Device can manipulate which organ is driving a disease to study its downstream effects   Can serve as intermediate step between animal studies and clinical trials to test new drugs ‘We wanted to make it as easy as using a smartphone’ Imagine a device smaller than a toddler’s shoebox that can simulate any human disease in multiple organs or test new drugs without ever entering — or harming — the body.  Scientists at Northwestern University have developed this new technology — called Lattice — to study interactions between up to eight unique organ tissue cultures (cells from a human ...

New Discoveries in the Development of Alzheimer's Disease in a Study led by Professor Michael Glickman and Dr. Inbal Maniv from the Faculty of Biology at the Technion were Published in Nature Communications. Alzheimer's disease was named after the German researcher Dr. Alois Alzheimer, who first described it in 1906. The disease is characterized by the degeneration and death of nerve cells, processes that lead to a progressive impairment of cognitive abilities. It occurs typically in adults over the age of 65, but a small percentage of all Alzheimer's patients are hereditary cases that affect younger ...

The ability to have access to the Internet or use a mobile phone anywhere in the world is taken more and more for granted, but the brightness of Internet and telecommunications satellites that enable global communications networks could pose problems for ground-based astronomy. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign aerospace engineer Siegfried Eggl coordinated an international study confirming recently deployed satellites are as bright as stars seen by the unaided eye. “From our observations, we learned that AST Space Mobile’s BlueWalker 3—a constellation prototype satellite featuring a ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – A new artificial intelligence (AI) model combines imaging information with clinical patient data to improve diagnostic performance on chest X-rays, according to a study published in Radiology, a journal of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). Clinicians consider both imaging and non-imaging data when diagnosing diseases. However, current AI-based approaches are tailored to solve tasks with only one type of data at a time. Transformer-based neural networks, a relatively new class of AI models, have the ability to combine imaging and ...

A two-phase NIH grant will fund research into a new CRISPR-based gene therapy platform that will target genetic brain diseases like Angelman syndrome and H1-4 (HIST1H1E) syndrome. A roughly $40 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant awarded to Yale School of Medicine will support the development of a gene-editing platform technology capable of reaching the human brain. The innovative new genome-editing technology, which was developed from the first phase from NIH Common Fund Somatic Cell Genome Editing (SCGE) program, could potentially lead to treatments or cures for many neurogenetic diseases. Neurogenetic disorders ...

When scientists viewed the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST) first images of the universe’s earliest galaxies, they were shocked. The young galaxies appeared too bright, too massive and too mature to have formed so soon after the Big Bang. It would be like an infant growing into an adult within just a couple years. The startling discovery even caused some physicists to question the standard model of cosmology, wondering whether or not it should be upended. Using new simulations, a Northwestern University-led ...

Van Andel Institute’s Nick Burton, Ph.D., has earned a five-year, nearly $2.9 million New Innovator Award from the National Institutes of Health Common Fund to find new ways to fix or prevent insulin resistance, a key driver of Type 2 diabetes.   Although manageable with treatment, there currently is no way to repair the underlying mechanisms that cause the disease. Furthermore, it remains unclear why some people are more prone to Type 2 diabetes while others are resistant. To find a solution, Burton ...

SAN ANTONIO — October 3, 2023 —A new study led by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) Planetary Scientist and Associate Vice President Dr. Alan Stern posits that the large, approximately 5-kilometer-long mounds that dominate the appearance of the larger lobe of the pristine Kuiper Belt object Arrokoth are similar enough to suggest a common origin. The SwRI study suggests that these “building blocks” could guide further work on planetesimal formational models. Stern presented these findings this week ...

NEW YORK, Oct. 3, 2023 — Mandë Holford, a professor in the Chemistry and Biochemistry departments at Hunter College and The City University of New York Graduate Center (CUNY Graduate Center), has won a National Institutes of Health Common Fund Pioneer Award for her trailblazing research exploring the therapeutic opportunities and properties of venoms from cephalopods and other marine mollusks. Holford received one of eight Pioneer Awards granted in 2023, which will total more than $47.7 million over five years. This is the first time a CUNY ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. (Oct. 4, 2022) – A synthetic peptide developed by researchers at the Medical College of Georgia could help reduce vascular problems associated with acute respiratory distress syndrome in COVID-19. In severe cases, COVID-19 is associated with the syndrome, which happens when fluid builds up in the tiny, elastic air sacs in the lungs, keeping them from filling with enough air and keeping oxygen from reaching the bloodstream. “These are the people who get the sickest from ...

MedAxiom, the premier source for cardiovascular organizational performance solutions, has released its 2023 Cardiovascular Provider Compensation and Production Survey Report that includes data from the largest number of providers since its debut. The report features a foreword from MedAxiom President and CEO Jerry Blackwell, MD, MBA, FACC, on the consistency of year-over-year data from 2021 to 2022, the importance of a robust pool of data to form the foundation of the report, and the application of data as a strategic planning tool.  2023 Report Highlights:   Compensation and production ...

Quantum annealing (QA) is a cutting-edge algorithm that leverages the unique properties of quantum computing to tackle complex combinatorial optimization problems (a class of mathematical problems dealing with discrete-variable functions). Quantum computers use the rules of quantum physics to solve such problems potentially faster than classical computers. In essence, they can explore multiple solutions to a problem simultaneously, giving them a significant speed advantage for certain tasks over classical computers. In particular, QA harnesses the phenomenon of “quantum ...

LOS ANGELES — City of Hope, one of the largest cancer research and treatment organizations in the United States, is opening a multicenter clinical trial to evaluate the efficacy of robotic-assisted, single-incision mastectomies. The minimally invasive procedure, which preserves the nipple and leaves only a small hidden scar on the side of the body, could potentially lead to significant improvements for breast surgery. “City of Hope is once again taking the lead in investigating innovations, treatments and therapies that are making big leaps forward for patients with cancer. We’re participating ...

Oak Brook, IL – A Special Issue of SLAS Discovery, Emerging Drug Discovery Ecosystems, is new for September. Volume 28, Issue 6 features three perspectives, one original research article and one protocol that align with the Virginia Drug Discovery Consortium (VaDDC) and its efforts to enhance and promote drug discovery and development in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Perspective An acute respiratory distress syndrome drug development collaboration stimulated by the Virginia Drug Discovery Consortium This ...

Communities with more socioeconomic vulnerability experience longer-duration power outages than more advantaged communities, according to a study. Research has shown that environmental disasters hit economically and socially vulnerable communities hardest. Scott Ganz and colleagues assessed the unequal impacts caused by the procedures electric utilities follow to restore power to customers after extreme-weather related outages. Using data from eight Atlantic hurricanes that made landfall between January 2017 and October 2020, which knocked out power for a total of over 15 million customers in 588 counties in the Southeast, the authors find ...

The Genomics Platform at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard has been one of the world’s leading academic genome sequencing centers since the days of the Human Genome Project. For the last decade, these services have included clinical sequencing and other molecular assays through its wholly-owned subsidiary, the Clinical Research Sequencing Platform. Now renamed Broad Clinical Labs (BCL), the lab is poised to further accelerate the power of ’omics technologies in clinical research, screening, and diagnostics. BCL supports large-scale projects for which results need to be generated under a clinical quality system, such as analyses for clinical trials, biobank profiling, ...

UMass Amherst researchers have pushed forward the boundaries of biomedical engineering one hundredfold with a new method for DNA detection with unprecedented sensitivity. “DNA detection is in the center of bioengineering,” says Jinglei Ping, lead author of the paper that appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Ping is an assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering, an adjunct assistant professor in biomedical engineering and affiliated with the Center for Personalized Health Monitoring of the Institute for Applied Life Sciences. “Everyone ...

An individual diagnosed with type 2 diabetes at age 30 years could see their life expectancy fall by as much as 14 years, an international team of researchers has warned. Even people who do not develop the condition until later in life – with a diagnosis at age 50 years – could see their life expectancy fall by up to six years, an analysis of data from 19 high-income countries found. The researchers say the findings, published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, highlight the urgent need to ...

Watching a loved one suffer the slow decline of dementia is hard enough. But trying to find care for them that’s high-quality, safe, available and affordable is nearly as difficult, as millions of American families have found out the hard way in recent years. That lack of options stems from a combination of workforce shortages, payment policies and a lack of consistency in dementia care delivery and regulation, according to experts from the University of Michigan and the University of California, San Francisco and their colleagues. Now, fueled by new five-year funding expected to total $81 million from the NIH’s National Institute on Aging or ...

New research by the psychologists Lucía Vicente and Helena Matute from Deusto University in Bilbao, Spain, provides evidence that people can inherit artificial intelligence biases (systematic errors in AI outputs) in their decisions. The astonishing results achieved by artificial intelligence systems, which can, for example, hold a conversation as a human does, have given this technology an image of high reliability. More and more professional fields are implementing AI-based tools to support the decision-making of specialists to minimise errors in their decisions. However, this technology is not without risks due to biases in AI results. ...

The decision to reach for a sugary beverage is heavily influenced by where you live, Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy researchers report in a new study published October 3 in the journal Nature Communications. While an analysis of the Global Dietary Database for the years 1990, 2005, and 2018 found overall consumption of sweetened drinks increased—by nearly 16% worldwide over the 28-year period studied—regional intake widely varied.  Sugary drinks are a public health concern because they have been widely associated ...

Australian researchers have developed a molecular-sized, more efficient version of a widely used electronic sensor, in a breakthrough that could bring widespread benefits. Piezoresistors are commonly used to detect vibrations in electronics and automobiles, such as in smart phones for counting steps, and for airbag deployment in cars. They are also used in medical devices such as implantable pressure sensors, as well as in aviation and space travel. In a nationwide initiative, researchers led by Dr Nadim Darwish from Curtin University, Professor Jeffrey ...

Key takeaways Rising temperatures will cut the number of days when conditions favor prescribed fires by 17% on average across the Western U.S., mostly in spring and summer. Winter, however, will see a net 4% increase in the number of favorable days. Implementing controlled burns in the West will require changes to policy and the availability of firefighters. ​​​​​​ Prescribed fires, sometimes called controlled burns, are one of the most common tools for preventing catastrophic wildfires in the Western United States. Lit by highly trained firefighters, they help clear away excess dry plant matter that might otherwise ...

Researchers at University of Galway have taken a significant step forward in the management of gestational diabetes mellitus after a clinical trial involving pregnant women provided new hope for expectant mothers suffering the condition. The findings from the trial are being published in JAMA: the Journal of American Medical Association.  Gestational diabetes is a global health issue affecting almost 3 million pregnant women worldwide every year. It is a condition characterised by elevated blood sugar levels during pregnancy, posing increased health risks for both mothers and their babies.  Professor Fidelma Dunne, Professor of Medicine ...

About The Study: In this randomized clinical trial, early treatment with metformin was not superior to placebo for the composite primary outcome of insulin initiation or a fasting glucose level of 5.1 mmol/L or greater at gestation weeks 32 or 38. Prespecified secondary outcome data support further investigation of metformin in larger clinical trials.  Authors: Fidelma Dunne, Ph.D., of the University of Galway in Galway, Ireland, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website ...