The gene SYNGAP1, the variants of which are top risk factors for Autism Apectrum Disorder (ASD), has previously unappreciated effects on the developing brain, according to a new study published in Nature Neuroscience. The study shows how disease-causing variants of SYNGAP1, thought primarily to affect synapses between mature neurons, could disrupt early development in a key region of the brain known as the cortex.  “Our findings reframe our understanding ...

New research finds that almost half of people who use illicit drugs in rural areas have been recently incarcerated. Results from a survey of almost 3,000 people in eight rural areas nationwide who report using illicit drugs published today in the journal JAMA Network Open. The study found that 42% had been incarcerated, either in prison or local jails, in the preceding six months. The study was conducted by researchers at Oregon Health & Science University and institutions across 10 states. The findings suggest a prime ...

An international team led by scientists from the University of Liège has observed, for the first time in the visible range, a glow on the night side of the planet Mars. These new observations provide a better understanding of the dynamics of the upper atmosphere of the Red Planet and its variations throughout the year. A scientific team led by researchers from the Laboratory for Planetary and Atmospheric Physics (LPAP) at the University of Liège (BE) has just observed, for the first time, lights in the night sky over Mars using the UVIS-NOMAD instrument on ...

The boom in phones, laptops and other personal devices over the last few decades has been made possible by the lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery, but as climate change demands more powerful batteries for electric vehicles and grid-scale renewable storage, lithium-ion technology might not be enough. Lithium-metal batteries (LMBs) have theoretical capacities an order of magnitude greater than lithium-ion, but a more literal boom has stymied research for decades. “A compounding challenge that further doomed the first wave of LMB commercialization in the late 1980s was their propensity to ...

MIAMI, FLORIDA (EMBARGOED UNTIL NOV. 9, 2023, AT 11 A.M. ET) – A multicenter study led by researchers at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine shows how interactions between tumor cells and immune components of the microenvironment can impact treatment responses and outcomes in patients newly diagnosed with multiple myeloma who undergo combination treatments that include targeted immunotherapy. New drugs developed over the past two decades have dramatically improved survival rates, with “deep” and sustained treatment ...

An international group of scientists has cautioned against reliance on mechanical cleanup devices as a means of addressing the plastic pollution crisis. The researchers – comprising a number of the world’s foremost experts in plastic pollution – say they appreciate the clear and pressing need to tackle the millions of tonnes of waste that have already accumulated in the ocean and waterways. However, they caution that plastic removal technologies used so far have shown varied efficiency in the amount of waste material they are able to collect, many have not been tested at all. In fact, some have been shown to harm quantities of marine organisms – including ...

(San Antonio, November 9, 2023) — The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded Jessica Eise, an assistant professor of social and environmental challenges in the University of Texas at San Antonio Department of Communication, $425,000 for her project to explore how to create enduring change in environmental public behavior to support actions that will effectively address climate change and its impacts on society. Despite four decades of climate change communication, the world has yet to see adequate public action and policymaker support to substantively address the challenge. Eise’s findings will empower ...

Women produce physiological data that is just as predictable as men, at least when it comes to skin temperature. This might seem like common sense, but variations in body signals due to menstrual cycles, such as temperature, were used as an excuse to keep women out of clinical studies for decades.  The data for the finding was gathered from a wearable device to continuously monitor the skin temperature of 600 people, half female and half male, over six months. The team found that there were more differences between any ...

Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) and Duke University School of Medicine have been awarded a $1.25 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation for the project “Measuring Artificial Intelligence (AI) Maturity in Healthcare Organizations.”   Working with the Coalition for Health AI (CHAI) and the University of Iowa, a team of experts will leverage the grant to develop a maturity model framework. The project leads are Peter Embí, MD, MS, and Laurie Novak, ...

Doctoral students at nine New York City area graduate engineering programs will soon be able to take courses at each other’s institutions without any additional tuition, as part of a new multi-school agreement announced today.  The Inter-University Engineering Doctoral Consortium (IUEDC), led by NYU Tandon School of Engineering, encourages Ph.D. students to complement their primary program by taking courses of interest offered at different schools, providing access to specialty instruction and expertise that may not be available at their home universities. Students should be ...

An international team of scientists, led by University of Missouri’s Haojing Yan, used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to discover 14 new transient objects during their time-lapse study of galaxy cluster MACS0416 — located about 4.3 billion light years from Earth — which they’ve dubbed as the “Christmas Tree Galaxy Cluster.” “Transients are objects in space, like individual stars, that appear to suddenly brighten by orders of magnitudes and then fade away,” said Yan, an associate professor in the Department ...

Stories about troubling aspects of science’s past as well as some hopeful signs for its future are among the winners of the 2023 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards. Presenter Adam Rutherford and producer Ilan Goodman won a Gold Award in the Audio category for a BBC series on the eugenics movement and its continuing repercussions in the modern age. Ashley Smart of Undark magazine won the Gold Award in the Science Reporting In-Depth category for a piece on the lingering impact of scientific racism, including the appropriation of legitimate genetics research for extremist ends. On a more ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- Regenstrief Institute informaticians and other data experts will share their research insights and innovations from November 11-15 at the 2023 American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) Annual Symposium in New Orleans, Louisiana. Two Regenstrief researchers also were part of the leadership team that organized and helped set the agenda for the conference, “Transforming Healthcare and Biomedicine for a Sustainable Future.” AMIA’s Annual Symposium is the premier medical informatics event, presenting leading-edge scientific research and a wide array of scientific sessions. The symposium presents work from across the spectrum of the informatics ...

Washington, D.C.—High fiber diets, like those that include broccoli sprouts or other cruciferous vegetables, may reduce disease symptoms and improve quality of life in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), according to a study conducted in mice. The study was published in mSystems, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology. In the study, the investigators used a popular interleukin-10-knockout (IL-10-KO) mouse model of Crohn’s to investigate the interactions between mice and their immune systems, as well as the broccoli ...

SEATTLE, W.A.—November 9, 2023—The Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group, a division of the Allen Institute, today announced the launch of the Allen Discovery Center (ADC) for Neuroimmune Interactions at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The research team will comprehensively define and map the interactions between the nervous system and the immune system that take place distant from the brain, such as at the skin, lung, and gut surfaces, and analyze how these interactions relay a variety of sensations back to the brain and regulate organ physiology and tissue immune responses. "Understanding ...

On 16 October 2023, the newly elected STM Board Members were announced at the Annual General Meeting. Lei Shi, the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Tsinghua University Press (TUP), and the Director of both the Journal Publishing Center and Academic Publishing Center of TUP has been elected to the designated seat representing non-Europe/US based companies. He became the first Chinese representative on the STM Board.   STM is the world’s leading association of scholarly publishers, who is committed to  advance trusted research for ...

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a $2 million grant through its Emerging Frontiers in Research Initiatives (EFRI) program to investigators at the UTSA MATRIX AI Consortium for Human Well-Being for research that will help bridge the gap between human brain processing efficiency and the limitations of current artificial intelligence (AI) models. This endeavor seeks to create a new form of AI that rapidly learns, adapts to and operates in uncertain conditions, all while effectively addressing ...

The world has become increasingly industrialized over the past few centuries, bringing all sorts of technology and conveniences to the masses. However, workers in industrial environments are often at the risk of exposure to many dangerous gases, such as nitrogen dioxide (NO2). Inhaling this gas can lead to serious respiratory diseases like asthma and bronchitis, and severely compromise the health of industrial workers. Constant monitoring of NO2 levels is thus needed to ensure a safe workplace. To help with this, many types of selective gas sensors have been developed using different ...

Rubber-like materials, commonly used in dampeners, possess a unique property known as dynamic viscoelasticity, enabling them to convert mechanical energy from vibrations into heat while exhibiting spring-like and flow-like behaviors simultaneously. Customization of these materials is possible by blending them with compounds of specific molecular structures, depending on the dynamic viscosity requirements. However, the underlying mechanisms behind the distinct mechanical properties of these materials remain unclear. A primary reason for this knowledge gap has been the absence of a comprehensive system capable of simultaneously ...

EMBARGOED UNTIL 9:05 A.M. UTC ON NOV. 9, 2023 Sensitivity to common food allergens such as dairy and peanuts could be an important and previously unappreciated cause of heart disease, new research suggests – and the increased risk for cardiovascular death includes people without obvious food allergies. That increased risk could be comparable to – or exceed – the risks posed by smoking, as well as diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis, the researchers report. UVA Health scientists and their collaborators looked at thousands of adults over time and found that people who produced antibodies in ...

Sensitivity to common food allergens such as cow’s milk and peanuts could be an important and previously unappreciated cause of heart disease, new research suggests – and the increased risk for cardiovascular death includes people without obvious food allergies. In a paper published in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology that describes analyses led by Corinne Keet, M.D., Ph.D., pediatric allergy and immunology professor in the UNC Department of Pediatrics of two longitudinal studies, the authors show that the people who produced IgE antibodies to cow’s milk and other foods were at significantly increased risk of cardiovascular mortality. This was true even ...

Joint press release Utrecht University and Natural History Museum Maastricht The cradle of palaeontology – the study of fossil remains of animals and plants – lies in the Maastricht limestones, where the first Mosasaurus was discovered in 1766. The Dutch-Belgian border area around the Limburg capital is one of the best-explored areas in the world where Cretaceous rocks are concerned, the era that came to an abrupt end 66 million years ago. New data can now be added to all previous knowledge: the Maastricht mosasaurs turned out to be quite picky in their choice of diet. This ...

Leveraging artificial intelligence and the largest pediatric brain MRI dataset to date, researchers have now developed a growth chart for tracking muscle mass in growing children. The new study led by investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, found that their artificial intelligence-based tool is the first to offer a standardized, accurate, and reliable way to assess and track indicators of muscle mass on routine MRI. Their results were published today in Nature Communications. “Pediatric cancer patients often struggle with low ...

Cell-based therapies show promise for drug delivery, replacing damaged tissues, harnessing the body’s own healing mechanisms and more But keeping cells alive to produce therapies has remained a challenge Researchers used a smart, energy-efficient version of water splitting to produce oxygen for these cells New approach maintains cells in vitro and in vivo, showing promise for both acute and chronic applications  EVANSTON, Ill. — In 2021, a Northwestern University-led research team received a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) contract worth up to $33 million to develop an ...

By Kimberly Flynn PISCATAWAY, NJ—Sensors in smartphones and smart speakers could help determine a person’s level of alcohol intoxication based on the changes in their voice, according to a new study in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. Researchers at Stanford Medicine and the University of Toronto conducted a small study of 18 adults ages 21 and up. Participants were given a weight-based dose of alcohol and randomly assigned a series of tongue twisters—one before drinking, and one each hour up to seven hours after drinking. The participants were asked to read the tongue twister aloud, and a smartphone was placed on a table withing ...