The three-dimensional shape of a protein can be used to resolve deep, ancient evolutionary relationships in the tree of life, according to a study in Nature Communications.   It is the first time researchers use data from protein shapes and combine it with data from genomic sequences to improve the reliability of evolutionary trees, a critical resource used by the scientific community for understanding the history of life, monitor the spread of pathogens or create new treatments for disease.  Crucially, the approach works even with the ...

PHILADELPHIA, PA (January 15, 2025) - Can memory influence what and how much we eat? A groundbreaking Monell Chemical Senses Center study, which links food memory to overeating, answered that question with a resounding “Yes.” Led by Monell Associate Member Guillaume de Lartigue, PhD, the research team identified, for the first time, the brain’s food-specific memory system and its direct role in overeating and diet-induced obesity.  Published in Nature Metabolism, they describe a specific population of neurons in the mouse brain that encode memories for sugar and fat, profoundly impacting food intake and body ...

Indigenous students identified inadequate funding as a major barrier to completing post-secondary education according to a new study published in AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples. The study surveyed Indigenous university students at Algoma University. The students, who identified as either First Nations or Métis, reported that they required multiple sources of funding, including government student loans and personal savings, to afford their post-secondary education. About two-thirds (69%) of students received funding for their education from First Nations sources, including funding from federal programs for Indigenous students.   “This ...

Hot Jupiters are giant planets initially known to orbit alone close to their star. During their migration towards their star, these planets were thought to accrete or eject any other planets present. However, this paradigm has been overturned by recent observations, and the final blow could come from a new study led by the University of Geneva (UNIGE). A team including the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS, the Universities of Bern (UNIBE) and Zurich (UZH) and several foreign universities has just announced the existence of a planetary system, WASP-132, ...

University of Birmingham venture Dexter has demonstrated the power of its Dexter software platform in a study showing that people whose childhoods featured abuse, neglect or domestic abuse carry a significantly increased risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis or psoriasis in later life.     The starting point for the recently published study was a database of over 16 million Electronic Health Records, from which the Dexter software defined a cohort, one arm that was exposed to childhood maltreatment, and one arm that was not.   The software then checked the records over a 26-year period ...

The discovery of two new planets beyond our solar system by a team of astronomers from The University of Warwick and the University of Geneva (UNIGE), is challenging scientific understanding of how planetary systems form. The existence of these two exoplanets - an inner super-Earth and an outer icy giant planet - within the WASP-132 system is overturning accepted paradigms of how ‘hot Jupiter’ planetary systems form and evolve. Hot Jupiters are planets with masses similar to those of Jupiter, but which orbit closer to their star than Mercury orbits the Sun. There is not enough gas and dust for these giant planets to form ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Weddnesday, Jan. 15, 2025 — Nearly half of Americans (46%) think the country is headed in the wrong direction when it comes to the incoming president’s policies to lower healthcare costs, while 31% say it’s on the right track, according to the latest West Health-Gallup survey released today. When viewed through a political lens, only Republicans are more positive than negative about the future of healthcare costs under the Trump administration; nearly three-quarters (73%) think the incoming administration’s healthcare policies are headed in the right direction. In contrast, 24% of independents and 3% of Democrats say the same. Democrats ...

Sign languages have been developed by nations around the world to fit the local communication style, and each language consists of thousands of signs. This has made sign languages difficult to learn and understand. Using artificial intelligence to automatically translate the signs into words, known as word-level sign language recognition, has now gained a boost in accuracy through the work of an Osaka Metropolitan University-led research group. Previous research methods have been focused on capturing information about the signer’s ...

Nearly a third of people in the U.S. have been exposed to unregulated contaminants in their drinking water that could impact their health, according to a new analysis by scientists at Silent Spring Institute. What’s more, Hispanic and Black residents are more likely than other groups to have unsafe levels of contaminants in their drinking water and are more likely to live near pollution sources. The findings, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, add to growing concern about the quality of drinking water in the United States and the disproportionate impact of contamination ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (Jan 15, 2025)–It’s not easy being a woman. Just look at the statistics. Women are more likely to have such debilitating conditions as osteoporosis, migraines, Alzheimer disease, depression, multiple sclerosis, and brain tumors. Sex hormones are often blamed. However, a new study suggests no link between hormone therapy (HT) and common brain tumors known as gliomas. Results of the study are published online today in Menopause, the journal of The Menopause Society. The debate over the risks and benefits ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (Jan 15, 2025)—Artificial intelligence (AI) is positioned to make a major impact on almost every industry, including healthcare. A new study suggests that machine learning models can more quickly and affordably identify women with severe subjective cognitive decline during the menopause transition, effectively opening the door to better management of cognitive health. Results of the study are published online today in Menopause, the journal of The Menopause Society. Subjective cognitive decline refers to a person’s ...

Light absorption is a cornerstone for several applications such as solar cells, photodetectors, and optical sensors, to name a few. Yet, the trade-off between the thickness of the absorber and its efficiency has long limited the performance of such devices. The goal in this investigation is to get the best of both worlds—ultra-thin materials with maximized absorption.   In a recent paper published in Light: Science & Applications, a group of researchers from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), led by Prof. Ying Wu and Prof. Xiangliang Zhang (now at University of Notre Dame), successfully put forward an efficient broadband light absorber ...

Low back pain is a leading cause of disability worldwide with many treatments, such as medication, often failing to provide lasting relief. Researchers from the University of Sydney’s Centre for Rural Health have uncovered a possible solution. Their study, published in JAMA Network Open, found integrating lifestyle support into back pain care could reduce disability and enhance quality of life. The randomised controlled trial included 346 participants from across Australia, all of whom had chronic low back pain and at least one lifestyle risk factor, such as obesity, poor diet, sedentary habits, or smoking. Participants were randomly assigned ...

Waking up does not activate an increase in the release of the stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol does, however, increase in the hours prior to wakening as part of the body’s preparation for the next day, new research led by the University of Bristol has found.  The study is published today [15 January] in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. For many years it has been generally accepted that waking up results in a stimulus to release hormone cortisol  - a phenomenon called the “cortisol awakening response” (CAR). This response has been used to investigate many clinical conditions including PTSD, depression, obesity, and chronic ...

      MEDIA INQUIRES   WRITTEN BY Laura Muntean   Olga ...

The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology: Global Commission proposes major overhaul of obesity diagnosis, going beyond BMI to define when obesity is a disease. Current medical approaches to diagnosing obesity rely on BMI which is not a reliable measure of health or illness at the individual level. This can result in misdiagnosis with negative consequences for people living with obesity and wider society. The Commission on Clinical Obesity recommends a new, nuanced approach where measures of body fat - for example, waist circumference or direct fat measurement - in addition to BMI are used to detect obesity, therefore reducing the risk of misclassification. Additionally, the ...

Federal reservoirs could help meet the country’s solar energy needs, according to a new study published in Solar Energy. For the study, Evan Rosenlieb and Marie Rivers, geospatial scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), as well as Aaron Levine, a senior legal and regulatory analyst at NREL, quantified for the first time exactly how much energy could be generated from floating solar panel projects installed on federally owned or regulated reservoirs. (Developers can find specific details for each reservoir on the website AquaPV.) And the potential is surprisingly ...

A new USC study reveals that the challenges that led to a national shortage of affordable housing and soaring home prices were set in motion long ago — and could have been foreseen. The researchers behind the study say that the problem will only worsen as more natural disasters — such as the devastating Los Angeles area wildfires and large hurricanes — flatten entire communities. Los Angeles County officials estimate that more than 10,000 homes and businesses have been lost so far to the fires that erupted across the region last week. “A ...

SAN ANTONIO, Jan. 14, 2025 – Scientists from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio) and Trinity University are partnering with the San Antonio Food Bank for a four-year, $2.2 million study on eating disorders in older Hispanic women. A grant from the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health is funding this transformative study, which aims to redefine how the intersection of binge eating, food insecurity and health disparities among ...

The University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science is set to revolutionize materials science with the development of a state-of-the-art electromagnetic levitation (EML) system, funded by a competitive Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) grant. Designed to operate in extreme conditions, the system enables researchers to study ultra-high-temperature ceramics (UHTCs) in their solid and molten states — unlocking new possibilities for aerospace, defense and industrial applications. Rethinking High-Temperature Research Traditional methods of studying UHTCs are limited by the challenges of chemical contamination at extreme temperatures. The EML system’s ...

Researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have developed a gene-editing treatment for prion disease that extends lifespan by about 50 percent in a mouse model of the fatal neurodegenerative condition. The treatment, which uses base editing to make a single-letter change in DNA, reduced levels of the disease-causing prion protein in the brain by as much as 60 percent.  There is currently no cure for prion disease, and the new approach could be an important step towards treatments that prevent the disease or ...

LA JOLLA (January 14, 2025)—Like all cancers, bladder cancer develops when abnormal cells start to multiply out of control. But what if we could put a lid on their growth? Previous studies showed that a protein called PIN1 helps cancers initiate and progress, but its exact role in tumor development has remained unclear. Now, cancer biologists at the Salk Institute have discovered that PIN1 is a significant driver of bladder cancer and revealed that it works by triggering the synthesis of cholesterol—a membrane lipid essential for cancer cells to grow. After mapping out the molecular pathway between PIN1 and ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- Researchers have identified a novel genetic risk factor for SARS-CoV-2 infection, providing new insights into the virus’ ability to invade human cells. SARS-CoV-2 is the virus that spreads COVID-19. The study, led by immunologist Declan McCole at the University of California, Riverside, shows that a loss-of-function variant in the phosphatase gene PTPN2, commonly associated with autoimmune diseases, can increase expression of the SARS-CoV-2 receptor ACE2, making cells more susceptible to viral invasion. A loss-of-function ...

Irvine, Calif., Jan. 14, 2025 — Researchers at the University of California, Irvine and New York’s Columbia University have embedded transistors in a soft, conformable material to create a biocompatible sensor implant that monitors neurological functions through successive phases of a patient’s development. In a paper published recently in Nature Communications, the UC Irvine scientists describe their construction of complementary, internal, ion-gated, organic electrochemical transistors that are more amenable ...

The microscopic soybean cyst nematode (SCN) may be small, but it has a massive impact. This pest latches onto soybean roots, feeding on their nutrients and leaving a trail of destruction that costs farmers billions in yield losses each year. Unfortunately, current methods to combat SCN are faltering as the pest grows resistant to traditional controls. But new research is now offering a glimmer of hope. A collaborative team of scientists from BASF Agricultural Solutions and the Advanced Bioimaging Laboratory at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center are working on a potential solution: ...