The beliefs we hold develop from a complex dance between our internal and external lives. Our personal-level cognition and our relationships with others work in concert to shape our views of the world and influence how likely we are to update those views when we encounter new information. In the past, these two levels of belief have been studied largely in isolation: psychologists have modeled the individual-level cognitive processes while researchers in fields from computational social science to statistical physics have offered insights ...

In an article published in JAMA Network Open, researchers at the University of São Paulo’s Medical School (FM-USP) report on a study involving 774 men and women who followed a vegan diet in Brazil. Their findings show that on average the participants consumed the recommended amount of proteins and essential amino acids, and that their diet consisted largely of unprocessed and minimally processed foods. However, participants who consumed proportionally lower levels of industrialized products such as protein supplements and textured soy protein were more likely to exhibit inadequate ...

An outstanding $21 million philanthropic investment will establish a pioneering research centre to advance precision diagnosis for diseases that affect millions of Australians. The Colonial Foundation Diagnostics Centre will use cutting-edge ‘spatial biology’ technologies to deliver enhanced diagnosis and, in turn, personalised care for patients with inflammatory diseases, like rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease. The centre, co-led by WEHI and the Royal Melbourne Hospital, and funded by the Colonial Foundation, builds on an existing partnership that has pioneered potential new tests for detecting early-stage dementia. At a glance   A $21 million ...

Metal production is responsible for 10% of global CO2 emissions, with iron production emitting two tons of CO2 for every ton of metal produced, and nickel production emitting 14 tons of CO2 per ton and even more, depending on the ore used. These metals form the foundation of alloys that have a low thermal expansion, called Invar. They are critical for the aerospace, cryogenic transport, energy and precision instrument sectors. Recognizing the environmental toll, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Sustainable Materials (MPI-SusMat) have now developed a new method to produce Invar alloys without emitting ...

Findings from the international FORT-2 clinical trial showed that a combination treatment including immunotherapy is safe and tolerable in patients with locally advanced or metastatic bladder cancer. The results, which were recently published in JAMA Oncology, show potential to broaden the number of patients with bladder cancer who could benefit from immunotherapy, an approach that harnesses a patient's own immune system to fight cancer. “The major problem with immunotherapy was it works great for some patients with ...

Studies by researchers at UTHealth Houston seeking to understand the underlying pathology of Alzheimer’s disease in order to discover new pathways to treatment have earned multiple awards totaling $3.5 million from the Texas Alzheimer’s Research and Care Consortium (TARCC). A state-funded organization composed of 11 medical schools across the state, the goal of the TARCC is to fund Alzheimer’s-related projects within the member institutions and promote collaborative efforts. Rodrigo Morales, PhD, professor of neurology with McGovern Medical ...

University of Tennessee Extension and UT AgResearch scientists have been awarded part of a nearly $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to study ways to use automation and robotics to address the labor shortage in the nursery crops industry. Growing plants in a nursery is highly dependent on manual labor, making this industry particularly prone to worker shortages. An increasingly scarce workforce is limiting production, economic development and prosperity in the rural communicates where nurseries ...

Captive tigers in the United States outnumber those living in the wild. The World Wildlife Federation estimates around 5,000 of the big cats reside in the U.S., mostly owned by private citizens. The health of this population is a genetic mystery for conservation groups and researchers interested in how the captive tigers could help stabilize or restore wild tiger populations. Are the privately owned animals just like tigers in the wild, or do they reflect characteristics popular in the illegal trade? Are they a hodgepodge of wild tiger ancestry, ...

UTHealth Houston and The Ocean Corporation are collaborating on UTHealth Houston’s Space Medicine Training Fellowship program, which now includes a two-week intensive training focused on hyperbaric technologies and analog environments akin to those astronauts experience during extravehicular activities (EVAs), or space walks. The training will enhance the hands-on learning experience of fellows in the Space Medicine Fellowship program, giving them a deeper understanding of physiological and medical challenges encountered in extreme environments. “Integrating ...

By cleverly applying a computational technique, scientists have made a breakthrough in understanding the ‘pseudogap,’ a long-standing puzzle in quantum physics with close ties to superconductivity. The discovery, presented in the September 20 issue of Science, will help scientists in their quest for room-temperature superconductivity, a holy grail of condensed matter physics that would enable lossless power transmission, faster MRI machines and superfast levitating trains. Certain materials involving copper and oxygen display superconductivity (where electricity flows without resistance) at relatively high — but still frigid — temperatures below ...

A new way of looking at tooth enamel could give scientists a path to deeper understanding of the health of human populations, from the ancient to the modern. The method, published this week in the Journal of Archaeological Science, examines two immune proteins found embedded in human tooth enamel: immunoglobulin G, an antibody that fights infection, and C-reactive protein, which is present during inflammation in the body. “These proteins are present in tooth enamel, and they are something we can use to study the ...

Researchers discovered a drug that safely and effectively helped cancer patients when they suffered from cachexia (ku-KEK-see-uh), a common condition related to cancer that involves weight loss and muscle wasting. The results of the randomized phase 2 clinical trial, which included187 individuals who experienced cachexia with lung, pancreatic, or colorectal cancer, were reported in the New England Journal of Medicine on Sept. 14, 2024. Richard Dunne, MD, MS, a Wilmot Cancer Institute oncologist and cachexia expert was part of the large group of investigators ...

Blanca Barquera's investigation into the energy-generating processes of Bacteroides, the most abundant member of the gut microbiome, and their impact on our well-being holds the promise of significant advancements in human health. Barquera is a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the Departments of Biological Sciences and Chemistry and Chemical Biology. In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that an unhealthy gut is more than just a source of digestive troubles. A healthy ...

Jeffrey Elam, senior chemist, Distinguished Fellow, and founder of the atomic layer deposition (ALD) research program at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, was named as a fellow of the Electrochemical Society (ECS), which focuses on advancing theory and practice at the forefront of electrochemical and solid-state science and technology. Elam, who has been with the lab since 2002, has been a trailblazer in thin film coating science and technology for over 20 years, ...

Oregon Health & Science University researchers have found that despite legislation in 19 states requiring insurers to cover a 12-month supply of contraception, patients aren’t receiving a year’s worth of their prescription; most receive just three months or less. Their study recently published in the journal JAMA Health Forum shows that policies requiring coverage of a 12-month supply of short-acting hormonal contraception — most commonly the birth control pill — have not been fully implemented, resulting in no substantial increases nationally in year-long prescription orders. This leaves many patients at an increased risk for unintended ...

All living organisms emit a low level of light radiation, but the origin and function of these 'biophotons' are not yet fully understood. An international team of physicists, funded by the Foundational Questions Institute, FQxI, has proposed a new approach for investigating this phenomenon based on statistical analyses of this emission. Their aim is to test whether biophotons can play a role in the transport of information within and between living organisms, and whether monitoring biophotons could contribute to the development of medical techniques for the early diagnosis of various diseases. Their analyses of the measurements of the faint glow emitted by lentil ...

Antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections often occur in patients with chronic inflammatory intestinal conditions, such as inflammatory bowel disease, and in patients who have taken antibiotics for a long time. Gram-negative bacteria such as Enterobacteriaceae are a common cause of these infections and have few treatment options. Fecal microbiota transplants have shown promise to curb some of these infections, but their composition varies between batches and they aren’t always successful.  Researchers at Keio University School of Medicine in Tokyo and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have isolated ...

Sometimes all it takes is a little push.  That is the conclusion of a recently published study in which doctors used a handheld ultrasound device to nudge patients’ kidney-stone fragments.  As many as 50% of patients who have kidney stones removed surgically still have small fragments remaining in the kidneys afterward. Of those patients, about 25% find themselves returning for another operation within five years to remove the now-larger fragments. UW Medicine researchers found, however, that patients ...

A recent study has successfully decoded the autotetraploid genome of the wax apple, uncovering its genetic evolution and key factors driving fruit diversity. The research highlights the fruit’s rich antioxidant profile, with promising implications for human health and breeding strategies aimed at enhancing nutritional value. Wax apple (Syzygium samarangense), known for its crisp texture, rose-like aroma, and health benefits, faces breeding challenges due to its complex genetic diversity and limited genomic data. These obstacles have hindered efforts to improve key fruit qualities such as size and sugar ...

A new study co-led by the Smithsonian and the University of Arizona offers the most detailed glimpse yet of how Earth’s surface temperature has changed over the past 485 million years. In a paper published today, Sept. 19, in the journal Science, a team of researchers, including paleobiologists Scott Wing and Brian Huber from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, produce a curve of global mean surface temperature (GMST) across deep time—the Earth’s ancient past stretching over many millions of years. ...

Science has provided more than sufficient evidence to inform a collective and global approach to tackle the continued spread of plastic pollution, according to a new report. Writing in the journal Science, an international group of experts say the need for worldwide action to tackle all forms of plastic and microplastic debris has never been more pressing. It is clear that existing national legislation alone is insufficient to address the challenge, they say, and the United Nations’ Plastic Pollution Treaty ...

Estimating past global temperature is important for understanding the history of life on Earth and for predicting future climate. Now, a new reconstruction of Earth’s temperature history over the past 485 million years – based on a method that combines diverse physical proxy data with climate model predictions – reveals a much wider range of climate variability across the Phanerozoic eon than previously understood. The findings highlight atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) as the dominant factor controlling climate variability throughout this period, offering new ...

Cooling in the subsurface waters beneath Greenland’s Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden Glacier (79NG) from 2018 to 2021 was driven by European atmospheric blocking, which forced changes in the large-scale ocean circulation of the Nordic seas, researchers report, slowing glacial melt, despite ongoing global warming trends. The findings highlight the importance of regional atmospheric dynamics in influencing glacier stability. Understanding these dynamics is key to predicting the future of glaciers like ...

Published in the journal Science, the study presents a curve of global mean surface temperature that reveals Earth's temperature has varied more than previously thought over much of the Phanerozoic Eon a period of geologic time when life diversified, populated land and endured multiple mass extinctions. The curve also confirms Earth's temperature is strongly correlated to the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The start of the Phanerozoic Eon 540 million years ago is marked by the Cambrian ...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Subscribe to UCSF News Department of Defense-funded study aims to end a decades-long impasse in treatment development.  Traumatic brain injury (TBI) results in close to 70,000 deaths in the United States every year, and it is the cause of long-term physical, cognitive and mental disability in 5 million Americans. But despite three decades of work, treatments are sorely lacking. Now, an innovative drug development trial will be available in emergency departments of 18 level 1 trauma sites nationwide. It is launched by UC San Francisco and the Transforming Research and Clinical Knowledge in Traumatic ...