Dementia experts from UC San Francisco will join their peers from around the globe at the annual Clinical Trials on Alzheimer’s Disease (CTAD) conference in Boston from Oct. 24 to 27. Presentations cover breakthroughs in therapies that clear amyloid – a hallmark of Alzheimer’s – and a symposium on patients with early Alzheimer’s symptoms who were treated with the anti-amyloid medication donanemab, which may be approved by the end of the year. Other topics include novel treatments, diagnostic blood biomarkers, amyloid-related imaging abnormalities (ARIA) and Medicare coverage.  This year’s ...

BOSTON - Low back pain is the leading cause of disability worldwide and a major driver of healthcare costs in the United States, according to the World Health Organization. Over the last 20 years, recommended treatment of low back pain has shifted from use of pain medications including opioids to early use of nonpharmacologic treatments such as spinal manipulation and therapeutic exercise which are commonly provided by chiropractors and physical therapists. However, while nearly all Americans will experience back pain at some point in their lives, most Americans ...

In a paper published today in Science, a global team led by Macquarie University’s Dr Stuart Ryder and Swinburne University of Technology’s Associate Professor Ryan Shannon, report on their discovery of the most ancient and distant fast radio burst located to date, about eight billion years old. The discovery smashes the team’s previous record by 50 per cent. It confirms that fast radio bursts (FRBs) can be used to measure the “missing” matter between galaxies. The source of the burst was shown to be a group of two or three galaxies that are ...

WASHINGTON (October 19, 2023) – Every 13 or 17 years, billions of cicadas emerge from the ground to reproduce in eastern North American deciduous forests. One of the largest emergence events of these insects happened in 2021 when theBrood X cicadas emerged. Researchers who studied that once-in-a-generation event are now unveiling the impact this occurrence had on forest ecosystems, specifically on birds, caterpillars and trees. In a new study published today in Science, researchers at the George Washington University, Georgetown University and the University of Maryland quantified the widespread ...

Maximum temperature extremes reduce the nesting success of birds across the United States by nearly 50% in agricultural landscapes but not forests, according to a new study based on more than 20 years of citizen-science nest-monitoring data. The findings show that future warming may exacerbate the negative effects of habitat conversion on bird fitness, especially among species of conservation concern in human-dominated landscapes. Habitat conversion and climate change are fundamental drivers of biodiversity loss worldwide. However, ...

An unusually high-energy fast radio burst (FRB) from a high-redshift galaxy has offered new insights into the distant universe, challenging current models of FRB emission. The findings also help constrain key attributes of these astrophysical phenomena. FRBs are brief pulses of radio emission originating from distant extragalactic sources. Although the astrophysical processes that cause FRBs aren’t fully understood, the signals they produce can be used to infer information about the cosmic environments they pass through as they travel across the universe, including the nature of ...

Researchers present NorthPole – a brain-inspired chip architecture that blends computation with memory to process data efficiently at low-energy costs. Since its inception, computing has been processor-centric, with memory separated from compute. However, shuttling large amounts of data between memory and compute comes at a high price in terms of both energy consumption and processing bandwidth and speed. This is particularly evident in the case of emerging and advanced real-time artificial intelligence (AI) applications like facial recognition, object detection, and ...

The periodical mass emergence of cicadas in eastern North American forests can “rewire” forest food webs and initiate a cascade of ecological impacts that propagates throughout the food chain, according to a study that quantified effects of the 2021 Brood X cicada emergence. The study found that when insect-eating birds have abundant prey in the form of cicadas and thus shift their focus away from their usual repast – leaf-eating caterpillars – the caterpillars feast more heavily upon the leaves of oak saplings, doubling insect leaf damage. “Although previous studies have documented strong ecological ...

For tens of thousands of years, evolution shaped tomatoes through natural mutations. Then, humans came along. For centuries, we’ve bred and cherry-picked tomatoes with our preferred traits. Today, CRISPR genome editing allows us to make new crop mutations that improve traits even further. However, individual mutations, whether natural or engineered, don’t work alone. Each operates in a sea of thousands of so-called “background” mutations. These changes have been sowed by evolution and agricultural ...

Bird populations are in rapid decline across North America. While climate change is just one of the many factors influencing North American birds, its effects are significant and can interact with other stressors, such as habitat loss. A team of University of California, Davis, researchers found that the effects of extreme temperatures on avian reproduction can vary depending on the type of environment that birds call home. The findings, published in the journal Science, shed light on how climate change can combine with habitat loss to affect bird reproduction ...

An international team has spotted a remote blast of cosmic radio waves lasting less than a millisecond. This 'fast radio burst' (FRB) is the most distant ever detected. Its source was pinned down by the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) in a galaxy so far away that its light took eight billion years to reach us. The FRB is also one of the most energetic ever observed; in a tiny fraction of a second it released the equivalent of our Sun’s total emission over 30 years. The discovery of the burst, named FRB 20220610A, was made in June last year by the ASKAP radio telescope in Australia ...

Whether a mouse is a good or bad parent can be traced back to imprinted genes in key neurons in the “parenting hub” in the brain, according to a new study by Anthony Isles of Cardiff University and colleagues, published October 19 in the journal PLOS Genetics. In mice, there is some evidence that an unusual phenomenon in mammals called genomic imprinting impacts parenting behavior. Mammals inherit two copies of each gene – one from each parent – and usually, each copy is expressed equally in the cell. With imprinted genes, however, only one copy is expressed, ...

With smartphone videos, clinicians can analyze human movement using open source "OpenCap" platform, 25x faster and at a fraction of the cost of labs. #### Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.101XXXX Article Title: OpenCap: Human movement dynamics from smartphone videos Author Countries: US Funding: SDU, AF, LK, JM, ASC, JLH, and SLD were supported by the National Institutes of Health (https://www.nih.gov; grant 1P41EB027060-01A1) and the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance (https://humanperformancealliance.org). ASC and MK were supported by Philips Healthcare (https://www.usa.philips.com/healthcare) ...

WHAT: A research team funded by the National Institutes of Health has developed a smart phone app that can track and analyze a person’s ability to move from one place to another, known as locomotion, and other types of movements. Human motion analysis is used to evaluate patients with movement difficulties, to help clinicians plan surgery, and to assess the results of treatment procedures. The research team believes that using the app costs about 1% of conventional motion analysis techniques and works 25 times faster. The study appears in PLOS Computational Biology. Researchers tested their app, called OpenCap, with 100 participants. Using two or more smart phones, ...

  Researchers from North Carolina State University have pinpointed a particular peptide’s role in activating atopic dermatitis, or eczema. The work could lead to more effective treatments for the condition. Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a skin condition characterized by itching, irritated and thickened skin at the site of the irritation. The brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) is a peptide, or short chain of amino acids, that is elevated in patients with AD. “BNP is expressed in sensory neurons, the neurons responsible for conveying sensation to the brain via the spinal cord,” ...

CHAPEL HILL, NC – Postpartum depression (PPD), a common subtype of major depressive disorder, is more heritable than other psychiatric conditions, yet the genetics of PPD are understudied compared to these other psychiatric conditions., such as anxiety and bipolar disorder. To remedy that, UNC School of Medicine researchers led an international team of researchers to conduct the largest-ever meta-analyses of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) to investigate the genetic architecture of PPD. Published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, their research shows that approximately 14 percent of the variation seen in PPD cases can be attributed to common genetic factors. A patient’s ...

A University of Oklahoma-led article published in Geophysical Research Letters highlights newly measured extremes recorded during the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Dynamics and Chemistry of the Summer Stratosphere field project. “Extreme Altitudes of Stratospheric Hydration by Midlatitude Convection Observed During the DCOTSS Field Campaign,” led by OU School of Meteorology Interim Director and Associate Professor Cameron Homeyer, summarizes the extremes in measured stratospheric depth of hydration by convection recorded during the DCOTSS project as a whole, and ...

Golden retrievers are one of the most popular breeds of dogs. But research shows they have up to a 65% chance of dying from cancer.  In a new study, University of California, Davis, researchers set out to find if certain genetic factors could help their survival rate. But instead of searching for genes associated with a cancer diagnosis in the breed, they instead chose to look for genes associated with longer life. The gene they found is in a family of proteins long known to be important in human cancers. Specific versions or variants ...

Each year, approximately 200 to 300 children in the United States are diagnosed with diffuse midline gliomas (DMG), a tumor that begins in the brain or spinal cord. The tumors cannot be removed through surgery due to their location in the brain, and current treatments are not effective and lead to a nearly zero percent survival rate. The University of Cincinnati’s Timothy Phoenix is part of a multi-investigator collaborative team with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital’s Stephen Mack, PhD, and Giedre Krenciute, PhD, that received a nearly $4 million National Cancer Institute (NCI) ...

CHICAGO (October 19) — Scientists have new evidence that a tropical disease once seen almost exclusively in returning travelers is now being detected in the United States in people with no international travel history — and caused by a Leishmania parasite strain that’s distinctly different from “imported” cases, according to an analysis from researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) presented today at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH).   The study, led by CDC scientist Marcos de Almeida, emerged from a curious rise of domestic infections over the last 10 years, ...

An international team of scientists headed by the University of Bonn has developed a novel type of nanomotor. It is driven by a clever mechanism and can perform pulsing movements. The researchers are now planning to fit it with a coupling and install it as a drive in complex machines. Their findings have now appeared in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.  This novel type of motor is similar to a hand grip trainer that strengthens your grip when used regularly. However, the motor is around one million times smaller. Two handles are connected by a spring in a V-shaped structure. In a hand grip trainer, ...

HOUSTON ― Researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have discovered that lactate-producing intratumoral bacteria drives resistance to radiation therapy,  suggesting that lactic acid-producing bacteria present in various cancers may serve as novel therapeutic targets. The study, published today in Cancer Cell, reported that a particular bacterial species, Lactobacillus iners (L. iners), caused cancer cells to respond to radiation by rewiring metabolic signaling pathways to resist treatment. The researchers also found that L. iners was associated with poorer clinical outcomes in patients with cervical ...

While the overall incidence and death rates from cervical cancer have dropped in the U.S., the opposite has been occurring in Appalachian Kentucky – a steady increase. The death rate from cervical cancer in Appalachian Kentucky is now twice that of the national rate. A team of cancer population scientists from MUSC Hollings Cancer Center and the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center documented the increase through investigation of county-level data from 2000 through 2019. Their findings are published this month in JAMA Network Open. “The rapidly growing disparities that we're ...

Study suggests that adhering to a Mediterranean diet may alleviate or prevent posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms The human gut microbiome has a significant impact on our health. Research has shown that it can influence the development and response of emotions, but the relationship between posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the gut microbiome has been unexplored. PTSD is a fear-based mental health disorder that develops in some individuals who experience a disturbing and horrifying situation involving severe injury, actual or threat of death, or violence. A new study by investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare ...

About The Study: The findings of this study that involved the use of data from Hong Kong and Singapore suggest that trust in health authorities was fundamental to overcoming COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. As such, engendering trust in health care professionals, experts, and public health agencies should be incorporated into pandemic preparedness and response.  Authors: Michael Y. Ni, M.D., of the University of Hong Kong, 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.2023.37909) Editor’s Note: Please see the article ...