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Medicine4 Dec 2023

EMBARGOED: CAR-T not cost-effective as second-line therapy for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma at current prices, study finds

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 ...

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Environment4 Dec 2023

Strange burn: new research identifies unique patterns in Utah wildfires

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 ...

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Environment4 Dec 2023

New study identifies the greatest threat to wildlife across North America and Canada: people

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 ...

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Engineering4 Dec 2023

ORNL engineer Karen White honored with Lifetime Achievement Award

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 ...

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Medicine4 Dec 2023

Osteopontin induces mitochondrial biogenesis in deadherent cancer cells

“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 ...

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Science4 Dec 2023

Boiled bubbles jump to carry more heat

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 ...

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Science4 Dec 2023

Increase in child suicide linked to the nation’s opioid crisis

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 ...

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Medicine4 Dec 2023

UCLA scientists receive $9.1 million from the NCI to improve early detection methods for cancer

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 ...

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Medicine4 Dec 2023

Health Affairs’ December Issue: Global Lessons From COVID-19

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 ...

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Science4 Dec 2023

BioOne announces Subscribe to Open Pilot

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, ...

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Engineering4 Dec 2023

Unveiling a new era of imaging: Boston University engineers lead breakthrough microscopy techniques

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 ...

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Medicine4 Dec 2023

New wearable communication system offers potential to reduce digital health divide

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 ...

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Science4 Dec 2023

In hotter regions, mammals seek forests, avoid human habitats

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 ...

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Medicine4 Dec 2023

Leukemia cells activate cellular recycling program

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 ...

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Energy4 Dec 2023

Argonne and Idaho National Laboratories partner with CMBlu Energy for innovative long-duration energy storage project

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™ ...

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Technology4 Dec 2023

CCNY researchers publish optical data storage breakthrough in Nature Nanotechnology

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 ...

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Medicine4 Dec 2023

Diet has a major impact on risk of Alzheimer’s disease

December 4, 2023 San Francisco, CA: In a detailed study, Diet’s Role in Modifying Risk of Alzheimer’s Disease: History and Present Understanding published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, we can finally see which diets are helpful in reducing the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. The role of diet in modifying the risk of Alzheimer’s disease is discussed in detail. Diets that are more plant based, like the Mediterranean diet and traditional diets in China, Japan, and India, are shown to reduce risk, especially ...

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Science4 Dec 2023

Study shows how ethical brands fare in a recession

Peer reviewed - observational study - people A new study from the University of East Anglia reveals why some ‘eco goods’ may fare better than others as a UK recession looms. A new study, published today, shows that when money gets tight, people are more likely to keep up more expensive ethical purchases like buying fair trade products. The study is one of the first to look at ethical purchases using actual market data from a major UK supermarket chain. Lead researcher Dr Jibonayan Raychaudhuri, from UEA’s School of Economics, said: “As a possible UK recession looms closer, we wanted to better understand how people’s spending ...

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Science4 Dec 2023

New technique efficiently offers insight into gene regulation

Researchers from the group of Jop Kind developed a new technique called MAbID. This allows them to simultaneously study different mechanisms of gene regulation, which plays a major role in development and disease. MAbID offers new insights into how these mechanisms work together or against each other. The results were published in Nature Methods on the 4th of December. DNA is the most important carrier of genetic information. Each cell contains approximately two meters of DNA. To ensure that all this genetic material fits into the small cell nucleus, it must be tightly packed. The DNA is therefore wrapped around a special type of protein, a histone. The ...

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Medicine4 Dec 2023

U of M Medical School study finds visions of nonphysical world are common among cognitively healthy Ojibwe individuals

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (12/04/2023) — Visual hallucinations are common among people with Lewy body dementia and other types of dementia. Identifying visual hallucinations is an important component of a wide variety of medical and psychiatric diagnoses and treatments, but without cultural context, some patients’ symptoms can be misinterpreted or misdiagnosed. In existing medical literature, there is almost no information regarding normal spiritual experiences in American Indian participants in the context of a neurocognitive evaluation. University of Minnesota Medical School researchers sought to understand how Ojibwe culture and spirituality affect a doctor’s assessment ...

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Science4 Dec 2023

Consistency key to corporate expressions of racial solidarity

ITHACA, N.Y. – Why do some corporate expressions of solidarity with marginalized groups register as genuine, while others seem performative or even backfire? An analysis of statements by Fortune 500 companies following the 2020 police killing of George Floyd finds that costly actions, such as donating money to social justice groups, aren’t enough to convey allyship to Black Americans. Companies must also demonstrate a consistent, long-term commitment to diversity and racial equity, according to research co-authored by James T. Carter, assistant ...

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Science4 Dec 2023

How mountains affect El Niño-induced winter precipitation

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A consideration of how mountains influence El Niño and La Niña-induced precipitation change in western North America may be the ticket to more informed water conservation planning along the Colorado River, new research suggests. The study, coinciding with a recent shift from a strong La Niña to a strong El Niño, brings a degree of precision to efforts to make more accurate winter precipitation predictions in the intermountain West by comparing 150 years of rain and snow data with historic El Niño-Southern Oscillation patterns. Overall, the analysis shows ...

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Medicine4 Dec 2023

ECHO research examines nutrition data's value from pregnancy to adolescence in understanding child health

Collaborative ECHO research led by Megan Bragg, PhD, RD and Kristen Lyall, ScD of the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute highlights the opportunity for researchers to access the large amount of diet information already collected from the ECHO Cohort. This research, titled “Opportunities for examining child health impacts of early-life nutrition in the ECHO Program: Maternal and child dietary intake data from pregnancy to adolescence”, is published in Current Developments in Nutrition. This study aimed to describe dietary intake data available in the ...

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Medicine4 Dec 2023

Training the immune system to prevent cancer – NextGen researchers discover paradigm-shifting approach

As one of the most insidious diseases in the world, cancer has few treatments that work to eradicate it completely. Now, a new ground-breaking approach pioneered by two researchers working at the University of Missouri’s Roy Blunt NextGen Precision Health building shows promising results in preventing lung cancer caused by a carcinogen in cigarettes — a discovery that immunologists Haval Shirwan and Esma Yolcu rank among the most significant of their careers. In the new study, Shirwan and Yolcu designed a molecule — known as an immune checkpoint stimulator (SA-4-1BBL) ...

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Technology4 Dec 2023

Snail-inspired robot could scoop ocean microplastics

ITHACA, N.Y. – Inspired by a small and slow snail, scientists have developed a robot protype that may one day scoop up microplastics from the surfaces of oceans, seas and lakes. The robot’s design is based on the Hawaiian apple snail (Pomacea canaliculate), a common aquarium snail that uses the undulating motion of its foot to drive water surface flow and suck in floating food particles. Currently, plastic collection devices mostly rely on drag nets or conveyor belts to gather and remove larger plastic debris from water, but they lack the fine scale required for retrieving microplastics. These tiny particles of plastic can be ingested ...

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