UCF Scientist Looking at Role of Fats to Curb Graft-Versus-Host Disease in Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation Patients BY SUHTLING WONG  Every three minutes, someone in the U.S. is diagnosed with leukemia, lymphoma, or myeloma – cancers of the blood, bone marrow, and lymph nodes.   Treatments for blood cancers often require hematopoietic stem cell transplants but such cells can launch a potentially deadly immunological attack on the patient’s organs called graft-vs-host ...

ITHACA, N.Y.- Though human-made ponds both sequester and release greenhouse gases, when added up, they may be net emitters, according to two related studies by Cornell University researchers. The studies begin to quantify the significant effects that both human-made and natural ponds have on the global greenhouse gas budget, measurements that aren’t well understood. “Global climate models and predictions rely on accurate accounting of greenhouse gas emissions and carbon storage,” said Meredith Holgerson, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Cornell and senior ...

New research by Janelia scientists and collaborators at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill shows how a cluster of neurons in the fruit fly brain transforms memories about past rewards into actions, helping the fly navigate to find food. Like other insects, flies turn into the wind, or upwind, to locate the source of attractive odors. The fly’s olfactory system detects and senses odors carried by the wind, guiding the fly to the reward. In the fly, a brain region called the mushroom body processes and integrates olfactory information. Multiple compartments ...

New Rochelle, NY, September 19, 2023–A special issue of the peer-reviewed journal Health Equity titled “How Stakeholders Are Working to Advance Health Equity" covers the following areas: changing mindsets, promoting antiracism in health delivery systems, and promoting antiracism in health policy. Click here to read the issue now. Guest Editors of the special issue are Laurie Zephyrin, MD, MPH, MBA, Senior Vice President, Advancing Health Equity, The Commonwealth Fund; Claire-Cecile Pierre, MD, Associate Chief Medical Officer, Vice President of Community Health, ...

Whether light and fluffy or thin and flexible, bread holds an important place in many cultures and cuisines. And despite millennia of baking experience, scientists are still striving to improve this staple food. Below are some recent papers published in ACS journals that report insights into the quality, healthfulness and preparation of bread. Reporters can request free access to these papers by emailing newsroom@acs.org. “Unraveling the Influence of Wheat Bran Chemical Composition, Lipolytic Enzyme Activities, and Phenolic Components on the Bread-Making Properties of Reconstituted Whole Wheat Flours” ACS Food Science & Technology Sept. 13, 2023 Whole-wheat bread contains ...

Near-eye displays are emerging as the future of portable devices, providing individuals with immersive virtual reality experiences. The primary objectives in developing these displays are to create immersive experiences and ensure visual comfort. While a larger field of view (FOV) enhances immersion in virtual reality, addressing the Vergence-Accommodation-Conflict (VAC) is crucial for comfortable vision. Researchers have explored innovative approaches to tackle these challenges. A significant breakthrough in near-eye displays is the integration of light field technology. However, earlier light field displays in VR were limited by their ...

Today, the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health was named one of 13 funded partners working alongside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to establish the Outbreak Analytics and Disease Modeling Network (OADM) – an important step towards creating a nationwide outbreak resource to support more effective responses during public health emergencies. Each funded partner will provide support in innovation, integration or implementation for outbreak analytics, disease modeling and forecasting. The Gillings ...

The U.S. National Science Foundation, UK Research and Innovation, and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada have jointly funded a new global center to address the emerging opportunity and challenge of “green ammonia” to provide clean energy and support food production while mitigating climate change. The Global Nitrogen Innovation Center for Clean Energy and the Environment (NICCEE), spearheaded by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) with key partners in the U.S. (New ...

Consumer confidence in driving hydrogen-fueled vehicles could be improved by having station operators adopt a predictive model that helps them anticipate maintenance needs, according to researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Colorado State University (CSU). Stations shutting down for unscheduled maintenance reduces hydrogen fueling availability to consumers and may slow adoption of these types of fuel cell electric vehicles, the researchers noted. The use of what is known as a ...

New Rochelle, NY, September 19, 2023—Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. announces the launch of Journal of Medical Extended Reality (JMXR), the new open access peer-reviewed research journal dedicated to the advancement of extended reality in medicine. JMXR is launching in partnership with the American Medical Extended Reality Association (AMXRA), the premier medical society advancing the science and practice of medical extended reality, as their Official Journal. The journal welcomes your submission and will consider virtual, augmented, and mixed reality research, alongside other emerging technologies. Spearheaded ...

In a new study, mice whose immune systems were trained against the microbial protein flagellin did not experience the usual detrimental effects of ingesting food additive emulsifiers, pointing to a potential new way to combat various chronic inflammatory diseases. Melissa Kordahi and Benoit Chassaing, Inserm researchers from the Institut Cochin and Université Paris Cité, France, and colleagues present these findings September 19th in the open access journal PLOS Biology. Dietary emulsifiers are substances added to processed food products to prevent mixed ingredients from separating. Prior research has suggested that eating certain emulsifiers ...

A new study shows the isolation and sequencing of more than a century-old RNA molecules from a Tasmanian tiger specimen preserved at room temperature in a museum collection. This resulted in the reconstruction of skin and skeletal muscle transcriptomes from an extinct species for the first time. The researchers note that their findings have relevant implications for international efforts to resurrect extinct species, including both the Tasmanian tiger and the woolly mammoth, as well as for studying pandemic RNA viruses. The Tasmanian ...

Life on a faraway planet — if it’s out there — might not look anything like life on Earth. But there are only so many chemical ingredients in the universe’s pantry, and only so many ways to mix them. A team led by scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison has exploited those limitations to write a cookbook of hundreds of chemical recipes with the potential to give rise to life. Their ingredient list could focus the search for life elsewhere in the universe by pointing out the most likely conditions — planetary versions of mixing techniques, oven temperatures and baking times — for the recipes to come together. The process ...

Millions of women are turning to the social media platform TikTok for health advice related to gynecologic cancers, but the majority of that information is misleading or dramatically inaccurate, according to a new study published by The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute in the journal Gynecologic Oncology. Senior study author Laura Chambers, DO, says this highlights the power of social media to feed misinformation that could be ...

Alexandria, Virginia — The latest research and advances in otolaryngology-head and neck surgery will be presented in Nashville, Tennessee, during the AAO-HNSF 2023 Annual Meeting & OTO Experience, September 30 – October 4. From among the hundreds of research presentations submitted for the 2023 Annual Meeting, the Annual Meeting Program Committee (AMPC), comprised of physician members, selected 16 Scientific Oral Presentations as the Best of Orals, as well as an additional 40 Late-Breaking abstract submissions that were added to the Scientific Oral Presentation program to offer the latest and most ...

Researchers at the Tufts Lyme Disease Initiative recently received grants totaling more than $7 million to build on an already impressive array of discoveries that Tufts’ teams have made to combat tick-borne diseases. While Lyme disease can often be successfully treated with antibiotics, 10-20% of patients experience persistent fatigue, joint pain, and mental impairments that last months or years. For some, it is never clear whether symptoms signal persistent infection, reinfection, or malfunction by the body’s immune system. Researchers ...

Researchers in the University of Delaware College of Health Sciences Department of Medical and Molecular Sciences are playing a pivotal role on the global health stage as they investigate the most common sexually transmitted infection (STI) in the world. Centers for Disease Control statistics show that 79 million Americans have human papillomavirus (HPV). With 14 million new infections each year, 80% of women will get at least one type of HPV at some point in their lifetime, according to the Office on Women’s ...

WHAT: In response to the persistent health challenges of herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) and HSV-2, today the National Institutes of Health released the Strategic Plan for Herpes Simplex Virus Research. An NIH-wide HSV Working Group developed the plan, informed by feedback from more than 100 representatives of the research and advocacy communities and interested public stakeholders. The plan outlines an HSV research framework with four strategic priorities: improving fundamental knowledge of HSV biology, pathogenesis, and epidemiology; accelerating research to improve HSV diagnosis; improving strategies to treat HSV while seeking a curative therapeutic; and, advancing research ...

Findings from a nationwide, multicenter study led by Johns Hopkins Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health suggest that patients with COVID-19 have less chance of developing post-COVID conditions — commonly known as long COVID — if they receive early treatment with plasma from convalescent (recovered) COVID patients that contain antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The new research, first posted online today in mBio, a journal from the American Society for Microbiology, is a follow-up investigation to the 2021 clinical trial that showed convalescent plasma ...

Biomedical research aimed at improving human health is particularly reliant on publicly funded basic science, according to a new analysis boosted by artificial intelligence. “What we found is that even though research funded by the National Institutes of Health makes up 10% of published scientific literature, those published papers account for about 30% of the substantive research — the important contributions supporting even more new scientific findings — cited by further clinical research ...

Using engineered microbes as microscopic factories has given the world steady sources of life-saving drugs, revolutionized the food industry, and allowed us to make sustainable versions of valuable chemicals previously made from petroleum.  But behind each biomanufactured product on the market today is the investment of years of work and many millions of dollars in research and development funding. Berkeley Lab scientists want to help the burgeoning industry reach new heights by accelerating and streamlining the process of engineering microbes to produce important compounds with ...

There is a widening health disparity among Black, American Indian and Alaska Native adults exposed to gun violence, according to Rutgers researchers who say these communities have more mental and physical health issues because they witness or are victimized at a higher rate.   In a new study published in Health Affairs Scholar, 3,015 Black and 527 American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) adults residing in the United States were surveyed between April and May 2023. Participants were asked whether they were threatened with a firearm, shot with a firearm, had a family or friend shot with a firearm, or witnessed or heard about a shooting. The results found that these ...

Philadelphia, September 19, 2023 – According to a new study comparing patients with and without vitiligo in South Korea, patients with vitiligo were associated with a 25% decreased risk of mortality compared with controls. This suggests that vitiligo-associated autoimmunity may play a role in reducing morbidity and mortality. The results appear in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, published by Elsevier. Previous studies have documented a reduced risk of cancer in patients with vitiligo, however, there has been limited research on the relationship between vitiligo-associated autoimmunity and the risk of morbidity and mortality ...

A significant share of voters see the EU as less democratic than it really is and believe the European Commission can steamroll its member states, a new study shows. The research shows that key channels of legitimation in the EU are not well known by the citizens of large member states. Whether people see themselves only as citizens of their nation, or simultaneously as a European, is linked to what they believe about the EU. A substantial share of EU voters who took part in the study believed that the members of the European Parliament are not directly elected. Many assumed the European Parliament is unimportant for decision ...

A new study suggests that Escherichia coli and other disease-causing microbes are passing easily between humans and animals in Cambodia, a country where clean water, sanitation and hygienic controls are lacking in many regions. The continuous exchange, along with unregulated antibiotic use, leads to the emergence and spread of drug-resistant E. coli, the authors say. Maya Nadimpalli, a scientific collaborator at the Antibiotic Research Action Center at the George Washington University and her international colleagues, conducted the research in Phnom Penh, an urban area where humans and animals are often living in close proximity without clean water or other ...