Like an old man suddenly aware the world has moved on without him, the conifer tree native to lower elevations of California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range finds itself in an unrecognizable climate. A new Stanford-led study reveals that about a fifth of all Sierra Nevada conifer forests – emblems of Western wilderness – are a “mismatch” for their regions’ warming weather. The paper, to be published Feb. 28 in PNAS Nexus, highlights how such “zombie forests” are temporarily cheating death, likely to be replaced with tree species ...

Researchers from Boston College, Georgetown University, American University, Texas A&M University, and Colorado State University published a new Journal of Marketing article that challenges the entrenched belief that financial vulnerability only affects low-income consumers. The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled “Beyond Income: Dynamic Consumer Financial Vulnerability” and is authored by Linda Court Salisbury, Gergana Y. Nenkov, Simon J. Blanchard, Ronald Paul Hill, Alexander L. Brown, and Kelly D. Martin. Even pre-pandemic, many U.S. workers lived ...

For his contributions to the field of regeneration, Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado receives the Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science. The Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science is a $100,000 prize awarded annually by the Vilcek Foundation as part of its prizes program.  Awarded annually since 2006, the Vilcek Foundation prizes recognize and celebrate immigrant contributions to scientific research and discovery, and to artistic and cultural advancement in the United States. The prizes provide direct support to individual immigrant scientists and artists and help to raise greater public awareness of the value of immigration ...

People are occasionally exposed to potentially harmful substances in the environment or through their diets or habits. For example, a compound found in cigarette and industrial smoke, benzo(a)pyrene (BaP), is known to damage DNA. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Central Science have mapped these effects — down to the single-nucleotide level — for the first time in human lung cells after BaP exposure. They say that this technique could help predict exposures that lead to cancers. When BaP gets into a person’s body and is metabolized, it can turn into a new compound, or metabolite, that irreversibly attaches to one ...

Although many measures are in place to prevent contamination, pollutants, such as mercury and lead, can still end up in the environment. Sensing them often requires complicated processes, but what if you could detect them with the tap of a fingertip? Researchers reporting in ACS Nano have developed a self-powered nanosensor that can discover small amounts of mercury ions and immediately report the result. Watch a video of the nanosensor in action here. Mercury in its Hg2+ form can be harmful if consumed through contaminated water or food, so researchers have developed various mercury sensors. One ...

SAN ANTONIO (Feb. 22, 2023) — In a new study, researchers from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio) link obesity with 21 Alzheimer’s disease-related genes, providing a potential mechanistic explanation for why Alzheimer’s is sometimes more frequent among adults who experienced obesity in midlife. The findings from 5,619 participants of the Framingham Heart Study were published Feb. 22 in Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association. The research team analyzed 74 Alzheimer’s-related genes from Framingham ...

Mount Sinai researchers have published a study in Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association that sheds new light on the role of DNA methylation in Alzheimer's disease (AD). The study found that DNA methylation has a profound impact on gene and protein co-expression networks associated with AD and could lead to the discovery of new neuropathological processes and molecular mechanisms for developing novel treatments for the disease. The study was conducted using a novel analytical approach to quantify the impact of DNA methylation on gene and protein expression and a large ...

DUBLIN, Ohio, Feb. 22, 2023 -- Today, Cardinal Health (NYSE: CAH) released its 2023 Biosimilars Report: Tracking market expansion and sustainability amidst a shifting industry, a publication that highlights provider perceptions, utilization and the latest market trends of biosimilars. The report assesses new and changing perspectives regarding some of the most disruptive biosimilars launched in the areas of immunology and ophthalmology, noting a growing familiarity of the medications among rheumatologists with 76% reporting being very familiar with the products, a 43% jump year-over-year. The research also reports high familiarity among gastroenterologists (81%) compared to ophthalmologists ...

East Africa’s iconic rangelands - under threat from climate change and human activity - have the potential to recover from repeated environmental shocks and degradation, a new study has concluded. Covering 47% of the Earth’s land surface, rangelands are home to one third of the global population, many of whom are pastoralists who depend on the savannahs to meet their daily need for shelter, water and food. But because rangelands develop in semi-arid areas and are primarily used for grazing, they are highly vulnerable to changes in rainfall and human pressures. As part of the study, published ...

ROCKVILLE, Md.— A new Slovenian population-scaled, school-based study shows that by providing additional physical education lessons to young children is effective in preventing childhood obesity, according to findings published in Obesity, The Obesity Society’s (TOS) flagship journal. “Our results show the importance of sustainable, long-lasting, physical activity programs set in schools for children’s health at both the individual and the population level. While this study analysed only the effectiveness of such program for obesity prevention, physical activity programs are likely to benefit ...

Inducing labour, in a low-risk pregnancy, can have long-term consequences on the child's cognitive development. Research from the Amsterdam UMC shows this based on pregnancy data and school performance at age 12 of 226,684 Dutch children. These results are published today in the journal AOGS.   By combining pregnancy data from the Dutch perinatal registration with data on school performance from Statistics Netherlands, researchers from Amsterdam UMC were able to study the potential effects of induced labour on school performance in low-risk pregnancies.  "We saw a small yet significant reduction in test scores for children born after ...

Acute low back pain is a common cause of disability. An analysis in the Journal of Orthopaedic Research examined which non-opioid drugs are best for treating this condition. The analysis, which included all randomized controlled trials published to date (18 studies with 3,478 patients), showed that muscle relaxants and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) could effectively and rapidly reduce symptoms. The combination of NSAIDs and paracetamol (also known as acetaminophen) was associated with a greater improvement than NSAIDs alone. “This is a first step towards the optimization of the management of acute low back ...

In an analysis published in the British Journal of Management that included 592 firms from 35 countries operating from 2002–2019, higher levels of greenhouse gas emissions were negatively associated with market value, whereas climate change initiatives were positively linked with market value. Surprisingly, climate change initiatives were positively related to increased levels of greenhouse gas emissions. The presence of a board sustainability committee—which plays a crucial role in designing environmental initiatives and introducing best sustainability management practices—was also associated ...

A new study published in Genes, Brain and Behavior has identified several genetic variants that may be linked with mathematical abilities in children. For the research, investigators performed genome-wide association studies on 11 mathematical ability categories in 1,146 students from Chinese elementary schools. They identified seven single nucleotide genetic variants in the genome that were strongly linked to mathematical and reasoning abilities.  Additional analyses revealed significant associations of three mathematical ...

Bovine meat and milk factors (BMMFs)—initially identified by de Villiers et al. in 2014—represent a class of infectious agents in beef and cow's milk that have been linked to the development of cancer. New research published in Molecular Oncology suggests that monitoring the presence and rate of expression of a BMMF-encoded replication protein (Rep) in inflammatory sites of the tissues may help identify individuals at risk for developing colorectal cancer subsequently after decades-long latency periods. The study compared the presence of Rep and specific ...

New research published in Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica found that in women with uncomplicated pregnancies, elective induction of labor at any point between 37 and 41 weeks was consistently associated with lower school performance in children at age 12. The analysis included 266,684 children born between 37 and 42 weeks from uncomplicated pregnancies in white women in the Netherlands. School performance scores at age 12 years were lower in those from pregnancies with induced labor at 37–41 weeks compared with those with uninduced labor. At 42 weeks, there was no significant difference in school performance between these groups. The proportion ...

In several poorer countries, ageing populations and a lack of universal access to long-term care place the burden of care for older adults on their family. To mitigate this, researchers have successfully implemented a community-integrated intermediary care model in Thailand. This care service has proven effective in reducing caregiver burden and improving the functional ability and independence of seniors. The multi-pronged model includes care prevention activities, capacity-building for family caregivers, and community respite services.   Rapidly ageing populations are a problem that many ...

Philadelphia, February 22, 2023 – In recent years, wearable devices such as smartwatches and rings, as well as smart scales, have become ubiquitous – “must-haves” for the health conscious to self-monitor heart rate, blood pressure, and other vital signs. Despite the obvious benefits, certain fitness and wellness trackers could also pose serious risks for people with cardiac implantable electronic devices (CIEDs) such as pacemakers, implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs), and cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) devices, reports a new study published in Heart Rhythm, the official journal of the Heart Rhythm ...

Feb. 22, 2022 — In this high-tech era, wearable devices such as smartwatches have proven to be invaluable companions for the health conscious. But a new study from the University of Utah shows that for a small group of people, some of these electronic fitness gadgets could possibly be risky to their health — even potentially deadly.             University of Utah electrical and computer engineering assistant professor Benjamin Sanchez Terrones and U associate professor of medicine Benjamin Steinberg have published a new study that shows wearable devices such as ...

As part of an effort to address a diversity crisis in brain research, a USC-led brain research consortium is launching a massive data-gathering initiative in India. By 2050, 79% of the world's population over age 60 will live in developing countries, with 20% in India, according to the United Nations. Yet most brain research has been conducted in Caucasian populations from relatively wealthy backgrounds. This lack of ethnic diversity means that we do not know if predictors of health and disease generalize to other ethnic groups, and researchers struggle ...

Substances exhibit many novel properties under high pressure, for example, pressure can induce insulator-metal or even superconductor transition. However, in-situ magnetic measurement is always a difficult problem in high pressure research and restricts the study of superconductor's Meissner effect and magnetic phase transition behavior of magnetic materials at high pressures. A new high pressure in-situ magnetic detection method was developed recently by a collaborated research group of Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS) of Chinese Academy of Sciences, ...

Researchers from Department of Microbiology, School of Clinical Medicine, LKS Faculty of Medicine, the University of Hong Kong (HKUMed), has identified novel host protease determinants, that facilitate the infection of SARS-CoV-2, including the Omicron variant, which provided new targets for combating the pandemic. In addition to the host protease determinants, members from the membrane-type matrix metalloproteinase (MT-MMP) and a disintegrin and metalloproteinase (ADAM) families were found to be able to mediate SARS-CoV-2 entry, with an increase efficiency against Omicron BA.1. This finding suggests that a new treatment strategy at MMP inhibition should be explored to effectively combat ...

Recently, Prof. WANG Hui, together with Prof. LIN Wenchu and associate Prof. QIAN Junchao from Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences reported a NIR- II -responsive carbon-coated iron oxide nanocluster which was guided by magnetic resonance image and capable of combined photothermal and chemodynamic therapy (CDT). Relevant results were published in SCIENCE CHINA Materials. As a promising treatment strategy, CDT has become a hot spot in treating cancer because of its simple operation and low side effects. The basic ...

Aquaculture, or the farming of aquatic plants and animals, contributes to biodiversity and habitat loss in freshwater and marine ecosystems globally, but when used wisely, it can also be part of the solution, new research shows. Published today in Conservation Biology, University of Melbourne researchers have identified 12 potential ecological benefits of aquaculture. These include species recovery, habitat restoration, rehabilitation and protection, and removal of overabundant species. Lead ...

Recently, a research team from the Institute of Solid State Physics, Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS) of Chinese Academy of Sciences developed a wearable sensing patch and realized rapid quantitative analysis of urea. The related results have been published in prestigious international journal Analytical Chemistry. Urea, which is excreted through sweat, urine, saliva and blood, is considered an important indicator of renal function in clinical diagnosis. Effective detection of urea level is crucial for early detection of disease. Wearable fluorescence-based sensors have attracted much attention of users, but traditional fluorescent hydrogels ...