Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are typical organic compounds found in cigarette smoke and vehicle exhaust. In addition, PAHs are produced from incomplete combustion of organic material and cooking. The highest concentrations of PM-bound PAHs ranged from 550 ng/m3 to 39000 ng/m3, were observed in Chinese kitchens, fire stations, and ships. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons may combine with ultrafine particles (UFPs) in the air to form particle-bound PAHs. PM0.1 may adsorb large amounts of toxic organic compounds, and long-term exposure to indoor UFPs from cooking resulted in ...

Medication delivered by a novel gel cured 100% of mice with an aggressive brain cancer, a striking result that offers new hope for patients diagnosed with glioblastoma, one of the deadliest and most common brain tumors in humans. “Despite recent technological advancements, there is a dire need for new treatment strategies,” said Honggang Cui, a Johns Hopkins University chemical and biomolecular engineer who led the research. “We think this hydrogel will be the future and will supplement current treatments for brain cancer.” Cui’s team combined an anticancer drug­­­ and ...

An interdisciplinary team of researchers has developed a suite of tools to estimate the total economic value of improving water quality in urban streams. The work can assist federal and state agencies charged with developing environmental regulations affecting urban ecosystems across the Piedmont Region of the United States, which stretches from Maryland to Alabama. “Urban streams are ubiquitous and face a number of stressors from rapid economic development,” says Roger von Haefen, professor of agricultural and resource economics at North Carolina State University and corresponding ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — An unusual blinking fish, the mudskipper, spends much of the day out of the water and is providing clues as to how and why blinking might have evolved during the transition to life on land in our own ancestors. New research shows that these amphibious fish have evolved a blinking behavior that serves many of the same purposes of our blinking. The results suggest that blinking may be among the suite of traits that evolved to allow the transition to life on land in tetrapods — the group of animals that includes mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians — some 375 million years ago. The study appears the week ...

A new machine-learning method could help us gauge the time of our internal body clock, helping us all make better health decisions, including when and how long to sleep.   The research, which has been conducted by the University of Surrey and the University of Groningen, used a machine learning programme to analyse metabolites in blood to predict the time of our internal circadian timing system.     To date the standard method to determine the timing of the circadian system is to measure the timing of our ...

ANN ARBOR—Health surveys and clinical studies have a data collection problem: Because of the way they record sex or gender, they often exclude transgender and gender-diverse people, according to University of Michigan research.   Most studies and surveys either ask participants for their sex, a biological construct, or their gender, a social construct. In this way, they only consider either sex or gender independently or use the two concepts interchangeably, says Kate Duchowny, a research assistant professor in the Survey Research Center at the U-M Institute for Social Research.   Participants either respond with their sex assigned at birth or the ...

Scientists observed seismic waves traveling through Mars’ core for the first time and confirmed model predictions of the core’s composition. An international research team—which included University of Maryland seismologists—used seismic data acquired by the NASA InSight lander to directly measure properties of Mars’s core, finding a completely liquid iron-alloy core with high percentages of sulfur and oxygen. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on April 24, 2023, these findings reveal new insights into how Mars formed and geological differences ...

A new study has uncovered intriguing insights into the liquid core at the centre of Mars, furthering understanding of the planet’s formation and evolution. The research, led by the University of Bristol and published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the US, reveals the first-ever detections of sound waves travelling into the Martian core. Measurements from this acoustic energy, called seismic waves, indicate its liquid core is slightly denser and smaller than previously thought, and comprises a mixture of iron and numerous other elements. The ...

“We have developed a technique in our laboratories that allows us to obtain an antibiogram within 2-4 hours – instead of the current 24 hours for the most common germs and one month for tuberculosis,” says Dr Sandor Kasas at EPFL. Professor Ronnie Willaert at Vrije Universiteit Brussel adds: “Our technique is not only faster but also simpler and much cheaper than all those existing now.” Antibiotic resistance happens when bacteria develop the ability to defeat the drugs designed to kill them. It ...

Targeting part of an antiviral pathway triggered by the accumulation of a key pathogen shared in Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal dementia may one day offer a new therapeutic approach to deterring or delaying cognitive decline, according to preclinical research led by Weill Cornell Medicine scientists. The study, published April 24 in Nature Neuroscience, demonstrates that inhibiting an innate immune system enzyme called cyclic GMP–AMP synthase (cGAS) helps neurons become resilient to the build-up of the protein tau into bundles known as fibrils, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s and some forms of frontotemporal dementia, the two most ...

Organic solar cells have a photoactive layer that is made from polymers and small molecules. The cells are very thin, can be flexible, and are easy to make. However, the efficiency of these cells is still much below that of conventional silicon-based ones. Applied physicists from the University of Groningen have now fabricated an organic solar cell with an efficiency of over 17 percent, which is in the top range for this type of material. It has the advantage of using an unusual device structure that is produced using a scalable technique. The design involves a conductive layer of tin oxide that is grown ...

The 25th International Conference on Redox Medicine will take place on June 21-23 in Paris. Redox Medicine 2023 will provide a glimpse into the role of redox in tomorrow’s medicine. What to Expect in Redox Medicine 2023? Reactive oxygen species (ROS) have been studied for decades, but the results remain controversial. ROS are beneficial to biological mechanisms, acting as signaling molecules and enhancing immune defense. However, they also have harmful effects, such as causing tissue and organ damage. Dr. Carole Nicco, stated that “The work and results presented at the Redox Medicine Congress will give ...

Key takeaways A study by researchers from UCLA, Australia, Ecuador, Germany, the Netherlands and the U.K. found that people around the world signal others for assistance every couple of minutes. The research, which examined behaviors in towns and rural areas in several different countries, revealed that people comply with these small requests for help far more often than they decline them. The findings suggest that people from all cultures have more similar cooperative behaviors than prior research has established. A new study by UCLA sociologist Giovanni Rossi and an international team of collaborators finds that people rely on ...

WASHINGTON, DC – The Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Science will sponsor the participation of 999 undergraduate students and 79 faculty members in three STEM-focused workforce development programs at 16 DOE national laboratories and a national fusion facility during summer 2023. Collectively, these programs ensure DOE and our nation have a strong, sustained workforce trained in the skills needed to address the energy, environment, and national security challenges of today and tomorrow. “Our future depends on the next generation ...

“One of the great mysteries of biology,” says Eric Libby, former SFI Postdoctoral Fellow, now an associate professor at the Integrated Science Lab (IceLab), Umeå University in Sweden, “is eukaryogenesis, or how eukaryotes arose.” Scientists consider this to be a period of major evolutionary transition, critical to our understanding of the history and evolution of life on Earth.  In a new study published on April 21, 2023, in PNAS, Libby worked with SFI Professor Christopher Kempes and Jordan ...

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory has awarded its newest cohort of named fellowships, providing five early-career scientists with additional support as they pursue pivotal discoveries that will make Americans safer and better off and increase our understanding of the universe.   For 2023, the laboratory has named four Maria Goeppert Mayer Fellows and one Walter Massey Fellow. Maria Goeppert Mayer was a pioneering nuclear physicist who received the 1963 Nobel Prize in physics for discovering, at Argonne, the shell model of the atomic nucleus. Walter Massey ...

Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) modes are a type of light wave that can carry the external torque of photons as they move through space. They are useful in many fields, from optical communications to super-resolution imaging. Advanced developments in these and other applications demand reliable and color-tunable LG mode laser sources, which do not yet exist. An optical parametric oscillator (OPO) is a device that can generate a wavelength-tunable laser beam, so it has been used to realize a color-tunable LG laser source — generally, in one of two ways. One way is to change a regular beam into an LG beam using a phase component ...

Every giant was once a baby, though you may never have seen them at that stage of their development. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has begun to shed light on formative years in the history of the universe that have thus far been beyond reach: the formation and assembly of galaxies. For the first time, a protocluster of seven galaxies has been confirmed at a distance that astronomers refer to as redshift 7.9, or a mere 650 million years after the big bang. Based on the data collected, astronomers calculated the nascent cluster’s future development, finding that it will likely grow in size and mass to resemble the Coma Cluster, ...

Ithaca, NY--Mountain Quail are an under-studied but recreationally-valued management indicator species in California's Sierra Nevada. They are notoriously difficult to study due to their penchant for impenetrable, dense, shrubby habitats, high elevations, and steep slopes. In this study, researchers used 1,636 autonomous recording units across about 22,000 square kilometers to conduct the first ever systematic and comprehensive study of Mountain Quail habitat associations and fire ecology in the Sierra Nevada. Researchers from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the University of Minnesota, Univesity of Wisconsin-Madison, and the ...

SAN ANTONIO (April 24, 2023) — Intensive blood pressure treatment significantly reduces the risk of adverse cerebrovascular events such as stroke. New research from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio) shows evidence of how the brain benefits from consistently lower blood pressure. The study, published March 1 in JAMA Network Open, is a follow-up analysis of the Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial (SPRINT), a multicenter clinical trial that compared intensive systolic blood pressure control ...

Deadlines are part and parcel of modern knowledge work. Journalists must serve their weekly columns, managers must turn in their monthly reports, and researchers must submit their papers and proposals on time. Despite their ubiquity, deadlines conjure up negative feelings and are perceived as challenging events. Accordingly, there has been a trend to do away with deadlines, where possible. For instance, the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the United States introduced no-deadline submissions in some of its funding programs. Critics, however, have been arguing that although deadlines may be painful, they are necessary, because they motivate people to act. Researchers from the University ...

URBANA, Ill. – As Corn Belt states seek ways to curb nitrogen flow from farms into the Gulf of Mexico, new University of Illinois research adds evidence for winter cover crops as an important part of the solution. A simulation study published in Science of the Total Environment finds widespread planting of cereal rye in Illinois could reduce nitrate in the state’s tile drainage water by 30%. The research team, part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) and The Grainger ...

Regenerative medicine—the process of replacing, engineering or regenerating human cells, tissues or organs—holds exciting potential for the field of health care. It could someday make it possible to grow a new kidney in a petri dish, repair damaged nerve cells, or reverse memory loss. Continuing a commitment to advance medicine through forward-thinking approaches and groundbreaking discoveries, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is announcing the creation of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine to foster innovative research into new pathways to cure ...

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. -- Researchers at Binghamton University partnered with the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) — a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory — to get a better look at how peroxides on the surface of copper oxide promote the oxidation of hydrogen but inhibit the oxidation of carbon monoxide, allowing them to steer oxidation reactions. They were able to observe these quick changes with two complimentary spectroscopy methods that have not been used in this way. The results of this work have been published in the journal Proceedings ...

A new Technology from Sage report sheds light on challenges in the librarian-patron relationship, including the need for greater digital literacy and more tailored support for students, and recommends methods to support the student experience. “The Knowledge Gap Between Librarians and Students: Contrasting Librarian and Student Perspectives on the Undergraduate Workflow” report is the second in the Librarian Futures series. A survey of nearly 600 students in the US, UK, and Canada highlights key findings for librarians across the undergraduate workflow — specifically ...