Living things act with purpose. But where does purpose come from? How do humans make sense of their relation to the world and realize their ability to effect change? These fundamental questions of agency – acting with purpose – have perplexed some of the greatest minds in history including Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Erwin Schrödinger and Niels Bohr. A Florida Atlantic University study reveals groundbreaking insight into the origins of agency using an unusual and largely untapped source – human babies. Since goal-directed action appears in the first months ...

The passenger pigeon. The Tasmanian tiger. The Baiji, or Yangtze river dolphin. These rank among the best-known recent victims of what many scientists have declared the sixth mass extinction, as human actions are wiping out vertebrate animal species hundreds of times faster than they would otherwise disappear. Yet, a recent analysis from Stanford University and the National Autonomous University of Mexico, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows the crisis may run even deeper. Each of the three species above was also the ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- One promising approach to treating Type 1 diabetes is implanting pancreatic islet cells that can produce insulin when needed, which can free patients from giving themselves frequent insulin injections. However, one major obstacle to this approach is that once the cells are implanted, they eventually run out of oxygen and stop producing insulin. To overcome that hurdle, MIT engineers have designed a new implantable device that not only carries hundreds of thousands of insulin-producing islet cells, but also has its own on-board oxygen factory, which generates oxygen by splitting water vapor found in the body. The researchers showed that when ...

Some 2,000 years ago in ancient Rome, glass vessels carrying wine or water, or perhaps an exotic perfumes, tumble from a table in a marketplace, and shatter to pieces on the street. As centuries passed, the fragments were covered by layers of dust and soil and exposed to a continuous cycle of changes in temperature, moisture, and surrounding minerals. Now these tiny pieces of glass are being uncovered from construction sites and archaeological digs and reveal themselves to be something extraordinary. On their surface is a mosaic of iridescent colors of blue, green and orange, with some displaying shimmering gold-colored ...

Accurate phylogenetic trees are fundamental to evolutionary and comparative biology, but the almost simultaneous emergence of major animal phyla and diverse body plans during the Cambrian Explosion poses major challenges to reconstructing deep metazoan phylogenetic relationships. This is particularly true for the second largest phylum, Mollusca, whose major lineages originated in the Cambrian period. The diverse fossil record, extreme morphological disparity among the eight living classes, and dramatic conflict among phylogenetic hypotheses due to diverse paleontological, ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – Remote workers can have a 54% lower carbon footprint compared with onsite workers, according to a new study by Cornell University and Microsoft, with lifestyle choices and work arrangements playing an essential role in determining the environmental benefits of remote and hybrid work. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also finds that hybrid workers who work from home two to four days per week can reduce their carbon footprint by 11% to 29%, but working from home one day per week ...

Low socioeconomic status can negatively impact children’s health in preschool, along with their ability to follow specialized health education intervention programs, Mount Sinai researchers found in an international study focused on health promotion in schools, including those in the Harlem section of New York City. The results, published September 18 in the Journal of American College of Cardiology, stress the importance of introducing a specialized health curriculum in classrooms starting in preschool. “This study shows that socioeconomic factors, including lower household income and education level, can negatively impact children’s health starting ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Oregon State University has received a $7.5 million National Institutes of Health grant to modernize a lab focused on using zebrafish to address pressing human health challenges. The Sinnhuber Aquatic Research Laboratory, led by Distinguished Professor Robyn Tanguay, a molecular toxicologist in the College of Agricultural Sciences, exploits the unique advantages of zebrafish to protect and improve human and environmental health. Zebrafish and humans have similar developmental processes and are similar on a genomic level, ...

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. -- Standardized and overly simplistic questionnaires are only scratching the surface of what employees think of their leaders, according to new research from Binghamton University’s School of Management (SOM), and negative behavior may be slipping through the cracks. As a result, the research finds, organizations may be missing out on critical information that could be keeping toxic leaders in positions of power. “Instead of capturing actual leader behaviors, ratings might simply reflect whether a person likes their leader,” said Mengying ...

The key to solving the Libyan political conflict lies within the country rather than with the international community, analysis says. Electoral and governance deadlock has been blamed for the devastating impact of the flooding in the country. The “contentment” of the political elite and others with the status quo - given the currently limited levels of violence and the rising global prices of energy since the outbreak of Russia’s war on Ukraine - explains the general lack of a genuine commitment to relaunch the transition and electoral roadmap, ...

Researchers at the University of Chicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center established “proof-of-concept” for a new treatment approach that was able to effectively treat the most aggressive forms of prostate cancer. The treatment showed complete tumor control and long-lasting survival without side effects in a mouse model of advanced prostate cancer. These findings, which were published online September 18, 2023, in Clinical Cancer Research, warrant further investigation in human clinical trials, the researchers concluded. Strategies to overcome resistance “Prostate cancer in the metastatic ...

Philadelphia, September 18, 2023 – Very young children who attend child care and receive onsite meals and snacks were more likely to be food secure and in good health, and less likely to be admitted after a hospital emergency department visit than children in child care whose meals and snacks were provided from home, according to a new study in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, published by Elsevier. These potential benefits could extend beyond the children themselves to their families, including through possible reductions in stress, and to society as a whole through potentially significant healthcare cost savings. Lead author Stephanie ...

HOUSTON – (Sept. 18, 2023) – Two Rice University scientists have received a 3-year grant from the Department of Energy (DOE) to investigate a form of carbon storage that is as little understood as it is ubiquitous: soil. Mark Torres, an assistant professor of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences, and Evan Ramos, a postdoctoral fellow in the Torres lab, will track how key minerals form in a watershed to build a fuller picture of the processes that allow soil to store carbon as organic matter. “Soil on Earth contains three times more carbon than the atmosphere,” Ramos said. “We ...

The National Institutes of Health has awarded $54 million over a seven-year period to the CCTSI at CU Anschutz. The grant from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) will fuel biomedical research and training across the state. This is the fourth consecutive time the NIH has funded the CCTSI since 2008 through its Clinical Translational Science Award (CTSA) program. “This powerful grant will allow the University of Colorado to conduct leading-edge research that can directly impact health and patient care, reduce health disparities across our state and remain poised to respond to public ...

UNIST, in collaboration with Pusan National University Yangsan Hospital, has embarked on an exciting joint venture to research and develop advanced 3D printing medical device technology. The UNIST 3D Printing Convergence Technology Center recently signed a business agreement with the Medical Device Usability Test Center at Pusan National University Yangsan Hospital. This agreement outlines their collaborative efforts in various areas, including the research and development of 3D printing-based medical devices as well as support for the commercialization of domestically developed devices. Notably, Yangsan Pusan National University ...

There has been a real race among scientists to create a technology that enables easy protein sequencing. Professor of Chemical Biology Giovanni Maglia of the University of Groningen has now found the missing piece in the puzzle: a way to transport a protein through a nanopore, which allows sequencing of proteins in a simple, handheld device.  DNA sequencing has been a revolution in how we understand life, and sequencing proteins is the next holy grail. Maglia explains: ‘DNA is mostly static. The processes in our cells are executed by proteins: they do the actual work. ...

This month, Ochsner Health is launching a pilot program that uses AI to draft simple messages to patients in the MyOchsner app portal. A small group of Ochsner clinicians will participate in testing a new Epic feature that drafts responses to routine patient requests, which will then be reviewed and edited by the clinicians. The feature is meant to speed up app response time to patients and allows doctors to spend more time with patients. “Ochsner has long been a leader in using digital tools to improve the patient experience,” said Ochsner ...

An augmented-reality headset is an effective digital tool for improving posture and gait in people with Parkinson’s disease, according to a recent Cleveland Clinic trial. Findings were published in Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair. Augmented reality, or AR, allows users to complete digital programs projected into the world around them. The “Dual-task augmented Reality Treatment” (DART) uses the Microsoft HoloLens2 to run patients through dual-task training (DTT), a series of tasks designed to engage the brain and body simultaneously. Activities ...

A team of UC researchers across three colleges has been awarded an additional $1.5 million state grant to continue research on improving firefighter protective gear. In 2022, the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation (BWC) awarded a UC team an initial $1.2 million to provide proof of concept on the development of a firefighter jacket liner that brings a firefighter’s body temperature down through advanced cooling technology and protects the body from other external hazards. That grant, and the new $1.5 million grant to carry the proof of concept to commercialization, ...

CMAJ headlines: Pediatric ED visits and hospitalizations for self-harm, suicidal thoughts increased in Canada during pandemic, especially in young adolescent females "Less is better" is the best message when talking to patients about alcohol Pediatric ED visits and hospitalizations for self-harm, suicidal thoughts increased in Canada during pandemic, especially in young adolescent females The COVID-19 pandemic had an outsized impact on the mental health of adolescents, especially young adolescent females, with a higher-than-expected number of emergency department (ED) visits and hospitalizations for self-harm and suicidal ideation, according to two new research ...

Healthcare organizations, in reviewing care delivery opportunities and providing feedback to staff, often focus on what went wrong, but a new study suggests that reversing this perspective may help organizations improve their work culture by understanding what went right. A team of Mass General Brigham researchers analyzed peer-to-peer positive feedback, systematically collected when caring for a dying patient as part of a mandatory mortality review process. They found that standardized collection and sharing of positive feedback — what went right — is a feasible way to increase mutual ...

An international team of scientists has developed a method for simultaneously detecting thousands of lipid molecules that are displayed to T cells in the human immune system. The study, co-led by D. Branch Moody, MD, of the Division of Rheumatology, Immunity and Inflammation at Brigham and Women's Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, represents a collaboration among researchers from Oxford, United Kingdom, Melbourne, Australia and Groningen, Netherlands. Results are published in Cell. The team developed a new and sensitive method to detect more than 2,000 lipids bound to CD1 ...

The implementation of artificial intelligence-powered large vessel occlusion (LVO) detection software for acute stroke triage can improve endovascular thrombectomy treatment times, according to new research from UTHealth Houston. The study, which was published today in JAMA Neurology, was led by co-first authors Youngran Kim, PhD, assistant professor of management, policy, and community health with UTHealth Houston School of Public Health; and Juan Carlos Martinez-Gutierrez, MD, a former surgery fellow in the Vivian L. Smith Department of Neurosurgery with McGovern Medical School at UTHealth ...

About The Study: This economic evaluation’s findings indicate that the economic burden of youth violence, including medical care, lost productivity, reduced quality of life from injury morbidity, and avoidable mortality, reached $122 billion in 2020, dominated by male firearm homicides. Prevention strategies can reduce this substantial burden.  Authors: Cora Peterson, Ph.D., of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2023.3235) Editor’s ...

About The Study: Increased TV/DVD screen time from age 1 year negatively affected later development in this study of 57,980 children. To reduce the negative consequences of excessive media use, researchers and health care professionals should encourage family media management and recommend social support for parents who tend to rely on the media.  Authors: Midori Yamamoto, Ph.D., of Chiba University in Chiba, Japan, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2023.3643) Editor’s ...