A multi-institutional team of researchers led by the White River Junction VA, and including the West Haven and Palo Alto VA, analyzed electronic health record data from more than 5.9 million Veterans―spanning both pre-pandemic (March 2018 - February 2020) and pandemic (March 2020 - February 2022) periods―to discover nuanced insights from COVID-19’s impact on mortality rates. While former studies have primarily relied on aggregate data, this research―published in the October 2023 issue of the International Journal of Epidemiology―offered a unique perspective ...

A paper in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences today describes “a missing law of nature,” recognizing for the first time an important norm within the natural world’s workings.   In essence, the new law states that complex natural systems evolve to states of greater patterning, diversity, and complexity. In other words, evolution is not limited to life on Earth, it also occurs in other massively complex systems, from planets and stars to atoms, minerals, and more. Authored by a nine-member team — leading scientists from the Carnegie Institution for ...

Exposure to a large-scale disaster, such as a tsunami, impacts population health over a decade later. A new study by an inter-disciplinary team of researchers in the United States and Indonesia has found that women who lived along the coast of Aceh, Indonesia when it was hit by waves from the 2004 tsunami have lower cortisol levels 14 years later than women who lived in other, nearby coastal communities that were not directly affected. Cortisol is a stress hormone produced by the adrenal glands. Cortisol levels rise in response to stress as part of the fight or flight response, but consistently elevated ...

A new study led by scientists at the American Museum of Natural History, Brooklyn College, and the Catalan Institute of Paleontology Miquel Crusafont has reconstructed the well-preserved but damaged skull of a great ape species that lived about 12 million years ago. The species, Pierolapithecus catalaunicus, may be crucial to understanding great ape and human evolution. The researchers describe their findings today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Pierolapithecus catalaunicus, a species from northeastern Spain first described in 2004, was one of a diverse group of now-extinct ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – The Space Age is leaving fingerprints on one of the most remote parts of the planet — the stratosphere — which has potential implications for climate, the ozone layer and the continued habitability of Earth.  Using tools hitched to the nose cone of their research planes and sampling more than 11 miles above the planet’s surface, researchers have discovered significant amounts of metals in aerosols in the atmosphere, likely from increasingly frequent launches and returns of spacecraft and satellites. That mass of metal is changing atmospheric chemistry in ways that ...

Stress and depression are known to increase risk of heart attack, especially among women. They’ve also been linked to worse recovery. But does stress and depression contribute more to women with heart attacks with open arteries or blocked arteries? That’s what a new study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology aimed to find out. Researchers found stress and depression were indeed common among women at the time of heart attack and for two months after. But they also found that women with heart attacks due to blockages (MI-CAD) in their coronary arteries had higher ...

When walking on the sidewalk, a person is able to avoid puddles, other walkers, and cracks in the pavement. It may seem intuitive – and that's because it is.  There’s actually a biological component that allows humans and other mammals to navigate our complex environments. Central Pattern Generators (CPG) are neural networks that produce rhythmic patterns of control signals for limbs using simple environmental cues. When we quickly step away to avoid something blocking our path, that’s ...

Using neutrons to see the additive manufacturing process at the atomic level, scientists have shown that they can measure strain in a material as it evolves and track how atoms move in response to stress. The automotive, aerospace, clean energy and tool-and-die industries — any industry that needs complex and high-performance parts — could use additive manufacturing,” said Alex Plotkowski, materials scientist in ORNL’s Materials Science and Technology Division and the lead scientist of the experiment. Plotkowski and his ...

Findings from research to help the business world identify destructive ‘corporate psychopaths’ will be presented at the Chelmsford Science Festival on Monday, 23 October.   Dr Clive Boddy of Anglia Ruskin University, a pioneer in the field of corporate psychopathy, will discuss his research, published in the International Journal of Market Research, looking at how the financial industry can identify, manage and, if necessary, remove these individuals.   Around 1% of the adult population are ...

NEW ORLEANS, La. - Ochsner Health was named among the “Best Hospitals According to Patients & Health Care Providers” by WebMD, an online publication for health news and information. The 2023 WebMD Choice Awards recognized a select group of 167 health systems with Elite Choice Awards, WebMD Patient Choice Awards, and Medscape Physician Choice Awards. Results were gathered via a survey of a national audience encompassing thousands of patients and healthcare clinicians to determine which hospitals they believe deliver the best quality and treatments. The awards program identifies the “best in class” ...

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon's Systems, Networking, and Energy Efficiency (Synergy) Lab will present several multi-year studies on their work around ubiquitous sensing at this week's ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp). The works unveil several innovative systems and explain how the collected data can be converted to offer useful insights, all while ensuring the privacy of the individuals being monitored. Led by School of Computer Science Associate Professor Yuvraj Agarwal, ...

Clinical stage artificial intelligence (AI) drug discovery company Insilico Medicine (“Insilico”) has been invited to present scientific data on its novel anti-cancer assets at three major upcoming cancer conferences -- the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) conference in Madrid Oct. 20-24, 2023; the Society of Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) conference Nov. 1-5, 2023 in San Diego; and the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) Dec. 5-9, 2023.  Small molecule oncology ...

SAN FRANCISCO — The American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) today presented Philip G. Morgan, M.D., and Margaret M. Sedensky, M.D., with its 2023 Excellence in Research Award in recognition of their extensive research focused on understanding how anesthetics work and whether certain anesthetics are safe for children with mitochondrial disease. The award is presented annually for outstanding achievement in research that has had, or is likely to have, an important impact on the practice of anesthesiology. Drs. Morgan and Sedensky are professors in the Department of Anesthesiology ...

Many parts of the Brazilian Amazon are neglected in ecological research, for several reasons, according to an article published in the journal Current Biology. Authored by Joice Ferreira of the Federal University of Pará (UFP) and colleagues from many countries who also belong to the Synergize Consortium, the article identifies the areas missing from ecological research and the factors that have determined these gaps, pinpointing opportunities for the planning of new investments in research ...

A new kind of polymer membrane created by researchers at Georgia Tech could reshape how refineries process crude oil, dramatically reducing the energy and water required while extracting even more useful materials. The so-called DUCKY polymers — more on the unusual name in a minute — are reported Oct. 16 in Nature Materials. And they’re just the beginning for the team of Georgia Tech chemists, chemical engineers, and materials scientists. They also have created artificial intelligence tools to predict the performance of these kinds of polymer membranes, which could accelerate development of new ones. The implications are stark: ...

Gun violence is tied to poverty, unemployment, broken families, disengaged youth and racial segregation, according to a study by the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center at Rutgers.   Published in the Journal of Urban Health, the study found that people living in disadvantaged communities face gun violence at higher levels that are harmful to the health and well-being of whole neighborhoods.   “Many of America’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods are stuck in a vicious cycle of violence and collateral damage that is almost impossible to escape,” ...

Researchers led by Prof. GAO Xiang from the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Prof. LU Lu from the Harbin Institute of Technology have proposed a novel method to transform wastewater contaminants into valuable chemicals using sunlight, thus paving the way for sustainable and eco-friendly chemical manufacturing. The study was published in Nature Sustainability on Oct. 16. Conventional chemical manufacturing relies on energy-intensive processes. Semiconductor biohybrids, integrating efficient light-harvesting materials with superior living cells, have emerged as an exciting advancement ...

PHILADELPHIA—Patients with long COVID – the long-term symptoms like brain fog, fatigue, or memory loss in the months or years following COVID-19 – can exhibit a reduction in circulating levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin, according to new research published today in Cell. The study, led by researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, sheds new light on the mechanisms of how persistent inflammation after contracting the SARS-CoV-2 virus can cause long-term neurological symptoms. According to the CDC, nearly one in five American adults who had COVID-19 experience symptoms of long ...

A research group led by Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) finds that when common orthopedic symptoms are given, ChatGPT’s diagnosis and recommendations are inconsistent Tokyo, Japan – ChatGPT, a sophisticated chatbot driven by artificial intelligence (AI) technology, has been increasingly used in health care contexts, one of which is assisting patients in self-diagnosing before seeking medical help. Although it seems very useful at first glance, AI may cause more harm than good to the patient if it is not accurate in its diagnosis and recommendations. A research team from Japan and ...

DALLAS and STAVANGER, Norway, October 16, 2023 — For nearly 20 years, the American Heart Association® (Association) and Laerdal Medical (Laerdal) have together developed and brought resuscitation education, training and technology to the health care market.  The Association and Laerdal will now expand their focus beyond education to creating and nurturing health care quality improvement solutions to impact a community “systems of care” approach and influence more positive patient outcomes. This World Restart a Heart Day, the organizations are furthering their collaborative relationship ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A multiyear analysis tested whether management zone maps based on soil conditions, topography or other landscape features can reliably predict which parts of a cornfield will respond best to higher rates of seeding or nitrogen application. The study found that – contrary to common assumptions – crop-plot responses to the same inputs vary significantly from year to year. The most unpredictable factor – the weather – seemed to have the biggest impact on how the crops responded to these inputs. The ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Human sensory systems are very good at recognizing objects that we see or words that we hear, even if the object is upside down or the word is spoken by a voice we’ve never heard. Computational models known as deep neural networks can be trained to do the same thing, correctly identifying an image of a dog regardless of what color its fur is, or a word regardless of the pitch of the speaker’s voice. However, a new study from MIT neuroscientists has found that these models often also respond the same way to images or words that have no resemblance to the target. When these neural networks were used to generate an image ...

TAMPA, Fla. — Targeted cancer drugs are widely used because of their ability to inhibit specific proteins involved in cancer development with fewer side effects compared to chemotherapy drugs. But targeted therapies can often inhibit other unknown proteins. These hidden targets may also contribute to the drug’s anticancer effects and potentially offer a path for the drug to be repurposed for other cancers controlled by the hidden target. In a new study published in Cell Chemical Biology, Moffitt Cancer Center researchers demonstrate this, showing that the ROS1 inhibitor lorlatinib has activity against an additional protein called PYK2. The team also reveals the mechanisms of ...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Monday October 16, 2023                           Contact: Jillian McKoy, jpmckoy@bu.edu Michael Saunders, msaunder@bu.edu ## Life expectancy has increased substantially for people in the United States with Down syndrome, from a median age of 4 years old in the 1950s to 57 years old in 2019. This longer life span increases the need for adequate healthcare into adulthood for this population, the majority of whom are at high ...

SAN FRANCISCO — The American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) today presented Santhanam Suresh, M.D., MBA, FASA, with its 2023 Excellence in Education Award in recognition of his extraordinary educational contributions to advancing regional anesthesia and pain management in children. The award is presented annually to an ASA member who has made significant contributions to the specialty through excellence in teaching, development of new teaching methods or the implementation of innovative educational programs. Dr. Suresh is the Arthur C. King professor and chair emeritus of pediatric anesthesiology ...