A shift in the way we think about the benefits mangroves provide to coastal regions could yield significant economic and biodiversity gains and protect millions from flooding, research has revealed. The University of Queensland-led study shows current conservation efforts typically target biodiversity protection whilst minimising conflict with economic interests, while failing to consider the huge benefits provided by ecosystems. Alvise Dabalà, now at the University of the Azores and whose Masters project at UQ formed the basis of this study, said human activities, such as deforestation and coastal development have led to extensive ...

Novel brain biometrics could help inform whether an athlete is ready to return to play following a concussion, according to new research from the University of South Australia. Conducted in partnership with the University of California San Francisco (UCFC), researchers found that changes in micromovements of the brain – termed ‘headpulses’ – could detect the lasting impacts of a concussion. Using a custom-designed headset* to evaluate headpulse biometrics among 101 amateur male and female Australian ...

The paper, “Understanding low bivalent COVID-19 booster uptake among US adults,” was published in the journal Vaccine. “Our results indicate that we have a lot more work to do in terms of educating the public and health care providers about the importance of staying up to date on COVID-19 boosters,” said first author Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD, professor of epidemiology at the Zuckerman College of Public Health, who led the research with associate professor of epidemiology Kristen Pogreba-Brown, PhD, MPH. Nearly 40% of survey participants reported they did not get a booster shot because ...

A pair of Cockrell School research teams are part of a massive semiconductor grant program from the National Science Foundation that includes funds from industry leaders and the federal CHIPS Act. The projects are part of the NSF Future of Semiconductors (FuSe) program through a public-private partnership between NSF and four major tech companies: Ericsson, IBM, Intel and Samsung. FuSe aims to enable rapid progress in new semiconductor technologies and manufacturing as well as workforce development.  Altogether, the program will support 24 research and ...

BEND, Ore. – Gut microbes found in wild wolves may be the key to alleviating a debilitating gastrointestinal condition common to domestic dogs, according to a study led by researchers at Oregon State University – Cascades. In a paper published in Applied Microbiology, the authors report a novel strain of Paenibacillus bacteria with characteristics of a probiotic – an organism that conveys a health benefit to the host. In this case, the benefit would be to head off canine inflammatory ...

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. – October 02, 2023) The population of childhood cancer survivors in the U.S. is increasing, with an overall childhood cancer survival rate greater than 85% five years after diagnosis. However, survivors can still be at increased risk of various health conditions, including second cancers. Using data from the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study (CCSS) and the St. Jude Lifetime Cohort Study (St. Jude Life), scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have identified a genetic ...

With New York declared a state of emergency following flash flooding, there is increasing concern such events will become more common globally. Now a study led by Monash University scientists in Australia has found that people impacted by a flooding event are at significantly increased risk of dying – including heart and lung problems – in a crucial window between three and six weeks after the event, even after the flooding has dissipated. The study, published today in the BMJ, found that the risk of dying increased and persisted for up to 60 days (50 days for cardiovascular mortality) after a flooded day - increasing by for 2.1% for all-cause deaths, 2.6% for cardiovascular ...

USC is partnering with seven of Los Angeles’ leading regenerative medicine institutes to form the Los Angeles and surrounding area regenerative medicine consortium (LA-RMC), with the goal of fulfilling the promise of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM): to develop laboratory discoveries into treatments for patients with unmet medical needs.  CIRM, the voter-created agency that provides public funding for stem cell research in California, is dedicated to advancing regenerative medicine, which uses stem cells and related approaches to treat disease and disorders. Regenerative ...

Australian researchers at WEHI have found that a genetic change that increases the risk of inflammation, through a process described as ‘explosive’ cell death, is carried by up to 3% of the global population. The study may explain why some people have an increased chance of developing conditions like inflammatory bowel disease or suffer more severe reactions to infections with bacteria like Salmonella. At a glance MLKL is a gene essential to triggering necroptotic cell death – a natural process that protects our body from infection. In some people this process can go awry and ...

New research to be presented at this year’s Annual Meeting of The European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), Hamburg (2-6 Oct), suggests that exposure to low doses of radiation may contribute to an increased risk of diabetes. The study by Dr Huan Hu and Dr Toshiteru Ohkubo from the Japanese National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health involved more than 6,000 out of around 20,000 emergency workers who responded to the radiation accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, which was hit by a huge tsunami in March 2011. Substantial amounts of radioactive materials were released into the environment following explosions at the ...

Real-world data from an ongoing international audit of testosterone deficiency in men with type 2 diabetes, being presented at this year’s Annual Meeting of The European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), Hamburg (2-6 Oct), suggests that testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) improves glycaemic control for up to 2 years. The early data from 37 centres across 8 countries who have so far joined the Association of British Clinical Diabetologists (ABCD) audit [1], suggest that the reason that HbA1c (a measure of average blood sugar levels over the past 2-3 months) continues ...

New research presented at this year’s Annual Meeting of The European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), Hamburg (2-6 Oct), shows that treatment with the drug semaglutide significantly improves blood sugar control and weight loss in adults with type 2 diabetes for up to three years. “Our long-term analysis of semaglutide in a large and diverse cohort of patients with type 2 diabetes found a clinically relevant improvement in blood sugar control and weight loss after 6 months of treatment, comparable with that seen in randomised trials”, says Professor Avraham Karasik from the Institute of Research and Innovation at Maccabi Health Services ...

Drinking dark tea every day may help to mitigate type 2 diabetes risk and progression in adults through better blood sugar control, suggests new research at this year’s Annual Meeting of The European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), Hamburg (2-6 Oct). The study, by researchers from the University of Adelaide in Australia and Southeast University in China, found that compared with never tea drinkers, daily consumers of dark tea had 53% lower risk for prediabetes and 47% reduced risk for type 2 diabetes, even after taking into account established risk factors known to drive the risk for diabetes, including age, ...

Soon after he joined UC Riverside in 2015, Maurizio Pellecchia, a professor of biomedical sciences in the UCR School of Medicine, began working with the UCR Research and Economic Development office to create on campus an incubator space. He envisioned that space as a home for UCR scientists to create startup companies to prove the commercial potential of their technologies. That multi-year effort helped create in the Multidisciplinary Research Building the EPIC Life Sciences Incubator that currently houses young companies in agricultural technology, biomedical technologies, bioengineering, and medicinal chemistry. One of the tenant companies in the incubator ...

Commercial whaling in the 20th century decimated populations of large whales but also appears to have had a lasting impact on the genetic diversity of today’s surviving whales, new research from Oregon State University shows. Researchers compared DNA from a collection of whale bones found on beaches near abandoned whaling stations on South Georgia Island in the south Atlantic Ocean to DNA from whales in the present-day population and found strong evidence of loss of maternal DNA lineages among blue and humpback whales. “A maternal lineage is often associated with an animal’s cultural memories such as feeding and breeding locations that are passed from one generation ...

Viruses in soil may not be as destructive to bacteria as once thought and could instead act like lawnmowers, culling older cells and giving space for new growth, according to research out of the University of California, Davis, published Sept. 28 in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.  How viruses affect ecosystems, including bacteria, is challenging to untangle because they are complex and change over time and space. But the first annual rain on Mediterranean ecosystems, such as those in California, offers a kind of reset, triggering activity that can be observed.  Scientists ...

The 2023 American College of Cardiology (ACC) Quality Summit kicks off on October 11-13 in Orlando, Florida, putting the spotlight on the value of ACC Accreditation and NCDR services to enhance health care quality. Cardiovascular clinicians and stakeholders across the U.S. will converge at this year’s Summit to discuss the role of accreditation and registries in health equity initiatives, best practices for rebooting and rebranding health care quality, and strategies to engage the CV team in the quality process. “ACC’s ...

Embargoed for release until 5:00 p.m. ET on Monday 2 October 2023 Annals of Internal Medicine Tip Sheet @Annalsofim Below please find summaries of new articles that will be published in the next issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The summaries are not intended to substitute for the full articles as a source of information. This information is under strict embargo and by taking it into possession, media representatives are committing to the terms of the embargo not only on their own behalf, but also on behalf of the organization they represent. ---------------------------- 1. ...

“[...] our results from the RNA-Seq experiments show that senescent ocular surface cells, particularly SCj, have abnormal keratin expression patterns [...]” A new priority research paper was published on the cover of Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 15, Issue 18, entitled, “Gene expression signatures of human senescent corneal and conjunctival epithelial cells.” In this new study, researchers Koji Kitazawa, Akifumi Matsumoto, Kohsaku Numa, Yasufumi Tomioka, Zhixin A. Zhang, Yohei Yamashita, Chie Sotozono, Pierre-Yves Desprez, and ...

The Grand Canyon’s valleys and millions of years of rock layers spanning Earth’s history have earned it a designation as one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. But, according to a new UNLV study, its marvels extend to vast cave systems that lie beneath the surface, which just might hold clues to better understand the future of climate change — by studying nature’s past. A research team — led by UNLV paleoclimatologist and professor Matthew Lachniet — pulled an ancient stalagmite from the floor of an undisturbed Grand Canyon cave. By studying the mineral deposits’ geochemistry, they were able to analyze precipitation patterns during the rapidly ...

A new study, led by radiation oncology physicists at Miami Cancer Institute, part of Baptist Health South Florida, displayed positive results using intracranial stereotactic radiosurgery, also known as SRS, for an MR-guided radiotherapy system. The study, ‘Commissioning Intracranial Stereotactic Radiosurgery (SRS) for an MR-guided Radiotherapy (MRgRT) system: MR-RT Localization and Dosimetric End-to-End Validation’ published in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology - Biology - Physics (IJROBP), highlights positive accuracy through an end-to-end hidden target test to quantify the imaging, planning, and delivery coincidence ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Altered measles and mumps viruses could be used as a platform to create a trivalent COVID-19 vaccine that triggers immunity to multiple variant strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, new research in animals suggests. The study builds upon previous studies that involved inserting a highly stable segment of the coronavirus spike protein into the measles vaccine or mumps vaccine. In a paper publishing this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists at The Ohio State University report on a new MMS vaccine candidate – for Measles, ...

Researchers led by Giulia Galli at University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering report a computational study that predicts the conditions to create specific spin defects in silicon carbide. Their findings, published online in Nature Communications, represent an important step towards identifying fabrication parameters for spin defects useful for quantum technologies.  Electronic spin defects in semiconductors and insulators are rich platforms for quantum information, sensing, and communication applications. Defects are impurities and/or misplaced atoms in a solid and the electrons associated with these atomic defects carry ...

Mining brings huge social and environmental change to communities: landscapes, livelihoods and the social fabric evolve alongside the industry. But what happens when the mines close? What problems face communities that lose their main employer and the very core of their identity and social networks? A research fellow at the University of Göttingen provides recommendations for governments to successfully navigate mining communities through their transition toward non-mining economies. Based on past experiences with industrial transitions, she suggests that a three-step approach centred around stakeholder ...

New study from Brigham researchers highlights a correlation between symptoms of insomnia and hypertension in women Getting enough sleep has never been more difficult in today's fast-paced environment. Yet new research from investigators in the Channing Division of Network Medicine of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, highlights why getting a good night’s sleep is critical to staying healthy. Their research unveils that women who struggled with getting enough sleep were at greater risk of ...