CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that autism is becoming more common in young children. In an effort to improve the challenges young autistic children face as part of their early development, researchers have focused on developing and evaluating nonpharmaceutical interventions that can be provided in early childhood. Micheal Sandbank, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Health Sciences at the UNC School of Medicine, is an expert on the research supporting these early interventions, which informs clinical practice across the United States. A new comprehensive meta-analysis, led by Sandbank, shows that many low-quality ...

A new study from UCLA Health researchers demonstrates that a novel treatment is effective in most patients with major depressive symptoms even after multiple failed courses of antidepressant medication. The treatment, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), may work even more rapidly than past findings have suggested, starting to alleviate symptoms as quickly as one week. Researchers from the Neuromodulation Division of UCLA’s Semel Institute analyzed the outcomes of hundreds of patients treated at UCLA Health from 2009 to 2022 with rTMS therapy, which uses magnetic fields to effectively “rewire” ...

Embargoed for release until 5:00 p.m. ET on Monday 20 November 2023 Annals of Internal Medicine Tip Sheet @Annalsofim Below please find summaries of new articles that will be published in the next issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The summaries are not intended to substitute for the full articles as a source of information. This information is under strict embargo and by taking it into possession, media representatives are committing to the terms of the embargo not only on their own behalf, but also on behalf of the organization they represent. ---------------------------- 1. ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — More than 1,100 experts have joined the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in boycotting the medical journal Nutrients until it stops publishing egregious animal experiments that could have been ethically conducted in humans. The boycott, which also applies to Nutrients’ publisher, MDPI, comes after repeated requests to the journal’s editors asking them to institute sound editorial practices. A letter sent to those editors today, Nov. 20, 2023, says “As a community of scientists and health care professionals, we have ...

DURHAM, N.C. – A Duke Health analysis of breast cancer in North Carolina showed that the state’s urban counties had higher overall incidences of disease than rural counties, especially at early stages upon diagnosis.   The findings, appearing in the journal Scientific Reports, serve as a national template for assessing the impact of poor environmental quality across different stages of breast cancer, which is marked by highly diverse origins and mechanisms for spreading. North Carolina serves as a good model; it has a diverse population ...

URBANA, Ill. — Cesarean section (C-section) procedures have increased dramatically around the world in the recent decades. Overweight and obesity rates, common risk factors for pregnancy outcomes and for C-sections, are also on the rise — creating a major health issue in low- and middle-income countries. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign investigates how high obesity levels lead to hospital specializations that affect the frequency of C-sections in Mexico. “Of course, obesity is a medical factor for C-sections; however, when we started this project we did not believe it to be the ...

With the rapid development in computing power over the past few decades, machine-learning (ML) techniques have become popular in medical settings as a way to predict survival rates and life expectancies among patients diagnosed with diseases such as cancer, heart disease, stroke, and, more recently, COVID-19. Such statistical modeling helps patients and caregivers balance treatment that offers the highest chance of a cure while minimizing the consequences of potential side effects. A professor and his doctoral student at The University of Texas at Arlington have published a new model of predicting survival from ...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – It has been uncertain how Mycobacterium tuberculosis deflects the immune response in humans, though evidence has pointed to host immunometabolism — the intrinsic link between metabolism in immune cells and their immune function. The pathogen M. tuberculosis is known to disrupt a metabolic pathway called glycolysis in infected myeloid cells, which include macrophages, through an unclear mechanism. A more accurate understanding of this pathogenic mechanism could provide a target against the bacterium that caused 1.6 million deaths in 2021, along with 10 million new cases of tuberculosis every year. Now a study published ...

In a leap forward for neuroanatomy education, the Global Neuroanatomy Network (GNN) is about to launch, creating a new, accessible, peer-reviewed collection of resources for instructors around the world. Developed as a response to the challenges faced in transitioning neuroanatomy education to an online format during the pandemic, the GNN represents a collaborative effort by educators globally. The initiative began as a conversation on social media, recognizing the need for better resources and support for teaching neuroanatomy online. As educators ...

Newly published research reexamines the evaluation of scientific findings, proposing a network-based methodology for contextualizing a publication’s impact. This new method, which is laid out in an article co-authored by Alex Gates, an assistant professor with the University of Virginia’s School of Data Science, will allow the scientific community to more fairly measure the impact of interdisciplinary scientific discoveries across different fields and time periods. The article was published ...

Researchers in UC Santa Barbara’s newly designated Biological Engineering (BioE) Department have received a significant boost from the U.S. Army, which awarded the university a $9.85 million grant to design and purchase state-of-the-art equipment that project leader Michelle O’Malley, a professor of chemical engineering and biological engineering, says “allows UCSB scientists to do things that we never thought were possible.” The funding, awarded through the Department of Defense’s Defense University Research ...

The latest image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows a portion of the dense center of our galaxy in unprecedented detail, including never-before-seen features astronomers have yet to explain. The star-forming region, named Sagittarius C (Sgr C), is about 300 light-years from the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*. “There’s never been any infrared data on this region with the level of resolution and sensitivity we get with Webb, so we are seeing lots of features here for the first time,” said the observation team’s principal investigator Samuel Crowe, an undergraduate student at the University ...

Irvine, Calif., Nov. 20, 2023 — A first-of-its-kind study led by the University of California, Irvine has revealed a new culprit in the formation of brain hemorrhages that does not involve injury to the blood vessels, as previously believed. Researchers discovered that interactions between aged red blood cells and brain capillaries can lead to cerebral microbleeds, offering deeper insights into how they occur and identifying potential new therapeutic targets for treatment and prevention.   The ...

In a new study, artificial intelligence in the form of ChatGPT outperformed an expert rhinoplasty surgeon in answering preoperative and postoperative patient questions related to nasal surgery. ChatGPT earned significantly higher ratings in accuracy, completeness, and overall quality, according to the study published in Facial Plastic Surgery & Aesthetic Medicine. Click here to read the article now. Kay Durairaj, MD, and Omer Baker, from Pasadena, California , Dario Bertossi, MD, from University of Verona, Steven Dayan, MD, from University of Illinois, Chicago, Kian Karimi, MD, from Los Angeles California, Roy Kim, MD, from San Francisco, California, Sam ...

When researchers asked hundreds of people to watch other people shake boxes, it took just seconds for almost all of them to figure out what the shaking was for. The deceptively simple work by Johns Hopkins University perception researchers is the first to demonstrate that people can tell what others are trying to learn just by watching their actions. Published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study reveals a key yet neglected aspect of human cognition, and one with implications for artificial intelligence. “Just by looking ...

Long considered myth, freakishly large rogue waves are very real and can split apart ships and even damage oil rigs. Using 700 years’ worth of wave data from more than a billion waves, scientists at the University of Copenhagen and University of Victoria have used artificial intelligence to find a formula for how to predict the occurrence of these maritime monsters. The new knowledge can make shipping safer. EMBARGOED CONTENT UNTIL MONDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2023 3 PM US EASTERN TIME Stories about monster waves, called rogue waves, have been the lore of sailors for centuries. But when a 26-metre-high rogue wave slammed into the Norwegian oil ...

Machine learning algorithms designed to diagnose a common infection that affects women showed a diagnostic bias among ethnic groups, University of Florida researchers found.  While artificial intelligence tools offer great potential for improving health care delivery, practitioners and scientists warn of their risk for perpetuating racial inequities. Published Friday in the Nature journal Digital Medicine, this is the first paper to evaluate fairness among these tools in connection to a women’s health issue. “Machine learning can be a great tool in medical diagnostics, but we found it can show bias toward different ethnic groups,” said Ruogu Fang, an associate ...

In recent years, many police departments have mandated or encouraged anti-bias training. This has occurred in response to government-imposed measures such as consent decrees or as a proactive attempt to enhance public perceptions of police following actions that have raised concerns about racially motivated and other discriminatory practices. In a new study, researchers evaluated the effectiveness of an anti-bias training intervention in one Californian jurisdiction. The study found that officers who received the training had improved performance scores (measured by Body Worn Camera footage), decreased disparity in how they treated different groups of people, ...

The widespread use of digital technologies and the Internet has spurred a new type of personal intrusion, known as cyberstalking. Incidences of cyberstalking have risen, with the U.S. Department of Justice estimating that more than 1.3 million people experience this type of victimization annually. A new study explored research to identify the factors associated with perpetration and victimization in cyberstalking. The study’s findings can inform the development of efforts to prevent and address cyberstalking. Conducted by a researcher at Sam Houston State ...

When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted on January 15, 2022 in the South Pacific, it produced a shock wave felt around the world and triggered tsunamis in Tonga, Fiji, New Zealand, Japan, Chile, Peru and the United States. It also changed the chemistry and dynamics of the stratosphere in the year following the eruption, leading to unprecedented losses in the ozone layer of up to 7% over large areas of the Southern Hemisphere, according to a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National ...

Pasadena, CA—Galaxies that formed just 2 to 3 billion years after the Big Bang are unusually hot and glow with light from surprising elements, like nickel, according to new work led by Carnegie’s Gwen Rudie and Northwestern University’s Allison Strom. Studying “teenage galaxies” from the ancient universe can teach scientists about how these massive systems of stars mature and evolve. Their findings, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, are part of the CECILIA (Chemical Evolution Constrained using Ionized Lines in Interstellar Aurorae) ...

When the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the United States, healthcare workers faced new demands, childcare and grocery store workers became essential workers, businesses shut down, and churches and school doors closed. The pandemic also arrived amidst protests over police violence. Deep partisan divisions and record natural disasters amplified these challenges. The national government offered new funding for businesses and individuals and public health guidance, and local governments issued guidelines for gathering in public.  Litigating the Pandemic (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023), a new book by Susan Sterett, professor ...

Treating cancer is becoming increasingly complex, but also offers more and more possibilities. After all, the better a tumor’s biology and genetic features are understood, the more treatment approaches there are. To be able to offer patients personalized therapies tailored to their disease, laborious and time-consuming analysis and interpretation of various data is required. Researchers at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin have now studied whether generative artificial intelligence ...

New Haven, Conn. — A Yale-led analysis of the genomes of more than 1 million people has shed light on the underlying biology of cannabis use disorder and its links to psychiatric disorders, abuse of other substances such as tobacco, and possibly even an elevated risk of developing lung cancer. For the study, researchers examined a genome-wide set of genetic variants in individuals from multiple ancestry groups enrolled in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ Million Veteran Program, one of the world’s largest genetic databases, and ...

Young people may be more susceptible to the effects of the risk factors for developing atherosclerosis. According to a study carried out at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC), younger people are especially vulnerable to the damaging effects of elevated blood cholesterol and hypertension, two of the major modifiable cardiovascular risk factors. These findings, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, underline the need to implement aggressive control of cardiovascular risk factors at younger ages, requiring a change in primary prevention strategies to include “surveillance of subclinical atherosclerosis ...