MIT researchers have created the first fiber with digital capabilities, able to sense, store, analyze, and infer activity after being sewn into a shirt. Yoel Fink, who is a professor of material sciences and electrical engineering, a Research Laboratory of Electronics principal investigator, and the senior author on the study, says digital fibers expand the possibilities for fabrics to uncover the context of hidden patterns in the human body that could be used for physical performance monitoring, medical inference, and early disease detection. Or, you might someday store your wedding music in the gown you wore on the big day -- more on that later. Fink and his colleagues describe the features of the digital fiber in Nature Communications. Until now, electronic fibers ...

The number of people engaging with life-enhancing cardiac rehabilitation clinics has declined during the pandemic, according to a BMJ clinical update which makes the case for more home-based and virtual alternatives. Before the covid-19 pandemic, 100?000 people were admitted to hospital with heart attacks and approximately 200?000 were diagnosed with heart failure annually in the UK. There was a 40% decline in the number of patients admitted with heart attacks (acute coronary syndromes ) in 2020. Cardiac rehabilitation is crucial to helping people who have encountered a heart attack or heart failure have a better quality of life. Now, a new review, undertaken by cardiac rehabilitation experts based at the ...

WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 3, 2021 -- A new West Health/Gallup survey finds nearly all Democrats (97%) and the majority of Republicans (61%) support empowering the federal government to negotiate lower prices of brand-name prescription drugs covered by Medicare. Overall, 8 in 10 Americans prefer major government action to control prices over concerns about it hurting innovation and competition from the pharmaceutical industry. The results come from a nationally representative poll of more than 3,700 American adults. While President Joe Biden, Democrats in Congress and former President Donald Trump have called for such negotiation, ...

If you have ever tried to chip a mussel off a seawall or a barnacle off the bottom of a boat, you will understand that we could learn a great deal from nature about how to make powerful adhesives. Engineers at Tufts University have taken note, and today report a new type of glue inspired by those stubbornly adherent crustaceans in the journal Advanced Science. Starting with the fibrous silk protein harvested from silkworms, they were able to replicate key features of barnacle and mussel glue, including protein filaments, chemical crosslinking and iron bonding. The result is a powerful non-toxic glue that sets and works as well underwater as it does in dry conditions and is stronger than most synthetic glue products now on the ...

People who use methamphetamine are more likely to have health conditions, mental illness, and substance use disorders than people who do not use the drug, according to a new study by researchers at the Center for Drug Use and HIV/HCV Research (CDUHR) at NYU School of Global Public Health. The findings are published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. The use of methamphetamine--a highly addictive and illegal stimulant drug--has increased in recent years, as have overdose deaths. Methamphetamine can be toxic for multiple organs including the heart, lungs, liver, and neurological system, and injecting the drug can increase one's risk for infectious diseases. "Methamphetamine can complicate the management of existing chronic ...

A new study in the journal Sleep finds that increased evening screen time during the Covid-19 lockdown negatively affects sleep quality. During the lockdown period in Italy, daily internet traffic volume almost doubled compared to the same time in the previous year. Researchers here conducted a web-based survey of 2,123 Italian residents during the third and seventh week of Italy's first national lockdown. The survey ran in the third week of lockdown (March 25th - 28th, 2020) and evaluated sleep quality and insomnia symptoms, using the Pittsburgh Sleep ...

A study published in the journal Pediatrics shows the combination of two early reading programs had positive effects on preschool students entering kindergarten in Cincinnati Public Schools over a three-year period. The two early reading programs are: Reach Out and Read, through which children receive a new book and guidance about reading at home during well-visits from newborn through age 5; and Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, which mails new books to the child's home once a month from birth through age 5. Each of these is well-established at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and across the nation. "With this early study, we suggest that when combined and sustained, ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Many species of ground-dwelling beetles, ladybugs, hoverflies, damsel bugs, spiders and parasitic wasps kill and eat pest species that routinely plague farmers, including aphids and corn rootworm larvae and adults. But the beneficial arthropods that live in or near cropped lands also are susceptible to insecticides and other farming practices that erase biodiversity on the landscape. A new study reveals that beneficial arthropods are nearly twice as abundant and diverse in uncultivated field edges in the spring as they are in areas that ...

A University of Birmingham-led study of over a thousand dental professionals has shown their increased occupational risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection during the first wave of the pandemic in the UK. The observational cohort study, published today (3 June 2021), in the Journal of Dental Research, involved 1,507 Midland dental care practitioners. Blood samples were taken from the cohort at the start of the study in June 2020 to measure their levels of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The team found 16.3% of study participants - which included dentists, dental nurses and dental hygienists - had SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, compared to just 6% of the general population at the time. Meanwhile, the percentage of dental ...

Scientific papers suggesting that smokers are less likely to fall ill with covid-19 are being discredited as links to the tobacco industry, reveals an investigation by The BMJ today. Journalists Stéphane Horel and Ties Keyzer report on undisclosed financial links between certain scientific authors and the tobacco and e-cigarette industry in a number of covid research papers. In April 2020, two French studies (shared as preprints before formal peer review) suggested that nicotine might have a protective effect against covid-19 - dubbed the "nicotine hypothesis." The stories made headlines worldwide ...

New York, NY (June 2, 2021) - A phase 3 clinical trial co-led by Mount Sinai researchers is the first to show that immunotherapy after surgery to remove bladder cancer can reduce the risk of relapse for patients who are at high risk of their cancer returning in a deadly metastatic form, according to results published in The New England Journal of Medicine. The immunotherapy nivolumab was used as an adjuvant therapy, which is given after surgery in the hopes of maximizing its effectiveness. The randomized trial, named "Checkmate 274," showed that using nivolumab increased these patients' chance of staying cancer free after surgery compared to patients who received a placebo. The average length of time before relapse nearly doubled ...

June 5, 2021 marks the 40th anniversary of the first report of AIDS cases and the onset of the American AIDS epidemic. In a new, thought-provoking paper in the New England Journal of Medicine, Professor Ronald Bayer and co-author Gerald Oppenheiner capture the experiences of the physicians who were central to the AIDS epidemic. In the words of the doctors, they relay what it meant to look back after 40 years and how they "aged together." The doctors called their experiences extraordinary and the conditions demanding, under which they performed their duties and treated their patients. They speak of their work as "in the trenches," giving their careers immediate meaning and value that they never expected. As several physicians expressed, ...

MINNEAPOLIS - Deep brain stimulation continues to be effective in people with Parkinson's disease 15 years after the device is implanted, according to a study published in the June 2, 2021, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Researchers found that compared to before deep brain stimulation, study participants continued to experience significant improvement in motor symptoms, which are symptoms that affect movement, as well as a reduction in medications 15 years later. Parkinson's disease can progressively affect speech, walking and balance due to a gradual reduction of a chemical in the brain called dopamine. Parkinson's symptoms of muscle stiffness, tremor and slowness ...

MINNEAPOLIS - Older people with type 1 diabetes who have been to the hospital at some point for both low and high blood sugar levels may be at six times greater risk for developing dementia years later. The research is published in the June 2, 2021, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study also found that people with type 1 diabetes who visit the hospital for just one of the blood sugar extremes may also be at greater risk for developing dementia. Type 1 diabetes is a chronic condition in which the pancreas produces little or no insulin. Hypoglycemia is low blood glucose, or the main sugar in blood, that may result in loss of consciousness. Hyperglycemia results from insulin deficiency or extremely ...

URBANA, Ill. -When pigs get hit with significant illnesses during key stages of pregnancy, their immune response may negatively affect developing piglets, making them less productive on the farm. New research from the University of Illinois shows that when those piglets - especially males - experience a second stressor in early life, they are at higher risk of neurodevelopmental and other neurological anomalies, putting them at an even greater disadvantage in production settings. "With more information about maternal illness, what we call maternal immune activation, we can make better decisions about how to handle these types of immune challenges within animal production settings," says Marissa Keever-Keigher, doctoral student ...

In a new study, University of Maine researchers found that culture helps humans adapt to their environment and overcome challenges better and faster than genetics. After conducting an extensive review of the literature and evidence of long-term human evolution, scientists Tim Waring and Zach Wood concluded that humans are experiencing a "special evolutionary transition" in which the importance of culture, such as learned knowledge, practices and skills, is surpassing the value of genes as the primary driver of human evolution. Culture is an under-appreciated factor in human evolution, Waring ...

Icebergs crumbling into the sea may be what first come to mind when imagining the most dramatic effects of global warming. But new University of Arizona-led research, published in Geophysical Research Letters, suggests that more record-breaking temperatures will actually occur in the tropics, where there is a large and rapidly growing population. "People recognize that polar warming is much faster than the mid-latitudes and tropics; that's a fact," said lead study author Xubin Zeng, director of the UArizona Climate Dynamics and Hydrometeorology Center and a professor of atmospheric sciences. "The second fact is that the warming over land is greater than over ...

People of color are more than twice as likely to die after a traumatic brain injury as white people, according to a new retrospective review from Oregon Health & Science University. The study published today in the journal Frontiers in Surgery. In the report, "Racial and Ethnic Inequities in Mortality During Hospitalization for Traumatic Brain Injury: A Call to Action," the researchers analyzed more than a decade of data related to the health outcomes and demographics of thousands of patients treated for traumatic head injuries at OHSU Hospital, one of two Level 1 trauma centers in the state. They found a clear delineation of worse outcomes for people of color. "We have a societal and professional duty to recognize and accept that the effects of structural ...

Hydrogels are commonly used inside the body to help in tissue regeneration and drug delivery. However, once inside, they can be challenging to control for optimal use. A team of researchers in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University is developing a new way to manipulate the gel -- by using light. Graduate student Patrick Lee and Dr. Akhilesh Gaharwar, associate professor, are developing a new class of hydrogels that can leverage light in a multitude of ways. Light is a particularly attractive source of energy as it can be confined to a predefined area as well as be finetuned by the time or intensity of light exposure. Their work was recently published in the journal Advanced Materials. Light?responsive hydrogels are an ...

OAKLAND, Calif. -- In patients with insulin-treated type 2 diabetes, the use of continuous glucose monitors is associated with better blood sugar control and fewer visits to the emergency room for hypoglycemia, a Kaiser Permanente study published June 2 in the journal JAMA found. The monitors have previously been shown to improve glucose control for patients with type 1 diabetes. Continuous glucose monitors are now the standard of care for these patients. "The improvement in blood sugar control was comparable to what a patient might experience after starting a new diabetes medication," said the study's lead author Andrew J. Karter, PhD, a senior research scientist with the Kaiser Permanente Northern California ...

What The Study Did: Researchers investigated the effect of real-time continuous glucose monitoring on glycemic control among patients with insulin-treated diabetes. Authors: Andrew J. Karter, Ph.D., of Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, California, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2021.6530) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support. INFORMATION: Media advisory: The full study and editorial ...

BAR HARBOR, MAINE — Many salamanders can readily regenerate a lost limb, but adult mammals, including humans, cannot. Why this is the case is a scientific mystery that has fascinated observers of the natural world for thousands of years. Now, a team of scientists led by James Godwin, Ph.D., of the MDI Biological Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, has come a step closer to unraveling that mystery with the discovery of differences in molecular signaling that promote regeneration in the axolotl, a highly regenerative salamander, while blocking it in the adult mouse, which is a mammal with limited regenerative ability. "Scientists at ...

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University's Computational Biology Department in the School of Computer Science have developed a new process that could reinvigorate the search for natural product drugs to treat cancers, viral infections and other ailments. The machine learning algorithms developed by the Metabolomics and Metagenomics Lab match the signals of a microbe's metabolites with its genomic signals and identify which likely correspond to a natural product. Knowing that, researchers are better equipped to isolate the natural product to begin developing it for a possible drug. "Natural products are still one of the most successful paths for drug discovery," said Bahar Behsaz, a project scientist in the lab and lead author of a paper about the process. "And ...

A team of Colorado State University scientists, led by veterinary postdoctoral fellow Dr. Anna Fagre, has detected Zika virus RNA in free-ranging African bats. RNA, or ribonucleic acid, is a molecule that plays a central role in the function of genes. According to Fagre, the new research is a first-ever in science. It also marks the first time scientists have published a study on the detection of Zika virus RNA in any free-ranging bat. The findings have ecological implications and raise questions about how bats are exposed to Zika virus in nature. The study was recently published in Scientific Reports, a journal published by Nature Research. Fagre, a researcher at CSU's Center for Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases, ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - All fish are not created equal, at least when it comes to nutritional benefits. This truth has important implications for how declining fish biodiversity can affect human nutrition, according to a computer modeling study led by Cornell and Columbia University researchers. The study, "Declining Diversity of Wild-Caught Species Puts Dietary Nutrient Supplies at Risk," published May 28 in Science Advances, focused on the Loreto region of the Peruvian Amazon, where inland fisheries provide a critical source of nutrition for the 800,000 inhabitants. At the same time, the findings apply to fish biodiversity worldwide, as more than 2 billion people depend on fish as their primary source of animal-derived nutrients. "Investing in safeguarding biodiversity can deliver ...