In recent years, studies have revealed that the now-arid region of northern Arabia was once much wetter and greener, providing Neolithic human populations with access to both water and game. The present aridity of the region, however, preserves little organic matter, making a reconstruction of the Neolithic lifestyle difficult. Now, in a new study published in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, the National Research Council of Italy, Institute of Heritage Science (CNR ISPC), and University College London present use-wear ...

An international team of scientists has found early human migrants left Africa for Eurasia, across the Sinai peninsula and on through Jordan, over 80-thousand years ago. Researchers from the University of Southampton (UK) and Shantou University (China), together with colleagues in Jordan, Australia and the Czech Republic(1), have proved there was a “well-watered corridor” which funnelled hunter-gatherers through The Levant towards western Asia and northern Arabia via Jordan. Their findings, published in the journal Science Advances, support previous research conducted ...

EMBARGOED FOR USE UNTIL: 2 p.m. (ET) on Oct. 4, 2023 -- A UCLA-led team of researchers has found nerve pathways that supply brown adipose tissue (BAT), a type of tissue that releases chemical energy from fat metabolism as heat – a finding that could pave the way toward using it to treat obesity and related metabolic conditions. The researchers have for the first time detailed this nerve supply and provided examples of how manipulating it can change BAT activity, marking a first step toward understanding how to use it therapeutically, said ...

To date it has been unclear exactly how the sex of a bee is determined. A research team from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) comprising biologists and chemists has now identified a key gene and the molecular mechanism linked with it. In the current issue of the scientific journal Science Advances, they describe how this process is similar to a game involving two dice. The sex of a living creature has significant consequences for its form, function and behaviour. The biological sex of an organism is usually determined at the start of its life. In humans, for example, the presence of the sex-determining “Y chromosome” ...

WASHINGTON, DC – The Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Science has selected 60 graduate students representing 26 states for the Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program’s 2023 Solicitation 1 cycle. Through world-class training and access to state-of-the-art facilities and resources at DOE National Laboratories, SCGSR prepares graduate students to enter jobs of critical importance to the DOE mission and secures our national position at the forefront of discovery and innovation. “This ...

NEW YORK (October 4, 2023) -- The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation today announced that Special Olympics International is the recipient of the 2023 Pardes Humanitarian Prize in Mental Health. It is recognized for its lasting humanitarian impact around the world through sports training and athletic competition for adults and children with intellectual disabilities. An Honorary Pardes Prize Recipient was also announced for 2023 – Henry Jarecki, M.D – for his important contributions to the field of psychiatry and his unique work to preserve academic and scientific freedom. “Special Olympics International is being honored as a beacon of light ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Mayo Clinic researchers have developed a calculation that can help identify moderate aortic stenosis patients at higher risk of dying from the condition. According to new research published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, calculating the patient's mean arterial pressure (AugMAP) is a simple and effective way to identify those patients who may benefit from more aggressive treatment strategies. "Physiologically, AugMAP can be considered a marker of global left ventricular contractile function," says Chieh-Ju Chao, M.D., senior associate consultant in the Mayo Clinic Department ...

Applying machine learning to find the properties of atomic pieces of geometry shows how AI has the power to accelerate discoveries in maths. Mathematicians from Imperial College London and the University of Nottingham have, for the first time, used machine learning to expand and accelerate work identifying ‘atomic shapes’ that form the basic pieces of geometry in higher dimensions. Their findings have been published in Nature Communications. The way they used artificial intelligence, in the form of machine learning, could transform how maths is done, say the authors. Dr Alexander Kasprzyk from ...

Rivers across England have seen a significant improvement in river invertebrate biodiversity since 1989, shows a study led by UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) researchers. The study, which involved one of the largest and most wide-ranging analyses of long-term monitoring data in the world – spanning over 30 years, found improvements in invertebrate biodiversity across all regions and river types in England. This improvement is all the more surprising given English rivers are amongst the most highly exposed to wastewater and other pressures in Europe. The recent State of Nature report shows that the overall abundance of species in Great ...

New Orleans – The National League for Nursing (NLN) presented Demetrius Porche, DNS, PhD, ANEF, FACHE, FAANP, FAAN, Professor and Dean of LSU Health New Orleans School of Nursing, with its Mary Adelaide Nutting Award for Outstanding Teaching or Leadership in Nursing Education during the 2023 NLN Education Summit. The Annual NLN Awards recognize and honor individuals of stature and distinction for their outstanding contributions to nursing education and the broader space of health care. The NLN Mary Adelaide ...

The Translational Plant Sciences Center has awarded funding to four new research projects to help them grow and cultivate external funding. The center provided the projects up to $10,000 a year for up to two years to support the development of innovative research leading to extramural support through the Translational Plant Sciences Center (TPSC) Seed Grant program. “This program aims to provide faculty with funds to explore new research by establishing teams composed of labs and partners both inside and outside of TPSC and Virginia Tech ...

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Volcanic ash is no ordinary dust: It gets injected into the atmosphere, climbs to the stratosphere, impacts climate, powders roadways and clogs jet engines. To bridge the knowledge gap between volcanologists and atmospheric scientists working on climate change and observing global systems, Cornell researchers have characterized volcanic ash samples from many explosive eruptions of a broad compositional range. The work is helping scientists uncover how this tiny material – measured in microns and nanometers – plays a big role in the atmosphere. Volcanic ash is formed from minerals trapped in ...

AURORA, Colo. (Oct. 4, 2023) – A pilot program that successfully reduced burnout among female medical residents has shown even greater results on a national level, according to researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. The study was published today in the journal JAMA Network Open. “We did a pilot program in 2021to see if it would work and it did,” said study co-author Tyra Fainstad, MD, associate professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. “Then we expanded it to 26 graduate medical institutions in 19 states. There were 1,017 participants. We saw significant improvement in every wellbeing outcome we assessed including all ...

HOUSTON ― The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Research Highlights showcases the latest breakthroughs in cancer care, research and prevention. These advances are made possible through seamless collaboration between MD Anderson’s world-leading clinicians and scientists, bringing discoveries from the lab to the clinic and back. Recent developments at MD Anderson include a computer game that helps breast cancer survivors improve symptoms of peripheral neuropathy, a publicly available single-cell atlas of CD19 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells, new targets for TP53-mutant acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a preclinical target ...

Cancer immunotherapy drugs called PD-1 inhibitors are widely used to stimulate the immune system to fight cancer, but many patients either don’t respond or develop resistance to them. A new small-molecule drug candidate being tested in an early-stage clinical trial aims to improve patient responses to immunotherapy.  Now scientists have shown, in a study published today in Nature, that the small molecule works through two different mechanisms to slow tumor growth and increase survival in lab animals.  Researchers from the Tumor ...

In a study on the prevalence of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and its association with crash risk among older adult drivers, researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health found that older adult drivers with ADHD are at a significantly elevated crash risk compared with their counterparts without ADHD. Outcomes included hard- braking events, and self-reported traffic ticket events, and vehicular crashes. Until now research on ADHD and driving safety was largely limited to ...

About The Study: This study found that the burden of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)-associated hospitalizations in Canadian pediatric hospitals was substantial, particularly among infants less than six months of age, and RSV hospitalizations increased in 2021-2022 compared with the pre-pandemic period, while severity of illness remained similar. These findings suggest that RSV preventive strategies for infants less than six months of age would be associated with decreased RSV disease burden in children.  Authors: Jesse Papenburg, ...

About The Study: Based on U.S. national representative data, the estimated attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) prevalence was 10.08% to 10.47% among children and adolescents ages 4 to 17 from 2017 to 2022, which was similar to the prevalence from the National Health Interview Survey in 2015 to 2016 (10.20%). No significant annual change in the prevalence of ADHD was found from 2017 to 2022. Notably, the estimated prevalence of ADHD among individuals in the U.S. in this study was higher than worldwide estimates (5.3%) in earlier years (1978-2005). Authors: Wenhan Yang, M.D., Ph.D., of Guangdong ...

About The Study: In this post hoc secondary analysis of 10,678 participants with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease from a randomized clinical trial, enteric-coated aspirin was not associated with significantly higher risk of heart attack, stroke, or death or with lower bleeding risk compared with uncoated aspirin, regardless of dose, although a reduction in bleeding with enteric-coated aspirin cannot be excluded. More research is needed to confirm whether enteric-coated aspirin formulations or newer formulations will improve outcomes in this population. Authors: Mark B. Effron, M.D., of the University of Queensland-Ochsner Clinical School in New Orleans, is the corresponding ...

Robots built by engineers at the University of California San Diego helped achieve a major breakthrough in understanding how insect flight evolved, described in the Oct. 4, 2023 issue of the journal Nature. The study is a result of a six-year long collaboration between roboticists at UC San Diego and biophysicists at the Georgia Institute of Technology.  The findings focus on how the two different modes of flight evolved in insects. Most insects use their brains to activate their flight muscles each wingstroke, just like we activate the muscles in our legs ...

Main points: New research has overturned the traditional view that natural rock weathering acts as a CO2 sink that removes CO2 from the atmosphere. Instead, this can also act as a large CO2 source, rivalling that of volcanoes. The results have important implications for modelling climate change scenarios but at the moment, CO2 release from rock weathering is not captured in climate modelling. Future work will focus on whether human activities may be increasing CO2 release from rock weathering, and how this could be managed. A new study led by the University of Oxford has overturned the view ...

An international team of researchers has developed a new theoretical framework that bridges physics and biology to provide a unified approach for understanding how complexity and evolution emerge in nature. This new work on "Assembly Theory," published today in Nature, represents a major advance in our fundamental comprehension of biological evolution and how it is governed by the physical laws of the universe. This research builds on the team's previous work developing Assembly Theory as an empirically validated approach to life detection, ...

Biophysically detailed neuronal models provide a unique window into the workings of individual neurons. They enable researchers to manipulate neuronal properties systematically and reversibly, something that is often impossible in real-world experiments. These in silico models have played a pivotal role in advancing our understanding of how neuronal morphology influences excitability and how specific ion currents contribute to cell function. Additionally, they have been instrumental in building neuronal circuits to simulate and study brain activity, offering ...

Dr. Qihui Zhou, a neuroscientist at DZNE’s Munich site, has been awarded a “Starting Grant” from the European Research Council (ERC) worth about 1.5 million euros to investigate disease mechanisms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). With her studies, which will focus on the role of immune cells in the disease process and on the most common genetic forms of ALS and FTD, Zhou aims to pave the way for better treatments. ALS and FTD are devastating diseases characterized by loss of brain cells for which there ...

First business school to launch comprehensive library of VR Learning Experiences to make management education more impactful and to advance management research VR Learning Experiences already used by 40+ professors and 13K+ learners at INSEAD and now available globally via the INSEAD XR Portal Professor Ithai Stern, Academic Director of the INSEAD Immersive Learning Initiative, wins 2023 Strategic Management Society Educational Impact Award for his contribution to quality and innovation of strategic management teaching   Fontainebleau ...