Using NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, which launched in 2004, scientists have discovered a black hole in a distant galaxy repeatedly nibbling on a Sun-like star. The object heralds a new era of Swift science made possible by a novel method for analyzing data from the satellite’s X-ray Telescope (XRT). “Swift’s hardware, software, and the skills of its international team have enabled it to adapt to new areas of astrophysics over its lifetime,” said Phil Evans, an astrophysicist at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom and longtime Swift team member. “Neil Gehrels, the ...

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (09/07/2023) — Recently published research from the University of Minnesota Medical School suggests individuals with hepatitis C should consider revaccination for hepatitis B. The study was published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases. Previous research has shown individuals with hepatitis C infection have a lower response to the hepatitis B virus (HBV) vaccine.  “This study has broad implications for public health in hepatitis-infected individuals,” said Jose Debes, MD, PhD, an ...

Utility companies are generally well-equipped to handle routine blackouts, but often struggle with extreme weather events like hurricanes.  Conventional hurricane power-outage prediction models often produce incomplete or incorrect results, hampering companies’ abilities to prepare to restore power as quickly as possible, especially in cities that are susceptible to prolonged hurricane-induced power outages.  New research from NYU Tandon School of Engineering may help solve that problem. By combining wind speed and precipitation ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — When dairy cows are fed diets with reduced protein concentrations — aimed at decreased environmental nitrogen pollution from their manure such as nitrate leaching, nutrient-laden run-off and ammonia volatilization — their milk production can suffer. Supplementing the amino acid histidine may help in maintaining, and even increasing, milk and milk-protein yields. That’s the conclusion of a new study conducted by an international research team led by Alexander Hristov, Penn State distinguished ...

From the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, “monstrous births”—malformed or anomalous fetuses—were, to Western medicine, an object of superstition. In 19th-century America, they became instead an object of the “modern scientific study of monstrosity,” a field formalized by French scientist Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. This clinical turn was positioned against the backdrop of social, political, and economic activity that codified laws governing slavery, citizenship, immigration, family, ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Every day we encounter circumstances we consider wrong: a starving child, a corrupt politician, an unfaithful partner, a fraudulent scientist. These examples highlight several moral issues, including matters of care, fairness and betrayal. But does anything unite them all? Philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists have passionately argued whether moral judgments share something distinctive that separates them from non-moral matters. Moral monists claim that morality is unified by a common characteristic and that all moral issues involve concerns about harm. Pluralists, in contrast, argue that moral ...

Large-bodied mammals play crucial roles in ecosystems. They create habitats, serve as prey, help plants thrive, and even influence how wildfires burn. But now, fewer than half of the large mammal species that were alive 50,000 years ago exist today, and those that remain are threatened with extinction from intensifying climate change and human activities. While mammal extinctions are well-documented, very little research has explored the impact those losses had on the nuanced ways in which mammal communities interact with their environments. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are using a novel methodology to investigate how mammals’ ability to function in their environments ...

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. – September 07, 2023) As many as 5.8 million Americans are currently living with Alzheimer’s disease, a neurodegenerative condition associated with progressive cognitive decline, including loss of memory capabilities . Protein aggregates, composed of beta-amyloid or other proteins, form in the brains of individuals with Alzheimer’s. These beta-amyloid plaques appear to be a significant contributor to the disease. St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists uncovered a subset of immune cells that appears to slow this beta-amyloid plaque accumulation ...

KERI succeeded in transferring the ‘Ion Implantation and its Evaluation Technology for the SiC (silicon carbide) Power Semiconductor’ to a Hungarian company.   Power semiconductors are key components in electricity and electronics, acting as the muscles of the human body by regulating the direction of current and controlling power conversion. There are many different materials for power semiconductors. Among them, SiC is receiving the most attention due to its excellent material properties, including high durability and excellent power efficiency. When SiC power ...

By A.J. Hostetler Led by the director of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Stravitz-Sanyal Institute of Liver Disease and Metabolic Health, a consortium studying noninvasive tests for liver disease has demonstrated the effectiveness of five noninvasive tests, a significant milestone on the path to regulatory approval. In an article published today in the journal Nature Medicine, institute director Arun Sanyal, M.D., a professor at the VCU School of Medicine, and colleagues report on five biomarker tests that potentially could be given to patients who may have ...

About The Study: In this randomized clinical trial including 64 transgender and gender-diverse adults, immediate testosterone therapy compared with no treatment significantly reduced gender dysphoria, depression, and suicidality in transgender and gender-diverse individuals desiring testosterone therapy.  Authors: Ada S. Cheung, M.B.B.S., Ph.D., of Austin Health in Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia, 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.2023.31919) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for ...

About The Study: Long- and short-term heat exposure during pregnancy was associated with higher risk of severe maternal morbidity in this study with 403,000 pregnancies from 2008 to 2018 in Southern California. These results might have important implications for severe maternal morbidity prevention, particularly in a changing climate.  Authors: Jun Wu, Ph.D., of the University of California, Irvine, 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.2023.32780) Editor’s Note: Please ...

About The Study: Calcium channel blocker use was adversely associated with glaucoma prevalence in this study of 427,000 adult UK Biobank participants, suggesting that calcium channel blockers may represent an important modifiable risk factor for glaucoma, potentially through an intraocular pressure–independent mechanism.  Authors: Alan Kastner, M.D., M.Sc., of the Moorfields Eye Hospital National Health Service Foundation Trust and University College London Institute of Ophthalmology in London, 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/jamaophthalmol.2023.3877) Editor’s ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Sept. 7, 2023 –  Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia that affects more than 6.5 million Americans, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. To find effective treatments and slow the progression of this debilitating disease, researchers have made much progress in developing new drugs that target beta-amyloid plaques, one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease. Beta-amyloid plaques are accumulations of brain protein fragments, which can impact cognition. However, these recent drugs have only yielded modest results. Now, ...

A star like our own Sun in a nearby galaxy is gradually being eaten away by a small but ravenous black hole, losing the equivalent mass of three Earths every time it passes close. The discovery by University of Leicester astronomers is reported today (7 September) in Nature Astronomy and provides a ‘missing link’ in our knowledge of black holes disrupting orbiting stars. It suggests a whole menagerie of stars in the process of being consumed that still lie undiscovered. The team was supported by the UK Space Agency and the UK Science and technology Facilities Council (STFC). The astronomers were alerted to ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- RNA vaccines against Covid-19 have proven effective at reducing the severity of disease. However, a team of researchers at MIT is working on making them even better. By tweaking the design of the vaccines, the researchers showed that they could generate Covid-19 RNA vaccines that produce a stronger immune response, at a lower dose, in mice. Adjuvants are molecules commonly used to increase the immune response to vaccines, but they haven’t yet been used in RNA vaccines.  In this study, the MIT researchers engineered both the nanoparticles used to deliver the Covid-19 antigen, and the antigen itself, to boost the immune response, ...

Patescibacteria are a group of puzzling, tiny microbes whose manner of staying alive has been difficult to fathom. Scientists can cultivate only a few types, yet these bacteria are a diverse group found in many environments. The few types of Patescibacteria that researchers can grow in the lab reside on the cell surfaces of another, larger host microbe. Patescibacteria in general lack the genes required to make many molecules necessary for life, such as the amino acids that make up proteins, the fatty acids that form membranes, and the nucleotides in DNA. This has led researchers ...

A vital component of the batteries at the heart of electric vehicles and grid energy storage, lithium is key to a clean energy future. But producing the silvery-white metal comes with significant environmental costs. Among them is the vast amount of land and time needed to extract lithium from briny water, with large operations running into the dozens of square miles and often requiring over a year to begin production. Now, researchers at Princeton have developed an extraction technique that slashes the amount of land and time needed for lithium production. The researchers say their system ...

New research highlights that genetic background can affect individual responses to GLP-1R agonist drugs.   Researchers reveal for the first time that high blood sugar levels in type 2 diabetes can play a causal role in lung disorders.   The study sheds light on the role of the digestive system, including the small intestine, ileum, and colon, in controlling blood sugar levels.   This is the largest-ever study into the genetic basis of random "round-the-clock" blood sugar levels.  Groundbreaking research published today in Nature Genetics describes the largest-ever study into the genetics of random "round-the-clock" ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Oregon State University research has uncovered a possible clue as to why glaciers that terminate at the sea are retreating at unprecedented rates: the bursting of tiny, pressurized bubbles in underwater ice. Published today in Nature Geoscience, the study shows that glacier ice, characterized by pockets of pressurized air, melts much more quickly than the bubble-free sea ice or manufactured ice typically used to research melt rates at the ocean-ice interface of tidewater glaciers. Tidewater glaciers are rapidly retreating, the authors say, resulting in ice mass loss in Greenland, the Antarctic Peninsula and other glacierized regions around the globe. “We ...

Researchers from Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) show that the protein involved in Parkinson’s disease, α-synuclein, can propagate through the lymphatic system of the brain before it aggregates   Tokyo, Japan – In many neurodegenerative disorders, abnormal proteins progressively aggregate and propagate in the brain. But what comes first, aggregation or propagation? Researchers from Japan share some new insights about the mechanism involved in Parkinson’s disease.   In a study published ...

A new study from the Department of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University found that the extinction of large prey, upon which human nutrition had been based, compelled prehistoric humans to develop improved weapons for hunting small prey, thereby driving evolutionary adaptations. The study reviews the evolution of hunting weapons from wooden-tipped and stone-tipped spears, all the way to the sophisticated bow and arrow of a later era, correlating it with changes in prey size and human culture and physiology.   The researchers explain: "This study was designed to examine a broader unifying hypothesis, which we proposed in a previous paper published in ...

A review paper by scientists at the Chonnam National University summarized the recent research on bioprinting methods for fabricating bioengineered blood vessel models. The new review paper, published on Aug. 1 in the journal Cyborg and Bionic Systems, provided an overview on the 3D bioprinting methods for fabricating bioengineered blood vessel models and described possible advancements from tubular to vascular models. “3D bioprinting technology provides a more precise and effective means for investigating biological processes and developing new treatments than traditional 2D cell cultures. Therefore, it is a crucial tool ...

Hyperthermia is a potentially non-invasive cancer treatment that capitalizes on the heat intolerance of cancer cells, which are more sensitive than normal cells. In order to induce effective hyperthermia, it is necessary to apply the appropriate temperature according to the cell type, i.e., to comprehensively study the thermal toxicity of the cells, which requires accurate regulation of the culture temperature. Researchers from Keio University in Japan have developed a cell culture system with temperature ...

Research Highlights: More than half of adults (55%) with uncontrolled blood pressure who enrolled in a digital monitoring program that connected patients with clinical advice and included a bilingual app paired with at-home blood pressure monitors had controlled final blood pressure measurements after participating for least 90 days. Patients using the Spanish-language version of the digital monitoring program demonstrated more improvement in blood pressure control than patients who used the English-language version. Embargoed until 6:30a.m. CT/7:30 a.m. ET Thursday, Sept. 7, 2023 BOSTON, Sept. 7, 2023 — Over half of patients ...