(Toronto, September 21, 2023) The United Nations General Assembly held a high-level meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness, and Response on September 20, 2023, to continue discussions on finalizing a globally enforceable Pandemic Accord or Treaty that will be presented to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) World Health Assembly in May 2024. This treaty, if agreed to and eventually ratified, will be the second international treaty instrument under WHO auspices, and represents a critical juncture in global health needed to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response in the ...

According to a study recently published by the Journal of the American Medical Association, maternal morbidity and mortality rates in Texas during the last two decades have more than doubled from 1999 (10.3 deaths per 100,000 births) to 2019 (21.9 deaths per 100,000 births). This rate not only exceeds the national average (17.4 in 2018), but it also places Texas at or near the bottom of most metrics used to determine the safest states in which to have a baby. One of the primary factors related to the lack of maternity care in the Lone Star state is the existence of maternity care deserts, which are counties where no maternity care exists. And in the Texas Panhandle, ...

SHERBROOKE, Canada (September 21, 2023) – SBQuantum, the first company developing diamond quantum magnetometers capable of providing vector measurements of both the amplitude and the orientation of Earth's magnetic field, today announces it has been selected as a participant in the final phases of the MagQuest Challenge, along with its partner, Spire Global. Led by the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, MagQuest is a multi-million dollar competition to find more accurate and efficient ways to map the earth’s electromagnetic field, also known as the World Magnetic Model (WMM). Aircraft, ...

The most comprehensive study to date investigating whether e-cigarettes are a gateway into or out of smoking finds that, at the population level, there is no sign that e-cigarettes and other alternative nicotine delivery products promote smoking. The study, led by Queen Mary University of London and funded by the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR), also found some evidence that these products compete against cigarettes and so may be speeding up the demise of smoking, but this finding is only tentative and more data are needed to determine the size of this effect. The study compared the time course of use and sales of electronic cigarettes with that ...

In virtual meetings, it’s easy to keep people from talking over each other. Someone just hits mute. But for the most part, this ability doesn’t translate easily to recording in-person gatherings. In a bustling cafe, there are no buttons to silence the table beside you. The ability to locate and control sound — isolating one person talking from a specific location in a crowded room, for instance — has challenged researchers, especially without visual cues from cameras. A team led by ...

TORONTO, ON – Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leaks may be one of the mechanisms that link traumatic brain injury (TBI) with dementia, according to a recently published hypothesis in Alzheimer's & Dementia: Translational Research & Clinical Interventions, a journal of the Alzheimer’s Association. Traumatic brain injuries are strongly associated with an increased risk of dementia. Unfortunately, the exact pathways underlying this relationship are unclear. This gap in knowledge makes it difficult to create preventative strategies to support patients with TBI. CSF leaks are associated with decreased brain buoyancy and the appearance of brain sagging on MRI. Severe ...

While most individuals impacted by COVID-19 experience milder symptoms and recover within a few weeks, the global pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus continues to pose a significant health challenge. Some of those affected may progress to develop more severe illness and pneumonia, often resulting in a more unfavorable prognosis. Although protocols have been developed to assess patients' risk, diagnostic and prognostic tools primarily rely on expensive and less accessible imaging methods, ...

Sewage pollution, whether treated or untreated, was found to be the primary driver of increased nutrients, algae, and sewage fungus in rivers. Sewage discharge also radically altered plant, animal, and microbe communities, increasing the abundance of harmful species. Run-off from agriculture was also found to lower water quality and be particularly harmful for sensitive insect groups. Ahead of World Rivers Day (24 September), new research by the University of Oxford reveals that sewage discharge into rivers has a greater impact on water quality, and the animals ...

South Korean researchers have achieved a landmark feat by setting international standards for short-range wireless communication technology, commonly used within a 10 cm range, to enable internet communication. ETRI(Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute) announced on the 21st July that the international standard “IETF RFC 9428(Transmission of IPv6 Packets over Near Field Communication)” was formally adopted by the Internet Engineering Task Force(IETF), a semi-private international standardization organization under the Internet Architecture Board(IAB). Near ...

Injecting drugs into the bloodstream can often harm healthy tissues as well. Drug delivery systems (DDSs) are an innovative solution designed to target specific cells and minimize such side effects. One strategy for drug delivery that has steadily gained traction involves a combination of microbubbles and ultrasound. Microbubbles are small gas-filled bubbles that can be loaded with drugs or other therapeutic agents on their surface. When exposed to ultrasound waves, these microbubbles begin to oscillate, with the ensuing ...

MIAMI, FLORIDA (Sept. 20, 2023) – A researcher with Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine has been selected to receive a prestigious honor from Columbia University. Glen N. Barber, PhD, Sylvester’s internationally known cell biologist who chairs UM’s Department of Cell Biology, has been awarded the 2023 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia for outstanding contributions to basic research in biology and biochemistry. Barber is the first UM faculty member to receive this award, and more than 50% of previous honorees have gone on to win the Nobel Prize. The award, which carries a $10,000 ...

Prior studies of uromodulin, the most abundant protein in urine, and kidney disease have focused primarily on urinary uromodulin levels. The current study evaluated associations of serum uromodulin levels with risk of end-stage kidney disease and mortality in a cohort of African American adults with hypertension and chronic kidney disease. The research, recently published in the American Journal of Kidney Diseases (AJKD), found that participants with lower levels of uromodulin at baseline were more likely to develop end-stage kidney disease, even after accounting for baseline kidney ...

Jeffrey Raskin, MS, MD, a neurosurgeon at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, performed the first ever computer-guided radiofrequency ablation to decrease excessive muscle tone (called hypertonia) in a child with cerebral palsy. In hypertonia, muscles are constantly activated, which causes severe pain and deformity in the bones and joints, and profoundly impacts the child’s quality of life. Medications are not always effective, and these patients do not have any other surgical options. Dr. ...

Previous studies have shown that overweight and obesity are risk factors for several types of cancer. It is also known that obese women have a higher risk of cancer than their male counterparts, and that the risk level decreases with intentional weight loss. However, evidence of a link between obesity, weight loss and haematological cancer has been limited. The current study, published in the journal Lancet Healthy Longevity, used data from the Swedish Obese Subjects (SOS) study at the University of Gothenburg and data from e.g., the Cancer ...

Multiyear La Niña events have become more common over the last 100 years, according to a new study led by University of Hawai‘i (UH) at Mānoa atmospheric scientist Bin Wang. Five out of six La Niña events since 1998 have lasted more than one year, including an unprecedented triple-year event. The study was published this week in Nature Climate Change. “The clustering of multiyear La Niña events is phenomenal given that only ten such events have occurred since 1920,” said Wang, emeritus professor of atmospheric sciences in the UH Mānoa School of Ocean ...

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a leading cause of long-term disability and premature death, especially among military personnel and those playing contact sports. Substantial research has examined acute and chronic neurological consequences of TBI; however, non-neurological conditions associated with TBI are understudied. A new review paper by investigators from Mass General Brigham presents key findings on long-term associations between TBI and cardiovascular disease, highlighting that nervous system dysfunction, neuroinflammation, changes in the brain-gut connection, and post-injury comorbidities may elevate risk of both cardiovascular ...

Freelance journalist Adele Waters speaks to scores of doctors unable to work or play with their children, forced to sell their homes or facing financial destitution by an illness they caught while doing their jobs. She hears of “shockingly low” access to protective equipment faced by many doctors in their workplaces, and how some have struggled for medical colleagues to take their symptoms seriously. Charities that provide financial support to doctors in need have seen a sudden rise in demand, and now there are calls for long covid to be considered an occupational disease to help doctors and other healthcare workers access support and financial ...

New research published in Diabetologia (the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes [EASD]) shows that morning and afternoon physical activity are associated with a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes across all population levels of education and income, but found no statistically significant association between evening physical activity and risk type 2 diabetes. The study is by Dr Caiwei Tian, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA, and Dr Chirag Patel, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA. and colleagues. Physical activity is a preventive factor for type 2 diabetes, but its timing and consistency (in contrast with overall sum of physical activity) ...

New research has found that monkeys increase their use of scent markings to compensate for human noise pollution. Pied tamarins (Saguinus bicolor) use both vocal calls and scent markings to communicate, and the new study – published in the journal Ethology Ecology & Evolution – is the first to investigate how primates change their communication strategies in response to noise pollution. The pied tamarin has an extremely narrow geographic range in central Brazil, much of which now lies within the city of ...

Leesburg, VA, September 20, 2023—According to an accepted manuscript published in the American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), upgrade and downgrade rates from targeted biopsy to radical prostatectomy were not significantly different between patients whose MRI examinations were clinically interpreted using PI-RADS Version v2.0 or v2.1. “Implementation of the most recent PI-RADS update did not improve the incongruence in prostate cancer grade assessment between targeted biopsy and surgery,” wrote corresponding author Baris Turkbey, MD, from the Molecular Imaging Branch ...

Almost 80% of plastic in the waste stream ends up in landfills or accumulates in the environment. Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists have developed a technology that converts a conventionally unrecyclable mixture of plastic waste into useful chemicals, presenting a new strategy in the toolkit to combat global plastic waste. The technology, invented by ORNL’s Tomonori Saito and former postdoctoral researcher Md Arifuzzaman, uses an exceptionally efficient organocatalyst that allows selective deconstruction ...

A study of Canadian hospitalizations from 2007-2019 show that over 75% of patients with moderate to severe acute kidney injury (AKI) do not get appropriate follow-up kidney health testing after hospital discharge. A study in Alberta, Canada, examined care received by over 20,000 hospitalized with AKI during hospitalization and after discharge between 2009 and 2017. The results, recently published in the American Journal of Kidney Diseases (AJKD), showed that a low proportion of patients with moderate to severe AKI were seen by a kidney specialist ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Living things from bacteria to plants to humans must constantly adjust the chemical soup of proteins -- the workhorse molecules of life -- inside their cells to adapt to stress or changing conditions, such as when nutrients are scarce, or when a pathogen attacks. Now, researchers have identified a previously unknown molecular mechanism that helps explain how they do it. Studying a spindly plant called Arabidopsis thaliana, a Duke University-led team discovered short snippets of folded RNA that, under normal conditions, keep levels of defense proteins low to avoid harming the plants themselves. But when the plants detect a pathogen, these folded RNA structures ...

For the first time, scientists have mapped the reproductive strategies and life cycle of an endangered coral species, offering hope it can be clawed back from the path to extinction.  The purple cauliflower soft coral, Dendronephthya australis, is endemic to south-eastern Australia, with the largest populations historically found in the Port Stephens estuary in New South Wales. It is one of the 100 priority species on the Federal Government’s Threatened Species Strategy.  Not only is the future ...

Brown adipocytes are specialized cells that can use energy to produce heat. This property makes them attractive tools for the treatment of diseases like obesity and type 2 diabetes. Until recently, this therapeutic potential was constrained by limited understanding of how brown adipocyte tissue (BAT) develops from precursors. A team led by investigators at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, identified a set of cellular signaling cues that lead up to brown ...