When a family of five-ton elephants stomps and chomps its way through your crops, there’s only one winner. And in the central African nation of Gabon, farmers are getting fed up with the giant animals trampling their fields—and their livelihoods. In conservation terms, Gabon is a success story—protected areas and tough anti-poaching measures have allowed the numbers of critically endangered African forest elephants to stabilize. But with food prices rising, anti-elephant protests have been spiking too. “Some people cannot farm anymore—the elephants are eating so much of their crops,” Gabon’s environment minister ...

SEATTLE – Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) researchers have constructed biological body mass index (BMI) measures that offer a more accurate representation of metabolic health and are more varied, informative and actionable than the traditional, long-used BMI equation. The work was published in the journal Nature Medicine.  For decades, clinicians have relied on BMI as a crude tool to classify individuals as underweight, normal weight, overweight or obese. BMI scores are calculated by dividing a person’s weight in kilograms by height in meters squared. About 30 percent of the population is misclassified by this approach. Despite its limitations, ...

PHILADELPHIA (March 20, 2023) – The sense of taste is among the first to come into contact with food before we ingest it, but whether animals can taste basic or alkaline food and how they do it remained unclear until now. A research group led by Yali Zhang, PhD, Principal Investigator at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, recently addressed this significant question, as they similarly did for sour taste in 2021 on the lower end of the pH scale. Their work, published today in Nature Metabolism and highlighted in Nature, identified a previously unknown chloride ...

For the first time, scientists at the University of Sydney and the University of Basel in Switzerland have demonstrated the ability to manipulate and identify small numbers of interacting photons – packets of light energy – with high correlation. This unprecedented achievement represents an important landmark in the development of quantum technologies. It is published today in Nature Physics. Stimulated light emission, postulated by Einstein in 1916, is widely observed for large numbers of photons and laid the basis for the invention of the laser. With this research, stimulated emission has now been observed for single photons. Specifically, ...

Muscle degeneration, the most prevalent cause of frailty in hereditary diseases and aging, could be caused by a deficiency in one key enzyme in a lipid biosynthesis pathway. Researchers at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences characterize how the enzyme PCYT2 affects muscle health in disease and aging in laboratory mouse models. The findings are published on March 20 in Nature Metabolism.   Muscle degeneration in inherited diseases and aging affects hundreds of millions of people ...

Figuring out a lie has never been easier: forget body language or how convincing the message is, just listen to how detailed and rich the story is. This is the core of a new approach to lie detection, say researchers from the University of Amsterdam's Leugenlab (LieLab) in collaboration with researchers from Maastricht University and Tilburg University.  Since 9/11, security staff have been trained to recognise no less than 92 signals that someone might be lying. Bruno Verschuere, associate professor of Forensic Psychology: ‘This ...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — In a major breakthrough in the fields of nanophotonics and ultrafast optics, a Sandia National Laboratories research team has demonstrated the ability to dynamically steer light pulses from conventional, so-called incoherent light sources. This ability to control light using a semiconductor device could allow low-power, relatively inexpensive sources like LEDs or flashlight bulbs to replace more powerful laser beams in new technologies such as holograms, remote sensing, self-driving cars and high-speed communication. “What we’ve done is show that ...

Yevette Richards, Associate Professor, History and Art History, received funding to write a book about northern Louisiana.  The book will be a regional study of how kinship networks were central to the production of systemic racist terror and the subsequent erasure of its memory.   Richards will investigate a broad spectrum of racist violence from Reconstruction to the 1940s. She will show how white family networks functioned over time and across multiple parishes to serve as both incubators of racist violence and shields ...

Media contacts:  Robin Marks, 628-399-0370  Robin.Marks@ucsf.edu | @UCSF  Julie Langelier, 415-734-5000  julie.langelier@gladstone.org | @GladstoneInst  New Data Show Therapies May Activate Lymph Nodes to Produce Tumor-Tackling T Cells  Cancer treatment routinely involves taking out lymph nodes near the tumor in case they contain metastatic cancer cells. But new findings from a clinical trial by researchers at UC San Francisco and Gladstone Institutes shows that immunotherapy can activate tumor-fighting T cells in nearby lymph nodes.     The ...

Shigellosis, a highly contagious diarrheal disease, is caused by Shigella bacteria circulating in industrializing countries but also in industrialized countries. Scientists from the French National Reference Center for Escherichia coli, Shigella and Salmonella at the Institut Pasteur who have been monitoring Shigella in France for several years have detected the emergence of extensively drug-resistant (XDR) strains of Shigella sonnei. Bacterial genome sequencing and case characteristics (with most cases being reported in male adults) suggest that these strains, which originated in South Asia, mainly spread among men who have sex with men (MSM). This observation needs to ...

Motivated by the limitations of scanning approaches to photoacoustic microscopy, an international group supervised by Emmanuel Bossy of Université Grenoble Alpes experimented with structured illumination using known and unknown speckle patterns. One of their experiments produced the first demonstration of the use of blind structured illumination for photoacoustic imaging through a diffuser. The group’s research was published Jan. 11 in Intelligent Computing, a Science Partner Journal. The research article concludes that “photoacoustic microscopy can harness many of the structured illumination methods developed initially for pure optical ...

More than five million people in the United States live with some form of paralysis and may encounter difficulties completing everyday tasks, like grabbing a glass of water or putting on clothes. New research from Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute (RI) aims to increase autonomy for individuals with such motor impairments by introducing a head-worn device that will help them control a mobile manipulator. Teleoperated mobile manipulators can aid individuals in completing daily activities, but many existing technologies like hand-operated joysticks or web interfaces require a user to have substantial fine motor skills to effectively ...

People whose mothers are overweight during pregnancy and nursing may become obese as adults because early overnutrition rewires developing brains to crave unhealthy food, according to a Rutgers study in Molecular Metabolism. Rutgers researchers traced this link from mother to child in mice with an experiment that began by letting some mice get obese on unlimited high-fat food during pregnancy and breastfeeding while keeping others slim on limitless healthy food. They found that mice born to obese mothers stay slim in adulthood on unlimited healthy food but overeat more than mice born to lean mothers when given access to unhealthy food. The ...

Efforts to understand the effects of immigration enforcement on crime have largely been informed by police crime statistics. In a new study, researchers used longitudinal data from the U.S. National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) to assess the impact of federal immigration policies on local communities. They found that activation of two policies—the Secure Communities Program and 287(g) task force agreements—significantly increased the risk of violent victimization among Latinos. The study, by researchers at Penn State University and the University of Maryland (UMD) at College Park, ...

BOSTON, MA -- Research published today in the JAMA Internal Medicine finds that developing postoperative delirium is associated with a 40% faster rate of cognitive decline over those who do not develop delirium. “Delirium is associated with faster cognitive decline,” said Zachary J. Kunicki, PhD, MS, MPH Assistant Professor located at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, the first author.  “Whether delirium causes this faster rate of decline, or is simply a marker of those who are at risk of experiencing faster ...

About The Study: The findings of this study suggest a consistent, widespread, and significant decline in activity following the onset of COVID-19 in the United States. Vulnerable populations, including individuals at a lower socioeconomic status and those reporting worse mental health in the early COVID-19 period, were at the highest risk of reduced activity. The researchers found a significant decline in daily step counts that persisted even after most COVID-19–related restrictions were relaxed, suggesting COVID-19 affected long-term behavioral choices. It is currently unknown whether this reduction is steps is clinically meaningful over time.  Authors: Evan L. ...

About The Study: The results of this study of National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded surgeons suggest that women surgeons remained underrepresented among surgeon-scientists over a 25-year period despite early career success in receiving NIH funding. These findings suggest that substantial additional support for women surgeon-scientists is necessary to achieve a gender-diverse surgical research workforce.  Authors: Mytien Nguyen, M.S., of the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, 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.2023.3630) Editor’s ...

BOSTON – In April 2021, new federal rules went into effect mandating that healthcare providers make nearly all test results and clinical notes immediately available to patients. Evidence suggests that patients may gain important clinical benefits by reviewing their medical records, and access through electronic patient portals has been advocated as a strategy for empowering patients to manage their health care and for strengthening patient-clinician relationships. However, concerns remain about the effects of releasing test results to patients before clinicians offer counsel or interpretation.  In ...

SAN FRANCISCO – The Public Library of Science (PLOS) welcomes several new participants to its ongoing three-year consortial agreement with Center for Research Libraries (CRL) and the Northeast Research Libraries (NERL) program. Joining twenty fellow member institutions who signed on during the first year, newly participating institutions for the second year include Duke University, Macalester College, University of Arizona, University of Denver, and University of Southern California, University of Texas at Austin, and University of Washington. This agreement provides researchers with unlimited publishing privileges in PLOS journals without incurring fees. All PLOS journals are underpinned ...

Researchers from Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) have uncovered a link between cardiovascular disease and chronic kidney disease, revealing novel disease biomarkers and therapeutic targets Tokyo, Japan – Chronic kidney disease is linked to the formation of mineral deposits on blood vessel walls, known as “calcification”, causing cardiovascular disease. Small extracellular vesicles (sEVs)—small, enclosed structures outside cells—can transmit signaling molecules between cells, but their biological roles are not fully understood. Now, “malicious” sEVs ...

Published on 10 March 2023 in Agronomy journal, the TMG Research gGmbH study team traced a highly destructive desert locust invasion in the Eastern Africa and Horn region between 2019-2021. Ethiopia and Kenya sprayed well over a million hectares of territory with damaging nerve agents malathion and chlorpyrifos, both from the organophosphate family of pesticides. The scale of the invasion – and subsequent choice of control measures – was magnified by unprecedented breeding due to changing climate conditions. Due to the inaccessible location of the breeding grounds, the scale of the threat ...

Embargoed press materials are now available for Discover BMB, the annual meeting of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Top scientists and educators in the field will gather at the meeting, held March 25–28 in Seattle.   Reporters are invited to attend an exciting lineup of in-person scientific sessions in Seattle or access press materials electronically. Register now or find more information in the #DiscoverBMB newsroom.   Explore the schedule at a glance, full program, award lectures, or symposium sessions to see all the exciting research topics that will be covered at #DiscoverBMB.   Featured research findings are highlighted below:   New ...

They published their work on Feb. 6 in Energy Material Advances.   “Lithium-ion batteries are considered one of the most promising next-generation energy storage technologies,” said paper author Hui Xing, associate professor with MOE Key Laboratory of Material Physics and Chemistry under Extraordinary, Northwestern Polytechnical University. “to fully understand the dynamics of lithium dendrite growth during electrodeposition to inhibit the growth of lithium dendrite structure has been important in the field of battery safety and energy storage.”   Xing explained that Previous ...

HOUSTON – (March 20, 2023) – Tumor cells won’t show their true selves in a petri dish, isolated from other cells. To find out how they really behave, Rice University researchers developed an upgraded tumor model that houses osteosarcoma cells beside immune cells known as macrophages inside a three-dimensional structure engineered to mimic bone. Using the model, bioengineer Antonios Mikos and collaborators found that the body’s immune response can make tumor cells ...

Certain personality traits are associated with satisfaction in life, and despite the changes people may experience in social roles and responsibilities over the course of their adult lives, that association is stable regardless of age, according to research published by the American Psychological Association. “Many studies have shown that people with certain personality profiles are more satisfied with their life than others. Yet, it had not been extensively studied whether this holds true across the lifespan. For example, extraverted – that is sociable, talkative – people might be particularly happy in young adulthood, ...