PHILADELPHIA — People who experience poor sleep in the month before surgery may be more likely to develop postoperative delirium, according to new research being presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY® 2024 annual meeting. Postoperative delirium is a change in mental function that can cause confusion and occurs in up to 15% of surgical patients. In certain high-risk patients, such as those with hip fractures, the incidence can be even higher. It is a significant complication in older adults. Pain, age, stress, anxiety and insomnia are known to contribute to the risk for postoperative delirium. The researchers believe this study is the first to assess sleep quality ...

PHILADELPHIA — A new, computerized, mental health assessment tool may allow doctors to quickly identify children experiencing anxiety or depression before surgery, suggests new research presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY® 2024 annual meeting. In the small, single-center study, researchers found more than half of the children screened had anxiety before having surgery and more than one-third had depression. “The use of the KCAT® tool in pediatric patients in the preoperative setting is very feasible and the results of our pilot study show a substantial prevalence of these mental ...

PHILADELPHIA— Severely injured Black, Asian and Hispanic children and adults are less likely than white patients to receive critical helicopter ambulance services, which can make the difference between life and death, according to a study presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY® 2024 annual meeting. It is the first to highlight disparities in the use of helicopter ambulance transport after severe trauma. “Severely injured patients are more likely to survive if they get the right care within the ‘golden hour,’ the critical first hour after the trauma,” said Christian Mpody, M.D., Ph.D., lead author of the study and anesthesiology resident at Montefiore ...

PHILADELPHIA — Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as ibuprofen, may help reduce patients’ risk of postoperative delirium, according to a study presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY® 2024 annual meeting. “Postoperative delirium is a serious complication associated with a risk for health problems and even death after surgery,” said Steven M. Frank, M.D., co-author of the study and a professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. ...

PHILADELPHIA — A simple blood test could help doctors identify women in labor who are at risk for preeclampsia — a leading cause of maternal death — and take precautions to prevent it, according to research presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY® 2024 annual meeting. Between 5% and 10% of pregnant women develop preeclampsia (sudden high blood pressure and protein in the urine), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Black women are 60% more likely to develop preeclampsia than white women, ...

PHILADELPHIA — People who have multiple orthopedic surgeries during the same hospital stay are more likely to suffer malnutrition due to repeated or prolonged fasting, which can slow recovery and increase the risk of death, according to a study of more than 28 million patients presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY® 2024 annual meeting. Because food or liquid retained in the stomach increases the risk of regurgitation and aspiration in the airway and lungs during general anesthesia and deep sedation, most patients are directed to fast for ...

About The Article: This article presents the 2024 revision of the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki, a set of principles to guide the ethical treatment of participants in medical research. Corresponding Author: World Medical Association (wma@wma.net). To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2024.21972) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions ...

About The Study: This article examines ethical oversight of clinical research in the U.S. and offers practical recommendations that are consistent with current regulations and that could help to make research oversight better fit for purpose for different types of studies. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Nancy E. Kass, ScD, email nkass@jhu.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2024.0269) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, ...

Long-term, low-dose antiviral treatment reduces the risk for potentially vision-damaging bouts of inflammation and infection, as well as pain, which occur when shingles affects the eye, according to new research presented October 19 at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) in Chicago. Shingles occurs when the varicella-zoster virus, which causes chickenpox in children, lies dormant for decades in nerve cells and then starts multiplying again for reasons unknown. It commonly affects people 50 and older, and ...

Taking an antiviral medication for a year may prevent vision damage associated with shingles that affects the eye, according to new research led by faculty from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the NYU Grossman School of Medicine at NYU Langone Health. “Up until now, there has been no proven long-term treatment for new, worsening, or repeated episodes of this disease, so the results of this study provide convincing evidence for using long-term, low-dose antiviral treatment,” said Bennie Jeng, MD, chair of Ophthalmology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania ...

PHILADELPHIA — The American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) today presented Mary Dale Peterson, M.D., MSHCA, FACHE, FASA, with its 2023 Distinguished Service Award in recognition of her enduring contributions to advancing patient-centered, physician-led health care. Her dedicated service to the specialty and ASA includes her leadership as ASA president during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The award is the highest honor ASA bestows and is presented annually to a member who has transformed the specialty of anesthesiology. Nationally recognized for her role in guiding health plans and hospitals, Dr. Peterson currently serves ...

The University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s Fibers and Composites Manufacturing Facility has a new home and IACMI – The Composites Institute has new headquarters with the dedication of Innovation South. Innovation South is an 85,000-square-foot multiuse facility in UT’s Research Park at Cherokee Farm, located just off Alcoa Highway across the Tennessee River from the flagship university’s main campus. Developed and owned by Partners Development, the building includes a 40,000-square-foot ...

In the fields of physics, mathematics, and engineering, partial differential equations (PDEs) are essential for modeling various phenomena, from heat diffusion to particle motion and wave propagation. While some PDEs can be solved analytically, many require numerical methods, which can be time-consuming and computationally intensive. To address these challenges, scientists have been exploring alternative computing paradigms, including photonic computing. Photonic computing leverages light–matter interactions to perform ...

STARKVILLE, Miss.—Mississippi State University is part of a European-American collaboration studying how human activities, like fertilizer use and polluting, are impacting nitrogen-fixing plants which are crucial for maintaining healthy ecosystems by adding nitrogen to the soil. MSU Assistant Professor Ryan A. Folk of the Department of Biological Sciences co-authored a study published today [Oct. 18] in Science Advances, showing that increased nitrogen deposition from human activity is reducing the diversity and evolutionary distinctiveness of nitrogen-fixing plants. Lead author Pablo Moreno García, ...

HOUSTON, Oct. 18, 2024 –The University of Houston Energy Transition Institute is launching two educational series focused on exploring the unfolding energy transition and addressing the grand challenges in energy. Starting October 21, "Driving the Energy Transition," will air on Houston Public Media’s KUHF News 88.7 with new episodes launching every two weeks on Mondays. The following day, October 22, the Energy Transition Webinar series will begin, running biweekly on ...

University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science professor Nikolaos Sidiropoulos has introduced a breakthrough in graph mining with the development of a new computational algorithm.  Graph mining, a method of analyzing networks like social media connections or biological systems, helps researchers discover meaningful patterns in how different elements interact. The new algorithm addresses the long-standing challenge of finding tightly connected clusters, known as triangle-dense subgraphs, within large networks — a problem that is critical in fields such as fraud detection, computational biology and data ...

New Rochelle, NY, October 17, 2025—Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., is pleased that Wai Hong (Kevin) Lo, PhD, has been appointed the new Editor-in-Chief of the journal ASSAY and Drug Development Technologies. Dr. Lo is replacing Bruce Melancon, PhD as Editor-in-Chief. ASSAY and Drug Development Technologies provides access to novel techniques and robust tools that enable critical advances in early-stage screening. This research published in the Journal leads to important therapeutics and platforms for drug discovery and development. This peer-reviewed journal features original papers application-oriented technology reviews, topical issues on ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 2 P.M. EDT ON FRIDAY, OCT. 18 Trees are the most abundant natural resource living on Earth’s land masses, and North Carolina State University scientists and engineers are making headway in finding ways to use them as sustainable, environmentally benign alternatives to producing industrial chemicals from petroleum. Lignin, a polymer that makes trees rigid and resistant to degradation, has proven problematic. Now those NC State researchers know why: They’ve identified the ...

The University of Texas at Arlington will host GridNEXT DFW 2024: Meeting the Demand, an event dedicated to envisioning the future of energy infrastructure, on Oct. 25 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The one-day seminar will bring together industry partners, leaders, government officials and private stakeholders across the Texas energy space to discuss growing power needs and how to better support the Texas power grid. It will be held at UTA’s Rio Grande Ballroom, 300 W. First St. in Arlington. Woody Rickerson, ERCOT senior vice ...

Jennifer Martindale-Adams, EdD, and Linda Nichols, PhD, professors in the Department of Preventive Medicine in the College of Medicine at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, are members of a team led by Xiaopeng Zhao, PhD, professor in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, that was recently awarded $401,090 grant from the National Institute on Aging for the development of the RISE project, “Robot-based Information and Support to Enhance Alzheimer’s Caregiver ...

The full moon has a bad reputation for bringing out the worst in people, from werewolves to lunatics. However, it turns out that the lunar cycle can impact behavior – at least in tropical mammals.     New research appearing in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B reveals that half of the mammal species in tropical forests adjust their behaviors in response to the moon's phases and corresponding variations in light.   By Caleb Hess, Cathrine Glosli Michigan State University ecologist Lydia Beaudrot, who studies tropical ecology and conservation, was among the international cohort of researchers who contributed to the study. ...

Dr. Ursula White, an associate professor of Clinical Science at Pennington Biomedical Research Center, is taking a deep dive into the lasting health effects of short-term weight gain and weight loss. The ability for the fat tissue to expand or contract to accommodate changes in body weight is important for sustained health. Dr. White’s clinical study at Pennington Biomedical, the EAT2 study, will allow her to explore how changes within the adipose tissue are affected by weight gain and weight loss, and what that means for a person’s health.   The EAT2 study is recruiting participants now, and participants will be randomly assigned ...

A species of tropical butterfly with unusually expanded brain structures display a fascinating mosaic pattern of neural expansion linked to a cognitive innovation. The study, published today in Current Biology, investigates the neural foundations of behavioural innovation in Heliconius butterflies, the only genus known to feed on both nectar and pollen. As part of this behaviour, they demonstrate a remarkable ability to learn and remember spatial information about their food sources—skills previously connected to the expansion of a brain structure called the mushroom bodies, responsible for learning and memory. Lead author Dr Max ...

About The Study: In this randomized clinical trial of outpatients with mild to moderate COVID-19, treatment with montelukast did not reduce duration of COVID-19 symptoms. These findings do not support the use of montelukast for the treatment of mild to moderate COVID-19.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Susanna Naggie, MD, MHS, email susanna.naggie@duke.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.39332) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author ...

Maize, or corn, grows tall, with thin stalks that boast ears of the cereal grain used in food production, trade and security globally. However, due to rain, wind and other increasingly extreme weather events, the maize falls down, risking the entire crop. Called lodging, the physical fall results in shorter plants and overlapping leaves — both of which negatively impact the plant’s ability to grow.   Conventional lodging prevention and mitigation requires many agricultural technicians significant time to investigate the crop fields, according to a team of researchers based in China. They ...