicine a six-year, $4.1 million grant to ...

Is it possible to improve the antibodies that the body produces to fight SARS-CoV2? In a study led by researchers from Lund University in Sweden, this was investigated by redesigning antibodies and combining them against the virus. The modified antibodies have been tested in human cells and with mice. Many antibodies used to treat covid infection during the pandemic have been so-called neutralizing antibodies that prevent the virus from infecting the cell. But as the virus has mutated, the ability ...

Firms that have their roots in selling non-physical digital products, also known as “born digital firms,” can establish an international presence without ever physically setting foot in another country. But experience shows that many born digital firms are still choosing to establish a physical presence—funded through foreign direct investments—in key markets. A new study published in the Global Strategy Journal in February 2023 highlights the role of a physical presence in foreign markets for born digital firms. “Past research has indicated that digital technologies are highly fungible, which means that there is little relative gap in value when a resource ...

Solar power technologies, which use solar cells to convert sunlight to electricity or storable fuels, are gaining momentum in a world looking beyond fossil fuels for its energy needs. The dark bluish solar panels that dot rooftops and open fields today are typically made from silicon, a well-tested semiconductor material. Silicon photovoltaic technology has its limitations, though, losing up to 40% of the energy it collects from sunlight in the form of heat waste. Researchers at Colorado State University are studying radical new ways to improve solar power and provide more options for the industry to explore. CSU chemists are proposing to make solar cells using not ...

A Breakthrough for People and Planet: Effective and Inclusive Global Governance for Today and the Future, produced by the independent High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism (HLAB), includes comprehensive and detailed recommendations to strengthen the global architecture for peace, security and finance, deliver just transitions for climate and digitalisation, and ensure more equity and fairness in global decision-making. It also argues that gender equality needs to be at the heart of a reinvigorated multilateral architecture along with recommendations to ensure the multilateral system is more networked, more inclusive and more effective.   Six transformational ...

Oakland residents have bought fewer sugary beverages since a local “soda tax” went into effect, and that is likely improving their health and saving the city money, a new UC San Francisco study found.    According to the study publishing April 18 in PLOS Medicine, purchases of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) dropped 26.8% – compared to similar cities not subject to a tax – between July 2017, when the one-cent-per-ounce tax went into effect, and Dec. 31, 2019.      The research comes a little ...

The upcoming launch of the SMARTER center in the West Virginia University Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources will direct $1.5 million in federal funding toward the development of mobility solutions for transportation challenges faced by rural residents. Beginning this summer, West Virginia’s SMARTER center — standing for Sustainable Mobility and Accessibility Regional Transportation Equity Research — will position the state to begin taking advantage of cutting-edge technologies like self-driving cars within the next decade, according to lead researcher and assistant ...