In a breakthrough for environmentally friendly chemical production, researchers at the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI) have developed an economical way to make succinic acid, an important industrial chemical, from sugarcane. The team of University of Illinois and Princeton University researchers created a cost-effective, end-to-end pipeline for this valuable organic acid by engineering a tough, acid-tolerant yeast as the fermenting agent, avoiding costly steps in downstream processing. Succinic acid is a widely ...

To discover new treatments for genetic disorders, scientists need a thorough knowledge of prior literature to determine the best gene/protein targets and the most promising drugs to test. However, biomedical literature is growing at an explosive rate and often contains conflicting information, making it increasingly time-consuming for researchers to conduct a complete and thorough review.   To address this challenge, Cole Deisseroth, a graduate student enrolled in the M.D./Ph.D. program and mentored by Drs. Huda Zoghbi and Zhandong Liu at the Jan and Duncan ...

Lessening the effects of climate change will require a variety of innovations and a lot of ingenuity. Now, a new center led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) will help these efforts by advancing the understanding of plasma-based clean hydrogen production. PPPL was selected to lead a DOE Energy Earthshot Research Center (EERC) as part of the Hydrogen Shot™, which aims to reduce the cost of hydrogen by 80%. With funding from the DOE’s Office of Science, the EERCs support fundamental ...

As a source of protein and biodiesel for cleaner renewable energy, soybean is an important crop worldwide. But is it performing to its full potential? An ambitious effort led by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (JGI) will sequence 400 soybean genomes to develop a “pangenome” — an attempt to characterize all the useful diversity in the genome to create an even more robust and resilient crop. The soybean pangenome project will sequence and analyze at least 50 soybean genomes from cultivated lines and wild relatives at reference quality, the gold standard of modern sequencing. A further ...

“DISE is effective against all cancers we tested.”  A new editorial paper was published in Oncotarget's Volume 14 on September 25, 2023, entitled, “DISE, an ancient anti-cancer mechanism that senses mutational load in cancerous cells?” In their new editorial, researchers Monal Patel and Marcus E. Peter from Northwestern University discuss a recent breakthrough in cancer therapy. Despite the multiple advances in therapy, cancer remains one of the most common causes of death globally. ...

A multi-institutional project led by a Penn State researcher is focused on developing an all-in-one semiconductor device that can both store data and perform computations. The project recently received $2 million in funding over three years as part of the new National Science Foundation Future of Semiconductors (FuSe) program, a $45.6 million investment to advance semiconductor technologies and manufacturing through 24 research and education projects across the United States. “The goal of ...

Nemours Children’s Health will host the first-ever dedicated pediatric session at HLTH, the leading platform bringing together the entire health ecosystem focused on health innovation and transformation. This invited program, “Elevating Kids Health Well Beyond Medicine,” will extend HLTH’s 2023 theme, “Elevating Humanity,” to focus on health in childhood and why it is the only way to build good health across the lifespan. “The child health perspective is an essential viewpoint for the attendees of HLTH to consider and we are proud to offer ...

University of Oklahoma engineering researcher Reza Foudazi, Ph.D., has been selected to receive a $600,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Defense under the Defense Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, or DEPSCoR. The highly competitive grant was awarded to only 28 academic teams nationwide.  An associate professor in the School of Sustainable Chemical, Biological and Materials Engineering, Foudazi’s research centers on the exploration of electrochemical energy storage systems that incorporate multivalent ions. ...

Messenger RNA (mRNA) technology has become popular in the last few years due to its use in COVID-19 vaccines. This technology has been so groundbreaking that it recently won the 2023 Nobel Prize in medicine “for discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.” This isn’t new technology, however— modified mRNAs have been studied for decades and show significant potential for therapeutic applications. Compared to unmodified mRNAs, modified ...

Abdolhossein Haji-Sheikh, a retired professor in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at The University of Texas at Arlington, has made a $500,000 gift to support his former department. The gift creates an endowed professorship in heat transfer, one of Haji-Sheikh’s areas of expertise during his decades of teaching at UTA. The professorship will be awarded in 2026. Haji-Sheikh began his career at what was then Arlington State College in 1966. He said he wants to give back to ...

Inventor of xenobots unveils new advance toward artificial life New AI algorithm compresses billions of years of evolution into seconds The evolved robot has three legs and rear fins, something a human engineer would never devise Researcher: ‘Now anyone can watch evolution in action as AI generates better and better robot bodies in real time.’ A team led by Northwestern University researchers has developed the first artificial intelligence (AI) to date that can intelligently design robots from ...

Two Rice University bioengineers received the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s New Innovator Award (NIA) for creative research projects demonstrating broad impact potential. Part of the High-Risk, High-Reward Research program, NIA awards support early-career investigators with ambitious, unconventional project proposals “in any area of biomedical, behavioral or social science research relevant to the NIH mission,” according to the agency’s website. Rice’s ...

Cancer-related fatigue (CRF) is a debilitating yet all-too-common condition, which can severely affect quality of life for patients undergoing treatment. For those struggling with CRF, there have been no effective pharmaceutical treatments for the constellation of symptoms that together define the syndrome. In a new study led by Yale Cancer Center researchers at Yale School of Medicine, the team found that a metabolism-targeting drug called dichloroacetate (DCA) helped alleviate CRF in mice, without interfering with cancer ...

Effective September 26, 2023, NRG Oncology-RTOG 1308, a phase III randomized trial comparing overall survival after photon versus proton chemoradiotherapy for patients with inoperable stage II-IIIB non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has met its accrual target. The trial, one of several NRG Oncology ongoing clinical trials across various malignancies within the National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN) that compare photon versus proton radiation therapy techniques, is the first phase III head-to-head comparison of these ...

Even as the world slowly begins to decarbonize industrial processes, achieving lower concentrations of atmospheric carbon requires technologies that remove existing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere — rather than just prevent the creation of it. Typical carbon capture catches CO2 directly from the source of a carbon-intensive process. Ambient carbon capture, or “direct air capture” (DAC) on the other hand, can take carbon out of typical environmental conditions and serves as one weapon in the battle against climate change, particularly as reliance ...

Dr. Tanya Stoyanova, associate professor of molecular and medical pharmacology and urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, was awarded a $350,000 Idea Development Award from the Department of Defense. The award will help Stoyanova, a member of the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, to identify new cancer detection and treatment strategies for small cell lung cancer, a highly aggressive form of the disease that accounts for approximately 15% of lung cancers. Known for spreading quickly, most people diagnosed with the disease face low chances of survival beyond five years. The award ...

Carol L. Silva, the Edith Kinney Gaylord Presidential Professor of Political Science in the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences and Senior Associate Vice President for Research and Partnerships at the University of Oklahoma, has been elected a 2023 fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. “Carol is an experienced, dynamic leader with an extensive record of excellence in research and building successful multidisciplinary programs and convergent teams focused on grand challenge problems at the intersection of public policy and technology. We congratulate her on this election to the NAPA and look forward to the impact she will make among these national thought ...

Large health systems are acquiring smaller physician practices at what some consider an alarming rate, leaving fewer independent practices. When the COVID-19 pandemic occurred, it was unclear whether the independent practices would be able to “keep up” (maintain the same level of patient care) with larger practices, which have more resources, and if care for patients with chronic conditions might be disrupted by the pandemic.   A new study from Associate Dean of Research Alison Cuellar found that independent practices experienced a smaller drop in patient volume than ...

The Gerontological Society of America (GSA) invites all journalists to attend its 2023 Annual Scientific Meeting — the country’s largest interdisciplinary conference in the field of aging — from November 8 to 12 in Tampa, Florida. Qualified media representatives intending to cover the meeting may register free of charge. More than 3,000 professionals are expected to attend the five-day gathering at the Tampa Convention Center. The theme for 2023 is “Building Bridges > Catalyzing Research > Empowering All Ages,” and the program schedule contains ...

Females may infer what makes a male attractive by observing the choices of more experienced females, and the context of those choices matters, according to a mathematical model publishing October 3rd in the open access journal PLOS Biology. Rather than simply copying their peers, females might learn to prefer rare traits that set successful males apart from others, Emily DuVal at Florida State University, US, and colleagues report. Sexual selection — where traits become more common because of their attractiveness to the opposite sex — can produce strange and elaborate characteristics, such as huge antlers, bright plumage, and ...

Despite increasing rates of tuberculosis in prisons across the globe, current WHO TB prevention guidelines fail to reach incarcerated populations. Programs should instead prioritize them, argue a group of researchers from Stanford, Harvard, UCL and a range of other global institutions. ##### In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Medicine: http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1004288 Article Title: Prioritizing persons deprived of liberty in global guidelines for tuberculosis preventive treatment Author Countries: United States Funding: ...

A machine learning model equipped with only data on people’s age, smoking duration and the number of cigarettes smoked per day can predict lung cancer risk and identify who needs lung cancer screening, according to a new study publishing October 3rd in the open access journal PLOS Medicine by Thomas Callender of University College London, UK, and colleagues. Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer death worldwide, with poor survival in the absence of early detection. Screening for lung cancer among those at highest risk could reduce ...

Residents of rural counties have overall worse health outcomes than their urban counterparts. A study published in PLOS Global Public Health  by William Weeks at Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Washington, United States and colleagues introduces a Health Equity Dashboard for policy makers to visualize health disparities in specific locations, and to examine the relationship between health-related measures and socio-demographic characteristics. Despite overall decreasing mortality rates prior to 2020, health disparities between rural and urban areas in the United States have increased. To better understand inequities in health-related measures between rural and non-rural populations, ...

Food insecurity is four times higher in Brazilian households headed by single women of colour than those headed by married white men, according to research published in the open access journal PLOS Global Public Health. Gender inequities, skin colour and children in the home increase the risk of food insecurity and the authors argue that policy makers need to consider intersectionality in programmes to reduce it. In 2021 there were 2.37 billion people suffering from food insecurity, with prevalence higher among women than men. The gender gap has increased in recent years, especially in the economic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. — A recent study based on real-world community patient data confirms the effectiveness of the Pooled Cohort Equation (PCE), developed by the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology in 2013. The PCE is used to estimate a person's 10-year risk of developing clogged arteries, also known as atherosclerosis, and guide heart attack and stroke prevention efforts. Study findings are published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The new study highlights to patients and clinicians the continued reliability and effectiveness of the PCE as a tool for assessing cardiovascular risk, regardless of statin use to lower ...