PLYMOUTH MEETING, PA [September 6, 2023] — New research in the September 2023 issue of JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network reveals an alarming lack of access for non-English speakers who called hospitals across the United States looking for information on cancer care services. The researchers from University of Michigan set up a series of simulated patient calls to various hospital general information lines, speaking in English, Spanish, and Mandarin. Nearly all of the English-speaking callers were provided with next steps to access cancer care—such as a telephone number for presumed clinic or transfer to the ...

MINNEAPOLIS – A study of twins shows that having a concussion early in life is tied to having lower scores on tests of thinking and memory skills decades later as well as having more rapid decline in those scores than twins who did not have a concussion, or traumatic brain injury (TBI). The study is published in the September 6, 2023, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. “These findings indicate that even people with traumatic brain injuries in earlier life who appear to have fully recovered from ...

Barriers to accessing potentially life-saving support persist, according to new research into suicidality in the LGBTIQA+ community.  An RMIT-led study with Switchboard, Roses in the Ocean and University of Sydney interviewed members of the LGBTQA+SB community to understand their lived experiences of suicidal thoughts and behaviours, and uncover factors that protect people at these times of distress.  The acronym SB in LGBTIQA+SB stands for sistergirl and brotherboy, acknowledging the trans women and trans men of First ...

Largescale changes to the global food system could enable people not only to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but to achieve net negative emissions by 2050. A team led by Maya Almaraz of Princeton University and Benjamin Houlton of Cornell University report these findings in a new study published September 6 in the open-access journal PLOS Climate. Currently, the global food system is responsible for about one-third of greenhouse gas emissions. There are multiple opportunities within the food system to reduce emissions, and some have proposed that agriculture could act as a sink to remove carbon dioxide from the ...

US adults who don't trust university-based research are less likely to see climate change as an important problem, indicating a need to develop 'a culture of trust'.  #### Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000147 Article Title: Why don’t Americans trust university researchers and why it matters for climate change Author Countries: UK, USA Funding: RD’s work is supported by the Quadrature Climate Foundation [01-21-000149] and Keynes Fund [JHVH]. RMA and DE’s work is supported by Caltech’s ...

Almost 6 in 10 female adolescents in India are anaemic, with 21 of 28 states reporting increased prevalence since 2015, per national surveys. #### Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/globalpublichealth/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgph.0002117 Article Title: Is the burden of anaemia among Indian adolescent women increasing? Evidence from Indian Demographic and Health Surveys (2015–21) Author Countries: India Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. END ...

Autistic and neurodivergent workers report experiencing unique pressures to mask traits, to avoid negative reactions from colleagues and employers ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0290001 Article Title: The workplace masking experiences of autistic, non-autistic neurodivergent and neurotypical adults in the UK Author Countries: UK Funding: The present study was funded by an Autistica research grant (REF: 7263) to AR and BH (https://www.autistica.org.uk/). Research at the UCL Centre for Research ...

Australian patients with chronic health issues prescribed medical cannabis showed significant improvements in overall health-related quality of life and fatigue in the first three months of use, along with improvements in anxiety, depression, and pain. Interestingly, cannabis therapy did not seem to improve reported sleep disturbances, according to a study published September 6, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Margaret-Ann Tait from the University of Sydney, Australia, and colleagues. Since 2016 in Australia, medical cannabis has been approved for prescription to patients with health conditions unresponsive to other treatment. ...

Experiencing negatively-perceived emotions might prompt people to withdraw from a social group - specifically, shame for individualistic societies, but anger for more collectivistic cultures ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0289918 Article Title: Shame and anger differentially predict disidentification between collectivistic and individualistic societies Author Countries: Germany, Japan, Canada Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. END ...

In 2019, an ESPN report explored the reasons so many football wide receivers prefer to wear jersey numbers between 10 and 19. The story found that many of the athletes simply believed the lower numbers made them look faster and slimmer than the higher numbers traditionally assigned to their position. Ladan Shams, a UCLA professor of psychology and neuroscience, was quoted in the story and offered a psychological explanation for the phenomenon. But she emphasized that there was no scientific research on the topic. Now there is. A new UCLA study published in the journal PLOS ONE reveals that those wide receivers were onto ...

In an analysis of samples from patients with rheumatic diseases, researchers from across Mass General Brigham found evidence that prior infection with a pre-pandemic coronavirus that causes the common cold may help set the stage for the development of long COVID The study points to a potential marker of long COVID, which could inform clinical trials and may help explain why some patients develop long COVID A patient population at increased risk for severe COVID-19 may help researchers understand why some people develop long-term, persistent symptoms (long COVID) while others do not. Rheumatologists from Brigham and ...

The shape and size of a grain of rice, the new device can conduct dozens of experiments at once to study the effects of new treatments on some of the hardest-to-treat brain cancers. Researchers  from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, have designed a device that can help test treatments in patients with gliomas, a type of tumor that originates in the brain or spinal cord. The device, which is designed to be used during standard of care surgery, provides unprecedented insight into the effects of drugs on glioma ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - As the Earth’s human population grows, greenhouse gas emissions from the world’s food system are on track to expand. A new study demonstrates that state-of-the-art agricultural technology and management can not only reduce that growth, but eliminate it altogether by generating net negative emissions – reducing more greenhouse gas than food systems add. In fact, employing additional agricultural technology could result in more than 13 billion tons of net negative greenhouse gas emissions each year, as the world seeks to avoid dangerous climate extremes, according to research published Sept. 6 in PLOS Climate. The work was led by Benjamin ...

Remembering the order of information is central for a person when participating in conversations, planning everyday life, or undergoing an education. A new study, published in the scientific journal PLoS One, shows that this ability is probably human unique. Even the closest relatives of humans, such as bonobos, do not learn order in the same way. “The study contributes another piece of the puzzle to the question of how the mental abilities of humans and other animals differ, and why only humans speak languages, plan space travel, and have learned to exploit the earth so efficiently that we now pose a serious ...

Footballers wearing jerseys featuring small numbers are rated as more slender than those wearing big numbers, in experiments indicating how visual perception may be influenced by cognition ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0287474 Article Title: Big number, big body: Jersey numbers alter body size perception Author Countries: USA Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. END ...

Jimmy Jiang envisions a future where every house is powered by renewable energy stored in batteries. In his chemistry lab, Jiang and his students at the University of Cincinnati have created a new battery that could have profound implications for the large-scale energy storage needed by wind and solar farms. Innovations such as UC’s will have profound effects on green energy, Jiang said. Batteries store renewable energy for when it’s needed, not just when it’s produced. This is crucial for getting the most out of wind and solar power, he said. “Energy ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — This summer, viral misinformation claimed that the Amish did not vaccinate against COVID-19 and, as a result, had a death rate 90 times lower than the rest of the United States. Now, a Penn State study is the first to provide geographically broad and population-wide evidence that while the Amish-populated counties across the nation tend to have lower vaccination rates than other populations, they are not entirely unvaccinated.  The research was published recently in the journal Population Research and Policy Review. The Amish are a distinctive Christian subculture that traces its roots to the 16th century Protestant ...

A recent article published in Volume 3 of the journal Psychoradiology, researchers from Sichuan Normal University introduced an innovative Three-Choice BIC paradigm that merges the GNG and two-choice oddball (TCO) tasks. This study engaged 48 college students who responded to varied stimuli using designated keys and restrained responses to no-go stimuli. Employing functional neuroimaging coupled with conjunction and ROI analyses, the researchers sought to unveil unique neural pathways linked to BIC ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. — The treadmill exercise test with electrocardiogram (ECG), also known as an exercise stress test, is one of the most familiar tests in medicine. While exercise testing typically is focused on diagnosing coronary artery disease, a recent study from Mayo Clinic finds that exercise test abnormalities, such as low functional aerobic capacity, predicted non-cardiovascular causes of death such as cancer in addition to cardiovascular-related deaths. These new findings are published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings. The exercise stress test is noninvasive, easily available and provides important diagnostic information. In addition to the ECG itself, ...

DENVER/Sept. 6, 2023 — A newly funded study will evaluate both the frequency and major risk factors for cancer in golden retrievers, a breed commonly affected by the disease.   The study will use data from Morris Animal Foundation’s Golden Retriever Lifetime Study, which is one of the largest and most comprehensive canine health studies in the world. The study will also incorporate data from Veterinary Companion Animal Surveillance System (VetCompass), a not-for-profit research project based at the Royal Veterinary College ...

LA JOLLA, CA—A good night’s sleep has many proven health benefits, and a new Scripps Research study suggests one more: preventing opioid relapse. In the new study, published online in Neuropharmacology on August 12, 2023, scientists gave an experimental insomnia treatment to rats experiencing oxycodone withdrawal. The researchers found that the animals were far less likely to seek out drugs again in the future—even after ending the treatment. These findings could eventually lead to therapies to help prevent opioid addiction or relapse in humans. “These results are very encouraging,” says Rémi Martin-Fardon, PhD, associate professor of molecular medicine ...

The researchers studied birds given a simulated bacterial infection in order to stimulate their immune system. The birds were then compared with birds whose immune system was not stimulated – and their activity was measured for several weeks using miniature data loggers. “We found that the birds whose immune system was stimulated had reduced activity for three weeks, which is much longer than we expected. We could also see that the "sick" blackbirds stopped their activities ...

The 2023 edition of the António Champalimaud Vision Award recognizes the St John of Jerusalem Eye Hospital Group (SJEHG) for its work supporting hundreds of thousands of people living in the Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem, helping in the fight against blindness while providing access to essential health services in a region marked by conflict and instability. The SJEHG has been developing its activity at the centre of three major world religions. The ongoing conflict in the region has had a severe impact on health care access and delivery. Without the intervention of the SJEHG, the rate of blindness would be rampant, increasing ...

Precisive real-time prediction of the movement of nearby vehicles or the future trajectory of pedestrians is essential for safe autonomous driving. A research team led by City University of Hong Kong (CityU) recently developed a novel AI system that improves predictive accuracy amid dense traffic and increases computational efficiency by over 85%, offering great potential for enhancing the safety of autonomous vehicles. Professor Wang Jianping, in the Department of Computer Science (CS) at CityU, who led the study, explained the critical importance ...

Study Title: Being Breastfed in Infancy and Risk of Colorectal Cancer and Precursor Lesions Publication: Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology: https://www.cghjournal.org/article/S1542-3565(23)00673-0/fulltext Dana-Farber Cancer Institute authors include Chen Yuan, ScD, first author; Kimmie Ng, MD, MPH, senior author Summary: Rates of young-onset colorectal cancer have been on the rise since the early 1990s. This study, led by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, investigated potential links between being breastfed as an infant and having colorectal cancer later in life. The team evaluated data collected by the Nurses’ Health Study ...