Key take-aways: Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a stage of decline in cognitive function greater than normal for a person’s age and education, not severe enough to impair daily function – but it can progress. Around one third of people with cardiovascular disease (CVD) also have MCI, yet MCI is undiagnosed in 50-80% of these cases. The central aim of the EU’s DORIAN GRAY project is to untangle this MCI-CVD connection, reduce the burden of disease at older ages and prolong survival. Brescia, Italy – 27 February 2025 – A major new project, DORIAN GRAY, ...

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) plays a crucial role in protecting childhood and adult health by developing vaccination recommendations based on scientific evidence. SHEA encourages timely rescheduling of the ACIP’s meeting that was scheduled for February 2025 to ensure patients and healthcare providers  are getting the most up to date recommendations based on the latest scientific evidence review regarding vaccination.  The ACIP’s recommendations are foundational to public health, guiding pediatric and adult vaccine schedules that have significantly reduced the prevalence of highly communicable infectious ...

Filippo Radicchi, professor of Informatics at the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, co-authored a ground-breaking study that could lead to the development of new AI algorithms and new ways to study brain function. The study, titled “Topology shapes dynamics of higher-order networks,” and published in Nature Physics, proposed a theoretical framework specifically designed for understanding complex higher-order networks. It could lead to breakthroughs ...

A unique dark-coloured organic glass, found inside the skull of an individual who died in Herculaneum during the 79 CE Mount Vesuvius eruption, likely formed when they were killed by a very hot but short-lived ash cloud. The conclusion, from research published in Scientific Reports, is based on an analysis of the physical properties of the glass, thought to comprise the fossilised brain of the individual. Glass rarely occurs naturally due to the specific conditions required for formation. For a substance to become glass, its liquid form must cool fast ...

More than 99% of birds can fly. But that still leaves many species that evolved to be flightless, including penguins, ostriches, and kiwi birds. In a new study in the journal Evolution, researchers compared the feathers and bodies of different species of flightless birds and their closest relatives who can still fly. They were able to determine which features change first when birds evolve to be flightless, versus which traits take more time for evolution to alter. These findings help shed light on the evolution of complex traits that lose their original ...

A new study has identified a genetic circuit in plants that controls individual leaf growth and allows the plants to adapt to their environment. The findings could help the development of more drought-resistant crops. Scientists from the University of Nottingham’s School of Biosciences investigated the growth of maize leaves in plants cultivated in three different soils containing differential amounts of nutrients and water.  They found that microbes colonising plant leaves across these soils influence the growth of the leaves independently of the concentration of nutrients and soil properties. The findings have been published ...

Mothers who were given access to virtual breastfeeding support (or telelactation) through a free app tended to report more breastfeeding than peers who did not receive such help, with a more-pronounced effect observed among Black mothers, according to a new RAND study.     Reporting results from the first large trial of telelactation services, researchers found that mothers who were given access to video telelactation services reported slightly higher rates of breastfeeding six months after giving birth, as compared to mothers who did not receive the service.      The ...

About The Study: In this cross-sectional study of U.S. homicide rates, substantial variation was found across and within county, race and ethnicity, sex, and age groups; American Indian and Alaska Native and Black males ages 15 to 44 had the highest rates of homicide. The findings highlight several populations and places where homicide rates were high, but awareness and violence prevention remains limited. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Paula D. Strassle, PhD, MSPH, email pdstrass@umd.edu. To access the embargoed ...

About The Study: This study found that the prevalence of adults with diabetes did not significantly change between 2013 and 2023, but glycemic control among those with diagnosed disease worsened in 2021-2023 after nearly a decade of stability. This trend was most pronounced among young adults. The increase of 1% in mean HbA1c levels and 20% decrease in glycemic control would increase the lifetime risk of cardiovascular events. Potential explanations for these findings include increased sedentary behavior, reduced social support, heightened mental health ...

About The Study: In this cohort study of 46,000 U.S. residents, nearly two-thirds of participants had suboptimal 5-year sleep duration trajectories. Suboptimal sleep duration trajectories were associated with as much as a 29% increase in risk of all-cause mortality. These findings highlight the importance of maintaining healthy sleep duration over time to reduce mortality risk. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Kelsie M. Full, PhD, MPH, email k.full@vumc.org. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.62117) Editor’s ...

Key Takeaways  Surgical adhesions — internal bands of scar tissue that form between organs or tissues after surgery— can lead to severe complications such as bowel obstructions, chronic pain, and infertility while increasing the difficulty of future operations.  Surgical adhesions negatively impact patient outcomes and drive up health care costs.  There is currently no standard measure of the severity of surgical adhesions or their impact on a patient’s quality of life.  CHICAGO – Scarring is expected after most operations, but surgical adhesions present a unique ...

Age-related macular (AMD) degeneration is a leading cause of vision impairment and blindness in the elderly population. In so-called wet AMD, new, abnormal blood vessels grow in the central part of the retina called macula, which is required for high-acuity central vision, leading to fluid and blood leakage and macular damage or dysfunction. Although wet AMD accounts for a minority of AMD cases, 90% of AMD-related cases of blindness are due to wet AMD. Wet AMD in its early stages can be treated with drugs to reduce the formation of new blood vessels, but this treatment is inefficient in cases where blood vessel formation is already in ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. – Astronomers have long grappled with the question, “How do planets form?” A new collaboration among Michigan State University, Arizona State University and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will seek to answer this question with the help of a powerful telescope and high-performance computers.   The team of researchers will use 154 hours on the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST, to probe the atmospheres of seven planets beyond our solar system – all of which were formed less than 300 million years ago, around the time dinosaurs roamed ...

Since the discovery of actin in relation to muscle function more than 80 years ago by Albert Szent-Gyorgyi in Szeged, Hungary, actin research has become extremely diverse and now extends to plants and prokaryotes, as well as biochemical, biophysical, molecular, and cellular biology fields. The need for an international actin conference with comprehensive topics, where the latest results and research directions are presented, is critical for the community. Therefore, we decided to bring together the best experts in actin biology from across the world to build research synergies to tackle long-standing questions ...

Astronomers have long grappled with the question, “How do planets form?” A new collaboration among Arizona State University (ASU) , Michigan State University (MSU) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) will seek to answer this question with the help of a powerful telescope and high-performance computers.  The team of researchers will use 154 hours on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), to probe the atmospheres of seven planets beyond our solar system – all of which were formed less than 300 million years ago, around the time dinosaurs roamed the Earth. In conjunction with JWST, this collaboration, called the KRONOS program, will use computers ...

WASHINGTON — For the first time, researchers have used high-speed laser writing to create lines spaced just 100 nm apart on a glass substrate. The optimized printing approach could enable super-resolution 3D direct laser writing (DLW) of microlenses, photonics crystals, micro-optical devices, metamaterials and more. DLW is an additive manufacturing technique that uses a focused laser beam to selectively solidify, or polymerize, a material with nanoscale precision. DLW typically uses multi-photon polymerization to polymerize materials in a precise, ...

Scientists at VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center have identified an innovative combination of treatment strategies that work collaboratively to effectively kill acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cells, a frequently incurable form of cancer. New research findings — published in the Nature family journal Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy — suggest that a class of drugs known as MCL-1 (myeloid leukemia cell-1) inhibitors interact with a type of kinase inhibitor that targets the SRC gene to efficiently trigger cell death in AML cells. “Results from this research could add another approach ...

A new study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that mental health visits for patients with depression from high-wealth neighborhoods in Maryland were significantly more likely to happen via telehealth compared to patients with depression from low-wealth neighborhoods in Maryland from mid-2021 through mid-2024. Telehealth visits by phone or web-based teleconferencing became popular during the COVID-19 pandemic after in-person health care options were scaled back and telehealth restrictions relaxed. The researchers investigated how mental health care visits changed from before and over the course ...

A new AI-based system for analyzing images taken over time can accurately detect changes and predict outcomes, according to a study led by investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine, Cornell’s Ithaca campus and Cornell Tech. The system’s sensitivity and flexibility could make it useful across a wide range of medical and scientific applications. The new system, termed LILAC (Learning-based Inference of Longitudinal imAge Changes), is based on an AI approach called machine learning. In the study, which appears Feb. 20 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers developed the system and demonstrated it on diverse time-series of images—also ...

TORONTO, Feb. 27, 2025 – Research led by York University’s Faculty of Health reveals how a specific mutation in a protein called TRAF1 can shut down an overactive immune response, dramatically reducing inflammation in mice. Lead researcher Ali Abdul-Sater says this discovery could pave the way for a new class of drugs to treat rheumatoid arthritis.   “Rheumatoid arthritis is a common health condition which can interfere with many aspects of daily life and based on the limited efficacy ...

A new trans-Atlantic space initiative has launched, linking Texas and France in an ambitious effort to fuel startup growth, drive research and forge international partnerships. Announced at the 2025 ASCENDxTexas event Feb. 27, the Texas-France Space Hub aims to unite academic institutions and private enterprises, expanding commercial space presence in both countries. The three-year initiative fosters global partnerships in aerospace, bringing together Rice University, Stellar Access and Houston Spaceport in Texas with France’s space agency CNES and ...

Planetary-mass objects (PMOs) are cosmic nomads: they drift freely through space, unbound to any star, and weigh less than 13 times the mass of Jupiter. While they have been spotted in abundance in young star clusters such as the Trapezium Cluster in Orion (Fig. 1), their origin has puzzled scientists. Traditional theories have suggested that they might be failed stars or planets ejected from their solar systems. An international team of astronomers, in collaboration with the University of Zurich (UZH), has used advanced simulations to demonstrate that these enigmatic objects can form directly from the violent interactions of disks around young stars. “PMOs don’t ...

Bacteremia, or blood poisoning, occurs when bacteria overcome the body’s immune defenses. Bacteremia can worsen into sepsis, a condition that accounts for more than 1 in 3 hospital deaths per year. Yet people are routinely exposed to and fight off bacteria from the environment without this deadly series of events occurring. Scientists are trying to figure out exactly how bacteria spread throughout the body to cause systemic infection in the hopes of eventually stopping this process in its tracks. Michael Bachman, M.D., Ph.D., clinical associate professor of pathology and microbiology and immunology at U-M Medical School and former postdoc Caitlyn Holmes, Ph.D., ...

The Indiana University School of Medicine is accepting nominations until May 15, 2025, for the 2026 August M. Watanabe Prize in Translational Research. The Watanabe Prize is one of the nation’s largest and most prestigious research awards recognizing senior investigators focused on shepherding scientific discoveries into new therapies for patients. Nominees should be members of the scientific or medical communities who have demonstrated outstanding accomplishments in translational research. The winner of the 2026 Watanabe Prize in Translational Research will receive a $100,000 award and spend time in Indianapolis from September 16-18, ...

A new analysis of social media posts finds public support for solar energy remains high, though that support declined significantly from 2016 to 2022. The study also found solar power has become an increasingly polarized issue, with the shift in support being driven largely by opposition to solar power among people in regions that lean Republican. “The U.S. saw significant growth in the solar energy sector between 2013 and 2022, but that growth has not been spread evenly across the country – some areas have seen more deployment of solar energy technologies than other areas,” says Serena Kim, corresponding author of ...