The costs of environmental pollution caused by plastics in cigarette butts and packaging amount to an estimated US$26 billion every year or US$186 billion every 10 years—adjusted for inflation—in waste management and marine ecosystem damage worldwide,  finds a data analysis published online in the journal Tobacco Control. These costs may seem small compared with the overall economic and human toll of tobacco, but they are cumulative and preventable, highlights the researcher.  And ...

Walking at a speed of 4 or more km an hour is linked to a significantly lower risk of type 2 diabetes, suggests a pooled data analysis of the available evidence, published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. And the faster the speed above 4 km/hour, the lower the risk seems to be, with every 1 km increase in speed associated with a 9% reduction in risk, the findings suggest.  While regularly nipping out for a stroll is associated with a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes, it’s not clear what the optimal speed might be to ward off the disease, ...

UK rates of transgender identity have risen 5-fold since 2000, with the highest rise observed among 16 to 29 year olds, although the overall numbers are still small, suggests an analysis of nearly 20 years of anonymised general practice records, published online in the open access journal BMJ Medicine. And rates of people identifying as transgender were more than twice as high in the most socially and economically deprived areas as they were in less deprived areas, the analysis shows.  A solid grasp of the numbers and ages of those identifying as transgender is essential ...

Clocking up 6 or more hours of sedentary leisure time every day may double a woman’s risk of uterine fibroids before she’s gone through the menopause, suggests research published in the open access journal BMJ Open. The risk of these benign, but potentially large and painful, womb growths seems to rise in tandem with the amount of time spent sitting or lying down during the day, the findings suggest. Uterine fibroids are the most common benign tumours in women of childbearing age, varying in prevalence from 4.5% to 69%, say the researchers.  These growths may not produce any symptoms, but they may also be associated with abnormal bleeding, pelvic and abdominal pain, ...

The number of people identifying as transgender in their GP records in the UK has increased between 2000 and 2018, finds a new study led by UCL researchers. The research, published in BMJ Medicine, is the first large-scale study in the UK to estimate the number of people whose gender identity is different to their sex assigned at birth. To do this, the team reviewed anonymised data from 7 million individuals aged 10 to 99 years, from IQVIA Medical Research Data, a UK primary care database, between 2000 and 2018. Researchers looked for diagnostic codes that suggested patients had spoken to their GP about ...

Planting flowers beside food crops on farms in India attracts bees, boosts pollination and improves crop yield and quality, researchers have found. The research, the first Indian study of its kind, is published today (Monday, 28 November) in the Journal of Applied Ecology and was carried out in South India by ecologists from the University of Reading, UK, and the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation, India. The scientists focused on the Moringa crop, a nutrient-rich "superfood," and its essential pollinators – bees.  By planting companion marigold flowers and ...

A Hobart-based solicitor built his reputation as “the foremost scientist in the colony” in the mid-1800’s, despite limited contributions to scientific knowledge. Morton Allport achieved his status by obtaining the bodily remains of Tasmanian Aboriginal people and Tasmanian tigers, also known as thylacines, and sending them to collectors in Europe – specifically asking for scientific accolades in return. This took place in the context of a genocide against the Tasmanian Aboriginal peoples, and persecution of the thylacine that eventually led to its extinction. The new research by Jack Ashby, Assistant Director of the University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge, ...

An inspection design method and procedure by which mobile robots can inspect large pipe structures has been demonstrated with the successful inspection of multiple defects on a three-meter long steel pipe using guided acoustic wave sensors. The University of Bristol team, led by Professor Bruce Drinkwater and Professor Anthony Croxford,  developed approach was used to review a long steel pipe with multiple defects, including circular holes with different sizes, a crack-like defect and pits, through a designed inspection path to achieve 100% detection coverage for a defined reference defect. In the study, published today in NDT and E International, ...

Modern robots know how to sense their environment and respond to language, but what they don’t know is often more important than what they do know. Teaching robots to ask for help is key to making them safer and more efficient. Engineers at Princeton University and Google have come up with a new way to teach robots to know when they don’t know. The technique involves quantifying the fuzziness of human language and using that measurement to tell robots when to ask for further directions. Telling a robot to pick ...

Michele Galizia, a President’s Associates Presidential Professor in the School of Sustainable Chemical, Biological and Materials Engineering at the University of Oklahoma, is leading a research team that recently received a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy that will develop improved polymer membranes to advance molecular separation and related materials science. “We currently separate chemicals, gases and liquids using a thermal-based distillation technology that is very expensive to operate and consumes the equivalent of eight GJ of electricity per person on the planet per year,” ...

Living systems—unlike non-living or inanimate objects—use information about their surrounding environment to survive. But not all information from the environment is meaningful or relevant for survival. The subset of information that is meaningful, and perhaps necessary for being alive, is called semantic information. In a new paper published in PRX Life, University of Rochester physicists and their coauthors have, for the first time, applied this theory of semantic information to a well-known ...

Researchers have identified a new way to screen genes that cause several different types of cancers to grow, identifying particularly promising targets for precision oncology in oral and esophageal squamous cancers.  The study, published in this month’s issue of Cell Reports, used 3-dimensional models of organ tissues called organoids to identify and test potential gene targets from The Cancer Genome Atlas. “There’s a tremendous amount of data in The Cancer Genome Atlas, ...

Over the past decades, increasing evidences have demonstrated that five retinoids, including retinol (ROL), retinol acetate (RAc), retinol propionate (RP), retinol palmitate (RPalm), and hydroxypinacolone retinoate (HPR), can be potential therapeutic agents for skin photoaging. However, therapeutic efficacies and biosafety have never been compared to these compounds. This study aimed to determine the optimal retinoid type(s) for anti-photoaging therapy both in vitro and in vivo. The data demonstrated that four retinoids (RPalm, RP, HPR and ROL) but not RAc were effective for anti-photoaging treatment at 5 μg/mL in vitro, with action mechanisms associated with antioxidative, ...

As more medications move toward federal approval for Alzheimer’s disease, a new study led by researchers at UC San Francisco and Kaiser Permanente Washington has found that personalized health and lifestyle changes can delay or even prevent memory loss for higher-risk older adults.  The two-year study compared cognitive scores, risk factors and quality of life among 172 participants, of whom half had received personalized coaching to improve their health and lifestyle in areas believed to raise the risk of Alzheimer’s, such as uncontrolled diabetes and physical inactivity. These participants were ...

November 28, 2023-- Inadequate health coverage is a particular problem for commercially insured children, according to a new study released by Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. The research shows that coverage gaps are affecting publicly insured children as well. Until now, prior research had focused on documenting rates and trends in insurance consistency for children covered by all insurance types. The findings are published in JAMA Health Forum. “While uninsurance among children has generally been declining in the U.S., our results highlight the need for a renewed focus on making sure that children’s ...

DETROIT – A Wayne State University College of Engineering professor has received a $2.65 million award from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health to develop a novel filtration platform to improve an advanced drug delivery device to optimize diabetes insulin treatments. Subcutaneous insulin administration (SIA) technology has improved significantly over the past two decades, but SIA technology failure and underlying tissue damage caused by insulin phenolic preservatives ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Mayo Clinic’s Board of Trustees has approved Bold. Forward. Unbound. in Rochester, a multiyear strategic initiative that advances Mayo Clinic’s Bold. Forward. strategy to Cure, Connect and Transform healthcare for the benefit of patients everywhere. It reimagines Mayo Clinic’s downtown Rochester campus and introduces new facilities with a combination of innovative care concepts and digital technologies that will give Mayo Clinic the ability to scale transformation ...

While doctors and nurses were hailed as the frontline heroes of the COVID-19 pandemic, their counterparts in public health were experiencing threats. During the pandemic, threats against public health workers reached an all-time high. After the vaccine was released, those threats increased and changed in nature, according to a longitudinal study conducted during the first year of the pandemic by Jennifer Horney, founder of the University of Delaware Epidemiology Program in the College of Health Sciences.  The results, recently published in an open-access commentary in Public Health in Practice, show a strong need for expanded legal protections ...

The U.S. must reduce racial residential segregation if it is to reduce racial disparities in health outcomes, according to a recently published study by researchers at Tufts University School of Medicine. The research on 220 metropolitan areas nationwide between 1980 and 2020 found strong links between trends in racial residential segregation and racial disparities in early death rates from a variety of causes.  The study is the first known to examine the association between changes in racial segregation over time ...

Manard named recipient of 2023 JAAS Emerging Investigator Lectureship   Benjamin Manard, an analytical chemist in the Chemical Sciences Division of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been selected for the 2023 Emerging Investigator Lectureship from the Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry. JAAS is a publication of the Royal Society of Chemistry that shares innovative research on the fundamental theory and application of spectrometric techniques. Manard is the first winner of this award from a Department of Energy ...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 28, 2023                           Contact: Jillian McKoy, jpmckoy@bu.edu Michael Saunders, msaunder@bu.edu Lisa LaPoint, lisa.lapoint@tufts.edu ## While past research has indicated that moderate alcohol consumption can lower one’s risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), more recent studies suggest that moderate levels of drinking may be hazardous to heart health. ...

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 21, entitled, “1,5-anhydro-D-fructose induces anti-aging effects on aging-associated brain diseases by increasing 5’-adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase activity via the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ co-activator-1α/brain-derived neurotrophic factor pathway.” 5’-Adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase (AMPK) is a metabolic sensor that serves as a cellular housekeeper; it also controls energy homeostasis and stress resistance. Thus, correct regulation ...

“The Achilles’ heel of CRISPR application is the delivery of sgRNA/Cas9 to the desired tissues.” BUFFALO, NY- November 28, 2023 – A new editorial paper was published in Oncotarget's Volume 14 on November 27, 2023, entitled, “The double-edge sword of CRISPR application for in vivo studies.” In this new paper, researcher Martin K. Thomsen from Aarhus University begins his editorial by discussing a hallmark paper that was published a decade ago by Platt et al. on the in vivo ...

Our ability to pay attention to tasks—a key component of our everyday lives—is heavily influenced by factors like motivation, arousal and alertness. Maintaining focus can be especially challenging when the task is boring or repetitive. “In many activities, it is difficult to maintain a high level of focus over time. Our research asks why this is the case,” said Matthew K. Robison, assistant professor of psychology at The University of Texas at Arlington. He and colleagues at the University ...

Katherine Rich, MD MPH, resident in the MGH Department of Medicine, is the first author of a recently published paper in JAMA Network Open, “Projected Life Expectancy Gains from Improvements in HIV Care in Black and White Men Who Have Sex With Men.” Aima Ahonkhai, MD MPH and Emily Hyle, MD MSc, physician investigators in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital, are co-senior authors. What Question Were You Investigating? Substantial inequities persist across the HIV care continuum in the US; Black people with HIV bear a disproportionate disease burden due, ...