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 ...

A longstanding hypothesis in neurobiology was that a single neuron releases a single type of neurotransmitter, a molecule used by neurons to communicate with one another. In recent decades, several neurons have been found to release more than one neurotransmitter. This phenomenon called co-transmission is increasingly gaining recognition as a powerful and versatile molecular mechanism useful for the dynamic regulation of diverse neural circuits. However, precisely how co-transmission affects the firing of ...

New shared language will facilitate faster service, improve EV user experience The National Charging Experience Consortium (ChargeX) has released a report that recommends 26 common electric vehicle (EV) charging error codes to enable faster error reporting, diagnostics and resolution within the EV charging industry. Ultimately, the codes would improve the U.S. charging experience. The ChargeX Consortium is a collaboration between U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories, EV charging industry experts, consumer advocates and other stakeholders. The Recommendations for Minimum Required Error Codes report aims to reduce confusion between charger manufacturers, EV manufacturers and ...

Latino sexual minority men who experience racial, ethnic and sexual prejudice are more likely to delay HIV testing, complicating efforts to end the more than 40-year epidemic, according to a new Rutgers study. “Total HIV infection rates in the United States are stabilizing, which is good news,” said Gabriel Robles, an assistant professor at the Rutgers School of Social Work and coauthor of the paper published in the journal AIDS Education and Prevention. “What’s bad is that the trend for some subgroups, including some Latino/x sexual minority men, is going in the opposite direction. Our study offers ...

As Lung Cancer Awareness Month comes to a close, Henry Ford Health is proud to announce it has received an anonymous gift of $10 million, which is poised to significantly advance lung cancer research at Henry Ford Cancer. This transformative gift has enabled Henry Ford to establish a new lung cancer tissue biorepository, which is a facility that catalogs and stores biological samples for research. These samples – in this case, lung cancer tissue – are crucial for scientists who are studying ...

28 November 2023: Researchers at RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences and Advanced Materials and Bioengineering Research Centre (AMBER) have developed a new surgical implant that has the potential to transform the treatment of complex bone infections. When implanted on an injured or infected bone, the material can not only speed up bone healing, it also reduces the risk of infections without the need for traditional antibiotics.  The newly published paper in the journal Advanced Materials, tackles the complex clinical problem of bone infection, ...

Across the entire animal kingdom, visual images are processed by two major neuronal pathways that extract light and dark stimuli from visual scenes – ON (light on) and OFF (light off) pathways. Light stimuli are brighter than their background like a white cloud in a gray sky whereas dark stimuli are darker than the background like a black bird in a blue sky. The two pathways can extract stimuli with different contrasts but some pathways are more sensitive than others. In carnivores and rodents, ON pathways are more sensitive ...

Air quality in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area continues to miss safety levels set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and is unlikely to meet EPA goals anytime soon, according to new research from The University of Texas at Arlington. Purnendu “Sandy” Dasgupta, professor of chemistry and biochemistry and the Hamish Small Chair of Ion Analysis at The University of Texas at Arlington, said the region’s low population density, lack of widespread public transportation and reliance on cars contribute to its poor air quality. Its ozone values have exceeded safety levels set by the EPA for the last 20 years. “Compared ...

With more than 400 million privately owned firearms in circulation across the United States, gun violence prevention efforts have emphasized secure firearm storage as a method for preventing injury and death. But some owners may not see the value in doing so, according to Rutgers researchers. Despite evidence that secure storage can effectively reduce the risk of suicide and unintentional shootings, many firearm owners typically keep at least one firearm stored loaded and unlocked, quickly accessible in case of home invasion. ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) today announced funding awards totaling $80.5 million to support four new, ambitious patient-centered comparative clinical effectiveness research (CER) studies focused on both the health care and social factors that contribute to inequities in maternal morbidity and mortality. The trials are among 30 CER studies and related projects recently approved for PCORI funding.    Awarded through an innovative PCORI funding opportunity known as Partner for its focus on partnering research institutions and community organizations ...