ORLANDO, March 27, 2023 - A University of Central Florida professor and 26 other researchers have published a study identifying the challenges humans must overcome to ensure that artificial intelligence is reliable, safe, trustworthy and compatible with human values.   The study, “Six Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Grand Challenges,” was published in the International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction.   Ozlem Garibay ’01MS ’08PhD, an assistant professor in UCF’s Department ...

More than half amount in adult human brain is made up of white matter. Lipid-rich myelin is a special structure formed by oligodendrocytes wrapping neuronal axons to form the major components of white matter. Abnormal myelin sheath is associated with many neurological diseases. Mea6/ cTAGE5C is essential for vesicle trafficking from ER to Golgi. However, its biological function in oligodendrocyte and white matter development remains unclear. Scientists from Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of Chinese Academy of Sciences generated mice with conditional knockout (cKO) of Mea6 in oligodendrocytes. Using ...

Recently, a research group lead by Prof. Shuting Wang from topology optimization of Huazhong University of Science and Technology has put forward a massively efficient filter utilizing the splitting of the tensor product structure. This study can be found in the journal Frontiers of Mechanical Engineering on 10 January, 2023. With the aid of spitting technique, the traditional weight matrices of both B-splines and non-uniform rational B-splines implicit filters are equivalently decomposed into two or three submatrices, by which the sensitivity analysis is reformulated for the nodal design variables without altering ...

A large observational study published in JAMA Internal Medicine suggests that most patients do not medically benefit from consultation with a medical specialist before their surgery. In Canada, surgeons refer more than 40,000 patients each year for consultation with a medical specialist (such as a general internist, cardiologist, endocrinologist, geriatrician, or nephrologist) before surgery. Between 10 and 40% of elective surgery patients will have a preoperative medical consultation. These preoperative medical consultations are meant to address health issues that could lead to complications during surgery, but the evidence to support them has been limited ...

Public health experts at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus released a new research letter today in JAMA Pediatrics that examines how quickly Colorado’s children and teenagers can access a loaded gun and call attention to the critical importance of reducing access to guns when an adolescent is in crisis. “There’s a high rate of firearm suicides in our youth and we know that for a large portion of those who attempt suicide, that ideation to action can happen under 10 minutes,” said principal investigator Ashley Brooks-Russell, ...

After a child’s hospital stay, many families covered by private insurance may experience sticker shock – on average spending $1,300 out of pocket – a new study in JAMA Pediatrics suggests. For one in seven families, the price tag is even higher, exceeding $3,000.   “Bills for a child’s hospitalization can be astonishingly high for some families depending on how their insurance plan is structured,” said lead author Erin Carlton, M.D., a pediatric intensivist at University of Michigan Health C.S. Mott Children's ...

About The Study: In this study of 1,678 participants, expectations of low benefit and high adverse effects, the tendency to catastrophize instead of normalize benign bodily sensations, and prior negative experiences were associated with COVID-19 vaccination adverse effects. Clinician-patient interactions and public vaccine campaigns may both benefit from these insights by optimizing and contextualizing information provided about COVID-19 vaccines.  Authors: Ingmar Schafer, Ph.D., of the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf ...

Lunar surface water has attracted much attention due to its potential for in-situ resource utilization by future lunar exploration missions and other space missions Now, a research group led by Prof. HU Sen from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics (IGG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has found that impact glass beads in Chang'e-5 (CE5) lunar soils contain some water. Detailed studies show that these glass beads are likely a new water reservoir on the Moon, recording the dynamic ingress and egress of solar wind-derived water and acting ...

A 2022 study from Oregon Health & Science University researchers confirmed that chronic use of cannabis may greatly impact male fertility and reproductive outcomes in nonhuman primates — but it was unclear whether the effects are permanent. Now, the OHSU research team has confirmed that discontinuing use of THC can at least partly reverse these effects, according to a new study published online today in Fertility & Sterility. This is one of the first studies demonstrating that discontinuation ...

**EMBARGOED TILL 11 A.M. ET MONDAY, MARCH 27 To develop treatments that may one day entirely rid the body of HIV infection, scientists have long sought to identify all of the places that the virus can hide its genetic code. Now, in a study using blood samples from men and women with HIV on long-term suppressive therapy, a team led by Johns Hopkins Medicine scientists reports new evidence that one such stable reservoir of HIV genomes can be found in circulating white blood cells called monocytes. Monocytes are short-lived circulating immune cells that are a precursor to macrophages, immune cells able to engulf and destroy viruses, bacteria ...

Every year, hundreds of thousands of pairs of black holes merge in a cosmic dance that emits gravitational waves in every direction. Since 2015, the large ground-based LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA interferometers have made it possible to detect these signals, although only about a hundred such events, an infinitesimal fraction of the total, have been observed. Most of the waves remain 'indistinguishable', superimposed and added together, creating a flat, diffuse background signal that scientists call the 'stochastic gravitational wave ...

The results of a study published in “Advances in Nutrition” that compared dietary and nutrition recommendations from dozens of clinical practice guidelines around the world for treating, managing and preventing major chronic diseases should increase clinician confidence on recommending consumption of fruits, vegetables, legumes and whole grains. The meta-epidemiological study from the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) reviewed 78 clinical practice guidelines published between 2010 and 2021 in North America, Europe and Asia and found close alignment in their recommendations for encouraging daily intake of plant food sources, while ...

The knowledge of biodiversity in allegedly well-known places is not as complete as one would expect and its detailed study by researchers continues to offer surprises, is what we find out in a new study of the flora of south-central Spain.  Now, Spanish botanists from Pablo de Olavide University (Seville, Spain) have described a new plant species of the papyrus family (Cyperaceae) restricted to the La Mancha region in south-central Spain. This region is in fact well-known for classic literary fans, who might recognise the name ...

SAN ANTONIO — March 27, 2023 —Southwest Research Institute recently delivered the Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder (LMS) to Firefly Aerospace in Cedar Park, Texas, for integration into the Blue Ghost 1 lunar lander scheduled to arrive at the Moon in 2024. The sounder will determine the electrical conductivity of the interior of the Moon by measuring low-frequency electric and magnetic fields. “For more than 50 years, scientists have used magnetotelluric techniques, which use natural characteristics of the Earth’s electromagnetic fields to determine the electrical resistivity of the subsurface for research and resource exploration,” said SwRI’s Bob Grimm, ...

INDIANAPOLIS – The burden of the pandemic has disproportionately affected socially vulnerable populations. One of the first studies to look at the intersection of social vulnerability with COVID-19 vaccine utilization and effectiveness has found that while vaccination rates have varied substantially between socially vulnerable and communities that are not socially vulnerable, there has been no difference in vaccine effectiveness between those who are socially vulnerable and those who are not. “We found that protection against emergency room and urgent care center visits, hospitalization and death conveyed by a COVID-19 mRNA vaccination ...

Social relationships influence physical health, but questions remain about the nature of this connection. New research in Social Psychological and Personality Science suggests that the way you feel about your close relationships may be affecting the way your body functions. Previous smaller-scale studies have examined the connection between relationship conflict or satisfaction with stress levels and blood pressure. The new research examines the effects of positive and negative relationship experiences on the body, as well as how these experiences and health outcomes change ...

Research findings from Rutgers, the University of Michigan, the University of Texas Southwestern, and the Medical University of South Carolina could save lives by enabling faster and more accurate identification of hospitalized patients who need liver transplants or are likely to recover. Retrospective analysis of blood samples and medical records from 270 patients admitted to the hospital with acute liver failure (ALF) found that concentrations of a short-lived but abundant serum protein called carbamoyl phosphate synthetase 1 (CPS1) helped predict which patients survive or die without a transplant. “We still need to validate these results in more patients to ...

PULLMAN, Wash. – A quick, affordable diagnostic test developed by a Washington State University researcher may help curb one of the most prevalent but least discussed sexually transmitted infections. More common than chlamydia or gonorrhea, Trichomonas vaginalis, also known as trich, causes no symptoms in about 70% of those infected. Even when asymptomatic, trich is linked to a host of bad health outcomes, including increased susceptibility to HIV, prostate cancer in men and infertility and pregnancy complications in women. Trich is easily ...

Most climate models do not yet account for a new UC Riverside discovery: methane traps a great deal of heat in Earth’s atmosphere, but also creates cooling clouds that offset 30% of the heat. Greenhouse gases like methane create a kind of blanket in the atmosphere, trapping heat from Earth’s surface, called longwave energy, and preventing it from radiating out into space. This makes the planet hotter.  “A blanket doesn’t create heat, unless it’s electric. You feel warm because ...

INDIANAPOLIS, March 27, 2023 — Nobody likes needles, but they’re necessary for delivering many vaccines and biologics into the body. But what if those could be puffed through the skin instead, with just a little pressure, like being hit in the arm with a foam toy? Today, scientists report steps toward making that a reality. Using powdered vaccines that don’t require refrigeration and a system driven by compressed gas, their “MOF-Jet” could easily deliver therapeutics against cancer and other diseases in a relatively painless way. The researchers will present their results at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS ...

INDIANAPOLIS, March 27, 2023 — Squids and octopuses are masters of camouflage, blending into their environment to evade predators or surprise prey. Some aspects of how these cephalopods become reversibly transparent are still “unclear,” largely because researchers can’t culture cephalopod skin cells in the lab. Today, however, researchers report that they have replicated the tunable transparency of some squid skin cells in mammalian cells, which can be cultured. The work could not only shed light on basic squid biology, but ...

Statement Highlights: As health care professionals, researchers and consumers increasingly use genetic testing, they are uncovering incidental genetic abnormalities, or variants, that are associated with cardiovascular diseases. The statement writing committee cautions that incidentally identified single gene variants may or may not be risk factors for disease, so it is important to interpret them correctly and cautiously. The new scientific statement offers a framework to support health care professionals in appropriately assessing individual genetic variants, communicating findings with patients and families, and, when ...

Since the Paris Agreement to combat global warming was reached in 2015, many countries have committed to becoming climate neutral, i.e., achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. The world's largest agricultural country, China, is also committed to join the green transition. As the largest agricultural country, China is also the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, yet it has set itself a target of achieving carbon neutrality by 2060.  According to Professor and Head of Land-CRAFT at Department of Agroecology at Aarhus University Klaus Butterbach-Bahl, this places huge demands on agricultural systems: "Agriculture in China accounts ...

A team of botanists from Ecuador, Germany, and the United States has described two new species of carnivorous plants with striking appearance. They are part of the butterworts (genus Pinguicula), a group of flowering plants with about 115 species that can catch and digest small insects with their sticky leaves. Whereas the majority of butterwort species is distributed in the northern hemisphere, these new species were discovered in the high Andes of southern Ecuador, close to the border with Peru. Carnivorous plants use animals (usually small insects) as an additional source of nutrients ...

The new projection is significantly lower than several prominent population estimates, including those of the United Nations. The researchers go further to say that if the world takes a “Giant Leap” in investment in economic development, education and health then global population could peak at 8.5 billion people by the middle of the century. The new projections by researchers from the Earth4All initiative for the Global Challenges Foundation is published as a working paper People and Planet, 21st Century Sustainable Population Scenarios and Possible Living Standards Within Planetary Boundaries. The team used a new system ...