In recent years, the escalating impact of global warming has prompted efforts to reverse troubling trends, often by planting trees to capture and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it. New research from a team led by Young Zhou, from the Quinney College of Natural Resources and the Ecology Center, shows that, in addition to trees, humble grasses also play an essential role in capturing carbon — more important than previously thought. A recent initiative set its sights on capturing carbon in tropical savannas, an ecosystem characterized by shared space of trees and grasses. The project initiated ...

Mental health and substance use disorders are prevalent among people experiencing homelessness, yet access to care for these health issues is challenging for people living on the streets. Now, a new survey conducted by a team of researchers from USC Street Medicine found that, in California, street medicine programs are helping to fill this gap, delivering critical, high-level mental health and substance use treatments to the state’s unsheltered population. The survey, published in Community Mental Health Journal, shows that street medicine has the potential to serve as the basis for a strategy to expand access to behavioral health care for people who ...

A team of scientists from the University of California, Irvine, believe they have discovered a special antibody which may lead to a treatment for Retinitis Pigmentosa, a condition that causes loss of central vision, as well as night and color vision.  The study, Structural basis for the allosteric modulation of rhodopsin by nanobody binding to its extracellular domain, was published in Nature Communications. Authors of the study were Arum Wu, PhD, David Salom, PhD, John D. Hong, Aleksander Tworak, PhD, Philip D. Kiser, PharmD, PhD, and Krzysztof Palczewski, PhD, in the Department ...

Women who use non-steroidal anti-inflammatory painkillers alongside hormonal contraception appear to be at a small increased risk of blood clots known as venous thromboembolism (VTE), finds a large Danish study published by The BMJ today. The risk was greater in women using combined oral contraceptives containing third or fourth generation progestins, but smaller in women using progestin-only tablets, implants and coils, alongside the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) ibuprofen, diclofenac, and naproxen. The researchers stress ...

High intake of several emulsifiers (part of the ‘E numbers’ group of food additives), widely used in industrially processed foods to improve texture and extend shelf-life, is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), suggests a study published by The BMJ today. Given that these food additives are used ubiquitously in thousands of widely  consumed ultra-processed food products, these findings have important public health implications, say the researchers. Emulsifiers are often added to processed and packaged foods such as pastries, cakes, ice cream, ...

Rochester Institute of Technology researchers are improving non-invasive treatment options for degenerative disc disease, an ailment that impacts 3 million adults yearly in the U.S., according to the Mayo Clinic. Using state-of-the-art gene editing technology in mesenchymal stem cells, the researchers will add to the growing field of regenerative medicine, the process of producing cellular therapies to alleviate pain and lack of mobility. Karin Wuertz-Kozak and Thomas Gaborski, faculty-researchers in RIT’s Kate Gleason College of Engineering, recently received a National Institutes of Health award for “Extracellular vesicles produced by CRISPR-activated ...

As the second most popular social media platform in the world, YouTube frequently attracts criticism. In particular, critics argue that its algorithmic recommendations facilitates radicalization and extremism by sending users down "rabbit holes" of harmful content. According to a new study published in Science Advances, however, exposure to alternative and extremist video channels on YouTube is not driven by recommendations. Instead, most consumption of these channels on the platform can be attributed to a small group of users high in gender and racial resentment who ...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 6, 2023 – Though a cornerstone of thermodynamics, entropy remains one of the most vexing concepts to teach budding physicists in the classroom. As a result, many people oversimplify the concept as the amount of disorder in the universe, neglecting its underlying quantitative nature.  In The Physics Teacher, co-published by AIP Publishing and the American Association of Physics Teachers, researcher T. Ryan Rogers designed a hand-held model to demonstrate the concept of entropy for students. Using everyday materials, Rogers’ approach allows students to confront ...

MIAMI, FLORIDA (Sept. 6, 2023) – A new study from researchers with Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and other top-tier cancer centers highlights the vital role that the immune system plays in determining the duration of patients’ remission from multiple myeloma. Their findings, published Sept. 2 in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications, suggest that the health of patients’ immune systems may determine how long they will experience progression-free survival from this deadly blood cancer. Additionally, the researchers were pleasantly surprised to discover that patients’ immune systems ...

As part of a National Institutes of Health initiative to improve maternal health and pregnancy outcomes nationwide, Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian will play a pivotal role as collaborators with Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC) as one of 10 nationwide IMPROVE (Implementing a Maternal Health and Pregnancy Outcomes Vision for Everyone) Maternal Health Research Centers of Excellence.  The research center, called the NY Community-Hospital-Academic Maternal Health Equity Partnerships, or NY-CHAMP, ...

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, has announced the publication of the first issue of Proceedings of the ACM on Networking (PACMNET), a new peer-reviewed journal. Issued quarterly, PACMNET publishes original research papers on new technologies, novel experimentation, creative use of networking technologies, and new insights into network management. The journal features articles on system design and performance evaluations of computer networks, experience learned from deployments, traffic engineering, and network programmability from academic experts as well as practitioners working in ...

The Aero Club of Southern California has awarded the Howard Hughes Memorial Award to NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. The award will be accepted at a ceremony Wednesday, Sept. 6, at the California Club in Los Angeles. The Howard Hughes Memorial Award honors exceptional leaders who have advanced the fields of aviation or aerospace technology. Hughes’ first cousin, William R. Lummis, established the award in 1978, and the Aero Club of Southern California presents the award annually. Accepting the award will be Mike Menzel, the NASA mission systems engineer for Webb at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “On behalf of the entire ...

MIAMI, FLORIDA (Sept. 6, 2023) – The National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) has awarded Justin Taylor, M.D., a researcher at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, a five-year grant totaling $1.92 million for his work to better define the role of XPO1 (Exportin-1) in cancer. XPO1 is a nuclear export protein shown to play a role in many cancer types, including solid tumors and blood cancers. NIGMS is the arm of the National Institutes of Health that supports basic research aimed at increasing the understanding of biological processes and laying the foundation for advances ...

BUFFALO, N.Y.— Treating newly diagnosed Type 1 diabetes patients with semaglutide (trade names Ozempic, Wegovy and Rybelsus) may drastically reduce or even eliminate their need for injected insulin.   Those are the remarkable findings of a small University at Buffalo study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine and published online on Sept. 6.   “Our findings from this admittedly small study are, nevertheless, so promising for newly diagnosed Type 1 diabetes patients ...

PLYMOUTH MEETING, PA [September 6, 2023] — New research in the September 2023 issue of JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network reveals an alarming lack of access for non-English speakers who called hospitals across the United States looking for information on cancer care services. The researchers from University of Michigan set up a series of simulated patient calls to various hospital general information lines, speaking in English, Spanish, and Mandarin. Nearly all of the English-speaking callers were provided with next steps to access cancer care—such as a telephone number for presumed clinic or transfer to the ...

MINNEAPOLIS – A study of twins shows that having a concussion early in life is tied to having lower scores on tests of thinking and memory skills decades later as well as having more rapid decline in those scores than twins who did not have a concussion, or traumatic brain injury (TBI). The study is published in the September 6, 2023, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. “These findings indicate that even people with traumatic brain injuries in earlier life who appear to have fully recovered from ...

Barriers to accessing potentially life-saving support persist, according to new research into suicidality in the LGBTIQA+ community.  An RMIT-led study with Switchboard, Roses in the Ocean and University of Sydney interviewed members of the LGBTQA+SB community to understand their lived experiences of suicidal thoughts and behaviours, and uncover factors that protect people at these times of distress.  The acronym SB in LGBTIQA+SB stands for sistergirl and brotherboy, acknowledging the trans women and trans men of First ...

Largescale changes to the global food system could enable people not only to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but to achieve net negative emissions by 2050. A team led by Maya Almaraz of Princeton University and Benjamin Houlton of Cornell University report these findings in a new study published September 6 in the open-access journal PLOS Climate. Currently, the global food system is responsible for about one-third of greenhouse gas emissions. There are multiple opportunities within the food system to reduce emissions, and some have proposed that agriculture could act as a sink to remove carbon dioxide from the ...

US adults who don't trust university-based research are less likely to see climate change as an important problem, indicating a need to develop 'a culture of trust'.  #### Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000147 Article Title: Why don’t Americans trust university researchers and why it matters for climate change Author Countries: UK, USA Funding: RD’s work is supported by the Quadrature Climate Foundation [01-21-000149] and Keynes Fund [JHVH]. RMA and DE’s work is supported by Caltech’s ...

Almost 6 in 10 female adolescents in India are anaemic, with 21 of 28 states reporting increased prevalence since 2015, per national surveys. #### Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/globalpublichealth/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgph.0002117 Article Title: Is the burden of anaemia among Indian adolescent women increasing? Evidence from Indian Demographic and Health Surveys (2015–21) Author Countries: India Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. END ...

Autistic and neurodivergent workers report experiencing unique pressures to mask traits, to avoid negative reactions from colleagues and employers ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0290001 Article Title: The workplace masking experiences of autistic, non-autistic neurodivergent and neurotypical adults in the UK Author Countries: UK Funding: The present study was funded by an Autistica research grant (REF: 7263) to AR and BH (https://www.autistica.org.uk/). Research at the UCL Centre for Research ...

Australian patients with chronic health issues prescribed medical cannabis showed significant improvements in overall health-related quality of life and fatigue in the first three months of use, along with improvements in anxiety, depression, and pain. Interestingly, cannabis therapy did not seem to improve reported sleep disturbances, according to a study published September 6, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Margaret-Ann Tait from the University of Sydney, Australia, and colleagues. Since 2016 in Australia, medical cannabis has been approved for prescription to patients with health conditions unresponsive to other treatment. ...

Experiencing negatively-perceived emotions might prompt people to withdraw from a social group - specifically, shame for individualistic societies, but anger for more collectivistic cultures ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0289918 Article Title: Shame and anger differentially predict disidentification between collectivistic and individualistic societies Author Countries: Germany, Japan, Canada Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. END ...

In 2019, an ESPN report explored the reasons so many football wide receivers prefer to wear jersey numbers between 10 and 19. The story found that many of the athletes simply believed the lower numbers made them look faster and slimmer than the higher numbers traditionally assigned to their position. Ladan Shams, a UCLA professor of psychology and neuroscience, was quoted in the story and offered a psychological explanation for the phenomenon. But she emphasized that there was no scientific research on the topic. Now there is. A new UCLA study published in the journal PLOS ONE reveals that those wide receivers were onto ...

In an analysis of samples from patients with rheumatic diseases, researchers from across Mass General Brigham found evidence that prior infection with a pre-pandemic coronavirus that causes the common cold may help set the stage for the development of long COVID The study points to a potential marker of long COVID, which could inform clinical trials and may help explain why some patients develop long COVID A patient population at increased risk for severe COVID-19 may help researchers understand why some people develop long-term, persistent symptoms (long COVID) while others do not. Rheumatologists from Brigham and ...