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 ...

To slow the effects of climate change, conserve biodiversity, and meet the sustainable development goals, replanting trees is vital. Restored forests store carbon within the forest’s soil, shrubs, and trees. Mixed forests are especially effective at carbon storage, as different species with complementary traits can increase overall carbon storage. Compared to single-species forests, mixed forests are also more resilient to pests, diseases, and climatic disturbances, which increases their long-term carbon storage potential. The delivery of other ecosystem services is also greater in mixed species forests, and they support higher levels of biodiversity. Although the benefits ...

WHAT: A treatment to move blood from the umbilical cord into an infant’s body may provide a safe option for preterm infants born after 28 weeks who need rapid support, suggests a study supported by the National Institutes of Health. The procedure, called umbilical cord milking, involves gently squeezing the cord between the thumb and forefinger and pushing the blood into the newborn’s abdomen. The new findings suggest that concerns raised by a 2019 study of infants born before 28 weeks—which concluded that umbilical cord milking might increase the risk of bleeding inside the brain—do not apply to preterm infants born after 28 weeks. The ...

Osaka, Japan – Robots able to display human emotion have long been a mainstay of science fiction stories. Now, Japanese researchers have been studying the mechanical details of real human facial expressions to bring those stories closer to reality. In a recent study published by the Mechanical Engineering Journal, a multi-institutional research team led by Osaka University have begun mapping out the intricacies of human facial movements. The researchers used 125 tracking markers attached to a person’s face to closely examine 44 different, singular facial actions, such as blinking or raising the corner of the mouth. Every facial expression comes with a variety of local deformation ...

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates there were 42,795 deaths resulting from motor vehicle crashes in 2022 in the United States. This projection is close to the previous year fatality numbers, which were the highest in 16 years. A Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science at University of California San Diego program aims to improve safety for all roadway users, including drivers, pedestrians and cyclists with support from a $360,000 grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety through the NHTSA. To inform and promote safe driving, the UC San Diego Training, Research and Education for Driving Safety (TREDS) provides ...

A research team led by The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has developed a microprinter that can print piezoelectric films 100 times faster for the production of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) for sensors, wearable or implantable medical devices, offering the possibility to lower the mass production costs. The microprinter, built at a comparatively lower cost as compared with other printers on the market, utilizes an electrostatic field to propel streams of ink onto a platform, allowing for efficient manipulation of thin film patterns and enhanced printing speed to address the challenge of mass production ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Oregon State University is one of four institutions selected to advance a federal effort to modernize the National Spatial Reference System, which underpins surveying, mapping, autonomous vehicle navigation, precision agriculture and the rest of the United States’ geospatial economy. OSU will receive $6.5 million over five years from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for research to be conducted by the new Geospatial Center for the Arctic and Pacific, or GCAP. The funding is through NOAA’s National Geodetic Survey and is part of nearly $20 million awarded overall. The other funding ...

Peer-reviewed/ review, analysis and opinion  The Lancet: Studying medicine, Nazism, and the Holocaust crucial to strengthening medical education and ethics today Most comprehensive report to date on medical atrocities under Nazism and during the Holocaust – and their implications for today – details the central role health professionals played in formulating and carrying out the antisemitic, racist, and inhumane policies and practices during the Nazi regime. The Commission challenges long-held misconceptions about medicine in the Nazi era, including the claim that medical crimes were carried out by only a ...

The effectiveness of live zoster (shingles) vaccine is highest in the first year after vaccination and then wanes substantially. But it continues to provide some protection against shingles and its complications ten years after vaccination, even in patients with a weakened immune system, finds a study published by The BMJ. Vaccine effectiveness is a measure of how well vaccines work to protect communities in the real world. Herpes zoster, commonly known as shingles, is a painful rash caused by reactivation of the chickenpox virus. It’s much more common among people aged 60 and older and those with a weakened ...

Lisbon, Portugal: Patients with HER2-positive breast cancer that has started to spread to other parts of the body survive for longer if they are treated with a new drug called pyrotinib, according to results from the longest follow-up of the PHOEBE randomised clinical trial in China.   Presenting the latest results at the Advanced Breast Cancer Seventh International Consensus Conference (ABC 7), Professor Xichun Hu, of Fudan University Cancer Hospital, Shanghai, China, said the researchers had been able to analyse data on overall survival from the trial up to March 15, ...

Some barnacles are ‘morphing’ to protect themselves from predatory warm-water sea snails, which are expanding into their territory due to climate change. Research led by the University of Southampton and published in the Journal of Biogeography shows how temperate prey species are adapting to changing water temperatures, which carry the threat of warm-water predators encroaching into their territory. As global sea-surface temperatures rise and the number of marine heatwaves increase under global heating, coastal marine communities are changing. Warm-water predators ...

AI can map giant icebergs from satellite images 10,000 times faster than humans     Scientists have trained an artificial intelligence (AI) system to accurately map - in one-hundredth of a second - the surface area and outline of giant icebergs captured on satellite images.   It is a major advance on existing automated systems which struggle to distinguish icebergs from other features in the image. Manual - or human - interpretation of the image is more ...

Whether talking about the office kitchen, hiking trails or ratings on Yelp, there are always people who put in effort to leave those spaces better. There are also those who contribute nothing to that public good. New research using large-scale online experiments suggests that rewarding people to contribute to a virtual public good, such as a simulated online rating for a ferry system, increased the accuracy of the ratings and improved the overall quality of that resource. The multidisciplinary team, including researchers from the University of California, Davis; Hunter College, College of New York; the Max Planck Institute for ...

1 in 25 carries a genotype that is associated with a shortened lifespan Scientists at deCODE genetics, a subsidiary of Amgen, have published a study on actionable genotypes detected in the Icelandic population and their association with lifespan. The results of this study are among the things that have motivated the government of Iceland to announce a nationwide effort in precision medicine. As the delivery of precision medicine to a population requires considerable amount of data on genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics of the population, Icelanders are currently exceptionally well suited for ...

While we all aspire for a long lifespan, what is most coveted is a long period of vigor and health, or “healthspan,” that precedes the inevitable decline of advancing age. Researchers at UC Santa Barbara have discovered that instruments of death that cells use to commit suicide when things go wrong contribute to making a longer and healthier life by revitalizing the specialized cellular compartments called mitochondria. Mitochondria generate the energy for all of our activities, from movement to thought. These power plants inside our cells descended ...

Dr. Vidhya Rangaraju has been named a recipient of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s “Ben Barres Early Career Acceleration Award,” which will provide her lab with $1.2 million over four years to study dysfunctions of brain energy supply.  Dr. Rangaraju is a Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience (MPFI). With this award, her lab will investigate the causes of disrupted energy supply in neurons that lead to cognitive decline in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).  ...

Transistors — the tiny on-off switches inside microchips — have gotten smaller and smaller over the years, increasing computing power and enabling smaller devices. During that time, the copper wires that connect these switches have likewise shrunk. However, smaller, thinner wires create a big problem, said Daniel Gall, professor of materials science and engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. “The job of the wire is to conduct electrons — electricity. Imagine a wire as a crowded hallway that the electrons have to get through. The narrower the hallway, the more the electrons bump into things and scatter. We call that resistance,” Gall ...

URBANA, Ill. — Waterhemp, the aggressive weed threatening Corn Belt crop production, is throwing curveballs once again, according to researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The weed has famously developed resistance to not one or two, but seven herbicide sites-of-action classes, nearly exhausting the chemical tools farmers can use to defend their livelihood. In a new Weed Science study, U. of I. researchers show that a single major gene is responsible for waterhemp’s resistance to S-metolachlor ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2023 MINNEAPOLIS – People with low education and income levels may have a 10% increased risk of death or being dependent on others to complete daily tasks three months after a stroke compared to people with high education and income levels, according to new research published in the November 8, 2023, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study does not prove that low education and income cause worse outcomes after stroke. It only shows an association. “Compared ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2023 MINNEAPOLIS –  For people with epilepsy, doing yoga may help reduce feelings of stigma about the disease along with reducing seizure frequency and anxiety, according to new research published in the November 8, 2023, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. “People with epilepsy often face stigma that can cause them to feel different than others due to their own health condition and that can have a significant impact on their quality of life,” said study author ...

Embargoed for release: Wednesday, November 8, 4:00 PM ET Key points: In a randomized trial of the cardiometabolic impacts of workplace interventions designed to reduce work-family conflict, older employees and those at baseline higher risk for cardiometabolic disease saw their risk of developing cardiovascular disease decrease equivalent to five to 10 years of age-related cardiometabolic changes. The study is among the first to assess whether changes to the work environment can affect cardiometabolic risk. Boston, MA—Increasing workplace flexibility may lower employees’ risk of cardiovascular disease, according to a new ...

After conducting the first scoping review of its kind, researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus have developed an evidence based interactive mapping tool to assist policymakers as they consider regulating the concentration of THC in cannabis products and as more potent products move into the marketplace. Their review, funded by the State of Colorado, was released today in the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH).    “We looked at studies that measured adverse or beneficial effects of high concentration ...