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 ...

The First ‘Birder’s Guide’ to Meteor Showers Peter Jenniskens new comprehensive guide describes over 500 meteor showers that appear in our night skies. October 31, 2023, Mountain View, CA -- The SETI Institute is proud to announce a new book by SETI Institute meteor astronomer Dr. Peter Jenniskens. Called “Atlas of Earth’s Meteor Showers,” this comprehensive guide describes over 500 meteor showers that appear in our night skies and adds a wealth of detail to the tapestry of our solar system. “Just as in a birder’s guide, the book describes the outward appearance, ...

The incidence of thyroid cancer in São Paulo State, part of Brazil’s relatively developed Southeast region, varies considerably according to socioeconomic status (education, poverty, wealth, income, segregation, mobility, and access to resources and services) and access to screening, but is highest in higher-income areas and the state capital. Mortality rates are similar across regions and income groups, however. These are the main findings of a study reported in the journal Endocrine Practice by researchers ...

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Academia Sinica of Taiwan have harnessed a combination of lab-grown cells to regenerate damaged heart muscle. The study, published in Circulation — which addresses major challenges of using heart muscle cells, called cardiomyocytes, grown from stem cells — takes a crucial step toward future clinical applications. Previous research has shown that transplanting cardiomyocytes made from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) can replace muscle in the hearts of mammals. Researchers have struggled to bring the treatment to the clinic, in part because the implanted cells haven’t developed enough ...

When, where, and why do diseases jump from animals to people? A new project will monitor how changing seasons, land use, and human behavior influence viral outbreaks in wild rodent populations, to identify hotspots with high potential for spillover into people. The project is co-led by Barbara Han, a disease ecologist at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, in an international team of scientists from the Smithsonian Institution, Royal Veterinary College, Oxford University, and the University of ...

Hoboken, NJ — October 31, 2023 — Wiley, a knowledge company and global leader in research, publishing and knowledge solutions, today announced the release of the KnowItAll 2024 Analytical Edition, the latest version of its spectral software that offers solutions to analyze, identify, quantify, and manage analytical and chemical data. When it comes to chemical quantitative analysis, researchers often find themselves navigating multiple software packages. Mastering multiple software packages to achieve the same level of expertise, reproducibility, and ...

When, where, and why do diseases jump from animals to people? A new project will monitor how changing seasons, land use, and human behavior influence viral outbreaks in wild rodent populations, to identify hotspots with high potential for spillover into people. The project is co-led by Barbara Han, a disease ecologist at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, in an international team of scientists from the Smithsonian Institution, Royal Veterinary College, Oxford University, and the University of Glasgow.  Until now, it has been difficult to study how changing environmental conditions impact virus transmission in the wild. With $2.9 million in funding ...

A sunflower’s ability to track the sun east to west during the day, and to face east again before the next sunrise, relies on multiple types of photoresponses, according to a new study publishing October 31st in the open access journal PLOS Biology by Stacey Harmer and colleagues at the University of California Davis, US. The results deepen the understanding of this well-known plant behavior, and upend previous assumptions about its dependence on a canonical light-dependent response pathway. Because plants are ...

Order wine at a fancy restaurant, and the sommelier might describe its aroma as having notes of citrus, tropical fruit, or flowers. Yet, when you take a whiff, it might just smell like … wine. How can wine connoisseurs pick out such similar scents? Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Associate Professor Saket Navlakha and Salk Institute researcher Shyam Srinivasan may have the answer. They have found that certain neurons allow fruit flies and mice to tell apart distinct smells. The team ...

Sunflowers famously turn their faces to follow the sun as it crosses the sky. But how do sunflowers “see” the sun to follow it? New work from plant biologists at the University of California, Davis, published Oct. 31 in PLOS Biology, shows that they use a different, novel mechanism from that previously thought.  “This was a total surprise for us,” said Stacey Harmer, professor of plant biology at UC Davis and senior author on the paper.  Most plants show phototropism – the ability to grow toward a ...

URBANA, Ill. — A team of animal scientists from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is set to deliver a potential game changer for subsistence farmers in Tanzania: cows that produce up to 20 times the milk of indigenous breeds.      The effort, published in Animal Frontiers, marries the milk-producing prowess of Holsteins and Jerseys with the heat, drought, and disease-resistance of Gyrs, an indigenous cattle breed common in tropical countries. Five generations of crosses result in cattle capable of ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – The lungs were once at the forefront of SARS-Cov-2 research, but as reports of organ failure and other serious complications poured in, scientists set out to discover how and why the respiratory virus was causing serious damage to the body's major organs, including the lungs. An interdisciplinary COVID-19 International Research Team (COV-IRT), which includes UNC School of Medicine’s Jonathan C. Schisler, PhD, found that SARS-CoV-2 alters mitochondria on a genetic ...

A groundbreaking study published in the journal Research in Aging sheds light on the financial challenges of housing-with-health-services models for low-income older adults.  The report explores strategies for ensuring the sustainability of these beneficial efforts.  The study was conducted in partnership with Hebrew SeniorLife, a Harvard Medical School-affiliated nonprofit organization serving older adults in the Greater Boston area.  It drew on insights from 31 key informational interviews and three focus groups ...

The next generation of cardiometabolic biomarkers should pave the way for earlier detection of risk factors for conditions such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease in children, according to a new scientific statement from the American Heart Association published in the journal Circulation. “The rising number of children with major risk factors for cardiometabolic conditions represents a potential tsunami of preventable disease for our healthcare system,” says the statement’s lead author Michele Mietus-Snyder, M.D., ...

A new compact, lightweight, gel-free and waterproof electrocardiogram (ECG) sensor offers more comfort and less skin irritation, compared to similar heart monitoring devices on the market. ECGs help manage cardiovascular disease – which affects around 4 million Australians and kills more than 100 people every day – by alerting users to seek medical care. The team led by RMIT University in Australia has made the wearable ECG device that could be used to prevent heart attacks for people with cardiovascular disease, including in remote healthcare and ...

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. -- A new drug developed by professors from the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at Binghamton University has received Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for the treatment of patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), a common genetic disease that mostly affects young boys. DMD is the most common genetic disease. It leads to the loss of the dystrophin protein in muscle tissues, with progressive weakness and challenges with day-to-day activities. The DMD gene is the largest gene in the human genome, ...

The antibody-drug conjugate trastuzumab deruxtecan is approved for various therapeutic indications. Since March 2023, it can also be used as monotherapy for the treatment of adults with unresectable or metastatic HER2-low breast cancer who have received prior chemotherapy at this disease stage or developed disease recurrence early after adjuvant chemotherapy. Treatment with trastuzumab deruxtecan is the first approved therapy for patients with HER2-low breast cancer. The German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) examined in an early benefit assessment whether the antibody-drug ...