Images EAST LANSING, Mich. – Michigan State University researchers received a $12 million, four-year federal grant from the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, or IARPA, under its Biometric Recognition and Identification at Altitude and Range, or BRIAR, program. The IARPA BRIAR program is a 48-month effort to deliver end-to-end software systems capable of detecting individuals at severe imaging conditions, extracting biometric signatures from the whole-body (such as an individual’s gait and/or body shape) and face, and fusing biometric information for robust multi-modal matching. The MSU project ...

When it comes to weight loss, nuts can get a bad rap – while they’re high in protein, they’re also high in fats, and this often deters those looking to shed a few kilos. But new research from the University of South Australia shows that you can eat almonds and lose weight too.   In the largest study of its kind, researchers found that including almonds in an energy restricted diet not only helped people to lose weight, but also improved their cardiometabolic health.   Examining the effects of energy restricted diets supplemented with Californian almonds or with carbohydrate- rich snacks, researchers found that both diets ...

Barcelona, Spain: People who come to emergency departments with alcohol-related diseases or conditions are more likely to make return visits and to die in the following 20 years, than people who come to emergency departments for other reasons, according to new research. For many, this means they may die in their 40s or 50s.   Professor Drew Richardson told the European Emergency Medicine Congress that he and his colleagues had followed 194 patients who had alcohol-related diagnoses when they arrived in the emergency department of The Canberra Hospital ...

PITTSBURGH—Today, William Sanders, dean of the College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, participated in a briefing at the United Nations. He was joined by Carnegie Mellon University Africa student Choukouriyah Arinloye. The event, “Artificial Intelligence for Accelerating Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: Addressing Society’s Greatest Challenges,” was held as part of the 78th United Nations General Assembly and was hosted by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The event ...

MIAMI, FLORIDA (Sept. 18, 2023) – Thoracic surgeons and researchers at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine found that increasing numbers of patients undergoing cancer-removal lung surgery by “anatomic lung resections” – lobectomies or segmentectomies – are able to go home safely and without complications one day after the operation, thanks to growing rates of robot-assisted surgeries and improvements in patient-centered care protocols. However, the research team found, patients of lower socioeconomic status were considerably ...

A new study finds that creating physical gaps in the forest canopy give eastern hemlocks more access to resources and help those trees withstand infestation by an invasive insect. The approach adds another tool to the toolkit that foresters can use to protect these trees. Eastern hemlocks are an ecologically important tree species found from eastern Canada to the Great Lakes states and south along the entire Appalachian mountain range. The hemlock woolly adelgid – an invasive insect that was introduced to North America 70 years ago and has spread along the East Coast – can kill a hemlock tree in as little as four years. “An ...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Monday, September 18, 2023                           Contact: Jillian McKoy, jpmckoy@bu.edu Michael Saunders, msaunder@bu.edu ## Trump's Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric, Policies Contributed to Decline in Preventive Healthcare Visits among Children of Immigrants  A new study shows that well-child visits for children with immigrant mothers ...

Urbana-Champaign, Illinois/Austin, Texas—[Sept. 18]—Samsung Austin Semiconductor is partnering with The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) to continue building the talent pipeline needed to support the growing semiconductor ecosystem throughout the United States. Samsung Austin Semiconductor is announcing a $1 million contribution per year to Grainger Engineering as part of its 5-star workforce development plan to provide support to engineering students who are interested ...

As announced by the Department of Defense today, The University of Texas at Dallas will receive $30 million over three years from the DOD to develop and commercialize new battery technologies and manufacturing processes, enhance the domestic availability of critical raw materials, and train high-quality workers for jobs in an expanding battery energy storage workforce. The award, which creates a prototype Energy Storage Systems Campus, is the largest allocation from a federal agency that the University has received to date. The Energy Storage Systems Campus will leverage and stimulate over $200 million in private capital. Dr. Kyeongjae ...

Below please find a summary of a new article that will be published in the next issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The summary is not intended to substitute for the full article as a source of information. This information is under strict embargo and by taking it into possession, media representatives are committing to the terms of the embargo not only on their own behalf, but also on behalf of the organization they represent. ---------------------------- ACP issues updated Rapid, Living Practice Points on treating COVID-19 patients in outpatient settings Article: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M23-1636  Evidence ...

Discovery from the lab of Youyang Zhao, PhD, from Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago offers promising treatment approaches for acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) in the elderly that can be caused by severe COVID-19, pneumonia, flu or sepsis. Currently there are no pharmacological or cell-based treatments for ARDS. Dr. Zhao’s research established that a gene called FOXM1 is important in the repair of blood vessel through regeneration of endothelial cells, which line the vessels of the lung. He found that aging impairs this gene’s expression, ...

Could future opioid overdoses, fatalities and other harms of opioid addiction be prevented if hospital emergency departments made better use of effective medications for opioid addiction? A team of University of Michigan researchers thinks so.  Led by Thuy Nguyen of U-M's School of Public Health, the researchers analyzed national Medicaid claims data of patients ages 12 to 64 treated at U.S. emergency departments for opioid overdoses in 2018. They focused on ED visits for opioid overdose and the rate of initiation of FDA-approved medications for opioid addiction, including buprenorphine, methadone and extended release naltrexone.  The ...

Among adults with chronic kidney disease (CKD) enrolled in the Chronic Renal Insufficiency Cohort (CRIC), young age, Black race, and low levels of education and income were associated with lower likelihood of getting an annual flu shot. Identifying risk factors for not receiving a flu vaccine (“non-vaccination”) in people living with kidney disease, who are at risk of flu and its complications, could inform strategies for improving vaccine uptake. In this study published in the American Journal of Kidney Diseases (AJKD), researchers led by Junichi Ishigami examined whether demographic factors, social ...

In recent years, cancer researchers have hailed the arrival of chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR T) therapy, which has delivered promising results, transforming the fight against various forms of cancer. The process involves modifying patients’ T-cells to target cancer cells, resulting in remarkable success rates for previously intractable forms of cancer. Six CAR T cell therapies have secured FDA approval, and several more are in the pipeline. However, these therapies come with severe and potentially lethal side effects, namely cytokine release syndrome (CRS) and neurotoxicity. These drawbacks manifest as a range of symptoms—from high fever and vomiting to multiple ...

EMBARGOED: September 18, 2023 4PM EST CONTACT:  Nicole Oliverio, nicole_oliverio@dfci.harvard.edu, 617-257-0454 Boston – An innovative phase 2 clinical trial led by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in collaboration with 10 major brain tumor centers around the country and designed to find new potential treatments for glioblastoma has reported initial results in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. While none of the three therapeutics tested so far improved overall survival of patients, this adaptive platform trial, the first of its kind in neuro-oncology, has the potential to rapidly and efficiently identify therapies that ...

A new study looks at the impact of learning environments on the academic success of racialized students. Compared to their peers, these students feel they have less control in their academic environment, less confidence and self-efficacy in their academic abilities, and weaker connections to other students and professors. The University of Ottawa study underscores that higher education institutions must recognize and address the specific needs of their racialized student communities and create inclusive learning environments that better meet these needs. Failing to do so could affect the overall psychological well-being and academic performance ...

The use of cell therapy to treat COVID-19 patients can reduce the risk of death from the disease by 60%, according to a systematic review and meta-analysis conducted by researchers at the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil, in partnership with colleagues in Germany and the United States. Their findings are reported in an article published in the journal Frontiers in Immunology. The review covers 195 clinical trials of advanced cell therapies targeting COVID-19 that were conducted in 30 countries between January 2020 and December 2021, as well as 26 trials with outcomes published by July 2022. Cell therapy has come into increasingly frequent use in recent years ...

Climate change is causing extinctions at an increasing rate, a new study by the University of Arizona researchers shows. They surveyed populations of the Yarrow's spiny lizard in 18 mountain ranges in southeastern Arizona and analyzed the rate of climate-related extinction over time. "The magnitude of extinction we found over the past seven years was similar to that seen in other studies that spanned almost 70 years," said John J. Wiens, a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UArizona, ...

Reston, VA—A new 225Ac-DOTA-based pre-targeted radioimmunotherapy (PRIT) system has been shown to cure a highly lethal form of advanced intraperitoneal ovarian cancer in a preclinical setting with minimal side effects. Targeting the HER2 protein, which is commonly expressed in ovarian cancer, the therapy (anti-HER2 225Ac-PRIT) is a potential treatment for the otherwise incurable disease. This research was published in the September issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine. Epithelial ovarian cancer is the most lethal ovarian cancer and frequently presents as advanced-stage disease, ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL September 18, 2023 at 3:00 PM U.S. Eastern time As the days get shorter and chillier in the northern hemisphere, those who choose to work out in the mornings might find it harder to get up and running. A new study in PNAS identifies a protein that, when missing, makes exercising in the cold that much harder—that is, at least in fruit flies. A team from University of Michigan Medical School and Wayne State University School of Medicine discovered the protein in flies, which they named Iditarod after the famous long distance dog sled across Alaska, while studying metabolism and the effect of stress on the body. They were particularly ...

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, ...