If the Chicago region replaced 30% of all on-road combustion-engine vehicles — including motorcycles, passenger cars and trucks, buses, refuse trucks and short- and long-haul trucks — with electric versions, it would annually save more than 1,000 lives and over $10 billion, according to a new Northwestern University study. The new study, which simulates air quality at a neighborhood scale, also found that areas with predominantly Black, Hispanic and Latinx residents would benefit most. The study underscores the potential of electric vehicles (EVs) to improve ...

Philadelphia, September 13, 2023 – There is already robust evidence that people living with cardiovascular disease are disproportionately affected by poor air quality and extreme temperatures, in large part due to climate change, the greatest threat to human health of the 21st century. In this special theme issue of the Canadian Journal of Cardiology, published by Elsevier, noted experts comprehensively review how climate change occurs and increases the risk of cardiovascular disease and provide practical tips on how to become a climate-smart cardiovascular healthcare provider. Not long ago, climate change was a fringe topic deemed only ...

Two graduate students from Western University have developed a ground-breaking method for predicting which intensive care unit (ICU) patients will survive a severe brain injury.   Matthew Kolisnyk and Karnig Kazazian combined functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with state-of-the art machine learning techniques to tackle one of the most complex issues in critical care. Whether it is the result of a stroke, cardiac arrest or traumatic brain injury, lives can forever be changed by a serious brain injury. When patients are admitted to the ICU, families are faced with tremendous uncertainty. Will my loved one recover? Are they aware of what is going on? Will they ever be the same ...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – During a bout of influenza, B cells interact with other immune cells and then take different paths to defend the body. One path is the B cells that differentiate into antibody producing cells. Another path is the B cells that differentiate into lung-resident memory B cells, or lung-BRMs, that are critical for pulmonary immunity. Unlike antibody-producing B cells that help fight the current infection, the long-lived, non-circulating lung-BRMs migrate to the lungs from draining lymph nodes. ...

For the first time in one year, three faculty at the University of Oklahoma have received Maximizing Investigators’ Research Awards from the National Institutes of Health. The recipients are Gallogly College of Engineering faculty Vivek Bajpai, Ph.D., John R. Clegg, Ph.D., and Stefan Wilhelm, Ph.D. The highly competitive five-year, $1,866,485 grants will support their ambitious research programs without the need to recompete for funding throughout the duration of their awards.   Bajpai, an assistant professor in the School of Sustainable Chemical, Biological and Materials Engineering, will lead the project, “Epigenetic and Transcriptional ...

The consortium, comprising of UNIST, DGIST, and POSTECH has been chosen for the esteemed 2023 University ICT Research Center Project (ITRC) by the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT). This prestigious selection recognizes their expertise in the ‘Quantum Information and Communication Technologies‘ sector. The consortium aims to develop advanced quantum technologies while nurturing exceptional master’s and doctorate-level talents. With a total funding amounting to 8.25 billion won—7.5 billion won from government subsidies—the project spans eight years. The kick-off meeting held at UNIST on August ...

A new climate study led by scientists at the University Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science found that temperature fluctuations in the tropical Atlantic Ocean temperature is largely driven by human-induced aerosol emissions, impacting rainfall in West Africa’s Sahel region and hurricane formation in the Atlantic. The findings, published in the journal Nature, comes in a year when several hurricanes, including Hurricane Idalia, formed within days of each other over the tropical Atlantic. “Our ...

Researchers at West Virginia University have taken the first steps toward developing technology that can capture carbon dioxide in the air and use it for eco-friendly manufacturing of methanol. The process they have begun modeling — which involves pulling air from buildings — could increase the sustainable supply of methanol, one of the world’s most extensively used raw materials, while removing a planet-warming greenhouse gas from the atmosphere. Project lead Xingbo Liu, who serves as professor, associate dean for research and chair of engineering ...

              New Orleans, LA – An LSU Health New Orleans research study led by Siqiong June Liu, PhD, Professor of Cell Biology and Anatomy, has found that cerebellar inhibitory interneurons are essential for fear memory, a type of emotional memory formation. Inhibitory interneurons within the cerebellar circuitry act as gatekeepers and control the output of the cerebellar cortex. The formation of fear memory requires the activity of these interneurons. The findings, which ...

Scientists call long-spined sea urchins “the lawn mowers of the reefs” because they eat algae that could otherwise smother reef ecosystems and kill corals. That’s why researchers affiliated with the University of Florida Tropical Aquaculture Lab (TAL), who work at the Florida Aquarium’s Conservation Campus in Apollo Beach, are trying to raise as many urchins as possible.   Aaron Pilnick, a post-doctoral researcher at TAL, led newly published research that identifies substrates that help long-spined sea urchins – scientifically known as Diadema -- ...

The human microbiome includes the genetic material of more than 100 trillion tiny microorganisms – fungi, yeast, bacteria, and even viruses, most of which hang out in our gastrointestinal tract to serve as guardians of our health. But when a healthy microbiome gives way to an imbalance — a “pathobiome” — any number of health problems can occur — from rheumatoid arthritis, to bacterial vaginosis. New data published this month in the journal Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology, from researchers at Drexel’s College of Medicine, gives more evidence to the possibility that developing a pathobiome ...

WASHINGTON  – A peer-reviewed study by Environmental Working Group scientists has found unsettling details about the potential health risks of common household cleaning products.  The study, published today in Chemosphere, analyzed 30 cleaning products, including multipurpose and glass cleaners, air fresheners and more. The study revealed that these everyday products may release hundreds of hazardous volatile organic compounds, known as VOCs.  Researchers tested both conventional products and “green” cleaning products and detected a total of 530 unique VOCs in the 30 products. Of these, 193 VOCs were hazardous – identified ...

Professor Zorana Jovanovic Andersen, Chair of the European Respiratory Society’s Environment and Health Committee and based at the University of Copenhagen, said:   “Today’s vote by the European Parliament to strengthen the legally binding limit values for air quality is an important step in the right direction toward clean air for all, even though the full alignment with World Health Organization was moved from 2030 to 2035. As we prepare for the negotiations with the Council, this is great news for all European citizens, especially the millions who live ...

The very first life on earth is thought to have developed from “protocells” – liquid mixtures of many different types of molecules. Researchers from the University of Göttingen have now shown that in such mixtures, small imbalances in the number of molecules of different types can have an unexpected effect. A surprising interplay with the complex pattern of interactions strongly amplifies such imbalances – meaning that a type of molecule that is only slightly in the majority can almost entirely separate out from the others. ...

Does the human brain have an Achilles heel that ultimately leads to Autism? With a revolutionizing novel system that combines brain organoid technology and intricate genetics, researchers can now comprehensively test the effect of multiple mutations in parallel and at a single-cell level within human brain organoids. This technology, developed by researchers from the Knoblich group at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Treutlein group at ETH Zurich, ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- By mining data from X-ray images, researchers at MIT, Stanford University, SLAC National Accelerator, and the Toyota Research Institute have made significant new discoveries about the reactivity of lithium iron phosphate, a material used in batteries for electric cars and in other rechargeable batteries. The new technique has revealed several phenomena that were previously impossible to see, including variations in the rate of lithium intercalation reactions in different regions of a lithium iron phosphate nanoparticle. The paper’s most significant practical finding — that ...

About The Study: In this survey study of 2,552 survivors of cardiac arrest in Denmark, health-related quality of life up to 20 years after the event was consistently high across follow-up periods and comparable to the general Danish population. These findings support resource allocation and efforts targeted to increasing survival after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Authors: Harman Yonis, M.D., of Nordsjallands Hospital in Hillerod, Denmark, 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/jamacardio.2023.2934) Editor’s ...

About The Study: In this economic evaluation of extended-release buprenorphine compared with transmucosal buprenorphine for the treatment of opioid use disorder, extended-release buprenorphine was not associated with efficient allocation of limited resources when transmucosal buprenorphine was available. Future initiatives should aim to improve retention rates or decrease costs associated with extended-release buprenorphine.  Authors: Juliet M. Flam-Ross, B.A., of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in London, and Sabrina A. Assoumou, M.D., M.P.H., of the Boston ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Glue holds the world together. Without adhesives, much of modern human civilization — including our cellphones, cars, furniture, walls and the packages arriving on our doorstep — would simply fall apart. The trouble with all those adhesives is that they are not sustainable. A team of chemists at Purdue University led by Jonathan Wilker, professor of chemistry in the College of Science and of materials engineering, aims to change that with a new, completely sustainable adhesive system. The team’s findings were released in a paper in Nature.  Additional Information Shellfish ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Many of the bacteria that ravage crops and threaten our food supply use a common strategy to cause disease: they inject a cocktail of harmful proteins directly into the plant’s cells. For 25 years, biologist Sheng-Yang He and his senior research associate Kinya Nomura have been puzzling over this set of molecules that plant pathogens use to cause diseases in hundreds of crops worldwide ranging from rice to apple trees. Now, thanks to a team effort between three collaborating research groups, they may finally have an answer to how these molecules make plants sick -- and a way to disarm them. The findings appear Sept. 13 in the journal Nature. Researchers ...

Researchers at Moorfields Eye Hospital and UCL Institute of Ophthalmology have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) system that has the potential to not only identify sight-threatening eye diseases but also predict general health, including heart attacks, stroke, and Parkinson’s disease. RETFound, one of the first AI foundation models in healthcare, and the first in ophthalmology, was developed using millions of eye scans from the NHS. The research team are making the system open-source: freely available to use by any institution worldwide, to act as a cornerstone for global efforts to detect and treat blindness using AI. ...

Key takeaways Social determinants of at-risk neighborhoods: Higher proportions of poverty and low per-capita income were most associated with higher rates of shooting incidents. High levels of social stressors: The study found that fatal and non-fatal firearm assaults were clustered in neighborhoods with high levels of social stressors measured with the 2018 version of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Social Vulnerability Index (SVI). A potential tool for directing anti-violence initiatives: The CDC’s SVI can help policymakers target neighborhoods at ...

Researchers from Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) have discovered that a gene called Rasip1 is intimately involved in the creation of blood cells Tokyo, Japan – Blood has long been a symbol of life and health, so it may be surprising that some aspects of blood production, i.e., hematopoiesis, remain incompletely understood. One such mystery is the role of a protein called SOX17. Blood cells are generated by hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), and SOX17 seems to be important to the development of HSCs because SOX17 is expressed where HSCs first develop. What exactly SOX17 does, however, has remained unclear. Now, a research team at Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new type of analysis suggests that droughts in Ohio were more severe from 2000 to 2019 than standard measurements have suggested. Researchers at The Ohio State University developed impacts-based thresholds for drought in Ohio, looking specifically at how corn yield and streamflow were affected by various drought indicators, such as notable changes in soil moisture, crops, and even livestock losses in the state. The results suggest this impacts-based approach could give Ohio farmers earlier and more accurate notice when drought conditions are approaching, said Steven Quiring, co-author of the study and a professor ...

Men ages 50 to 60 have an 80 percent chance of having some degree of bladder outlet obstruction (BOO) due to an enlarged prostate  – which causes multiple symptoms that can  impact their lives physically and psychologically.   The bladder, an incredibly complex organ, has its own electrical system and can change its constituents and geometry through a growth and remodeling process. However, in bladders with BOO, the urethral resistance increases and forces the muscle cells within the bladder to generate larger pressures to void.  Over time, the bladder adapts with a growth and remodeling response that causes changes in bladder size, tissue composition, ...