September 8, 2023 – SwiftPharma, a Belgium-based manufacturer, and the Population Council, a global nonprofit research organization, have signed a Manufacturing Master Service Agreement for the plant-based manufacture of Griffithsin to further the Council’s development of a Griffithsin fast-dissolving vaginal insert for protection against HIV.     The Population Council has been developing a non-antiretroviral HIV-prevention method containing Griffithsin (GRFT) in a fast-dissolving insert (FDI). This Griffithsin FDI is an on-demand, user-controlled, portable prevention technology in early development ...

Safety-net hospitals have a common mission to provide care for Medicaid beneficiaries and those who are uninsured, but there’s no universal definition for these hospitals—complicating efforts to allocate funding. In a new analysis published in JAMA Network Open and led by researchers at the NYU School of Global Public Health, the research team looked at five established definitions for safety-net hospitals and found that different criteria captured varying hospitals and characteristics. As a result, when the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) use one definition ...

The world saw another year full of extreme weather events resulting from climate change in 2022, from intense storms to soaring temperatures and rising sea levels. Antarctica was no exception, according to new research published this week.    In the 33rd annual State of the Climate report, an international assessment of the global climate published Sept. 6 in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, CU Boulder researchers report that the planet’s coldest and driest continent experienced both an unprecedented heatwave and extreme precipitation last year.  “My hope is that the public starts to see both the fragility and complexity of these ...

There’s a rhythm to developing life. Growing from a tiny cell cluster into an adult organism takes precise timing and control. The right genes must turn on at the right time, for the right duration, and in the correct order. Losing the rhythm can lead to diseases like cancer. So, what keeps every gene on beat? Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Professor Christopher Hammell has found that in the worm C. elegans, this genetic orchestra has no single conductor. Instead, a quartet of molecules works in concert to time each developmental stage. Hammell says this process shares some similarities with the circadian clocks that control human ...

Sleep-Wake Therapy Gives New Hope for Teens with Depression  Promoting healthy sleep in teen night owls brings adolescents’ biology and school demands in alignment.  School systems aren’t built for kids who fall asleep and wake up late, the so-called “night owls,” which may help explain why this group of teens is more prone to depression.  Now, researchers at UC San Francisco have found a way to help these kids adjust to their natural sleep-cycle rhythms while still fulfilling their school responsibilities. The findings are a welcome sign for adolescents with ...

Our world is changing, and warming temperatures will alter our natural ecosystems. Some of these changes will be straightforward, like animal ranges creeping northward as they strive to maintain their ideal temperatures. But other changes will be more complicated, as warming sets off complex chain reactions that reverberate through these systems. An important process in ecosystems is the decomposition of plant litter, in which dead plant material is broken down by animals, fungi, and microbes, making its nutrients accessible to the next generation of plants. How quickly this breakdown happens — the decomposition ...

Baltimore – A team of four data scientists from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, was named today as one of 32 winners of the Tools Competition, one of the largest education technology (edtech) competitions in the world that awarded more than $4 million to winners this year.  The team was a winner in the DARPA AI Tools for Adult Learning opportunity, which sought artificial intelligence-powered tools to help adults learn complex topics necessary for the current and future national security workforce (e.g., AI engineering ...

In work published in Science Advances, a team of researchers have determined a new pressure scale, which is critical for understanding the Earth’s composition. Using x-rays from a uniquely powerful spectrometer at RIKEN’s SPring-8 Center they avoided some of the large approximations of previous work, discovering that the previous scale overestimated pressure by more than 20% at 230 gigapascals (2.3 million atmospheres) - a pressure reached in Earth’s core. This is similar to someone running a marathon that they thought was 42 kilometers, but finding they had only really run 34 kilometers. While 20% might seem like a modest correction, it has big implications.  An accurate ...

The EurekAlert! Fellowships for International Science Reporters are back and now accepting applications from early-career Latin American science journalists. Two fellows will be selected to receive travel funding from EurekAlert! to attend the 2024 AAAS Annual Meeting, taking place February 15-17, 2024 in Denver, Colorado. Learn more about who is eligible and how to apply on our website. The application deadline is October 5, 2023 at 11:59 p.m. US Eastern Time. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) ...

A new study published today shows the number of sexual partners we have changes as we age – and there are some surprising results.  Researchers from the University of East Anglia (UEA), in collaboration with King’s College London and University College London, surveyed more than 5,000 people aged 18 years and older during the 2022 mpox (previously known as “monkeypox”) outbreak.   The team wanted to better understand how sexual behaviours change with age, so that mathematical models of sexually transmitted infections can be made more accurate. Key findings included in the paper, published today ...

As part of the international CLOUD project at the nuclear research centre CERN, researchers at PSI have identified so-called sesquiterpenes – gaseous hydrocarbons that are released by plants – as being a major factor in cloud formation. This finding could reduce uncertainties in climate models and help make more accurate predictions. The study has now been published in the journal Science Advances. According to the latest projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the global climate will be 1.5 to 4.4 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial levels by 2100. This figure is based on various scenarios describing how anthropogenic ...

HOUSTON – (Sept. 8, 2023) A team of Rice University researchers have won a 4-year, $1.2 million grant from the Department of Energy (DOE) to evaluate the strengths and limitations of different physical systems used to build quantum computers. Nai-Hui Chia, Kaden Hazzard and Kevin Slagle will use theory, numerical simulations and quantum hardware-run algorithms to provide a framework for comparing the viability and computational potential of different approaches to building quantum computers to help achieve near-term advances in quantum computing. Their project is one of six selected by the DOE “to improve our understanding of whether, when and how quantum ...

September 8, 2023 — As part of its partnership with the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), Medical Care has published its first PCORI-sponsored article collection, which provides specific information about the costs that healthcare systems can expect to incur in promoting the uptake of specific evidence-based programs. Medical Care, https://journals.lww.com/lww-medicalcare/pages/default.aspxthe official journal of the Medical Care Section of the American Public Health Association, is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.  In the September issue, five project teams that received Implementation Award funding from PCORI ...

“While vaccination has been successful for the general population, it is crucial not to overlook the needs of immunocompromised individuals.” BUFFALO, NY- September 8, 2023 – A new editorial paper was published in Oncoscience (Volume 10) on September 1, 2023, entitled, “Exiting the pandemic together: achieving global immunity and equity.” In this new editorial, researchers Yuxin Ying, Jola Bytyci and Lennard YW Lee from Oxford Medical School discuss their recent investigation into the effectiveness of ...

September 8, 2023 – A series of pre-clinical studies provide important first steps in developing techniques of robotic bladder transplantation in humans, as reported 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.  "Our study is the first report of bladder auto-transplantation in heart-beating, brain-dead human research donors as a necessary preparatory step toward clinical bladder transplantation in living patients," comments Inderbir S. Gill, MD, of Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.  Preclinical ...

Oak Ridge National Laboratory has launched a new entrepreneurial start-up program, Safari, as an addition to the Department of Energy Office of Technology Transitions Practices to Accelerate the Commercialization of Technologies, or PACT, program. Safari seeks to connect post-exit entrepreneurs with commercially relevant technologies developed by world-leading scientific experts, which could provide the basis for a new business. A post-exit or serial entrepreneur has established and sold at least one company. “An experienced entrepreneur is likely to succeed in subsequent business ventures,” said Jennifer ...

Scientific research depends on collaboration between researchers and institutions. But over the past decade, there has been a surge of large-scale research projects involving extraordinarily large numbers of researchers, from dozens to hundreds, all working on a common project. Examples of this trend include ManyBabies, centred on infant cognition and development, and ManyManys, focused on comparative cognition and behaviour across animal taxa. These kinds of projects, known as big team science (BTS), benefit from pooled human and material ...

PHILADELPHIA— The blood-brain barrier (BBB) has been found to play a significant role in controlling behavior critical to how ant colonies function, according to new research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The implications of this research on the intricate mechanisms behind ant behavior go beyond the world of ants. The findings, published this week in Cell, hint at similar mechanisms at play in other species, including mammals. In ants, along with other animals, the BBB consists of tightly locked cells that protect the brain from germs and other harmful substances. The protective barrier plays a key role in how the brain and ...

Metastasis is the leading cause of death in cancer, occurring when a cell leaves the primary tumour, passes into the bloodstream and lymphatic system and reaches distant organs. Non-invasive collection of these circulating tumour cells is essential for the study of cell biology, the diagnosis and prognosis in cancer research, and drug development. As a general rule, the concentration of cancer cells found in blood is very small with respect to other cell types, and traditional methods of collecting them in a viable way are laborious.  “We wanted to come up with a device capable ...

September 8, 2023 — As part of its active efforts to dismantle systemic racism and promote principles of equity and inclusion within its editorial processes and content, Obstetrics & Gynecology, the official journal of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, has devoted its entire October 2023 issue to addressing racism in reproductive health. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.  A journal with such a rich history must root out inequity  "Let ...

UPTON, NY—Researchers at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, and Northrop Grumman, a multinational aerospace and defense technology company, have found a way to maintain valley polarization at room temperature using novel materials and techniques. This discovery could lead to devices that store and process information in novel ways using this technology without the need to keep them at ultra-low temperatures. Their ...

In a groundbreaking study published on July 26, 2023, in the journal Environmental Science and Ecotechnology, researchers from Huazhong University of Science and Technology have introduced "Meta-Sorter," an AI-based method that leverages neural networks and transfer learning to significantly improve biome labeling for thousands of microbiome samples in the MGnify database, especially those with incomplete information. The Meta-Sorter approach comprises two crucial steps. Firstly, a neural network model is meticulously constructed using 118,592 microbial samples from 134 biomes and their respective biome ontology, boasting an impressive average ...

BOSTON – Researchers who previously developed the first 3D human cell culture models of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) that displays two major hallmarks of the condition—the generation of amyloid beta deposits followed by tau tangles—have now used their model to investigate whether the exercise-induced muscle hormone irisin affects amyloid beta pathology. As reported in the journal Neuron, the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)–led team has uncovered promising results suggesting that irisin-based ...

About The Study: In this study of health care workers who received a COVID-19 vaccine, an influenza vaccine, or both, co-administration was not associated with substantially inferior immune response or to more frequent adverse events compared with COVID-19 vaccine administration alone, supporting the co-administration of these vaccines.  Authors: Gili Regev-Yochay, M.D., of the Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan, Israel, 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/jamanetworkopen.2023.32813) Editor’s ...

About The Study: The findings of this study suggest that childhood survivors of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) are at high risk of readmission in the first two months after discharge. Future studies should evaluate whether post-discharge interventions (e.g., telephonic contact, follow-up clinics, and home health care) may help reduce the readmission burden.  Authors: Garrett Keim, M.D., of Children’s Hospital of 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/jamanetworkopen.2023.30774) Editor’s ...