PHILADELPHIA — (Nov. 26, 2024) — The Wistar Institute’s Alessandro Gardini, Ph.D., and lab have shed new light on how certain biological processes determine the development of neural cells. Their findings on a molecular “bridge” complex demonstrate a new level of detail in the understanding of early neural development — which is fundamental for the further understanding of neurodevelopmental syndromes. The new paper, “The enhancer module of integrator controls cell identity and early neural fate commitment” was published in the journal, Nature Cell Biology. “By achieving a better understanding of how the nervous system develops ...

A team of researchers led by Anna-Karin Gustavsson at Rice University has developed an innovative imaging platform that promises to improve our understanding of cellular structures at the nanoscale. This platform, called soTILT3D for single-objective tilted light sheet with 3D point spread functions (PSFs), offers significant advancements in super-resolution microscopy, enabling fast and precise 3D imaging of multiple cellular structures while the extracellular environment can be controlled and flexibly adjusted. The research was recently published in Nature Communications. Studying ...

Enron. Lehman Brothers. More recently, General Electric and Supermicro. During the past quarter century, a variety of high-profile companies have been caught cooking their books. But they’re often not caught before they’ve cost investors billions of dollars. That’s why analysts have long tried to sniff out businesses that may be using questionable or flat-out illegal accounting tricks to hide poor performance. New research from Urooj Khan, accounting professor and the Deloitte & Touche Centennial Faculty Fellow at Texas McCombs, proposes a new and more effective way to gauge companies’ “earnings quality.” In analyses of corporate ...

With 2024 on track to be declared the hottest on record, scientists from IIASA and Columbia University have noticed that specific regions are consistently more affected by extreme temperatures. A new study provides the first worldwide map of these regional climate danger zones. Amid the continued upward march in average temperatures over the past decades, a recent surge of record shattering extreme heat waves raise questions about the degree to which climate models can provide adequate estimates of relations between global mean temperature changes and regional climate risks. The study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) provides the ...

On Nov. 18, the heart failure and transplantation team at Emory University Hospital (EUH) made history, performing the first-ever surgical implantation in the United States of a brand-new type of ventricular assist device (VAD), which provides crucial care to patients with failing hearts. An expert team led by veteran cardiothoracic surgeon Mani Daneshmand, MD, successfully implanted a novel magnetically levitated pump, a VAD that has been specifically designed for patient ease and long-term health. The BrioVAD System, made by BrioHealth Solutions Inc., was authorized by the FDA to begin clinical trials ...

Congenital heart defects are the most common form of human birth defect, but we still don’t fully understand what causes them. Previous research had suggested that some heart defects could be triggered by problems with the placenta, the organ that provides oxygen and nutrients to the developing embryo. Now, researchers at Nanjing University, China have confirmed this link by focusing on a protein whose levels are reduced in many patients with congenital heart defects, called SLC25A1. SLC25A1 plays a key role in transporting ...

Chelsey Schlechter, MPH, PhD, Huntsman Cancer Institute investigator and assistant professor in the Department of Population Health Sciences at the University of Utah (the U), has been selected as a Cancer Moonshot Scholar. Schlechter is one of only eleven researchers in the U.S. chosen for the prestigious program this year, which aims to both advance impactful cancer research and broaden the research workforce. For the project, Schlechter and her team partnered with the Association for Utah Community Health and Utah Community Health Centers—organizations which ...

A new study led by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill offers a solution to water scarcity during droughts amid the tug of economic development, population growth and climate uncertainty for water users in Western U.S. states. The proposed two-way leasing contracts would coordinate agricultural-to-urban leasing during periods of drought and urban-to-agricultural leasing during wet periods, benefiting both urban and agricultural water users. “Water markets are an important tool for allocating water in the Western U.S., and other water-scarce regions around the world, but they are often slow to respond to drought, ...

Alexandria, VA, USA - The Journal of Dental Research (JDR) has announced the publication of a new issue of Advances in Dental Research, a supplement to the Journal of Dental Research (JDR), entitled, "Women in Dental, Clinical, and Translational Research.” The 2024 Annual Meeting of the American Association for Dental, Oral, and Craniofacial Research (AADOCR) and the Canadian Association for Dental Research featured a two-day “Meeting Within a Meeting” on the topic of “Women in Dental, Clinical, and Translational Research” organized by AADOCR Then- President Alexandre Vieira. During these sessions, speakers were challenged to reflect on ...

Team Unlocks New Insights on Pulsar Signals November 26, 2024, Mountain View, CA – Dr. Sofia Sheikh from the SETI Institute led a study that sheds new light on how pulsar signals—the spinning remnants of massive stars—distort as they travel through space. This study, published in The Astrophysical Journal, was performed by a multi-year cohort of undergraduate researchers in the Penn State branch of the Pulsar Search Collaboratory student club. Maura McLaughlin, Chair, Eberly Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy, West Virginia University, created the Pulsar Search Collaboratory to engage ...

Great apes track events with their eyes in the same way that humans do, according to a study published November 26th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Vanessa Wilson from the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland, and colleagues. When watching a cat chase a mouse, humans will alternate looking at cat and mouse, using the information to connect the two into what’s called an agent-patient relationship—with the cat as the agent and the mouse as the patient. This cognitive mechanism is thought to be ...

Routine screening to detect risk factors for heart disease dropped sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic in England, and some key measurements, such as blood pressure readings, may still lag behind pre-pandemic levels. These findings are reported in a new study by Frederick Ho and Naveed Sattar of the University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK, and colleagues published November 26th in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine. During the COVID-19 pandemic, patients went without routine face-to-face health checks, which are important for detecting common cardiometabolic ...

While NASA’s NEOWISE telescope ended its journey through space on Nov. 1, 2024, the team at IPAC, a science center at Caltech, was working on one further gift from the prolific mission.  The final data release from NEOWISE was released to the astronomy community just two weeks later, on Nov. 14, encompassing over 26 million images and nearly 200 billion sources detected by the telescope. And today, IPAC is releasing six new images from the mission’s archival data as a tribute to this landmark project, available here: https://www.astropix.org/link/3b2x  NEOWISE ...

"Research in the last several decades has established endothelial cells (ECs) as a dynamic interface critical for vascular protection.” BUFFALO, NY- November 26, 2024 – This editorial was published by Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) in Volume 16, Issue 17, titled, “The silent protector: Nucleoporin93’s role in vascular health.” Written by Julia Michalkiewicz, Tung D. Nguyen, and Monica Y. Lee from The University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine, ...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 26, 2024 – Human activities are causing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels to rise, which increases the global average surface temperature—and poses a threat to crop growth. Escalating concerns about climate change’s impact on global food security inspired researchers from Banaras Hindu University in India to create a way to explore how these factors influence crop yields. In Chaos, from AIP Publishing, the researchers share a mathematical model created to capture the nonlinear relationships between CO2, temperature, human population, ...

About The Study: This cohort study among individuals participating in a weight loss program found that nearly half of those consuming alcohol at baseline decreased their alcohol use after anti-obesity medication initiation. There may be properties of anti-obesity medications that lead to reduced use. For example, naltrexone decreases cravings for alcohol and glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs) may attenuate the rewarding effects of alcohol, similar to food.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Lisa R. Miller-Matero, PhD, email lmatero1@hfhs.org. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at ...

A multinational collaboration co-led by the Garvan Institute of Medical Research has uncovered a potential explanation for why some cancer patients receiving a type of immunotherapy called checkpoint inhibitors experience increased susceptibility to common infections. The findings, published in the journal Immunity, provide new insights into immune responses and reveal a potential approach to preventing the common cancer therapy side effect. “Immune checkpoint inhibitor therapies have revolutionised cancer treatment ...

Amphibians hold a significant place in evolution, representing the transition from aquatic to terrestrial lifestyles. They are crucial for understanding the brain and spinal cord of tetrapods—animals with four limbs, including humans. A group of scientists led by a team at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) now shows how harmless viruses can be used to illuminate the development of the frog nervous system. The results have now been published in Developmental Cell. Virus. When you hear the word, you probably shudder. But not all viruses are bad or cause disease. Some are even used for therapeutic ...

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications and VAST Data are giving supercomputing system Delta and the newly launched DeltaAI a boost in their storage and application performance. NCSA launched Harbor, a service that provides very fast storage for global home and software directories across all NCSA open-science resources. Its deployment has led to a 400% increase in application launch performance for the Delta system, among many other gains. Over the last two years, we’ve seen a significant increase in ...

Researchers have unveiled a groundbreaking advancement in liver failure care: the CATCH-LIFE-MELD score (Chinese Acute-on-Chronic Liver Failure Consortium (CATCH-LIFE)-MELD score). This innovative tool, developed by an international team led by Xia Yu and colleagues, enhances the accuracy of predicting short-term survival outcomes for patients suffering from acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF). The study, published in eGastroenterology, promises to revolutionize patient management and treatment planning for this life-threatening condition. “ACLF presents unique challenges due to its rapid progression and high mortality rates,” said Dr. Yu Shi, senior researcher at Zhejiang University ...

A recent special issue of the journal Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters has brought together some of China's top scientists to provide a picture of the latest progress in understanding and controlling air pollution. Fine particulate matter, referred to as PM2.5, and ground-level ozone (O3) are the main pollutants degrading the air quality of China’s cities and wider urban regions. Both have serious human health effects, such as heart disease, asthma, and lung damage. The World Health Organization (WHO) provides clear guidelines regarding acceptable concentrations ...

SAN FRANCISCO—November 26, 2024—Subtle signs of Alzheimer’s disease can emerge decades before a diagnosis—often in the form of irregular behaviors that reflect very early stages of brain dysfunction. But until now, identifying and measuring these slight behavioral changes in a scientific way hasn’t been feasible, not even when studying Alzheimer’s in mice.   In a study published in Cell Reports, a team of scientists at Gladstone Institutes used a new video-based machine learning tool to pinpoint ...

UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland is enrolling patients in an innovative clinical trial that seeks to cure sickle cell disease. The trial is the first in the U.S. to apply non-viral CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology in humans to directly correct the genetic mutation that causes the disease. The research involves taking the patient’s blood stem cells to correct the mutation and returning those edited cells to the patient through a bone marrow transplant. It’s hoped the corrected blood stem cells will then multiply and create a new blood system, one free of sickle cell.   “This ...

Gene editing could create hypoallergenic cats, according to a sequence analysis of the protein that triggers allergies to cats. Some 15% of people are allergic to cats, and symptoms can be severe. Martin D. Chapman and colleagues investigated CH1 and CH2, genes that code for the allergen, Fel d 1. Cats produce Fel d 1 in their sebaceous, salivary, perianal, and lachrymal glands. The function of Fel d 1 is unknown but comparisons of Fel d 1 sequences and homologs from 276 domestic or exotic cats—including cougars, cheetahs, lions, tigers, and jaguars, among others—suggests that CH1 and CH2 have been under active selection, and ...

The demand for electronics has led to a significant increase in e-waste. In 2022, approximately 62 million tons of e-waste were generated, marking an 82% increase from 2010. Projections indicate that this figure could rise to 82 million tons by 2030. E-waste contains valuable materials such as metals, semiconductors, and rare elements that can be reused. However, in 2022, only 22.3% of e-waste was properly collected and recycled, while the remaining materials, estimated to be worth almost $62 billion, were discarded in landfills. Although efforts to improve e-waste recycling continue, the process remains labor-intensive, and a significant portion of e-waste ...