Key takeaways  Using Fitbit activity tracking data, researchers identified patients who might be at higher risk of postoperative complications. Fewer daily steps were associated with a higher rate of complications postoperatively.   The odds of complications within 90 days after hospital discharge were reduced by half if a patient took more than 7,500 steps a day before the operation, after adjusting for the complexity of the procedure, comorbidities, and other factors.   CHICAGO (October 20, 2023): Patients who recorded more ...

Key Takeaways  Childhood trauma rates increased during the COVID-19 pandemic and were disproportionately higher for children in socioeconomically deprived areas.  In this vulnerable population, injuries were most often due to motor vehicle crashes, firearms, and non-accidental trauma.  The study adds to growing evidence of pandemic-related effects on health and reinforces the need for efforts to prevent pediatric trauma.  BOSTON (October 20, 2023): Injuries from gunshots and motor vehicle ...

Key Takeaways  Trauma centers with the highest pediatric readiness scores (93 or greater) on a national assessment have much lower death rates than centers scoring lower.  All trauma centers should address gaps in pediatric emergency care — most importantly, the lack of having a pediatric-specific quality improvement plan.  BOSTON (October 20, 2023): Children initially treated at trauma centers with the highest level of preparedness to care for children, called pediatric readiness, are significantly less likely to die than those initially treated at trauma facilities with lower pediatric readiness levels, new research shows. The findings are being presented ...

Key Takeaways  Women with breast cancer, who are making complex decisions about treatment options during an already stressful time, may turn to the wide variety of materials available online, which are not always from data-driven sources.  Researchers found that educational materials often vary in quality, can have a negative tone, and are written above the sixth-grade reading level recommended by the National Institutes of Health.  BOSTON (October 20, 2023): Women with breast cancer must often make complex decisions about surgery and treatment options ...

SAN ANTONIO, Texas, USA (Oct. 20, 2023) — The 50 families stretch from the Netherlands and the United Kingdom to the United States and China. Each family has a child who is paralyzed from a mutation in a single gene named Contactin-Associated Protein 1 (Cntnap1). The children are locked inside their bodies, unable to move. The families feed them and change them, and someone monitors them 24/7. Thousands of miles away in South Texas, Manzoor Bhat, MS, PhD, and his team at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio are making ...

A new study is gathering extensive data about people with bipolar disorder to improve diagnosis and treatment of this mental health condition that affects 40 million people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. UCLA Health is among six inaugural sites of the BD2 Integrated Network, which aims to enroll 4,000 participants for the study. Researchers intend to collect health metrics, brain scans, self-reported symptoms and data on movement and sleep from wearable trackers, over time, in what’s known as a longitudinal cohort study. The BD2 Integrated Network also forms a learning collective among the ...

Executives from clinical stage artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery company Insilico Medicine will present on the impact of AI on biotechnology at the Future Investment Initiative (FII) Conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine and Petrina Kamya, PhD, Head of AI Platforms and President of Insilico Medicine Canada will present on the topic “Will AI Rebuild Biotech?” on Oct. 26, 11:45am Arabic Standard Time. The event is available to be livestreamed.  The FII Conference brings together the world’s foremost CEOs, policymakers, ...

Allogeneic invariant natural killer T cells (allo-iNKTs) from a healthy donor have been shown to have therapeutic effects in treatment-resistant cancers and improve survival from COVID-19-related acute respiratory failure in previous studies. Unlike T cells, allo-iNKTs can be transferred from one person to another without causing graft-versus-host disease. But allo-iNKT cells rapidly become undetectable in the body after infusion, raising concerns over their rejection and disease relapse. Their functioning also varies from person to person. Researchers from the School of Veterinary Medicine and Perelman School of Medicine hypothesized ...

Stimulating muscle fibers with magnets causes them to grow in the same direction, aligning muscle cells within tissue, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Boston University investigators report October 20 in the journal Device. The findings offer a simpler, less time-consuming way for medical researchers to program muscle cell alignment, which is strongly tied to healthy muscle function. “The ability to make aligned muscle in a lab setting means that we can develop model tissues for understanding muscle in healthy and diseased states and for developing and testing new therapies ...

The ability of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB), a serious respiratory infection, to form snake-like cords was first noted nearly 80 years ago. In a study published October 20 in the journal Cell, investigators report the biophysical mechanisms by which these cords form and demonstrate how several generations of dividing bacteria hang together to create these structures that enable resistance to antibiotics. “Our work clearly showed that cord formation is important for infection and why this highly ordered architecture might be important for pathogenesis,” says senior author Vivek Thacker (@DrVivekThacker), who ...

There’s no doubt that exercise does a body good, including strengthening and toning our muscles. But how exactly does exercise make this happen? As we run and lift and stretch, our muscles experience chemical signals from surrounding cells, as well as mechanical forces from jostling against tissues. Some physiologists wonder: Is it the body’s natural chemical stimulants or the physical forces of repeated motion — or some mix of the two — that ultimately drive our muscles to grow? The answer could be the key to identifying therapies to help people recover from muscle ...

About The Study: In this study of 5,435 adolescents and young adults with cancer, those reporting moderate or severe symptoms through a screening program were more likely to subsequently receive specialty palliative care. These findings suggest that specialty palliative care was associated with a subsequent decrease in pain severity but did not affect other symptoms. New interventions targeting other symptoms during treatment and particularly at the end of life are needed.  Authors: Sumit Gupta, M.D., Ph.D., of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: ...

About The Study: In this randomized clinical trial of 134 individuals who underwent a cesarean delivery, use of a high-frequency electrical stimulation device as part of a multimodal analgesia protocol decreased opioid use in the immediate postoperative period and opioids prescribed at discharge. These findings suggest that the use of this device may be a helpful adjunct to decrease opioid use without compromising pain control after cesarean delivery.  Authors: Jennifer L. Grasch, M.D., of the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus, is the corresponding author.  To ...

Being suspended from school or sent to the office is tied to a big drop in grade point average (GPA), especially for Black and Latinx children, according to UC San Francisco researchers.  Their study, publishing Oct. 20, 2023, in JAMA Network Open, analyzed the school records of 16,849 students in grades 6 through 10 in a large urban school district in California from 2014 to 2017. Black students who had an “exclusionary school discipline” (ESD) event – being removed from a classroom or suspended ...

Researchers are studying the dramatic physical transformation that some insects undergo to give birth to live young. This includes suppressing their immune systems to accommodate babies, which is something some insects and people have in common. Understanding how these systems work can help improve treatments for fibromyalgia and other immune disorders. Biologists at the University of Cincinnati were part of an international team examining the complex structural and physiological changes that take place in Hawaii’s beetle-mimic cockroaches, which give birth to live young. “It’s ...

The 'wonder material' graphene is well-known for its high electrical conductivity, mechanical strength, and flexibility. Stacking two layers of graphene with atomic layer thickness produces bilayer graphene, which possesses excellent electrical, mechanical, and optical properties. As such, bilayer graphene has attracted significant attention and is being utilized in a host of next-generation devices, including quantum computers. But complicating their application in quantum computing comes in the form of gaining accurate measurements of the quantum bit states. Most research has primarily used low-frequency electronics to overcome this. However, ...

20 October 2023, Brussels, Belgium – At this critical junction for EU chemicals legislation, the independent scientific voice took centre stage at the 5th Annual Forum on Endocrine Disruptors. Together with an impressive number of concerned stakeholders, they called for the immediate adoption implementation of better EU legislation. While a restriction on per-and polyfluoroalkaline substances (PFAS) is ongoing, it risks being watered down by the massive volume of industry submissions to the public consultation. In addition, the European Commission’s legislative ...

A team from the University of Cordoba has designed a model, based on fuzzy logic, that predicts the performance of online education students, dividing them into 4 categories and helping professors give more personalized assistance to each student, tailored to their situations Distance education has democratized access to knowledge, overcoming problems of time and space. The flexibility and accessibility of this type of system has increased the number of people educated via online platforms. However, due to its large ...

Often introduced unintentionally by human activities, invasive alien species can outcompete and overwhelm native flora and fauna, driving species to the brink of extinction and disrupting the balance of ecosystems. Understanding why exactly they establish in new locations and how they got there in the first place is crucial if we are to mitigate their destructive effects. Unfortunately, there isn’t enough research on this, and the answers might not always be straightforward. A research team from AgResearch and Better Border Biosecurity (B3) investigated the biological risk posed by ...

A huge step forward in the evolution of perovskite solar cells recorded by researchers at City University of Hong Kong (CityU) will have significant implications for renewable energy development. The CityU innovation paves the way for commercialising perovskite solar cells, bringing us closer to an energy-efficient future powered by sustainable sources.  “The implications of this research are far-reaching, and its potential applications could revolutionise the solar energy industry,” said Professor Zhu Zonglong of the Department of Chemistry at CityU, who collaborated ...

They published their work on Oct. 18 in Energy Material Advances.   "Constructing a good interface between cathode and electrolyte is crucial for the development of all-solid-state battery," said Chuang Yu, a professor at the State Key Laboratory of Advanced Electromagnetic Technology at Huazhong University of Science and Technology. "Currently, strategies such as coating protect layer on cathode surface and isolating cathode/sulfide electrolyte by halide electrolyte layer are typical solutions to solve the problems at the interface between the cathode and the sulfide electrolytes, but it is not yet clear who is more suitable for sulfide-based all-solid-state ...

Bio-machine hybrid robots (BHRs) represent a new generation of micro-aerial vehicles that be controlled by building an interface between biological and artificial systems. In contrast to conventional bionic robots, they are free of complex mechanical structures, and due to the direct adoption of the animal body, they have superior moving characteristics and lower energy demand. Thus, the BHRs can be applied in many important scenarios, such as urban and wilderness rescue operations, environmental monitoring and hazardous area surveys. To accomplish long mission endurance, the energy supply ...

Johns Hopkins researchers looking to develop a long-acting, injectable malaria preventive using atovaquone have shown in a new study that resistance may not be the challenge scientists thought it was, particularly when using atovaquone as a malaria preventive. Malaria parasites in infected patients being treated with atovaquone tend to develop a resistance to the drug. Because of this, atovaquone by itself is not used as a malaria treatment nor has not been seen as a strong candidate for use as a preventive.  The study, led by a team of researchers at the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute and the Johns ...

New findings from researchers at UCLA Health suggest that measuring changes in how pupils react to light could help predict recovery from depression and personalize transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) treatment of major depressive disorder. TMS is a safe, non-invasive therapy that uses magnetic fields to stimulate parts of the brain involved in mood regulation. While TMS is proven effective, not all patients respond equally well to the therapy. The ability to predict who will benefit most could allow doctors to better customize ...

Women with diets during middle age designed to lower blood pressure were about 17 percent less likely to report memory loss and other signs of cognitive decline decades later, a new study finds. Led by researchers from NYU Grossman School of Medicine, the new findings suggest that a mid-life lifestyle modification – adoption of the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, or DASH diet – may improve cognitive function later in life for women, who make up more than two-thirds of those diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, the most prevalent form of dementia. The findings, published online today in ...