By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), partnered with the Wyss Institute at Harvard University to support the Institute in advancing its human Organ Chip platform and drug discovery capabilities to better understand the illness and injuries that result from a broad range of health security threats, including high doses of radiation, as well as predicting and evaluating ...

Quantum mechanics is full of weird phenomena, but perhaps none as weird as the role measurement plays in the theory. Since a measurement tends to destroy the “quantumness” of a system, it seems to be the mysterious link between the quantum and classical world. And in a large system of quantum bits of information, known as “qubits,” the effect of measurements can induce dramatically new behavior, even driving the emergence of entirely new phases of quantum information. This happens when two competing effects come to a head: interactions and measurement. In a quantum system, when the qubits interact ...

Investigators from the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai found that an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm can detect an abnormal heart rhythm in people not yet showing symptoms. The algorithm, which identified hidden signals in common medical diagnostic testing, may help doctors better prevent strokes and other cardiovascular complications in people with atrial fibrillation—the most common type of heart rhythm disorder. Previously developed algorithms have been primarily used in white ...

Colder is not always better for energy-hungry data centers, especially when it comes to their power bills. A new analysis says that keeping the centers at 41°C, or around 105°F, could save up to 56% in cooling costs worldwide. The study, publishing October 10 in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science, proposes new temperature guidelines that may help develop and manage more efficient data centers and IT servers in the future. “The cooling system accounts for over one-third of the data center’s total energy consumption, so many studies ...

Power grids—the web of electrical networks that sprawl across countries and continents—are under stress. Extreme weather events and volatile energy demands often push the system to the brink. Although these high-impact events can be very damaging, often overlooked is the impact of minor disruptions that trigger a domino effect throughout the system, according to a study analyzing European power blackouts. The findings, published October 18 in the journal Joule, showed that recovering power within 13 hours can reduce up to ...

Starting buprenorphine treatment for opioid use disorder through telehealth was associated with an increased likelihood of staying in treatment longer compared to starting treatment in a non-telehealth setting, according to a new study analyzing Medicaid data from 2019-2020 in Kentucky and Ohio. Published in JAMA Network Open, these findings add to a growing body of evidence demonstrating positive outcomes associated with the use of telemedicine for treatment of opioid use disorder. In Kentucky, 48% of those who started buprenorphine treatment via telehealth remained in treatment for 90 continuous days, compared ...

In a first-in-human phase 1 trial in 41 patients with recurrent glioblastoma, an oncolytic virus treatment designed by Brigham researchers extended survival, especially among those with pre-existing viral antibodies Therapy turns ‘immune desert’ into inflammatory cancer-fighting zone Study demonstrated the safety and preliminary efficacy of a novel gene therapy for glioblastoma Glioblastoma (GBM), an aggressive brain cancer, is notoriously resistant to treatment, with recurrent GBM associated with survival of less than 10 months. Immunotherapies, ...

Ordinary pencil lead holds extraordinary properties when shaved down to layers as thin as an atom. A single, atom-thin sheet of graphite, known as graphene, is just a tiny fraction of the width of a human hair. Under a microscope, the material resembles a chicken-wire of carbon atoms linked in a hexagonal lattice.  Despite its waif-like proportions, scientists have found over the years that graphene is exceptionally strong. And when the material is stacked and twisted in specific contortions, it can take on surprising electronic behavior. Now, MIT physicists have discovered another surprising property ...

About The Study: The results of this meta-analysis of 40 studies including 310,000 children and adolescents suggest that, in general, the treatment rates for mental disorders among children and adolescents were low, especially for depression and anxiety. Targeted intervention policies and effective measures should be designed and implemented to improve treatment rates of psychiatric disorders among youths.  Authors: Yuanyuan Xiao, Ph.D., of Kunming Medical University in Kunming, Yunnan, China, 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/jamanetworkopen.2023.38174) Editor’s ...

About The Study: The findings of this study including 340,000 pregnant women suggest that long-term exposure to antepartum and postpartum air pollution was associated with higher postpartum depression risks. Identifying the modifiable environmental risk factors and developing interventions are important public health issues to improve maternal mental health and alleviate the disease burden of postpartum depression.  Authors: Jun Wu, Ph.D., of the University of California, Irvine, is the corresponding author.  To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link ...

A microscopic discovery will not only enable scientists to understand the microbial world around us but could also provide a new way to control CRISPR-Cas biotechnologies.   An international team of researchers led by Professor Peter Fineran from the University of Otago and Dr Rafael Pinilla-Redondo from the University of Copenhagen has published a study in the prestigious journal Nature revealing new way viruses suppress the CRISPR-Cas immune systems of bacteria.   Co-first author Dr David Mayo-Muñoz, of the Phage-host interactions (Phi) laboratory in ...

DURHAM, N.C. – A vaccine designed to protect against three different deadly coronaviruses shows success in mouse studies, demonstrating the viability of a pan-coronavirus vaccine developed by researchers at the Duke Human Vaccine Institute.   Publishing in the journal Cell Reports, the single nanoparticle vaccine included components of a previous vaccine that was shown to protect mice and primates against multiple variants of SARS-CoV-2, which is the virus that causes COVID-19. In this study, the vaccine protected mice from SARS-CoV-1, another form of SARS coronavirus that can infect humans, and a MERS coronavirus that has led to periodic, deadly outbreaks ...

Particle accelerators are crucial tools in a wide variety of areas in industry, research and the medical sector. The space these machines require ranges from a few square meters to large research centers. Using lasers to accelerate electrons within a photonic nanostructure constitutes a microscopic alternative with the potential of generating significantly lower costs and making devices considerably less bulky. Until now, no substantial energy gains were demonstrated. In other words, it has not been shown that electrons really have increased in speed significantly. A team of laser physicists at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg ...

A new Corewell Health study suggests that men who have longer prostatic urethras, the part of the urethra that travels through the prostate, may be at a higher risk of experiencing moderate, often chronic urinary side effects after receiving radiation for prostate cancer.   To date, researchers have struggled to determine any risk factors that could shed light on who might experience these types of side effects ahead of time. But now, a simple MRI scan and a new metric to determine urethra length could change that. Results, now published in the journal Academic Radiology, indicate that for every 1-centimeter increase in length of the prostatic ...

They published their work on Oct. 12 in Energy Material Advances.   "The development of cost-effective and high-performance zinc-air battery cathode catalyst is imperative," said paper author Zhonghua Xiang, professor with the Beijing University of Chemical Technology. "Currently, zinc-air batteries still not occupy the market, because they are limited in both stability and in their energy density."   Xiang explained that zinc-air batteries can only work for very limited time at high current density, because there are lots of problems of its cathode, anode and electrolyte.   "The air ...

Annapolis, MD; October 18, 2023—Every so often, cicadas emerge above ground and blanket the earth with their exoskeletons while emitting a high-pitched chirp from sunrise to sunset. The periodical cicadas in the genus Magicicada come every 13 or 17 years, though other types of cicadas emerge much more frequently in our neighborhoods. A long-standing agricultural query related to the periodical cicadas was recently answered by an Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) research team at West Virginia's Appalachian Fruit Research Station. Simply: Once periodical ...

SAN ANTONIO — October 18, 2023 —Southwest Research Institute will host the Life-Cycle Analysis for Transportation Symposium on Nov. 16-17 in San Antonio. This year’s symposium will be in person for the first time. The two-day event will highlight academic, industry and institutional research efforts to characterize the total greenhouse gas emissions produced during the entire life cycle of a vehicle, including its manufacture, service life and recycling or disposal. “We often talk about getting to ‘zero-emissions,’ but this definition often ...

Media Contact: Kara Flynn, 202.257.8424, press@ashg.org For Immediate Release: Wednesday, October 18, 2023, 10:00am U.S. Eastern Time ROCKVILLE, MD — More than ever before, human genetics and genomics is an essential part of making progress in research, biotechnology, and health. As a key leader supporting research innovation, the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) will convene more than 8,000 researchers and clinicians at the ASHG 2023 Annual Meeting in Washington DC, Nov. 1-5 to share emerging discoveries and celebrate the Society’s 75th anniversary. “Human genetics is transforming science and health at a rapid ...

More than 150 species of wild animals across every continent are contaminated with flame retardant chemicals, according to a new map tracking peer-reviewed research worldwide. Polluted wildlife include killer whales, red pandas, chimpanzees and other endangered species. Added to furniture, electronics, vehicles, and other everyday products to meet flammability standards, the chemicals often do not work as intended. They also migrate out of products and into wildlife—and people.   “Flame retardants don’t actually make TV enclosures and car interiors more fire-safe, but they can harm people and animals,” ...

Octopuses are fascinating animals – and serve as important model organisms in neuroscience, cognition research and developmental biology. To gain a deeper understanding of their biology and evolutionary history, validated data on the composition of their genome is needed, which has been lacking until now. Scientists from the University of Vienna together with an international research team have now been able to close this gap and, in a study, determined impressive figures: 2.8 billion base pairs - organized in ...

A collaborative research team, led by Professor Hyun-Kon Song in the School of Energy and Chemical Engineering at UNIST, Dr. Seo-Hyun Jung from Research Center for Advanced Specialty Chemicals at Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT), and Dr. Tae-Hee Kim from the Ulsan Advanced Energy Technology R&D Center at Korea Institute of Energy Research (KIER), has achieved a groundbreaking milestone in battery technology. Their remarkable achievement in developing a non-flammable gel polymer electrolyte (GPE) is set to revolutionize the safety of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) by ...

SPOKANE, Wash. – A two-part training designed to help police officers recognize their implicit bias, revealed some behavior improvement and lowered citizen discrimination complaints in a controlled study. While a small study involving one police department, it is the first-known research to provide evidence that this type of training can produce positive behavioral effects. Led by Washington State University researcher Lois James, the study found some improvement in the anti-bias trained officers’ behavior toward homeless people in particular, ...

Researchers have invented an experimental wearable device that generates power from a user’s bending finger and can create and store memories, in a promising step towards health monitoring and other technologies. The innovation features a single nanomaterial incorporated into a stretchable casing fitted to a person’s finger. The nanomaterial enabled the device to generate power with the user bending their finger. The super-thin material also allows the device to perform memory tasks, as outlined below. Multifunctional devices normally require several materials in layers, which involves the time-consuming challenge of stacking nanomaterials with high precision. The team, led ...

 Determining whether a person is diabetic could be as easy as having them speak a few sentences into their smartphone, according to a groundbreaking study from Klick Labs that combines voice technology with artificial intelligence in a major step forward in diabetes detection. The new study, published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings: Digital Health, outlines how scientists used six to 10 seconds of people’s voice, along with basic health data, including age, sex, height, and weight, to create an AI model ...

Correction (Oct. 17, 2023): The paper’s title has been corrected to “Deep Learning-Predicted Dihydroartemisinin Rescues Osteoporosis by Maintaining Mesenchymal Stem Cell Stemness through Activating Histone 3 Lys 9 Acetylation Artificial intelligence has exploded in popularity and is being harnessed by some scientists to predict which molecules could treat illnesses, or to quickly screen existing medicines for new applications. Researchers reporting in ACS Central Science have used one such deep learning algorithm, and found that dihydroartemisinin ...