Lugano, Switzerland, 17 October 2023 – Women living and working in places with higher levels of fine particle air pollution are more likely to get breast cancer than those living and working in less polluted areas. Results of the first study to take account of the effects of both residential and workplace exposure to air pollution on breast cancer risk are presented at the ESMO Congress 2023 in Madrid, Spain (1).   “Our data showed a statistically significant association between long term exposure to fine particle air pollution, at home and at work, and risk of breast cancer. This contrasts with previous research which looked only at fine particle exposure ...

Thermosensation is critical for the survival of animals, but the mechanisms by which this is modulated by nutritional status remain unclear; here, behavioral and live brain imaging studies reveal why food-sated fruit flies prefer to stay at relatively higher temperatures compared to hungry flies. ##### In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Biology: http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002332 Article Title: Independent insulin signaling modulators govern hot avoidance ...

Different strains of E.coli can outcompete one another to take over the gut, a new study reveals. Publishing their findings today in PLOS Biology, scientists reveal that a particular strain, known as MDR ST131, can readily colonise new hosts, even if those hosts are already have E.coli in their healthy gut. The international team, led by experts at the University of Birmingham, used a mouse model to help understand why strains of E.coli that live in a healthy gut are rapidly overtaken of when challenged with a multi-drug resistant strain. Lead author Professor Alan McNally, from ...

Sleeping patterns and stress hormones could be the key to understanding how and when people with epilepsy are likely to experience seizures, a new study reveals.  Researchers used mathematical modelling to understand the impact of different physiological processes, such as sleep and changes in concentration of the stress-hormone cortisol, on key signatures of epilepsy – known as epileptiform discharges (ED). Epilepsy is a serious neurological disorder characterised by a tendency to have recurrent, spontaneous seizures. Classically, seizures were assumed to occur at random, until the discovery of ED activity with timescales that vary from hours and days through to months. The scientists ...

The Dompé Foundation is offering 16 scholarships to support neuroscience and neurobiology students enrolled at US universities for the academic year 2023/2024. This funding opportunity, which honors the legacy of the only female Italian Nobel laureate in Medicine, is intended for promising candidates from any nationality that have already been admitted to a Master’s, PhD or post-doc program. With a total budget of up to about 1 million USD, the Foundation has doubled from the previous two years its funding for the US project, ...

Continuing the temperature trend from this summer, September 2023 was the hottest September on record, according to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). The month also set the record for the highest temperature anomaly – the largest difference from the long-term average. This visualization shows global temperature anomalies along with the underlying seasonal cycle. Temperatures advance from January through December left to right, rising during warmer months and falling during cooler months. The color of each line represents the year, with colder purples for the 1960s and warmer oranges and yellows for more recent ...

One of the biggest challenges for earthquake early warning systems (EEW) is the lack of seismic stations located offshore of heavily populated coastlines, where some of the world’s most seismically active regions are located. In a new study published in The Seismic Record, researchers show how unused telecommunications fiber optic cable can be transformed for offshore EEW. Jiuxun Yin, a Caltech researcher now at SLB, and colleagues used 50 kilometers of a submarine telecom cable running between the United States and Chile, sampling ...

A team of researchers at the Texas A&M University School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (VMBS) has received a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to research metabolism in people with Down syndrome. By targeting genes that affect metabolism, the team may be able to develop drug therapies for physical and mental symptoms of the condition, like muscle loss, accelerated aging, and lower cognitive function, thereby improving the quality of life for people with Down syndrome. The new grant will also make Dr. Weston Porter, a professor in the VMBS Department of Veterinary Physiology & Pharmacology and lead researcher ...

In a world that relies on high-speed internet and seamless communication, the absence of a reliable fiber connection can be a significant hurdle. Fortunately, a cutting-edge technology known as free-space optical communication (FSO) offers a flexible solution for field-deployable high-speed wireless communication in areas where fiber connections are unavailable. FSO has garnered attention for its versatility across various scales of operation. On a global level, it plays a crucial role in establishing high-speed satellite internet projects like Starlink, ensuring global connectivity. At the ground level, ...

BATON ROUGE – The Obesity Society – the leading professional society focused on obesity science, treatment and prevention – has named Pennington Biomedical’s Dr. Leanne Redman as the recipient of the 2023 TOPS Research Achievement Award. The award, which is funded by the Take Off Pounds Sensibly, or TOPS, Foundation, was presented to Dr. Redman on Monday, Oct. 16, in recognition of her contributions to research in the field of obesity.   Considered by many to be the top award for obesity research, Dr. ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Anyone who has ever tried to pack a family-sized amount of luggage into a sedan-sized trunk knows this is a hard problem. Robots struggle with dense packing tasks, too.  For the robot, solving the packing problem involves satisfying many constraints, such as stacking luggage so suitcases don’t topple out of the trunk, heavy objects aren’t placed on top of lighter ones, and collisions between the robotic arm and the car’s bumper are avoided.  Some traditional methods tackle this problem sequentially, guessing a partial solution ...

Glioblastoma is the most common type of brain tumor that affects adults and, unfortunately, still remains incurable. In a new study, researchers have demonstrated that a specific mitochondrial protein plays an important role in glioblastoma, and can therefore be used as a potential target to reduce tumors. “Glioblastoma is notorious for its lethality. One of the major challenges is that it spreads invasively throughout the brain. We’re interested in understanding what drives this process in order to identify new therapeutic strategies,” said Brendan Harley (RBTE leader/EIRH), the Robert W. Schaefer Professor of Chemical ...

Key takeaways Whaling in the 20th century destroyed 99% of the Eastern North Pacific fin whale breeding  population. Because there is enough genetic diversity, current conservation measures should help the population rebound without becoming inbred. The future of fin whales in the Gulf of California depends on the recovery of the Eastern North Pacific population. A new genomic study by UCLA biologists shows that whaling in the 20th century destroyed 99% of the Eastern North Pacific fin whale breeding, or “effective,” population — 29% more than previously thought. But there is also some good news: Genes among members of this endangered ...

By Benjamin Boettner (Boston) — The lung is one of the tissues most sensitive to radiation in the human body. People exposed to high radiation doses following nuclear incidents develop radiation-induced lung injury (RILI), which affects the function of many cell types in the lung, causing acute and sustained inflammation, and in the longer term, the thickening and scarring of lung tissue known as fibrosis. RILI also is a common side effect of radiation therapy administered to cancer patients to kill malignant cells in their bodies, and can limit the maximum radiation dose doctors can use to control their ...

Texas A&M University scientists and research partners have received two National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) grants to study the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in deer. These funds will help researchers understand the impact of the virus in Texas’ deer populations and its relationship to human and ecological health. For these projects, the research team will focus on captive deer, which are an agricultural species in Texas, including managed deer that live on large, rural properties enclosed by fences, as well as on the wild deer with which captive deer may interact and deer living ...

SAN ANTONIO - October 17, 2023 — Southwest Research Institute has developed a unique technology (US20230242487A1) that enables the safe and efficient synthesis of organophosphorus nerve agent (OPNA) oxime antidotes. Using this technology, SwRI scientists can not only successfully synthesize currently known highly effective nerve agent countermeasures, but also effectively develop promising new drug candidates to treat nerve agent exposure. Current treatments for OPNA exposure have not changed significantly since the 1950s. OPNAs are odorless and colorless chemicals ...

October 17, 2023—The Foundation for Angelman Syndrome Therapeutics (FAST) announced today that the non-profit organization has entered into an exclusive global collaborative research and development agreement with the University of Pennsylvania to develop an investigational adeno-associated virus (AAV) gene therapy for Angelman syndrome (AS). Angelman syndrome is a nondegenerative neurogenetic disorder that is estimated to impact approximately 1 in 15,000 births, or potentially 500,000 individuals world-wide, ...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 17, 2023 – Wave energy technology is a proven source of power generation, but there is power inherent in every molecule of liquid on earth, even when the liquid is at rest. At the molecular scale, atoms and ions are always moving. If this nanoscale movement can be harvested, it could be a big source of energy. “There are vast amounts of air and liquid on the earth, and their successful harvesting could produce a gigantic amount of energy for society,” author Yucheng Luan said. In an article published this week in APL Materials, by AIP Publishing, Luan and his collaborators tested a molecular energy harvesting device that captures ...

For many people seaweed holds a reputation as a superfood, heralded for its health benefits and sustainability, but it appears our European ancestors were ahead of the game and were consuming the nutrient-rich plant for thousands of years. Researchers say they have found “definitive” archaeological evidence that seaweeds and other local freshwater plants were eaten in the mesolithic, through the Neolithic transition to farming and into the Early Middle Ages, suggesting that these resources, now rarely eaten in Europe, only ...

About The Study: The Million Hearts Model, which encouraged and paid health care organizations to assess and reduce cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk, reduced first-time heart attacks and strokes. The results support guidelines to use risk scores for CVD primary prevention.  Authors: Laura Blue, Ph.D., of Mathematica in Washington, D.C., 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/jama.2023.19597) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional ...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 17, 2023 – Climate change and the rapid increase in frequency of extreme weather events around the globe – such as wildfires and floods – reinforces the reality that these events are not only not random but, rather, interconnected. Interlinked climate behavior, or teleconnections, isn’t a well understood field but will be necessary to fully comprehend how our climate system works. In Chaos, from AIP Publishing, a team of researchers affiliated with Beijing Normal University and Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications in China and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany describes a climate network analysis method to explore ...

About The Study: The results of this study of over 4.7 million patient encounters across the U.S. during a 3-year period suggest that patients from racial and ethnic minority groups with acute traumatic injuries do not have their pain treated equitably in the prehospital setting. Authors: Eli Carrillo, M.D., of the Stanford University School of Medicine in Stanford, California, 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.2023.38070) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional ...

About The Study: In this study of 109,000 individuals born between 1933 and 1952 and followed up in old age, adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) was associated with an increased risk of dementia. Policy makers, caregivers, patients, and clinicians may wish to monitor reliably for ADHD in old age. Authors: Stephen Z. Levine, Ph.D., of the University of Haifa in Haifa, Israel, 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.2023.38088) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including ...

Tropical forests are among the most important habitats on our planet. They are characterised by extremely high species diversity and play an eminent role in the global carbon cycle and the world climate. However, many tropical forest areas have been deforested and overexploitation continues day by day. Reforested areas in the tropics are therefore becoming increasingly important for the climate and biodiversity. How well biodiversity develops on such areas can be monitored very well with an automated analysis of animal sounds. This was reported by researchers in the journal Nature Communications. Recordings on Former Cocoa Plantations and Pastures As part of the DFG research group ...

(Boston)—Untreated hyperthyroidism, conditions where there is excess thyroid hormone present, can adversely affect health, leading to increased risks for abnormal heart rhythms, heart failure, osteoporosis, adverse pregnancy outcomes, metabolic abnormalities and increased mortality risk. Hyperthyroidism can occur due to several different etiologies, including Graves’ disease, toxic (overactive) thyroid nodules, and thyroiditis. It is important to recognize, correctly diagnose, and appropriately treat the underlying cause of hyperthyroidism to minimize its impacts on health. In a new review article in the Journal ...