While the role of mothers’ stress, anxiety and depression on children’s behavioral and cognitive development is well established, less is known about the connection between fathers’ mental health and children’s development. Now, a team of researchers affiliated to different institutions across Quebec, Canada has examined if paternal anxious and depressive symptoms, measured during their partner’s pregnancy, and again six to eight years later, are associated with children’s cognitive function and behavior. They studied this association ...

A cancer drug currently in the final stages of clinical trials could offer hope for the treatment of a wide range of inflammatory diseases, including gout, heart failure, cardiomyopathy, and atrial fibrillation, say scientists at the University of Cambridge. In a study published today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, the researchers have identified a molecule that plays a key role in triggering inflammation in response to materials in the body seen as potentially harmful. We are born with a defence system known as innate immunity, which acts as the first line of defence against harmful materials in the body. Some of these materials will come from outside, such as bacterial or viral ...

Imagine the body’s cells are well-behaved students in the classroom. The “teachers” are tumor suppressor genes, and they make sure cells follow the rules. But when tumor suppressor genes are away, cells may go astray. With cells, this is a serious matter. Unregulated behavior can lead to uncontrolled growth and, ultimately, the development of cancer. In an invited review article Wednesday (Nov. 1, 2023) in Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, Kathleen Mulvaney, assistant professor with the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, talks about the ...

The oxygen content of seawater has a profound impact on the cycling of bioessential elements and the habitability of Earth. But how and why the marine oxygen landscape (i.e., the spatial pattern of oxygen levels) evolved since the start of the Phanerozoic 538 million years ago is not well established. To tackle this problem, researchers led by Prof. WANG Xiangli from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IGGCAS) and Prof. LI Chao from the Chengdu University of Technology, along with collaborators from the University of Cincinnati and the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, have reconstructed a nearly continuous record of ...

uIf your boss stomps and yells, criticizes you, and then proceeds to take the credit for your work – even it is an isolated incident – it can take a profound toll on employee well-being and performance. But despite the many years of research, the precise mechanisms through which bad leadership impacts employees’ performance remain a subject of interest. In a new study, first published online Oct. 30 in Group & Organization Management, an international group of researchers, led by Stevens Institute of Technology and University of Illinois Chicago, offer a novel explanation of the cognitive factors through which abusive ...

A research team led by Cleveland Clinic and Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) has developed a new method for mapping how the parts of the brain "speak" to each other, critical to understanding behavior changes in patients with neurological disease. Diseases like Alzheimer's disease change how patients communicate and act, affecting their relationships and well-being. Cleveland Clinic's Hod Dana, PhD, is collaborating with Jacob Raber, PhD, an OHSU behavioral neuroscientist, on ...

UTA will soon add a new piece of cutting-edge equipment to its already impressive and growing research armamentarium—a type of super-resolution microscope (SRM) that allows biologists to see structures within a cell in even finer detail. The SRM will come to UTA because of additional grant funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to the lab of Piya Ghose, an assistant professor of biology at UTA. This nearly $250,000 award supplements Ghose’s existing NIH/National Institute of General Medical ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — Domestic violence went down or stayed the same during the first 10 months of the COVID-19 pandemic in five major U.S. cities. However, domestic violence involving firearms increased in three of those cities, according to a new UC Davis study published in the Journal of Family Violence. “The increase in firearm domestic violence is concerning, as abuser firearm access is a risk factor for lethality,” said Elizabeth Tomsich, a research data analyst at the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Center and ...

Microbial communities growing on plastic debris in rivers may have the capacity to harbour potentially pathogenic microbes and act as reservoirs of antimicrobial resistance genes, according to a study published in Microbiome. The findings also highlight differences in the potential pathogens and antimicrobial resistance genes that new and degraded  plastics may have the capacity to harbour. Vinko Zadjelovic, Elizabeth Wellington, Joseph Christie-Oleza and colleagues characterised the microbial communities found on the surface ...

An early phase in the process of developing Alzheimer’s disease is a metabolic increase in a part of the brain called the hippocampus, report researchers from Karolinska Institutet in a study published in Molecular Psychiatry. The discovery opens up for new potential methods of early intervention.  Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia and strikes about 20,000 people in Sweden every year. Researchers now show that a metabolic increase in the mitochondria, the cellular power ...

Researchers from Queen Mary University of London have gathered detailed insights from the British South Asian community that could lead to more successful implementation of genetic testing to help tailor the use of routine medications. Their findings are published today (1 November 2023) in The Pharmacogenomics Journal and indicate key issues that could affect the take up of this new type of genetic testing amongst patients. Despite comprising 10% of the British population, individuals of South Asian heritage have historically been under-represented in ...

Cigarette style graphic warning labels could reduce people’s meat consumption, according to new research published today (1 November). The study suggests the use of warning labels on meat options could improve public health and reduce the UK’s carbon footprint. The team from Durham University tested a range of warning labels including those which warn people of the damage to climate, health, and risk of pandemics. They found that all labels were effective at discouraging people from choosing meals with meat. All warning labels, which showed ...

A new study has concluded that any credible net zero pathway for Brazil must include the implementation of nature-based solutions. Actions such as halting deforestation and large-scale restoration of native vegetation would have immediate impact, at a fraction of the cost of carbon-negative technologies. However, stronger policy frameworks will be needed if nature-based solutions are to achieve their full potential in Brazil. Without the implementation of nature-based solutions, in particular ending deforestation and restoring ...

DARIEN, IL – An updated position statement from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine supports the replacement of daylight saving time with permanent standard time. It is the position of the AASM that the United States should eliminate seasonal time changes in favor of permanent standard time, which aligns best with human circadian biology. According to the statement, evidence supports the distinct benefits of standard time for health and safety, while also underscoring the potential harms that result from seasonal time changes to and from daylight saving time. “By causing the human body ...

Can a machine be trained to paint like Jackson Pollock? More specifically, can 3D-printing harness the Pollock's distinctive techniques to quickly and accurately print complex shapes? “I wanted to know, can one replicate Jackson Pollock, and reverse engineer what he did,” said L. Mahadevan, the Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and of Physics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS). Mahadevan and his team combined physics and machine learning to develop a new 3D-printing ...

“Overall, our study provides novel insight into how reproductive aging impacts the murine ovarian proteome and ECM.” BUFFALO, NY- October 31, 2023 – A new priority research paper was published on the cover of Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 15, Issue 20, entitled, “Proteomic quantification of native and ECM-enriched mouse ovaries reveals an age-dependent fibro-inflammatory signature.” The ovarian microenvironment becomes fibrotic and stiff with age, in part due to increased collagen and decreased hyaluronan. However, the extracellular matrix ...

Physicists William Raphael “Raph” Hix of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and John Lajoie, who will join ORNL on Nov. 6 from Iowa State University, have been elected Fellows of the American Physical Society.   The society works to advance and spread physics knowledge via research journals, scientific meetings, education, outreach, advocacy and international activities. It represents more than 50,000 members, including physicists in government, academia and industry worldwide.   Hix, leader of the Theoretical and Computational ...

CHICAGO—October 31, 2023—Researchers at Illinois Institute of Technology (Illinois Tech) have been recognized by Peoples Gas with the Innovation Strategies and Technologies Award for their Battery-Operated Radiator Control (BORC) system, a groundbreaking solution to optimize the efficiency of manually operated radiators. The researchers, Assistant Professor of Architectural Engineering Mohammad Heidarinejad and Arthur W. Hill Endowed Chair in Sustainability Brent Stephens, had the insight that traditional steam radiators are ...

Recent preclinical results indicate novel next-generation vaccine candidates developed at Cleveland Clinic protect against multiple strains of influenza and last longer than vaccines currently in use. The vaccines are part of Cleveland Clinic's global vaccine research program, led by Ted Ross, PhD, Global Director of Vaccine Development at Cleveland Clinic. Published in Scientific Reports, the study credits the preclinical success of the influenza B vaccines to novel technology called Computationally Optimized Broadly Reactive ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – Book publishers cried foul – in the form of numerous legal challenges – nearly two decades ago when the Google Books project digitized and freely distributed more than 25 million works. The publishers argued that free digital distribution undermines the market for physical books, but new research from Cornell University’s Imke Reimers and a collaborator reveals that the opposite – increased demand for physical books, through online discovery – could be true. Reimers, an associate professor in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, and Abhishek Nagaraj, assistant professor ...

The U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is preparing to unveil a database containing the results of exposure experiments on solar reflectors conducted over more than four decades. The publicly available Solar Mirror Materials Database (SMMD) will contain information from thousands of solar mirror samples from more than a hundred suppliers that have been subjected to outdoor tests and laboratory environments. Typically used for concentrating solar-thermal power, these mirrors were installed and tested in Phoenix, ...

Increasing human input when AI is used for public services boosts acceptance of the technology, a new study shows. The research shows citizens are not only concerned about AI fairness but also about potential human biases. They are in favour of AI being used in cases when administrative discretion is perceived as too large. Researchers found citizens' knowledge about AI does not alter their acceptance of the technology. More accurate systems and lower cost systems also increased their acceptance. Cost and accuracy of technology ...

Obtaining high-resolution images in the world of microscopy has long been a challenge. Deconvolution, a method to enhance image clarity, often amplifies noise between the sample and the image. Researchers at Boston University recently developed a novel deblurring algorithm that avoids these issues, improving the resolution of images with photon intensity conservation and local linearity. As reported in the Gold Open Access journal Advanced Photonics, the innovative deblurring algorithm is adaptable to various fluorescence microscopes, requiring minimal assumptions about the emission point spread function (PSF). It works on both a sequence of raw images and even a single image, enabling ...

New research led by a Florida State University professor shows that potential adaptive responses by sea turtles, such as shifting the timing of when they nest, may not be enough to counteract the projected impacts from climate change on hatchling production. Warmer temperatures cause lower hatchling success and a greater percentage of female turtles, both of which can disrupt the viability of a species. Sand temperatures at sea turtle nesting sites globally are projected to increase by about 0.6 degrees Celsius to ...

Suicide and mental health distress disproportionately affect veterans in the United States. According to a report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, more than 5 million veterans suffered from these adverse behavioral health issues in 2020. That same year, after adjusting for age and sex differences in the population, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) estimated that veterans were 57.3 percent more likely to commit suicide than non-veterans. While the Veterans ...