People who endured childhood adversity, like abuse or neglect, were more likely to be hospitalized or die from COVID-19 in adulthood, a new University of Pittsburgh study found. Specifically, higher self-reported childhood adversity was linked to 12-25% higher odds of COVID-19 hospitalization and mortality. While age, sex, ethnicity, health, and sociodemographic factors have been related to such outcomes throughout the pandemic, this was the first study finding a link between these COVID-19  outcomes ...

The USA is likely to see consistent job growth from the transition to net zero, but the gains will be unevenly distributed, shows a new analysis. The analysis, conducted by Imperial College London researchers and published today in Nature Climate Change, shows that some states will need new policies to ensure a ‘just’ transition. The USA, alongside many countries, is planning for a low-carbon future, where energy production releases little to no carbon dioxide and what is released is removed from the atmosphere, creating net-zero carbon emissions. This has been backed by new policies, including the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which includes large investment ...

RICHMOND, Va. (Nov. 3, 2023) — If pharmacists had a larger role in prescribing medications to control blood pressure, they could prevent more than 15 million heart attacks, nearly 8 million strokes and more than 4 million cases each of angina and heart failure in the U.S. over 30 years, according to a new Virginia Commonwealth University-led study. The study, “Cost-Effectiveness of Pharmacist Prescribing for Managing Hypertension in the United States,” which published Friday in JAMA Network Open, details how ...

Differences in health care expenditures between Black and white adults vary substantially with the local level of racial and economic integration, and tend to be low or nonexistent in highly integrated communities, according to a study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. For their study, the researchers compared health care expenditures for a nationally representative sample of Black and white adults in census tracts across the United States. They found that, at the same level of health, health ...

About The Study: A novel multicomponent intervention designed to target several barriers that prevent eligible patients from completing key steps toward receiving a kidney transplant did not significantly increase the rate of completed steps in this randomized clinical trial that included 20,375 patients from 26 chronic kidney disease programs. Improving access to transplantation remains a global priority that requires substantial effort.  Authors: Amit X. Garg, M.D., Ph.D., of McMaster ...

Researchers in Germany and the USA have produced the first theoretical demonstration that the magnetic state of an atomically thin material, α-RuCl3, can be controlled solely by placing it into an optical cavity. Crucially, the cavity vacuum fluctuations alone are sufficient to change the material’s magnetic order from a zigzag antiferromagnet into a ferromagnet. The team’s work has been published in npj Computational Materials. A recent theme in material physics research has been the use of intense laser light to modify the properties ...

Developing new ways to break and reform chemical bonds is one of the main tasks of basic chemical research. “When a bond in a charged molecule is broken, the result is often a chemically ‘aggressive’ fragment, which we call a reactive fragment. These fragments are difficult to control using established methods of chemical synthesis. You can think of them as untamed beasts that attack anything in their path. In a mass spectrometer, there are many ways to break certain bonds and generate fragments,” says Dr Warneke, describing the processes in mass spectrometers. According ...

(Boston)—Carryl P. Navalta, PhD, clinical associate professor of psychiatry at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, has received a two-year, $476,194 grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for his research, “Project EDUCATE” (Education to Deliver and Utilize Child and Adolescent Treatment Effectively).   Project EDUCATE will identify and train mental health counseling students. The student trainees will be placed in community-based facilities in the greater Boston area that serve medically underserved children, adolescents and young adults with diverse race or ethnicity, culture, language and service needs.   “The ...

SAN ANTONIO — November 3, 2023 —New images captured by NASA’s Lucy spacecraft confirmed that the small main belt asteroid Dinkinesh is a binary, two asteroids that orbit a common center of mass. The SwRI-led mission will now fly by 11 asteroids in its 12-year mission to Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids. Dinkinesh was meant to be the first asteroid that Lucy flew by but ended up being the first two. “Dinkinesh really did live up to its name; this is marvelous,” said Lucy Principal Investigator Dr. Hal Levison, of SwRI’s ...

Philadelphia, PA (November 3, 2023) — The results of numerous high-impact clinical trials that could affect kidney-related medical care will be presented in-person at ASN Kidney Week 2023 November 1–November 5. In patients with IgA nephropathy, the IgA protein accumulates and damages the filtering part of the kidney, or glomerulus. Endothelin and angiotensin II contribute to the pathogenesis of this condition through different pathways. The phase 3 PROTECT trial compared sparsentan, a dual endothelin and angiotensin II receptor blocker, with irbesartan, an angiotensin II ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A species of exotic tick arrived in Ohio in 2021 in such huge numbers that their feeding frenzy on a southeastern farm left three cattle dead of what researchers believe was severe blood loss. The scientists from The Ohio State University have reported in the Journal of Medical Entomology on the state’s first known established population of Asian longhorned ticks, and are now conducting research focused on monitoring and managing these pests. So far, these ticks are not deemed to be a threat to human health. They tend to favor large livestock ...

By analyzing data from the Harvard Implicit Association Test—a widely accepted measure of a person’s attitudes toward people based on characteristics like race, gender, and sexuality—researchers find that healthcare professionals, and in particular nurses, are more biased against transgender people than are people who are not healthcare professionals. A questionnaire administered before and after the test shows that healthcare professionals are less likely to know transgender people personally and that nurses are more likely to conflate sex and gender identity. These results are reported November 3 in the journal Heliyon. The Implicit Association Test works by asking participants ...

About The Study: The findings of this study of 414,000 respondents to the 2021 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey suggest that e-cigarette use remained common during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly among young adults ages 18 to 24 (18% prevalence). Notably, 71.5% of individuals ages 18 to 20 who reported current e-cigarette use had never used combustible cigarettes. These results underscore the rationale for the implementation and enforcement of public health policies tailored to young adults.  Authors: Michael J. Blaha, M.D., M.P.H., of the Johns Hopkins ...

A survey from Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago found that 40 percent of parents who worked remotely during the pandemic reported higher parenting stress compared with only 27 percent of parents who worked onsite. Results revealed a gender difference – fathers who worked from home were twice as likely to report that parenting was stressful all or most of the time compared to fathers who worked onsite. Parenting stress for mothers who worked at home was slightly higher, but it did not reach statistical significance. The study found no differences ...

About The Study: In this study of a nationally representative sample of 7,062 non-Hispanic Black or white adults, health care spending for Black adults in the U.S. was equal to or less than that of white adults, but only in areas of racial and economic equity and equitable insurance access. The results underscore the continuing need to recognize place as a contributor to race-based differences in health care spending.  Authors: Lorraine T. Dean, Sc.D., of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, 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/jamahealthforum.2023.3798) Editor’s ...

Findings revealed a gender difference ‘Might be a reflection of societal expectations that men should prioritize work obligations over family needs’ Study authors offer tips for parents, employers to mitigate stress of remote work CHICAGO --- Forty percent of parents who worked remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic reported higher parenting stress compared with only 27 percent of parents who worked onsite, reports a new survey from scientists at Northwestern University and Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital ...

Researchers at the IBB-UAB have developed the most comprehensive database available to date to help understand the basis of protein aggregation, a phenomenon associated with ageing and several pathologies. The new resource, A3D-MOBD, brings together the proteomes of twelve of the most studied model organisms which cover distant biological clades and contains over half a million predictions of protein regions with a propensity to form aggregates. The A3D-MOBD was developed by the Protein Folding and Computational Diseases Group at the Institut de Biotecnologia i de Biomedicina of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (IBB-UAB), which is directed by Biochemistry and ...

Measuring the pH of substances gives us vital clues about the world around us, such as identifying contaminated water or checking the toxicity of medical or cosmetic products. Often, only small amounts of samples are available, but monitoring the variation in pH in these miniscule volumes matters. For example, identifying pH changes within tiny volumes of fluid from single cells can help in the detection of ovarian cancer. However, the current methods for measuring pH are mainly for bulk solutions and are not sensitive enough or are too fragile to measure small volumes on a commercial scale. In a recent study published in Microchimica ...

Teams led by Prof. DU Jiangfeng, Prof. SHI Fazhan and Prof. KONG Fei from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) used the Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV) center inside a single nanodiamond for quantum sensing to overcome the problem of random particle rotation.  The study was published on Oct. 7th in Nature Communications. It is an important goal to detect and analyze molecules under physiological in situ conditions in the field of life sciences. Only by observing biomolecules under this condition can we reveal conformation changes when they realize physiological functions. Thanks to its high sensitivity, good biocompatibility, and ...

A new study from Carnegie Mellon University, Bayes Business School (formerly Cass), and Bocconi University has found that men are less eager and likely to share negative information than women, while there was little difference when it comes to positive news. Published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, the authors suggest that this may be due to a greater concern among men over how other people will see them, resulting in a tendency to self-promote by sharing positive information about themselves and not revealing their negative experiences to others. Dr Erin Carbone, Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Social ...

A new publication from Opto-Electronic Science; DOI  10.29026/oes.2023.230025   discusses near-eye display based on metasurface devices.   With the rise of the meta-universe, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies have been developing rapidly in recent years. Near-eye displays are crucial technologies for VR and AR. Despite the rapid advances in near-eye display technologies, there are still challenges such as large field of view (FOV), high resolution, high image quality, natural free 3D effect, and compact form factor. Great efforts have been devoted to striking a balance between visual performance and device compactness. ...

A new publication from Opto-Electronic Science; DOI  10.29026/oes.2023.230026  overviews liquid crystal spatial light modulators devices and applications.   Technology to control and harness light has existed for centuries, often as static solutions that must be custom-designed. It is only in the past couple of decades that the digital era of micro-electronics and computing has seen fast rewritable technology meant for displays find its way into the mainstream of optics. In this review, the authors showcase the recent advances in replacing the traditional static optical toolkit with a modern digital toolkit for “light on demand”. ...

A new publication from Opto-Electronic Advances, 10.29026/oea.2023.230094  discusses Ferroelectric modulation of the Fermi level of graphene oxide to enhance SERS response.   Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is a powerful fingerprint analysis and detection technique that plays an important role in the fields of food safety, environmental protection, bio-imaging and hazardous substance identification. Electromagnetic enhancement (EM) and chemical enhancement (CM) are the two recognized mechanisms of action for amplifying Raman signals. EM originates from the localized surface plasmonic resonance effect of noble metal nanostructures ...

  A new publication from Opto-Electronic Advances, 10.29026/oea.2023.230076  discusses knot-inspired optical sensors for slip detection and friction measurement in dexterous robotic manipulation.   Hands possess an awe-inspiring ability to perceive friction forces with remarkable accuracy, all thanks to the mechanical receptors nestled within skin. This natural gift allows objects to be handled deftly and tools to be wielded effortlessly, infusing daily life with a delightful flexibility. But what if this tactile prowess could be unlocked in robots?   Imagine a world where robots possess the uncanny ability to detect and understand friction and slip, just ...

Lithium-ion batteries powered the device on which these words appear. From phones and laptops to electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries are critical to the technology of the modern world — but they can also explode. Comprising negatively and positively charged electrodes and an electrolyte to transport ions across the divide, lithium-ion batteries are only as good as the limitations of their components. Liquid electrolytes are potentially volatile at high temperatures, and their efficiency can be limited by nonuniformity and instabilities in the other components.   Researchers are working toward developing safer, ...