CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Air pollution poses well-established risks to physical health, but an emerging body of research says that it may also have adverse effects on mental health. New research co-written by a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign economist examining the relationship between air pollution via drifting wildfire smoke exposure and suicide risk found large-scale evidence that air pollution disproportionately elevates the risk of suicide among rural populations in the U.S. Each 10% increase in airborne particulate matter in rural counties causes monthly suicide rates ...

Many of today’s artificial intelligence systems loosely mimic the human brain. In a new paper, researchers suggest that another branch of biology — ecology — could inspire a whole new generation of AI to be more powerful, resilient, and socially responsible.  Published September 11 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the paper argues for a synergy between AI and ecology that could both strengthen AI and help to solve complex global challenges, such as disease outbreaks, loss of biodiversity, and climate change ...

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. (September 11, 2023) –  As an increasing number of improved asthma treatments are developed, a greater number of people with asthma are finding their symptoms under control. Their improved status raises an important question for healthcare providers (HCPs) who treat this condition: “What qualifies as clinical remission in the treatment of asthma?” A panel of 11 experts in asthma care came together to review available literature to create a working definition. The panel included six allergists, three pulmonologists and two pediatricians. The paper outlining their recommendations is published in Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, ...

Improving food literacy positively influences diet quality and reduces the risk of chronic diseases; however, interpreting the evidence of its effectiveness has been limited. Results of a new study in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, published by Elsevier, found that Foodbank Western Australia’s Food Sensations for Adults (FSA) food literacy program is effective in producing positive changes across a range of food literacy and dietary behaviors in participants ages 18 and older. Lead author Andrea Begley, DrPH, School of Population Health, Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia (WA), says, “Behavior change takes time to establish. Participants ...

Effective treatment for lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) in men aged 50 or older is associated with a lower risk of death over the next few years reports a study in the October issue of The Journal of Urology®, an Official Journal of the American Urological Association (AUA). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.  "We found a small but significant decrease in mortality risk for older men who received medications for treatment of LUTS," comments lead author Blayne Welk, MD, MSc, of Western University ...

Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $73 million in funding for eleven projects which focus on the goal of accelerating the transition from discovery to commercialization of new technologies that will form the basis of future industries. This goal will require basic research to be conducted with an eye to an innovation’s end application, considering discovery, creation, and production of materials and technologies with approaches that can be scaled and readily transitioned into new products and capabilities to support the economic health and security of the nation.  “This ...

Researchers in UC Santa Barbara professor Yasamin Mostofi’s lab have proposed a new foundation that can enable high-quality imaging of still objects with only WiFi signals. Their method uses the Geometrical Theory of Diffraction and the corresponding Keller cones to trace edges of the objects. The technique has also enabled, for the first time, imaging, or reading, the English alphabet through walls with WiFi, a task deemed too difficult for WiFi due to the complex details of the letters.      For more details ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Scientists have detected new strains of malaria-causing parasites in Ethiopia that are both resistant to current treatments and escape detection by common diagnostic tests — a development that could increase cases and deaths from malaria and make eliminating the persistent disease an even greater challenge. The authors detailed their findings from a genomic surveillance study in Nature Microbiology. Already, scientists had found in Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda strains of the parasite ...

The Buck Institute for Research on Aging has received a $3.5 million federal grant to lead the first-ever double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial to understand the effects of ketone ester supplementation on frailty, a condition of vulnerability which develops following age-related decline in multiple physiological systems.  TAKEOFF (Targeting Aging with Ketone Ester in Older Adults for Function in Frailty) will recruit a total of 180 people at the Buck, Ohio State University and the University of Connecticut Center on Aging.   “TAKEOFF ...

The Japan Trench is located on the “Pacific Ring of Fire”, a region of special interest in earthquake and deep-water research. “It is here that oceanic plates bend, form ultra-deep-water trenches and move below overriding plates in so-called subduction zones, while accumulating long-term global plate tectonic strain”, says Dr. Ken Ikehara from National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan, and co-chief scientist of IODP Expedition 386. “This energy is released cataclysmically during so-called megathrust earthquakes, ...

As researchers around the world race against time to develop new strategies and technologies to fight climate change, a team of scientists at the University of Houston is exploring one possible way to directly reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the environment: Negative emissions technologies (NETs). Mim Rahimi, assistant professor of environmental engineering at UH’s Cullen College of Engineering is leading the development of an emerging NET called electrochemical direct ocean capture (eDOC), which helps the ocean cleanse itself of harmful carbon dioxide. The concept ...

New research from Rice University finds that antidepressants may actually reduce negative memories in individuals suffering from depression while improving overall memory function.    The study, “Perceived antidepressant efficacy associated with reduced negative and enhanced neutral mnemonic discrimination,” appears in the latest edition of Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. It examines how antidepressant use in depressed individuals affects memories, both good and bad.    Stephanie Leal, an assistant professor of psychological sciences at Rice, is the study’s lead author. She said the study’s main finding about the link between antidepressants ...

Agriculture relies on synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, which is made using energy- and carbon-intensive processes and creates nitrate-containing runoff. Researchers have long sought solutions to reduce emissions from the industry that accounts for 3% of energy consumption each year. A collaboration between two labs at Northwestern University, partnering with the University of Toronto, has found that producing the fertilizer urea using electrified synthesis could both denitrify wastewater while enabling low-carbon-intensity urea production. The process, which includes converting carbon ...

UNIST has taken a significant step towards combating women’s cancer on the African continent by signing an MOU with Eswatini Medical Christian University (EMCU) on June 28, 2023. The primary purpose of this partnership is to enhance cooperation in the diagnosis and treatment of cervical cancer, marking the beginning of a promising initiative. Under this agreement, UNIST will lead research and development efforts in cervical cancer diagnosis and treatment technologies, while EMCU will provide a clinical test bed for these advancements. The ...

Nantes, France – September 11, 2023, 6:00pm CET – OSE Immunotherapeutics SA (ISIN: FR0012127173; Mnemo: OSE) today announced the peer-reviewed publication in Annals of Oncology* of the randomized Phase 3 clinical trial (Atalante-1) on T-cell epitope cancer vaccine Tedopi® in HLA-A2 positive patients with advanced or metastatic NSCLC in monotherapy in third line NSCLC with secondary resistance to immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI). Tedopi® is a novel T-cell epitope-based cancer vaccine targeting five tumor-associated antigens, ...

Tara Chaplin, Associate Professor, Clinical Psychology, received $500,664 from the National Institutes of Health for an Independent Scientist Career Award titled: "Integrating neural and momentary assessment of parenting, arousal, and adolescent substance use."  This Independent Scientist K02 Award will provide Dr. Chaplin with cutting edge advanced training to enhance her career and transform her program of research. Through this training, Dr. Chaplin will integrate ecological momentary assessment (EMA) science into her expertise in developmental neuroscience to understand from a neural and momentary level parenting, emotion, and substance use associations ...

Cynthia Smith, Associate Professor and K12 Education Director, Potomac Environmental Research and Education Center (PEREC), Environmental Science and Policy, received $60,750 from Fairfax County Public Schools for: "FCPS Watershed Programs." This funding began in July 2023 and will end in late June 2024. Since 2010, Smith has worked closely with the FCPS science office to deliver outdoor, hands-on field investigations to 5,200 seventh graders annually. Over 350 Mason students have worked as PEREC field interpreters, honing ...

Kevin Moran, Assistant Professor, Computer Science, and Ziyu Yao, Assistant Professor, Computer Science, are set to receive funding from the National Science Foundation for: "Collaborative Research: SHF: Medium: Toward Understandability and Interpretability for Neural Language Models of Source Code." Moran and Yao will develop a framework and methodology that enables researchers who build AI-powered developer tools and software engineers who use these tools to interpret why the underlying models make the predictions they do.  Their objective is to allow researchers to obtain detailed insights into why a model may not ...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 11, 2023 — What does it mean to have “cooked” something? Is heat the only way to break down proteins and transform raw ingredients? If you love ceviche, you know that’s not true … but how exactly does ceviche get “cooked?” No heat source is used, but it still undergoes a process in which proteins are denatured. We’re taking a closer look at proteins, how they denature and what that means for the food on your plate. https://youtu.be/Pw6apr3TBzY?si=RdIYP5j3B0daGtxw Reactions ...

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Sept. 11, 2023) — The University of Kentucky’s Vice President for Research and leading cardiovascular scientist is being recognized for her foundational work in the field of hypertension with a prestigious award from the American Heart Association (AHA). Lisa Cassis, Ph.D., a professor in the College of Medicine’s Department of Pharmacology and Nutritional Sciences, has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) since joining the UK faculty in 1988. Cassis has led many multimillion-dollar projects, including serving as program director of an $11.3 million NIH-supported Center of Biomedical Research ...

A study published in the prestigious journal Current Biology, led by the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE), a joint centre of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), has identified 88 red fire ant nests spread over 5 hectares near the city of Syracuse, in Sicily, Italy. These are invasive colonies that could have come from China or the United States, where it is also an invasive species, according to the study's genetic analyses. This work, led by Roger Vila, a scientist at the IBE, with Mattia Menchetti as its first author, an INPhINIT ”la Caixa” ...

A healthy lifestyle that involves moderate alcohol consumption, a healthy diet, regular physical activity, healthy sleep and frequent social connection, while avoiding smoking and too much sedentary behaviour, reduces the risk of depression, new research has found. In research published today in Nature Mental Health, an international team of researchers, including from the University of Cambridge and Fudan University, looked at a combination of factors including lifestyle factors, genetics, brain structure and our immune and metabolic systems to identify the underlying mechanisms that might explain this link. According ...

One of the most invasive species in the world is Solenopsis invicta, a red fire ant species with a painful sting. Native to South America, the ant has established itself across the globe. In an article publishing in the journal Current Biology on September 11, a group of ant experts confirm that the species has made its way to Sicily—the ant’s first official sighting in Europe. The ants could soon spread all over the continent, the researchers warn, which could cause major environmental, health, and economic problems in Italy and ...

About The Study: The findings of this exploratory study suggest there are racial disparities in dementia severity, functional impairment, and neuropsychiatric symptoms. Future work must address racial disparities and their underlying determinants as well as the lack of representation of racially minoritized individuals in nationally representative dementia registries. Authors: Lauren Massimo, Ph.D., of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamaneurol.2023.3093) Editor’s ...

About The Study: In this study of people taking pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV, tenofovir alafenamide fumarate (TAF) use was found to be associated with higher incident hypertension and statin initiation compared with tenofovir disoproxil fumarate use, especially in those 40 years or older. Continued monitoring of blood pressure and lipids for TAF users is warranted.  Authors: Adovich S. Rivera, M.D., Ph.D., of Kaiser Permanente Southern California in Pasadena, is the corresponding author.  To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The ...