CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Chains of fused carbon-containing rings have unique optoelectronic properties that make them useful as semiconductors. These chains, known as acenes, can also be tuned to emit different colors of light, which makes them good candidates for use in organic light-emitting diodes. The color of light emitted by an acene is determined by its length, but as the molecules become longer, they also become less stable, which has hindered their widespread use in light-emitting applications. MIT chemists have now come up with a way to make these molecules more stable, allowing them to synthesize acenes of varying lengths. Using their new approach, ...

PLYMOUTH MEETING, PA [December 5, 2023] — Today, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®)—an alliance of leading cancer centers—hosted a Patient Advocacy Summit to explore the role of navigation throughout the cancer process. A diverse group of subject matter experts addressed the impact patient navigation has on care and how to utilize navigators to reduce economic burdens and disparities in care. The speakers included patients and advocates, policymakers, health care providers, and health data analysts. The summit featured a series of best practice presentations highlighting some of the tools available to assist in various ...

EL PASO, Texas (Dec. 5, 2023) – A new study from The University of Texas at El Paso reveals a gender disparity in prison infractions that disproportionately affects women. The study, led by Melinda Tasca, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Security Studies at UTEP, and published in Justice Quarterly, analyzed the disciplinary infraction records of more than 20,000 males and females in a large western state prison, who were released between 2010 and 2013. The researchers set out to answer three questions: ...

Plastics are ubiquitous in all aspects of modern life, including food packaging, health care and household products.  There has been a massive increase in plastics production over the past several decades and there has been serious attention paid to managing plastic wastes, particularly focused on recycling/reuse.  However, as of the present time it has not been feasible, either technically or economically, to achieve a fully circular system.  Those plastic materials that are not processed for reuse, known as end-of-life pastics, end up in landfillsor in other waste processing systems (e.g., incineration) or advanced recycling (eg., pyrolysis) or directly disposed in the ...

The protein TDP-43 is present in all cells of our body and important for their biochemical processes. However, this protein can aggregate into large clumps in the brain, which can cause degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and other dementias. How exactly this happens and how these protein clumps are linked to disease is a subject of intense research. Professor Dorothee Dormann of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) suspects that these proteins may also assemble in healthy cells – and that this assembly on a much smaller scale is important for the normal function of the TDP-43 protein. Her research group investigates the reason for these assemblies in ...

The energy consumption of data centers and information and communication technology (ICT) devices is growing at an alarming rate, projected to constitute up to 20 percent of global energy consumption by 2030. To support the digital transformation effectively, we need to enhance software efficiency. A promising avenue in this endeavor is incremental computing, where computations react to input changes rather than recomputing results from scratch. However, existing approaches to incrementality have limited applicability: They either demand expert knowledge, support only specialized domains (e.g., ...

AMHERST, Mass. – Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently published a pair of papers that, together, provide the most detailed maps to date of how 144 common invasive plants species will react to 2° Celsius of climate change in the eastern U.S., as well as the role that garden centers currently play in seeding future invasions. Together, the papers, published in Diversity and Distributions and BioScience, and the publicly available maps, which track species at the county level, promise to give invasive species managers in the U.S. the tools they need ...

NEWPORT NEWS, VA – The Applied Research Center (ARC) is tying the knot with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. Today, the City of Newport News announced the transfer of the Applied Research Center to Jefferson Lab and the DOE. The announcement was made in a ribbon-tying ceremony for the facility. “Newport News is a hub of innovation and research, thanks in large part to Jefferson Lab’s robust educational and scientific offerings,” said Newport News Mayor Phillip Jones. “Since 1985, the city has invested more than $64 ...

By Courtney Price, Texas A&M University School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences Texas A&M University researchers have been awarded a $1.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study bone regeneration throughout the lifespan to ultimately benefit individuals with Down syndrome. The new INvestigation of Co-occurring conditions across the Lifespan to Understand Down syndromE (INCLUDE) Project grant will help scientists understand whether bone regeneration holds the key to helping people ...

“[...] the exact mechanism of how obesity increases the advancement of chronic kidney disease is still uncertain.” BUFFALO, NY- December 5, 2023 – A new research paper was published in Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 15, Issue 22, entitled, “Contribution of membrane raft redox signalling to visfatin-induced inflammasome activation and podocyte injury.” The number of obese patients with end-stage renal disease has ...

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (12/05/2023) – Researchers have discovered a novel mechanism whereby the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, can vary its mode of infection in human cells. Published in the journal eLife, a team from the University of Minnesota and the Midwest Antiviral Drug Discovery (AViDD) Center found the virus can alternate between being highly infectious and avoiding detection by the immune system. This understanding is vital for grasping the virus' impact during the pandemic and for predicting its potential evolutionary developments. The spike protein of the virus, which is crucial for attaching ...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Researchers have discovered the novel mechanism that underlies a previously reported observation that infection by group A Streptococcus bacteria reduces the risk of later developing Type 1 diabetes. The Journal of Immunology reports that vaccination of neonatal mice with group A Streptococcus promoted a clonal expansion of innate-like B cells that produce antibody against N-acetyl-D-glucosamine, or GlcNAc. GlcNAc is a derivative of glucose sugar that is found as part of the cell wall of group ...

Four researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have been named ORNL Corporate Fellows in recognition of significant career accomplishments and continued leadership in their scientific fields. Corporate Fellow is the highest recognition for members of the ORNL research staff. Paula Cable-Dunlap, Miaofang Chi, Scott Smith and Peter Thornton have been recognized by the laboratory for their standing in the international scientific community as exceptional and influential researchers and as role models and mentors among peers and early career researchers. “Paula, Miaofang, Scott and Peter represent ...

The University of Louisville has received $6.5 million through two federal grants to help increase Kentuckians’ access to health care, particularly in underserved rural and urban areas. The UofL School of Nursing will use the funds from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to develop and implement an accelerated Licensed Practical Nurse-to-Bachelor of Science in Nursing (LPN-to-BSN) pathway in medically underserved areas of Kentucky. The second HRSA-funded project aims ...

In recent years, microbiome research has started to shift its focus from the microbes themselves to the molecules they produce. After all, it’s these molecules that directly interact with human cells to influence a person’s health. But trying to identify which molecules are being made by a person’s microbiome is quite challenging. A typical metabolomics study can only characterize about 10% of the molecular data from a human microbiome sample. In a new study published on December 5, 2023 in Nature, microbiome experts at University of California San Diego ...

Most organ transplantations involve supply from older donors to younger recipients. Aging cells can become senescent, a condition in which they stop multiplying and secrete chemicals that negatively affect neighboring cells. Senescent cells accumulate in older donor organs, and have the potential to compromise transplant outcomes. A study led by researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, found that in preclinical models, transplanting older organs can trigger ...

Pregnant women are not getting the essential nutrients they and their babies need from modern diets say scientists, who have warned that the situation will likely worsen as more people turn to plant-based foods. A study looking at the health of expecting mothers from high-income countries, including the UK, New Zealand and Singapore, found that 90 per cent were lacking key vitamins necessary for healthy pregnancies and the wellbeing of unborn infants. Scientists from the University of Southampton, working with experts worldwide, surveyed more than 1,700 women and found most were missing essential nutrients found in abundance in meat and dairy products. These included vitamins B12, B6 and ...

Developing treatments for Alzheimer's disease (AD) is difficult because complex underlying mechanisms drive different types of cells that may contribute to the disorder. Microglia and astrocytes, resident immune and support cells in the central nervous system, are known to exclusively express several genes linked to risk of AD — particularly AD dementia. However, it was previously unclear exactly how and when these genetic risk factors contributed to other, distinct stages of AD progression, such as the accumulation of amyloid-β plaques and tau tangles. Researchers led by a team at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare ...

A paper co-authored by physicist Filip Kondev of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory has earned a “Top Cited Paper Award” from IOP Publishing, the publishing arm of the Institute of Physics. The paper, “The NUBASE2020 evaluation of nuclear physics properties,” provides researchers with recommended values of the basic nuclear physics properties for all known atomic nuclei. These data are provided for each nucleus in its ground state, its lowest energy level, and in its excited, isomeric state, a higher energy level that lives longer than what is typical. These data constitute the fundamental ...

Philadelphia, December 5, 2023 – What happens in the brain to cause many neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD), remains a mystery. A major limitation for researchers is the lack of biomarkers, or objective biological outputs, for these disorders, and in the case of ASD, for specific subtypes of disease. Now, a new study uses brain imaging and machine learning to identify altered functional brain connectivity (FC) in people with ASD – importantly, taking ...

Tanyu Collecting Instrumentation Data From RAP-Aggregate Base Project On Minnieville Road Burak Tanyu, Professor, Civil, Environmental and Infrastructure Engineering (CEIE); Director of CEIE Laboratories, received $36,674 from the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) for: "Collection of Instrumentation Data From the RAP-Aggregate Base Project on Minnieville Road." Mason's Sustainable Geotransportation Infrastructure (SGI) research team has access to an actual roadway site located in Minnieville, Virginia, ...

A new study from researchers at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and UC San Francisco estimates 152,753 excess infant deaths were attributable to living in flood-prone areas in Bangladesh over the past 30 years. Additionally, across the study period, children born during rainy months faced higher risk of death than those born in dry months.  The paper was published Dec. 5 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The findings begin to unspool the long term public health impacts of recurring environmental hazards such as flooding, ...

Researchers report December 5 in the journal Neuron that mice display behavior that resembles self-recognition when they see themselves in the mirror. When the researchers marked the foreheads of black-furred mice with a spot of white ink, the mice spent more time grooming their heads in front of the mirror—presumably to try and wash away the ink spot. However, the mice only showed this self-recognition-like behavior if they were already accustomed to mirrors, if they had socialized with other mice who looked like them, and if the ink spot was relatively large. The team identified a subset of neurons in the hippocampus that are involved in developing and storing this visual self-image, ...

The surgery did not improve the children’s neurodevelopmental functioning but was associated with improved quality of life, sleep symptoms, and blood pressure 12-months post-surgery according to a randomized control trial led by researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute Between 6% and 17% of children suffer from sleep-disordered breathing, characterized by habitual snoring, increased respiratory effort, and sleep apnea. If left untreated, the disorder may put children at higher risk of neurodevelopmental impairment, reduced quality of life, and cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. Enlarged tonsils are one of the main risk ...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 5, 2023 – More than 2.2 billion people currently live in water-stressed countries, and the United Nations estimates that 3.5 million die every year from water-related diseases. Because the areas most in need of improved drinking water are also located in some of the sunniest places in the world, there is strong interest in harnessing sunlight to help obtain clean water. Researchers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China developed a promising new solar-powered atmospheric water harvesting technology that could help provide enough drinking water for people ...