During the Dutch Hunger Winter Famine, infants experienced the highest absolute and relative mortality of all children under 14 years of age. These are findings from a new study at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Wageningen University & Research and the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute in the Hague. the Netherlands. In the famine cities, infant mortality increased to one percent or 922 deaths per 10,000 compared to 109 deaths per 10,000 children between the ages of one and four, and 27 deaths per 10,000 deaths at ages 5 to 14. ...

New research published today in Blood Advances reveals that since the introduction of pneumococcal conjugate vaccines, PCV7 and PCV13, invasive pneumococcal infection (IPD) rates among children living with sickle cell disease (SCD) have declined significantly. The study explores the efficacy of existing and emerging vaccines to protect children living with SCD from life-threatening infections. SCD is the most common inherited red blood cell disorder in the United States, affecting an estimated 100,000 people. ...

A groundbreaking discovery has been made by Professor Hyug Moo Kwon and his research team in the Department of Biological Sciences at UNIST, in collaboration with Professor Jaeseok Yang from Yonsei University. Their study sheds new light on the protein called ‘TonEBP,’ revealing its significant role in the development of lupus and lupus nephritis. This breakthrough not only enhances our understanding of these conditions, but also opens up potential avenues for future treatment options. Lupus is an autoimmune disorder characterized by autoreactive B cells and dysregulation of various immune cells, including myeloid cells. Lupus nephritis (LN), which ...

COVID-19 mRNA vaccination protects babies and young children against COVID-19-associated emergency department/urgent care visits, according to a multistate study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s VISION Network. The study found that children, age five and younger, who received the original COVID-19 vaccine and the updated vaccine were protected against the need for medical care for COVID in an emergency department or urgent care facility. Emergency department/urgent care visits are considered indicators of moderate disease. The small number of hospitalizations for children ages six months to five years old limited the assessment of vaccine ...

Multimorbidity describes the state of having more than one disease. Anthony Webster sought to untangle a puzzle at the heart of multimorbidity: does having had disease make a patient more likely to have another disease, independent of broad risk factors, such as age, smoking status, or weight? Webster applied a Poisson-Binomial distribution with a Weibull model to predict the incidence of 222 common diseases for approximately 500,000 individuals within the UK Biobank cohort, taking into account their age and established risk factors, but ignoring their history of previous disease or pre-existing conditions. Webster then compared the expected number ...

A research paper by scientists at the University of Coimbra proposed a soft robotic hand that composed of soft actuator cores and an exoskeleton, featuring a multimaterial design aided by finite element analysis to define the hand geometry and promote finger’s bendability. The new research paper, published on Aug. 8 in the journal Cyborg and Bionic Systems, presented the development, fabrication, and control of a bioinspired soft robotic hand and demonstrated finite element analysis can serve as a valuable tool to support the design and control of the hand’s fingers. “Recent research led to impactful achievements in functional designs, modeling, ...

Multi-impulse orbital rendezvous is a classical spacecraft trajectory optimization problem, which has been widely studied for a long time. Numerical optimization methods, deeplearning (DL) methods, reinforcement learning (RL) methods have been proposed. However, for the numerical optimization methods, they need long computation time, and they are usually not valid for the many-impulse rendezvous case with the magnitude constraints. For the machine learning (ML) methods, the DL method needs large amounts of data, and the RL method has the weakness of low efficiency. Nevertheless, ML demonstrates more accurate predictions ...

SAN ANTONIO — September 12, 2023 —The Association of Old Crows (AOC), an international organization for the electronic warfare (EW) community, has recognized three early-career Southwest Research Institute engineers for their achievements in EW research and development. Two honorees received back-to-back Electronic Warfare Professional Outstanding Young Crow Awards. AOC named one engineer a 2023 Future 5, a designation for innovative professionals building EW careers. EW technology detects and defeats enemy signals on the electromagnetic spectrum to protect U.S. and allied forces. Recipients of the international AOC EW Professional Outstanding Young Crow Award demonstrate outstanding ...

BATON ROUGE – The National Institutes of Health has awarded the Louisiana Clinical & Translational Science Center, or LA CaTS, a grant of nearly $1.3 million to support the efforts of in-state healthcare institutions to share health data for research purposes across a common structure. Awarded as a single grant, the funds will be primarily split between two LA CaTS member institutions: nearly $780,000 for the Pennington Biomedical Research Center and $490,000 for Tulane University School of Medicine. Together, these two projects will strengthen the LA CaTS Center’s capacity to address health care disparities, ...

Photonic neural network systems, which are fast and energy efficient, are especially helpful for dealing with large amounts of data. To advance photonic brain-like computing technologies, a group of researchers at the University of Strathclyde combined a spike-based neural network with a semiconductor laser that exhibits spiking neuronal behaviors. Recently, they presented high-performance photonic spiking neural network operation with lower training requirements and introduced a novel training scheme for getting better results. This research was published Aug. 29 in Intelligent Computing, a Science Partner Journal. Neural ...

September 12th, 2023 For immediate release Fom the bestselling author of Post-Truth and How to Talk to a Science Denier, comes On Disinformation: How to Fight for Truth and Protect Democracy The effort to destroy facts and make America ungovernable didn't come out of nowhere. It is the culmination of seventy years of strategic denialism. In On Disinformation, Lee McIntyre shows how the war on facts began, and how ordinary citizens can fight back against the scourge of disinformation that is now threatening the very ...

Sepsis, also colloquially referred to as blood poisoning, is a serious condition. Just over 3,000 people die with a diagnosis of sepsis in Norwegian hospitals each year. However, sepsis is not actually poisoning at all. The condition occurs when the immune system overreacts to an infection that can be caused by bacteria, viruses, fungi or parasites. The immune system attacks the organs of the body and the patient develops organ failure. A new study of 300,000 sepsis admissions has found that the condition is more prevalent than previously thought. However, ...

Mount Sinai researchers have developed a novel, automated measure of analyzing sleep studies to determine the severity and risk of mortality in patients with obstructive sleep apnea, a chronic sleep disorder that affects about 30 million people in the United States. The study findings, which provide a validated tool to better manage sleep apnea and promote preventive care, were published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine on September 12. The Mount Sinai Sleep and Circadian Analysis (SCAN) Group developed an automated breath-by-breath measure called ventilatory burden that assesses the proportion of small breaths during a routine sleep study. This ...

Spring break can be a good time for ski trips — the days are longer and a little warmer. But if people are booking their spring skiing trips the fall before, it's hard to know which areas will have the best snow coverage later in the season. Researchers who study water resources also want to know how much snow an area will get in a season. The total snowpack gives scientists a better idea of how much water will be available for hydropower, irrigation and drinking later in the year. A team led by researchers at the University of ...

With the start of the new school year, ten school system superintendents from coast to coast are working with the American Heart Association, a global force for healthier lives for all, to improve the health and well-being of students, families and educators nationwide. These top volunteer leaders, who are members of the association’s 2023-2024 national Superintendent Council will focus on providing guidance on how schools across the country can combat challenges that affect physical and mental well-being – contemporary issues like ...

Photos, b-roll and video available for download in electronic media kit: https://t.ly/RRu-V. (Credit: City of Hope) Event photos will be available at https://dam.gettyimages.com/assignments/city-of-hope-receives-100-million-gift. (Event photo credit: Getty Images for City of Hope) LOS ANGELES — City of Hope, one of the largest cancer research and treatment organizations in the United States, today announced a $100 million gift from Andrew and Peggy Cherng, philanthropists, co-founders and co-CEOs of Panda Express, to create a first-of-its-kind, national integrative oncology program that brings together Eastern and Western ...

An international team of researchers has demonstrated that a combination of inhibitors may suppress tumor growth and prevent relapse in patients with certain cancers, including head and neck squamous cell carcinoma and lung adenocarcinoma. Their findings support the future development of innovative therapeutic approaches targeting these cancers. The team’s work is published in the journal Oncogene on August 17, 2023. Scientists know that in humans and other mammals, the Hippo signaling pathway plays a key role in the rapid ...

While the public release of the artificial intelligence-driven large-language chatbot, ChatGPT, has created a great deal of excitement around the promise of the technology and expanded use of AI, it has also seeded a good bit of anxiety around what a program that can churn out a passable college-level essay in seconds means for the future of teaching and learning. Naturally, this consternation drove a proliferation of detection programs — of varying effectiveness — and a commensurate increase in accusations of cheating. But how are the students feeling about all of this? Recently ...

A team of researchers from the Department of Biological Sciences at UNIST has achieved a significant breakthrough in understanding how brain proteins can help alleviate complications arising from DNA replication stress. This groundbreaking discovery holds immense potential for advancing treatments for various diseases, including cancer, neurological disorders, and age-related conditions that result from disruptions in DNA replication. Led by Professor Jayil Lee, Professor Jang Hyun Choi, and Professor Hongtae Kim, this collaborative effort has unveiled crucial insights into ...

The United States is experiencing its highest overall death rates in more than a century, fueled in part by drug overdose mortality. The origins of the current epidemic are due, at least in part, to a 1986 World Health Organization pronouncement that pain treatment is a universal right. As such, cancer pain treatment guidelines were developed, which included the provision of opioids. In 1995, OxyContin was approved for the management of pain, paving the way for widespread prescription of opioids. Researchers ...

Nicotine e-cigarettes and two prescription medications that curb symptoms of withdrawal are the most effective stop-smoking aids, according to a comprehensive, multinational review by a team of scientists, including a University of Massachusetts Amherst public health and health policy researcher. Dual forms of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT), such as combining a patch with gum or a lozenge, were found to be nearly as effective.  Smoking remains the leading cause of preventable disease and death worldwide, and many people who want to quit smoking find it very difficult, due to the addictive nature of nicotine. The new study’s ...

In what’s known as the cluster effect, industries boom when similar businesses share a single locale. In San Francisco, there’s Silicon Valley. For cutting-edge fashion and media, there’s New York City. And according to a new report from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, when it comes to innovation in food technology, Boston has become a bona fide magnet. But what exactly is food technology, or food tech for short, and how can it solve the current food system’s most dire dilemmas? The report from the Food and Nutrition ...

Dinosaurs have quite the reputation for being the largest, fiercest predators in life’s history. Yet, 40 million years before dinosaurs ruled, Pampaphoneus biccai dominated South America as the biggest and most bloodthirsty meat eater of its time. In a new study published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, an international team of researchers reveal the astounding discovery of a 265-million-year-old, exquisitely preserved fossil species, Pampaphoneus biccai, found in the rural area of São Gabriel, Southern Brazil. The ...

Climate change and increases in drought and rainstorms pose serious challenges to our water management. Not only the availability of water is under pressure, but also its quality. However, according to the most recent IPCC report our current understanding of this issue is inadequate. To fill this gap, an international group of scientists has brought together a large body of research on water quality in rivers worldwide. The study published in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment shows that river water quality tends to deteriorate during extreme weather events. As these events become more frequent and severe due to climate change, ...

Research team led by Shir Filo and Prof. Aviv Mezer of the Safra Center for Brain Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (ELSC) and Dr. Tal Shahar currently, Director of the Neurosurgical Oncology Unit at the Neurosurgery Department, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, have unveiled a groundbreaking magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology that promises to revolutionize our understanding of iron homeostasis in the human brain. Their research, demonstrates the ability to non-invasively assess different molecular iron environments within the brain, shedding light on its vital role in normal brain function, aging, neurodegenerative ...