PITTSBURGH—Researchers in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, in collaboration with paleontologists from Spain and Poland, used fossil evidence to engineer a soft robotic replica of pleurocystitid, a marine organism that existed nearly 450 million years ago and is believed to be one of the first echinoderms capable of movement using a muscular stem. Published today in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), the research seeks to broaden modern perspective of animal design and movement by introducing a new a field of study - Paleobionics - aimed at using Softbotics, robotics ...

City lights shine all night amid the bustling traffic, businesses and neighborhoods of Southern California, one of the most populated areas that mountain lions call home. A study from the University of California, Davis, found that mountain lions avoid places with artificial light, even during the day. The finding adds to the list of challenges faced by the big cats in the region, where scientists have warned they may face extinction within decades. The new study, published in the journal Philosophical ...

A drug candidate developed by researchers at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center for advanced metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer is now in its first clinical trial. Ramesh Narayanan, PhD, deputy director of the Center for Cancer Research and the Muirhead Endowed Professor in the College of Medicine at UTHSC, and Duane Miller, PhD, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at UTHSC, have worked for more than a decade on therapies involving the hormone receptors that influence cancer progression. Their drug candidate, a molecule designed as a treatment for ...

A new mathematical model predicts that mammalian sperm cells have two distinct swimming modes. This prediction opens new questions about potential connections between sperm cells’ motor activity and their transitions to hyperactivation phases that may play an important role in fertilization. The finding is part of a larger effort to use math and fluid dynamics to describe how mammalian sperm move. The research is led by a team of engineers at the University of California San Diego. The new work is published in the journal Physical ...

NEW ORLEANS, La. – Several Ochsner Health hospitals and partners across the Gulf South have earned an ‘A’ Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade for Fall 2023.The Leapfrog Group, a national nonprofit watchdog that sets standards for excellence in patient care, assigns a grade to general hospitals across the country based on more than 30 national performance measures reflecting errors, accidents, injuries and infections, as well as the systems hospitals have in place to prevent them. The following Ochsner Health hospitals and partners received an ...

Technology is edging closer and closer to the super-speed world of computing with artificial intelligence.  But is the world equipped with the proper hardware to be able to handle the workload of new AI technological breakthroughs? “The brain-inspired codes of the AI revolution are largely being run on conventional silicon computer architectures which were not designed for it,” explains Erica Carlson, 150th Anniversary Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Purdue University. A joint effort between Physicists from Purdue University, University of California San Diego (USCD) and École ...

Researchers at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology developed an automated laboratory robot to run complex electrochemical experiments and analyze data. With affordability and accessibility in mind, the researchers collaboratively created a benchtop robot that rapidly performs electrochemistry. Aptly named the Electrolab, this instrument greatly reduces the effort and time needed for electrochemical studies by automating many basic and repetitive laboratory tasks. The Electrolab can be used to explore energy storage materials and chemical reactions that promote the use of alternative ...

The fight against dengue fever has a new weapon: a mosquito infected with the bacteria Wolbachia, which prevents the spread of the virus. These mosquitoes have now been deployed in several trials demonstrating their potential in preventing disease transmission. Now, researchers at the University of Notre Dame have conducted an analysis of the World Mosquito Program’s randomized control trial of Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes in Indonesia, looking at how excluding transmission dynamics impacted the original interpretation of the trial’s results. “Randomized controlled trials are the gold standard for evaluating the efficacy of any ...

“Our research study has demonstrated that poziotinib is highly potent in neratinib-resistant HER2 L755S lobular and ductal breast cancer models [...].” BUFFALO, NY- November 6, 2023 – A new editorial paper was published in Oncotarget's Volume 14 on October 31, 2023, entitled, “The uncharted role of HER2 mutant alleles in breast cancer.” Somatic HER2 mutations are a novel class of therapeutic targets across different cancer types. Treatment with the tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) neratinib ...

WASHINGTON  –  Warren Wood, Ph.D., U.S. Naval Research Laboratory Ocean Sciences Division’s Geology and Geophysics section head, received the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) Bronze Medal on Sept. 19, 2023 during a ceremony held at the Naval Submarine Base in Groton, Conn. for outstanding individual achievement in undersea warfare.   This award-winning work would not have been possible without fantastic teamwork, especially from the staff in Geology and Geophysics and Acoustic Simulation, Measurements & Tactics Branches,” said Wood. “Essentially a software ...

A new study, "Timing of Orthostatic Hypotension and its Relationship with Falls in Older Adults", has brought critical insights into the assessment of orthostatic hypotension, a drop in blood pressure commonly found among older adults when transitioning from a sitting or lying position to a standing position that can lead to dizziness and falls. Published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society (JAGS) and based on a secondary analysis of the "Study to Understand Fall Reduction and Vitamin D in You (STURDY)," this study examined the prevalence of orthostatic hypotension at different time points after ...

As parasites adapt to a warming world, an infectious disease expert at Rochester Institute of Technology has his eye on the tsetse fly in sub-Saharan Africa. The biting fly transmits Trypanosomiasis, or “sleeping sickness,” to cattle there and could someday migrate to northern climates, including to the United States. RIT researcher Bolaji Thomas is leading a $650,000 study funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and the Agriculture ...

CAR-T cell therapy is a last hope for many patients with blood, bone marrow or lymph gland cancer when other treatments such as chemotherapy are unsuccessful. A limiting factor of this otherwise very effective and safe therapy is that the cells used in the process quickly reach a state of exhaustion. Researchers at the University of Freiburg have now been able to prevent this exhaustion and thus significantly improve the effect of the therapy in a preclinical animal model. The new results have been published in the journal Nature Immunology. Using the body’s own defences ...

A team of University of Maryland researchers developed a nasal spray vaccine that delivers the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein into cells of the airway in mice and hamsters, triggering an immune response that significantly reduced infection and spread of COVID-19. The technology can be adapted to induce immunity to other respiratory illnesses, such as influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infections. A nasal vaccine for respiratory viruses would be a significant improvement over intramuscular shots, because they are less invasive and stop viral particle replication in the airway, before a virus can enter the bloodstream. This could improve the rate ...

Simon Fraser University researchers studying the evolutionary history of flu viruses have found that a new quantitative analysis of how they evolved may help predict future strains. The research draws on a field known as phylogenetics, which focuses on how groups of organisms are evolutionarily related, and is published in the journal Science Advances. Researchers used large phylogenetic ‘trees’ to predict which strains are most likely to grow during the upcoming flu season, and determined that this approach was moderately effective in detecting future strains of the influenza virus, and could be another tool in the toolbox to guide seasonal ...

(SAN ANTONIO, NOVEMBER 6, 2023) — The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) associate professor of psychology Joe Houpt, is part of a team that has earned a one-year, $50,000 grant from the Mays Cancer Center at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio). The project, “Surviving is Not Enough: Enhancing Cognitive Function in Cancer Survivors through Movement and Introspection,” aims to measure and enhance the cognitive functioning of cancer survivors at the Mays Cancer ...

Samantha Viano, Assistant Professor, Education, received funding from the National Science Foundation for the project: "CAREER: Second Chance STEM: Uncovering school policies structuring access to and engagement in high school STEM credit recovery."   Viano will conduct three individual studies as part of this research. The first study will be located in 14 schools in a large and demographically changing suburban school district. This work will be followed by a survey of optimal policy/practice ...

Kirin Furst, Assistant Professor, Civil, Environmental and Infrastructure Engineering, is set to receive funding from the National Science Foundation for the project: "Disinfection Resiliency and Microbial Risk in Drinking Water Distribution Systems During Extreme Heat Disasters." Furst and Katherine E. Graham, Assistant Professor, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, will evaluate the effect of extreme heat on disinfection efficacy and failure risk in drinking water distribution systems, and evaluate a novel engineering solution to improve ...

Aditya Johri, Professor, Information Sciences and Technology; Khondkar Islam, Professor, Associate Chair, Undergraduate Studies, Information Sciences and Technology; and Vivian Motti, Associate Professor, Information Sciences and Technology, are set to receive $299,486 from the National Science Foundation for the project: "EAGER: Education DCL: An Embedded Case Study Approach for Broadening Students' Mindset for Ethical and Responsible Cybersecurity in AI."  Using prior research on situated learning and perspectival thinking, the project team will create a series of four ...

Ruixin Yang, Associate Professor, Geography and Geoinformation Science/Assistant Director, Center for Earth Observing Spatial Research (CEOSR), received $8,000 from the International Food Policy Research Institute for the project: "Climate Risk Profile Studies For Africa." Yang is producing hazard maps by major crops and by seasons. He is conducting an extensive review of existing hazard development methods employed by the Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). Yang is also developing a Python program that focuses on mapping and identifying ...

Sam Lebovic, Professor, History, received funding for: "Visiting Research Scholarship at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University."  His project will focus on the law and politics of public employee speech, focusing particularly on how a modern bureaucratized American government should manage the speech of its employees while balancing competing democratic values. The project will explore such problems as academic freedom, administrative law, public sector employment law, transparency, and whistleblowing regulation. It will seek to generate new understandings of legal ...

The Pandemic-related Traumatic Stress Scale (PTSS) can be used to effectively measure stress related to the COVID-19 pandemic and identify children and adults with higher levels of stress who may need additional mental health support, according to a new study funded by the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes Program (ECHO) at the National Institutes of Health. The study included 17,830 children and adults from 47 ECHO Cohort study sites representing all 50 states, Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico. Researchers split the sample into four groups ...

Dr. Dragomir Milovanovic, a neuroscientist at DZNE’s Berlin site, has been awarded an European Research Council (ERC) “Starting Grant” worth 1.5 million euros to investigate biophysical phenomena relevant to brain diseases in a groundbreaking research project. Ultimately, the goal is to better understand the behavior of aberrant protein inclusions in neurodegenerative diseases. Human cells are complex entities comprising proteins, lipids and a wide number of other molecular spieces, some of them forming organized compartments, while others virtually float around. “The cell interior ...

Over the past few decades, algae have been slowly edging corals out of their native reefs across the globe by blocking sunlight, wearing the corals down physically, and producing harmful chemicals. But in recent years, a new type of algal threat has surfaced in tropical regions like the Caribbean—one that spreads quickly and forms a crust on top of coral and sponges, suffocating the organisms underneath and preventing them from regrowing. In an article publishing in the journal Current Biology on November 6, a team of marine biologists report that peyssonnelioid alga crusts, or PACs, ...

University of Oxford news release Strict embargo until Monday, 6 November, 2023.  11.00 (ET) or 16.00 (GMT)   Domestic cats introduced from the Near East and wildcats native to Europe did not mix until the 1960s, despite being exposed to each other for 2,000 years, according to two research papers published today in Current Biology. An international team has found new archaeological and genetic evidence which transforms our understanding of the history of cats in Europe. The team sequenced and analysed both wild and domestic cats, including ...