You need only to remember last summer’s wildfires in the United States and Canada, which fouled the air from coast to coast, to know the effects these blazes can have on the environment and human health.  A new study has tabulated the toll from two decades of wildfires on air quality and human health in the continental U.S. The authors report that from 2000 to 2020, the air has worsened in the western U.S., mainly due to the increase in frequency and ferocity of wildfires causing an increase of 670 premature deaths per year in the region during that time period. Overall, the study’s authors report fires have undercut ...

Many emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, especially zoonotic diseases such as ebola or new coronaviruses, emerge as the result of intensified human activities such as deforestation, expansion of agricultural land, and increased hunting and trading of wildlife.  In a new study, published in the scientific journal Lancet Planetary Health, researchers identified public and private companies operating in economic sectors associated with increased risks of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases.  Where data was available, the researchers analyzed the financial ...

SYDNEY, Dec. 5, 2023 – Modern living may be contributing to an epidemic of nearsighted vision and related blindness. By 2050, it is estimated that half the world’s population will suffer from low vision due to myopia, a condition where the eye grows too large and can no longer focus on objects in the distance. Human eyes, honed by evolution to survive in the wild, are ill-adapted to city living, contributing to increased cases of myopia, among other factors. For decades, researcher Sally McFadden from the University of Newcastle has investigated eyes and eyesight in ...

A new report outlines the dismal state of England’s physical and “social” infrastructure – from public services in health and education to the parks, cinemas and train stations that prop up communities – when compared to similar regions in what was once East Germany.   The report’s authors call for a “universal basic infrastructure” (UBI) if the UK is to ‘level up’ its regions and lift itself out of “flatlining” productivity rates. This UBI would see a minimum ...

Global carbon emissions from fossil fuels have risen again in 2023 – reaching record levels, according to new research from the Global Carbon Project science team. The annual Global Carbon Budget projects fossil carbon dioxide (CO2 emissions of 36.8 billion tonnes in 2023, up 1.1% from 2022. Fossil CO2 emissions are falling in some regions, including Europe and the USA, but rising overall – and the scientists say global action to cut fossil fuels is not happening fast enough to prevent dangerous climate change. Emissions from land-use change ...

An entirely new way to probe how active black holes behave when they eat has been discovered by an international team of astronomers. A sample of active black holes at the centre of 136 galaxies were found to shine in microwave and X-ray light in the same way, no matter their appetite for the surrounding galactic matter like gaseous clouds of dust and plasma. Led by scientists at Cardiff University, the team says the process is not something predicted by our current understanding of how black holes ...

Katie Konans, NASA’s audio and podcasting lead at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is one of two NASA employees named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Class of 2024. The other agency honoree, Clare Luckey, is a systems engineer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list is a selection of young, creative, and bold minds the magazine’s experts consider revolutionaries, changing the course of business and society. Forbes evaluated more than 20,000 nominees to decide on 600 business and industry figures, with 30 selected in each of 20 industries. “When I joined ...

Fatima Bagheri, a National Science Foundation (NSF) postdoctoral fellow at The University of Texas at Arlington, was one of 75 students selected to attend an intensive program on supercomputing at the Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago. With support from the Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Program, Bagheri participated in the Argonne Training Program on Extreme-Scale Computer (ATPESC) aimed at teaching attendees the ins and outs of using the latest supercomputers. Bagheri said she came to ATPESC to expand her knowledge of high-performing computers (HPC) like ...

Embargoed for release until 5:00 p.m. ET on Monday 4 December 2023  Annals of Internal Medicine Tip Sheet   @Annalsofim  Below please find summaries of new articles that will be published in the next issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The summaries are not intended to substitute for the full articles as a source of information. This information is under strict embargo and by taking it into possession, media representatives are committing to the terms of the embargo not only on their own behalf, but also on behalf of the organization they represent.  ----------------------------  1. ...

EMBARGOED: December 4, 2023, 5PM EST Contact: Nicole Oliverio, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute 617-257-0454, nicole_oliverio@dfci.harvard.edu CAR-T not cost-effective as second-line therapy for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma at current prices, study finds RESEARCH SUMMARY Study Title: Peripheral blood TCR clonotype diversity as an age-associated marker of breast cancer progression Publication: Annals of Internal Medicine, Click here for link Dana-Farber Cancer Institute authors include: Amar H. Kelkar, MD, MPH (first author); Edward R. Scheffer Cliff, MBBS, MPH; Caron A. Jacobson, MD; Gregory A. Abel, MD, MPH; Corey Cutler, MD, MPH (senior author); and Robert Redd, MS. Summary: Chimeric ...

For a century fire ecologists have worked to decipher a complex question — what does a “normal'' wildfire year look like in the West? That’s a hard question to answer for many reasons, but new research from a team in the Quinney College of Natural Resources shows that thanks to the state’s unique landscapes, Utah’s wildfire patterns may never fit into what is considered “normal” for other Western states. Utah landscapes are diverse — from dense forests of pinyon-juniper to scattered patches of sagebrush and grasslands, Utah’s variable topography produces ...

You see posts like these on neighborhood Facebook pages all the time: “An owl just flew into my window and appears stunned! Help!” or “I found a baby squirrel on the ground after the wind storm last night. Who do I call?” The answer is a local wildlife rehabilitation center—licensed individuals and organizations that take in hundreds of thousands of sick and injured wild animals nationwide each year. Wildlife rehabilitators see the highest number and greatest range of species of any government or nonprofit organization in the country, giving them unique insight into animal health—and making them great bellwethers of what’s ...

Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Karen White, who works in ORNL’s Neutron Science Directorate, has been honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award. White, who manages the section that provides the machine controls,, computing infrastructure, and protection systems across all neutron science technical areas, received the award during the biennial International Conference on Accelerator and Large Experimental Physics Control Systems, held October 7-13, 2013, in Cape Town, South Africa. The award by ICALEPCS honors and celebrates an individual or individuals ...

“Here, we study the induction of mitochondrial biogenesis by Osteopontin variants in deadherent breast tumor cells.” BUFFALO, NY- December 4, 2023 – A new research paper was published in Oncotarget's Volume 14 on December 1, 2023, entitled, “Osteopontin induces mitochondrial biogenesis in deadherent cancer cells.” Metastasizing cells display a unique metabolism, which is very different from the Warburg effect that arises in primary tumors. Over short time frames, oxidative phosphorylation and ATP generation are prominent. Over longer time frames, mitochondrial biogenesis becomes a pronounced ...

Water is often the go-to resource for heat transfer, being used in large-scale cooling operations like data centers that power the internet and nuclear power plants that power cities. Discovering dynamic phenomena to make water-based heat transfer more energy and cost efficient is the ongoing work of Jonathan Boreyko, associate professor and John R. Jones III Faculty Fellow in mechanical engineering. Boreyko and his team have published extensively on the topic of water and the way it can move, with members of his Nature-Inspired ...

The rise in child suicides in the U.S. since 2010 was fueled in part by the nation’s opioid crisis, which previous studies found increased rates of child neglect and altered household living arrangements, according to a new RAND Corporation study.   The analysis links the rise is child suicides to the reformulation of prescription opioids to discourage misuse, which led to a steep rise in the use of illicit opioids such as heroin and may have contributed to the growth of illicit opioid markets.   Geographic areas that were more exposed to ...

Researchers from the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center have received two grants totaling $9.1 million from the National Cancer Institute to advance liquid biopsy technologies for the early detection of cancer, which can significantly improve treatment outcomes and reduce the number of deaths caused by the disease. A liquid biopsy is a promising non-invasive medical test using a small volume of blood that gives scientists insight into the genetic makeup of tumors. By analyzing these components, researchers can gain valuable information about the genetic mutations, alterations and other molecular changes associated ...

Washington D.C.—The December Health Affairs, a theme issue about the lessons learned around the globe from the COVID-19 pandemic, covers topics including how modeling was used to respond to the pandemic, how health inequities emerged and were addressed, and how countries tried to protect their vulnerable residents. The December issue of Health Affairs was supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Merck Foundation. There will be a Health Affairs briefing on Tuesday, December 5, from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. ET. Register here. COVID-19, a decline in FDA foreign facility inspections. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) halted ...

WASHINGTON D.C. – BioOne, the leading nonprofit aggregator in the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences, today announces a bold plan to offer up to 80 society titles as part of a Subscribe to Open (S2O) pilot beginning in January 2026. This decision, unanimously endorsed by the BioOne Board of Directors, follows 18 months of careful feasibility analysis and extensive interviews with BioOne’s community of society and library partners in search of an equitable and sustainable path to open. BioOne will work with its publishing community throughout 2024 to encourage participation in the pilot, ...

When microscopes struggle to pick up faint signals, it’s like trying to spot subtle details in a painting or photograph without your glasses. For researchers, this makes it difficult to catch the small things happening in cells or other materials. In new research, Boston University Moustakas Chair Professor in Photonics and Optoelectronics, Dr. Ji-Xin Cheng and collaborators are creating more advanced techniques to make microscopes better at seeing tiny sample details, without needing special dyes. Their results, published in Nature Communications and Science Advances respectively, are helping scientists visualize and understand their samples in an easier ...

Wearable devices that use sensors to monitor biological signals can play an important role in health care. These devices provide valuable information that allows providers to predict, diagnose and treat a variety of conditions while improving access to care and reducing costs. However, wearables currently require significant infrastructure – such as satellites or arrays of antennas that use cell signals – to transmit data, making many of those devices inaccessible to rural and under-resourced communities. A group of University of Arizona researchers has set out to change that with a wearable monitoring device system that can send ...

The cool of the forest is a welcome escape on a hot day. This is especially true for mammals in North America’s hottest regions, according to a study from the University of California, Davis. The study indicates that, as the climate warms, preserving forest cover will be increasingly important for wildlife conservation. The study, published today in the journal PNAS, found that North American mammals — from pumas, wolves and bears to rabbits, deer and opossums — consistently depend on forests and avoid cities, farms and other human-dominated ...

FRANKFURT. In a recent study, scientists led by Professor Stefan Müller from Goethe University’s Institute of Biochemistry II investigated a specific form of blood cancer known as acute myeloid leukemia, or AML. The disease mainly occurs in adulthood and often ends up being fatal for older patients. In about a third of AML patients, the cancer cells’ genetic material has a characteristic mutation that affects the so-called NPM1 gene, which contains the building instructions for a protein of the same name. While it was already known that the mutated NPM1 variant (abbreviated as ...

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, along with Idaho National Laboratory (INL), was chosen by the agency for a demonstration project to validate an innovative long-duration energy storage system developed by battery manufacturer CMBlu Energy. The collaborative project aims to improve microgrids in cold climates and make fast charging of electric vehicles more affordable in underserved communities.  Over the course of the project, Argonne and INL will deploy and evaluate CMBlu Energy’s Organic SolidFlow™ ...

Physicists at The City College of New York have developed a technique with the potential to enhance optical data storage capacity in diamonds. This is possible by multiplexing the storage in the spectral domain. The research by Richard G. Monge and Tom Delord members of the Meriles Group in CCNY’s Division of Science, is entitled “Reversible optical data storage below the diffraction limit” and appears in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.   “It means that we can store many different images at the same place in the ...