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 ...

Recent advancements in generative artificial intelligence (AI) have showcased its potential in a wide range of creative activities such as to produce works of art, compose symphonies, and even draft legal texts, slide presentations or the like. These developments have raised concerns that AI will outperform humans in creativity tasks and make knowledge workers redundant. These comments are most recently underlined by a Fortune article entitled ‘Elon Musk says AI will create a future where ‘no job is needed’: ‘The AI will be able to do everything’. In ...

Ambegaonkar Studying Physical & Mental Workload & Recovery In Collegiate Dancers  Jatin Ambegaonkar, Professor, School of Kinesiology, received funding for the project: "Physical and mental workload and recovery in collegiate dancers."  He and his collaborators, Kelley Wiese (PhD Student, CEHD – Kinesiology concentration) and Dr. Jena Hansen-Honeycutt (School of Dance, CVPA) aim to comprehensively assess the workload in collegiate dancers over the academic year.   Specifically, they are examining objective physical activity demands ...

A team led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine has used an AI-based approach to uncover underlying patterns among the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age, termed social determinants of health (SDoH), and then linked each pattern to children’s health outcomes. Compared with traditional approaches, the strategy, in principle, provides a more objective and comprehensive picture of potential social factors that affect child health, which in turn, can enable better targeted interventions. As reported Oct. 16 in JAMA Pediatrics, the researchers analyzed data on more than 10,500 American children, in communities across 17 U.S. ...

Dere To Make Updates To CHIANTI Atomic Database & Software Kenneth Dere, Research Professor, Physics and Astronomy, received funding from NASA for: "Updates to the CHIANTI atomic database and software." CHIANTI is a database that contains a large quantity of atomic data for the analysis of astrophysical spectra.  Dere will also conduct maintenance on and make improvements to the ChiantiPy software package.  ChiantiPy is the Python interface to the CHIANTI atomic database for astrophysical ...

RICHLAND, Wash.—Can AI be trusted? The question pops up wherever AI is used or discussed—which, these days, is everywhere.   It’s a question that even some AI systems ask themselves.   Many machine-learning systems create what experts call a “confidence score,” a value that reflects how confident the system is in its decisions. A low score tells the human user that there is some uncertainty about the recommendation; a high score indicates to the human user that the system, at least, is quite sure of its decisions. Savvy humans know to check the confidence score when ...

Researchers at the University of Warsaw's Faculty of Physics have superposed two light beams twisted in the clockwise direction to create anti-clockwise twists in the dark regions of the resultant superposition. The results of the research have been published in the prestigious journal “Optica”. This discovery has implications for the study of light-matter interactions and represents a step towards the observation of a peculiar phenomenon known as a quantum backflow. “Imagine that you are throwing a tennis ball. The ball starts moving forward with positive momentum. If the ball doesn’t hit an obstacle, you are unlikely to expect it to suddenly ...

A team at the Medical University of South Carolina and Cincinnati Children’s has developed a sophisticated model for studying the diseased colon that could lead to the development of personalized treatments for colon-related diseases, such as cancer and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The researchers report their findings in the Nov. 2 issue of Cell Stem Cell. MUSC Hollings Cancer Center researcher Jorge Munera, Ph.D., collaborated with James Wells, Ph.D., and Daniel Kechele, Ph.D., both of Cincinnati Children’s, to grow miniature human colons complete with an immune system in the lab. This model improves upon existing organoids, or mini ...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 20, 2023 — There’s a century-old technology that’s taking the grid-scale battery market by storm. Based on water, virtually fireproof, easy to recycle and cheap at scale, vanadium flow batteries could be the wave of the future. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPtaDqLsbnM Reactions is a video series produced by the American Chemical Society and PBS Digital Studios. Subscribe to Reactions at http://bit.ly/ACSReactions and follow us on Twitter @ACSReactions. The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS’ mission is to advance the broader chemistry enterprise ...

Mammals usually mate via penetrative sex, but researchers report November 20 in the journal Current Biology that a species of bat, the serotine bat, (Eptesicus serotinus) mates without penetration. This is the first time non-penetrative sex has been documented in a mammal. The bats’ penises are around seven times longer than their partners’ vaginas and have a “heart-shaped” head that is seven times wider than the vaginal opening. Both the penises’ size and shape would make penetration post-erection impossible, and the researchers show that, rather than functioning as a penetrative ...

Cambridge scientists have shown that placing physical constraints on an artificially-intelligent system – in much the same way that the human brain has to develop and operate within physical and biological constraints – allows it to develop features of the brains of complex organisms in order to solve tasks. As neural systems such as the brain organise themselves and make connections, they have to balance competing demands. For example, energy and resources are needed to grow and sustain the network in physical ...

Wild caviar, a pricey delicacy made from sturgeon eggs, has been illegal for decades since poaching brought the fish to the brink of extinction. Today, legal, internationally tradeable caviar can only come from farmed sturgeon, and there are strict regulations in place to help protect the species. However, by conducting genetic and isotope analyses on caviar samples from Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, and Ukraine—nations bordering the remaining wild sturgeon populations—a team of sturgeon experts found evidence that these regulations are actively being broken. Their results, ...

Astrophysicists say they have found an answer to why spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way are largely missing from a part of our Local Universe called the Supergalactic Plane. The Supergalactic Plane is an enormous, flattened structure extending nearly a billion light years across in which our own Milky Way galaxy is embedded. While the Plane is teeming with bright elliptical galaxies, bright disk galaxies with spiral arms are conspicuously scarce. Now an international team of researchers, co-led by Durham University, UK, and the University of Helsinki, Finland, say different distributions of elliptical and disk ...

About The Study: This study of 1,000 participants found that adults with low household income were less likely than adults with higher incomes to have a cardiologist involved in their care during a hospitalization for heart failure. These findings suggest that socioeconomic status may bias the care provided to patients hospitalized for heart failure.  Authors: Parag Goyal, M.D., M.Sc., of Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, 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/jamanetworkopen.2023.44070) Editor’s Note: Please see the article ...

About The Study: In this study of 1.3 million children from Ontario, Canada, a slightly higher risk of autism spectrum disorder was observed in children born to individuals with infertility, which appears partly mediated by certain obstetrical and neonatal factors. To optimize child neurodevelopment, strategies should further explore these other factors in individuals with infertility, even among those not receiving fertility treatment.  Authors: Maria P. Velez, M.D., Ph.D., of Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, is the corresponding author.  To access the ...

About The Study: In this systematic review and meta-analysis of 13 randomized clinical trials of app interventions with 1,470 participants, the feasibility and efficacy of mobile app interventions were supported in treating moderate and severe depression, and practical implications were also provided for developing effective app-based interventions in clinical practice.  Authors: Ji-Won Hur, Ph.D., of Korea University in Seoul, Republic of Korea, is the corresponding author.  To access the embargoed study: Visit our For ...

Noise is an unseen pollutant with very real health impacts. Like many other forms of pollution, because of systemic injustice, it affects some people more than others. It also affects wildlife.   In a study published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, Colorado State University acoustic ecologists found that redlined, or marginalized, communities have more and louder urban noise, which has been linked to negative consequences for people and wildlife.   Ecological degradation exacerbates injustices against those living in formerly redlined ...

HOUSTON – (Nov. 20, 2023) – Picture a swarm of drones capturing photos and video as they survey an area: What would enable them to process the data collected in the most rapid and effective manner possible? Rice University’s Santiago Segarra and Ashutosh Sabharwal have won a grant from the Army Research Office, a directorate of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Army Research Laboratory, to develop a machine learning framework that improves military communication networks’ decision-making processes. The research could also help inform applications such as self-driving vehicles ...

According to Thailand's Ministry of Public Health, approximately 18-24 million or 30-40 percent of the Thai population carries the thalassemia gene, with moderately severe thalassemia patients requiring regular treatment, including blood transfusion and chelation therapy to remove excess iron from the blood. To facilitate greater understanding of this hereditary hemoglobinopathy, BGI Genomics released its State of Thalassemia Awareness Report. This report assesses the level of knowledge and attitudes related to the associated ...

A global study of major crops has found that farmworkers are being increasingly exposed to combinations of extreme heat and humidity during planting and harvest seasons that can make it hard for them to function. Such conditions have nearly doubled across the world since 1979, the authors report, a trend that could eventually hinder cultivation. The most affected crop is rice, the world’s number one staple, followed closely by maize. As temperatures rise, the trend has accelerated in recent years, with some regions seeing 15-day per-decade increases in extreme humid heat during ...

Young Voices Unheard: Children’s Views from Scotland and Greece on Education is a new book published by Bentham Science that attempts to explore the question of how young children view the concepts of Children’s rights. Giving children an opportunity to voice their ideas on their education is necessary, if we do not want to deprive children of their right to be consulted and their opinions to be listened to and be seriously considered when decisions are made affecting children’s lives (article 12 of the Convention). The book attempts to give a voice to children aged 5 to ...

In a world driven by digital transformation, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has emerged as a powerhouse, providing on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments. Bentham Science is delighted to unveil "Amazon Web Services: The Definitive Guide for Beginners and Advanced Users," a comprehensive text that simplifies the complexities of AWS, making it accessible to graduate students, professionals, and academic researchers in computer science, engineering, and information technology. Key Features:  Hands-On Approach for Beginners:  The book adopts a practical, hands-on approach, ensuring that beginners can dive into AWS ...

In a paper published Nov. 10 in Intelligent Computing, Philip Nicholas Johnson-Laird of Princeton University and Marco Ragni of Chemnitz University of Technology propose a novel alternative to the Turing test, a milestone test developed by computing pioneer Alan Turing. The paper suggests that it is time to shift the focus from whether a machine can mimic human responses to a more fundamental question: "Does a program reason in the way that humans reason?" The Turing test, which has long been a cornerstone of AI evaluation, involves a human evaluator attempting to distinguish between human and machine ...

Falls are the leading cause of both fatal and nonfatal injuries in the United States for adults ages 65 and older. With 1 in 4 older adults falling annually, 27,000 deaths, 8 million emergency department (ED) visits, and 800,000 hospitalizations have occurred. Follow-up after an ED-related fall visit is essential to initiate preventive strategies in these patients who are at very high risk for recurrent falls. Currently, it is unclear how frequently follow up occurs and whether preventive strategies are implemented. Researchers from Florida Atlantic University’s Schmidt College of Medicine and collaborators explored this issue by investigating ...