WASHINGTON (September 20, 2023)—The Ann Theodore Foundation Breakthrough Sarcoidosis Initiative (ATF-BSI), in partnership with the Milken Institute, launched its latest round of funding today. Up to $3.4 million in total funding will be made available to researchers from around the world whose work aims to increase scientific understanding of sarcoidosis. The program is accepting applications for two-year research projects and intends to award four to six research grants from doctorate-level investigators at qualifying research-based institutions worldwide. Awardees may be eligible for a third year of funding.  Sarcoidosis is an inflammatory ...

NEW YORK, NY (September 20, 2023)—Columbia will award the 2023 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize to Zhijian ‘James’ Chen and Glen Barber for discovering the cGAS-STING pathway, a key component of one of the body’s first line of defenses, the innate immune system. When pathogens infiltrate our cells, they leave behind traces of their DNA. These molecular fingerprints are detected by our cGAS-STING pathway, which sounds the alarm and mobilizes the immune system to eliminate invading threats. Research on the cGAS-STING pathway has revealed the ...

The past few decades have witnessed the burgeoning development of on-orbit servicing in light of various meaningful space applications such as repair of malfunctioning satellites, debris removal, on-orbit assembly, and so on. As for the orbit-servicing targets, they are usually divided into 2 categories, i.e., cooperative and non-cooperative ones, based on whether the space targets have active cross-link communication and cooperative identifiers with the servicing spacecraft or not. Before executing the orbit-servicing task, close-range rendezvous and proximity is an inevitable process in which ...

An Australian-first biobank will be established to improve and discover new treatments for children with genetic muscle diseases. The National Muscle Disease Bio-databank, co-led by Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Monash University and Alfred Health, will advance research into understanding why children develop genetic muscle diseases. The project forms part of a $2.5 million Medical Research Future Fund grant awarded to the team for research into congenital muscle diseases. These diseases, spanning dystrophies and myopathies, are characterised by severe muscle weakness, usually from infancy, that can impact swallowing, ...

Liver cancer is one of the most prevalent and deadly types of cancer worldwide. Most patients are diagnosed at an advanced stage, which leaves them with few treatment options. Unfortunately, the first-line drugs used in advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common type of liver cancer, are not very effective and offer only modest clinical benefits. Over the past few years, scientists have been trying to develop new therapies for HCC by analyzing specific genetic abnormalities and the ways in which they affect the manifestation and progression of the disease. One of the most common mutations in HCC ...

The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) approved Tuesday the creation of an undergraduate major for the University of Virginia’s School of Data Science, a landmark development for the four-year-old school, which was the first of its kind in the nation. Prior to Tuesday’s announcement, undergraduates could obtain a minor in data science, while graduate students could pursue master’s or doctoral degrees. Now, the establishment of the B.S. in Data Science will allow UVA’s undergraduates to focus their studies on this emerging and growing interdisciplinary field. “The B.S. in Data Science major is a major milestone ...

Highlights: Organisms, including viruses, live in the deepest, darkest places on the planet Marine virologists analyzed sediment from the Mariana Trench, the deepest place on Earth, and identified a new bacteriophage The phage infects Halomonas bacteria, which have been found in deep-sea environments and near hydrothermal vents The study helps probe how phages and hosts evolve together in secluded, hostile environments Washington, D.C. —  The Mariana Trench, the deepest place on Earth, plunges nearly 11,000 meters at its lowest point on the floor ...

A new Northwestern University-led study is changing the way astrophysicists understand the eating habits of supermassive black holes. While previous researchers have hypothesized that black holes eat slowly, new simulations indicate that black holes scarf food much faster than conventional understanding suggests. The study will be published on Wednesday (Sept. 20) in The Astrophysical Journal. According to new high-resolution 3D simulations, spinning black holes twist up the surrounding space-time, ultimately ripping apart ...

Florida Atlantic University’s María de los Ángeles Ortega, DNP, APRN, in the Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing, has been awarded a three-year, $1.3 million grant from the Administration for Community Living’s (ACL) Alzheimer’s Disease Program Initiative for a groundbreaking project designed to advance health equity and improve quality of life for individuals living with or at high risk for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) and their family caregivers. ACL was created around the fundamental principle that all people, regardless of age or disability, should be able to live independently ...

A team of researchers, led by Professor Jungki Ryu in the School of Energy and Chemical Engineering at UNIST and Professor Soojin Park from Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), have achieved a significant breakthrough in the development of a hybrid silicon photocatalyst. This innovative catalyst utilizes solar power to produce hydrogen and high-value compounds efficiently, marking a major step forward in green hydrogen production technology. The newly developed photocatalyst is both non-toxic and eco-friendly, addressing the limitations associated with ...

As summer turns to fall, many people will be turning off the air conditioning and firing up heaters instead. But traditional heating and cooling systems are energy intensive, and because they typically run on fossil fuels, they aren’t sustainable. Now, by mimicking a desert-dwelling chameleon, a team reporting in ACS’ Nano Letters has developed an energy-efficient, cost-effective coating. The material could keep buildings cool in the summers — or warm in the winters — without additional energy. Many ...

Boulder, Colo., USA: The consequences of a warming climate frequently dominated the news this summer, from devastating wildfires and floods to deadly heat waves across the globe. Reducing harm from climate change is a challenging endeavor, and it requires comprehensive public education. Thus, the question arises: How can climate change science be made most accessible to the general population, as well as decision-makers and educators? In a new paper published in the journal Geosphere, Steph Courtney and Karen McNeal explore the effects ...

WHAT: A trial of a preventive HIV vaccine candidate has begun enrollment in the United States and South Africa. The Phase 1 trial will evaluate a novel vaccine known as VIR-1388 for its safety and ability to induce an HIV-specific immune response in people. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, has provided scientific and financial support throughout the lifecycle of this HIV vaccine concept and is contributing funding for this study.  VIR-1388 is designed to instruct the ...

NEW YORK, NY – Sept. 20, 2023 – As cities brace for a confluence of flu, COVID-19, pneumonia, and RSV infections this fall, the American Thoracic Society announced that five new health systems have partnered with the Society to improve vaccination rates.  Grady Health System (Atlanta, GA), Meharry Medical College (Nashville, TN), St. Luke’s Health System (Boise, ID), the University of Colorado (Aurora, CO), and Wayne Health (Detroit, MI) join the University of Arizona/ Banner Health, West Virginia University Hospitals, Inc., and San Francisco Health Network/ University of California to help identify barriers to vaccination and find ...

  Mount Sinai’s Department of Rehabilitation and Human Performance has announced a $6.2 million grant from the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation. The grant will expand the Cohen Center for Recovery From Complex Chronic Illnesses (CoRE) to encompass research and clinical care beyond long COVID to include “long Lyme Disease/Lyme+” as well as other infection-associated complex chronic illnesses. This funding will be used for new research programs focusing on understanding and highlighting the key similarities and differences between long COVID; long Lyme disease/Lyme+, a collection of infection-associated ...

There is a growing interest in incorporating assistance from private citizens into scientific projects globally. Nonetheless, it seems that Anders P. Tøttrup, an Associate Professor at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, might become the world's first professor in Citizen Science. Anders P. Tøttrup is a trained biologist and leads the section for Citizen Science projects at the Natural History Museum of Denmark. These projects involve scientific endeavours in which citizens are invited to assist in collecting and analyzing data. Now, the Museum is taking a step further as Anders P. Tøttrup enters a 'professor track.' The goal is ...

PULLMAN, Wash. – The bright lights of big cities could be causing an evolutionary adaptation for smaller eyes in some birds, a new study indicates. Researchers found that two common songbirds, the Northern Cardinal and Carolina Wren, that live year-round in the urban core of San Antonio, Texas, had eyes about 5% smaller than members of the same species from the less bright outskirts. Researchers found no eye-size difference for two species of migratory birds, the Painted Bunting and White-eyed Vireo, no matter which part of the city ...

An upconversion organic light-emitting diode (OLED) based on a typical blue-fluorescence emitter achieves emission at an ultralow turn-on voltage of 1.47 V, as demonstrated by researchers from Tokyo Tech. Their technology circumvents the traditional high voltage requirement for blue OLEDs, leading to potential advancements in commercial smartphone and large screen displays. Blue light is vital for light-emitting devices, lighting applications, as well as smartphone screens and large screen displays. However, it is challenging to develop efficient blue organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) ...

A new longitudinal study published online in the International Journal of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease found that older adults with COPD had a heightened risk of depression during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Researchers examined a sample of 875 individuals with COPD from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging, a national study of Canadian older adults. Using longitudinal data, researchers were able to differentiate between 369 respondents with COPD who had a pre-pandemic history of depression and 506 respondents who had never experienced ...

Recent evidence strongly implicates infection by the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) as the trigger for development of multiple sclerosis (MS).  An international research team is now gathering to unveil the role of EBV in the onset and progression of the MS disease. The team has ambitious goals:  “We aim to find out why only a few EBV infected people develop MS, and define the underlying mechanism of this process”, explains the principal investigator (PI), Professor Kjell-Morten Myhr of the University of Bergen. “Our research will also seek to investigate if targeting the EBV infection with antiviral treatments can improve the disease course or even stop ...

In a recent randomized clinical trial of patients with fibromyalgia, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)—which uses structured techniques to alter distorted thoughts and negative moods—was superior to a matched education treatment in reducing the interfering effects of pain and other aspects of fibromyalgia on daily living. Within the group that received CBT in the trial, which is published in Arthritis & Rheumatology, improvements were at least partly attributable to reductions in what’s known as catastrophizing, a state comprised of cognitive and emotional processes such as helplessness, rumination, and magnification of ...

The amino acid creatine is essential for muscle and brain health, and people commonly use creatine supplements to improve exercise performance and increase muscle mass. Results from a recent clinical trial published in Food Science & Nutrition indicate that dietary creatine may also benefit individuals experiencing post-COVID-19 fatigue syndrome (also known as long COVID). In the trial, 12 people with post-COVID-19 fatigue syndrome were randomized to take a placebo or 4 grams of creatine monohydrate per day for ...

Investigators recently studied several species of freshwater mussels, which are endangered and are especially sensitive to changes in water quality, to explore the ramifications of sea-level rise in coastal rivers. The research published in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry determined the concentration of sea salt that would harm the viability of young mussels. The study focused on the ecosystems along the southeastern US coast, where sea-level measurements have indicated rising waters from 2 to 6mm per year. By detailing the levels in which salt water is toxic to mussels at various life stages, the results can provide guidance for conservation programs ...

A new study published in the Journal of Orthopaedic Research indicates that an artificial intelligence–based model trained on basic blood and lab test data as well as basic demographic data can predict a patient’s risk of death within 1-, 5-, and 10-years of experiencing a hip fracture. In the analysis of 3,751 hip fracture patient records from two in‐hospital database systems at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, the 1‐year mortality rate for all patients was 21% and for those aged 80 years and older was 29%. After assessing 10 different machine learning classification ...

Humans negatively impact the health of grizzly bear populations through top-down influences like direct mortality associated with forestry roads (from conflict or illegal killings) and displacement from high quality habitats, and through bottom-up influences like reducing availability of food resources. Research published in Wildlife Monographs reveals the relationship between these forces, informing a strategic conservation program. Investigators radio-collared and followed numerous grizzly bears over multiple years in southeastern British Columbia. They found an interesting interplay between the most important bottom-up factor, ...