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, ...

MIAMI, FLORIDA (Nov. 28, 2023) – Researchers at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine have found that country of birth – not just geographic region – is a key risk factor for gastric intestinal metaplasia, a precursor lesion of stomach cancer. Although stomach cancer, often called gastric cancer, is relatively rare in the United States, it is much more common and deadly among Hispanics, non-Hispanic Black people, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders than among the white population. Sylvester and the University of Miami Health System serve a widely diverse racial and ethnic population, including ...

Virtual, augmented and other extended reality technologies present the possibility to transform health care, education, entertainment, communication and more. And that transformation is close. Headsets and haptic gloves could connect doctors and patients thousands of miles apart in a virtual hospital. Sensors could monitor someone's health or help teachers know if their students are paying attention. Scanners could allow objects from a person's home to appear in their favorite video game. Glasses could help people with visual impairments navigate the world around them. Extended ...

A five-year, $2 million grant to study the pharmacological effects of the areca nut, commonly known as the betel nut, was awarded to a UTHealth Houston researcher by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The study, led by Alan Myers, PharmD, PhD, associate professor of pharmacology with UTHealth Houston School of Dentistry, will investigate how chemicals in the areca nut are metabolized in the body’s organs, particularly in the liver, and how that process is disrupted by alcohol or menthol. “On the global level, areca nut chewing has been around since antiquity, but still poses a major public health ...

Optimal windows exist for action and perception during the 0.8 seconds of a heartbeat, according to research published November 28th in the open access journal PLOS Biology. The sequence of contraction and relaxation is linked to changes in the motor system and its ability to respond to stimulation, and this could have implications for treatments for depression and stroke that excite nerve cells. The ways in which we perceive and engage with the world are influenced by internal bodily processes such as heartbeats, respiration and digestion. Cardiac activity can influence auditory and ...

A new catalog produced by a French-led international team of astronomers shows that NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has discovered 294 gamma-ray-emitting pulsars, while another 34 suspects await confirmation. This is 27 times the number known before the mission launched in 2008. “Pulsars touch on a wide range of astrophysics research, from cosmic rays and stellar evolution to the search for gravitational waves and dark matter,” said study coordinator David Smith, research director at the Bordeaux Astrophysics Laboratory in Gironde, France, which is part of CNRS (the ...

FINDINGS Researchers at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center have found certain immune cells can still fight cancer even when the cancer cells lack an important protein that the immune system relies on to help track down cancer cells. The team discovered the absence of the crucial protein B2M seems to activate an alternative immune response involving natural killer (NK) cells and CD4+ T cells in both animal studies and patient tumor biopsies, indicating a potential backup mechanism in the immune system to recognize and attack cancer cells. BACKGROUND Immunotherapies, such as immune ...

Providence, R.I. – From the ability to conduct clinical visits online to utilizing artificial intelligence to effectively diagnose patients, technology has changed how all doctors practice medicine. One published paper in the November/December issue of Annals of Family Medicine explains how AI-driven technology presents new opportunities for more effective patient care while a second paper describes the interplay between fulfillment of basic psychological needs at work and technology use in maintaining clinician well-being.   In ...

AMES, Iowa – A research poster dated Dec. 9, 2015, hangs just outside Nicole Hashemi’s Iowa State University laboratory. It introduces a major project for Hashemi and her research group. And it’s evidence that scientific persistence sometimes equals scientific advancement.   Hashemi, an associate professor of mechanical engineering, and her students have been working all these years to develop a “placenta-on-a-chip.” In this case that’s a thin, rectangular, clear, polymer block with two tiny microchannels – just millionths of ...