Research conducted at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health detected significant levels of metals in the blood and urine among marijuana users, concluding that marijuana may be an important and under-recognized source of lead and cadmium exposure. This is among the first studies to report biomarker metal levels among marijuana users and most likely the largest study to date, that links self-reported marijuana use to internal measures of metal exposure, rather than just ...

Researchers led by Hiroshi Ohno at the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences (IMS) in Japan have discovered a type of gut bacteria that might help improve insulin resistance, and thus protect against the development of obesity and type-2 diabetes. The study, published August 30 in the scientific journal Nature, involved genetic and metabolic analysis of human fecal microbiomes and then corroborating experiments in obese mice. Insulin is a hormone released by the pancreas in response to blood sugar. Normally, it helps get the sugar ...

Francis Crick Institute press release Under strict embargo: 16:00hrs BST 30 August 2023 Peer reviewed Experimental study Cells Researchers identify stem cells in the thymus for the first time Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute have identified stem cells in the human thymus for the first time. These cells represent a potential new target to understand immune diseases and cancer and how to boost the immune system. The thymus is a gland located in the front part of the chest, the place where thymocytes (the cells in the thymus) mature into T ...

UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 16:00 BST / 11:00 ET WEDNESDAY 30 AUGUST 2023 Researchers have developed a miniature battery that could be used to power tiny devices integrated into human tissues. The design uses an ionic gradient across a chain of droplets – inspired by how electric eels generate electricity. The device was able to regulate the biological activity of human neurons. This could open the way to the development of tiny bio-integrated devices, with a range of applications in biology and medicine. University of Oxford researchers have made a significant step towards realising miniature ...

A member of an important class of ion channel proteins can transiently rearrange itself into a larger structure with dramatically altered properties, according to a study led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine. The discovery is a significant advance in cell biology, likely solves a long-standing mystery about an unusual feature of some ion channels and has implications for the development of drugs targeting these proteins and for drug delivery. Ion channels are ubiquitous in the cell membranes of higher organisms. ...

  AURORA, Colo. (Aug. 30, 2023) – Scientists at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus have made a `paradigm shifting’ discovery on the mechanisms required for learning and memory that could lead to new therapies for Alzheimer’s disease and potentially Down syndrome. The study was published Wednesday in the journal Nature. For over 30 years, researchers believed that LTP or long-term potentiation, which is crucial for learning and memory, required enzymatic actions by an enzyme known as CaMKII. But a team of researchers led by Ulli ...

Modern medicine depends on antibiotics to treat infections by disabling targets inside bacterial cells. Once inside these cells, antibiotics bind to certain sites on specific enzyme targets to stop bacterial growth. Randomly occurring changes (mutations) in the genes for these targets occur naturally, in some cases making the target harder for the antibiotic to attach to, and that bacterial version resistant to treatment. For this reason, the more antibiotics have been used over time, the greater the chances that bacterial populations will evolve to have mutants resistant to existing antibiotics, and the more urgent the call for new approaches ...

Coastal wetlands and coral reef islands will struggle to grow fast enough to keep pace with rising sea levels driven by climate change, according to a new study published in Nature. The study was conducted by an international team that includes a Tulane University researcher. The findings show that the future of marshes and other low-lying coastal areas depend heavily on whether global warming can be limited to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) as formulated by the Paris Agreement. A key finding of the paper is that coastal marshes, mangroves, ...

Researchers have a new way to connect quantum devices over long distances, a necessary step toward allowing the technology to play a role in future communications systems. While today’s classical data signals can get amplified across a city or an ocean, quantum signals cannot. They must be repeated in intervals — that is, stopped, copied and passed on by specialized machines called quantum repeaters. Many experts believe these quantum repeaters will play a key role in future communication networks, allowing enhanced security and enabling connections between remote quantum computers. The Princeton study, published Aug. ...

Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of racial disparities in mortality between Black and white people in the United States. New research from the University of Chicago Medicine suggests that parental incarceration may be contributing to these health gaps. According to the new study, people who experienced a parent or parental figure’s incarceration anytime before the age of 18 had higher levels of hypertension and coronary disease biomarkers than people whose parents were not incarcerated. These results indicate that mass incarceration may have transgenerational health consequences. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are difficult ...

A collaborative international research team led by Professor Yoo-Geun Ham from Chonnam National University and Professor Seung-Ki Min from Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) has made a discovery on the impact of global warming on global daily precipitation. Using a deep learning approach, they have unveiled a significant change in the characteristics of global daily precipitation for the first time. Their research findings were published on August 30 in the online version of Nature, the ...

Remember when IBM’s Deep Blue won against Gary Kasparov at chess in 1996, or Google’s AlphaGo crushed the top champion Lee Sedol at Go, a much more complex game, in 2016? These competitions where machines prevailed over human champions are key milestones in the history of artificial intelligence. Now a group of researchers from the University of Zurich and Intel has set a new milestone with the first autonomous system capable of beating human champions at a physical sport: drone racing. The AI system, called Swift, won multiple races against three world-class champions in first-person view (FPV) ...

An existing blood cancer drug has shown promise in killing ‘silent’ HIV cells and delaying reinfections – a significant pre-clinical discovery that could lead to a future cure for the disease. Hidden HIV cells, known as latent infection, are responsible for the virus permanently remaining in the body and cannot be treated by current therapy options. These hibernating, infected cells are the reason why people living with HIV require life-long treatment to suppress the virus. Led by WEHI and The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection ...

The safety of tall buildings in the world's cities, in the face of extreme external traumas like vehicle impacts, blasts or fires, has been tested using a model developed by structural engineers at the University of Surrey – with reassuring results.  Surrey's structural engineers partnered with industry experts to check and enhance the robustness of skyscrapers. Surrey's researchers collaborated with experts at the respected collective of architects, designers, engineers and planners, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), famous for buildings like the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest skyscraper, and the Sears ...

Toronto, ON, August 30, 2023 – Higher stroke risk among females with atrial fibrillation may be related to sex-based disparities in cardiovascular care, according to a new study from Women’s College Hospital, the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre (PMCC) at University Health Network (UHN) and ICES. Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a common type of irregular heart rhythm that is associated with a higher risk of stroke—after the age of 40, one in four strokes are caused by AF. Previous studies have found that female sex (assigned at birth) is a risk factor for AF-associated stroke. Recent research suggested that ...

In the case of boredom, we think of many situations in life but intuitively not of exams. However, an international team of academics led by Thomas Götz from the University of Vienna has now studied exactly this phenomenon of test boredom for the first time and found remarkable results. According to the study, school students are actually very bored during exams. The study also showed that utter boredom has a negative effect on exam results. The research results have been published recently in the Journal of Educational Psychology.  Although boredom is currently a very intensively studied phenomenon, test boredom has so far been completely ignored ...

Washington, D.C. –  A new study has revealed important associations between the gut microbiome and eczema in infancy and has established the basis for the potential prevention and treatment of eczema via modulation of the gut microbiota. The study was published in mSystems, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology. “The problem of eczema is increasing, and our study shows it could be a result of unwanted changes in the gut bacterial content. The first year of life could be a critical period to restore the gut bacteria to a more desirable composition,” said the study’s principal investigator ...

Cocaine use continues to be a public health problem, yet despite concerted efforts, no drugs have been approved to resolve cocaine addiction. Research suggests that the attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder drug methylphenidate (MPH; Ritalin®) could serve as a cocaine-replacement therapy, but clinical results have been mixed. Although several labs have produced MPH derivatives for testing, parts of the molecule remained chemically inaccessible. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Central Science have cleared that hurdle. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 5 million Americans ...

Carbon capture is a promising method to help slow climate change. With this approach, carbon dioxide (CO­­2) is trapped before it escapes into the atmosphere, but the process requires a large amount of energy and equipment. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Central Science have designed a capture system using an electrochemical cell that can easily grab and release CO2. The device operates at room temperature and requires less energy than conventional, amine-based carbon-capture systems. Many industries are turning ...

Shaggy-haired, tusked pigs roam free in the woods of Germany and Austria. Although these game animals look fine, some contain radioactive cesium at levels that render their meat unsafe to eat. Previously, scientists hypothesized that the contamination stemmed from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident. But now, researchers in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology report that nuclear weapon fallout from 60 to 80 years ago also contributes significantly to the wild boars’ persistent radioactivity. Radioactive cesium, a byproduct of nuclear weapons explosions and nuclear ...

With a remarkable observational campaign that involved 12 telescopes both on the ground and in space, including three European Southern Observatory (ESO) facilities, astronomers have uncovered the strange behaviour of a pulsar, a super-fast-spinning dead star. This mysterious object is known to switch between two brightness modes almost constantly, something that until now has been an enigma. But astronomers have now found that sudden ejections of matter from the pulsar over very short periods are responsible for the peculiar switches. “We have witnessed extraordinary cosmic events where enormous amounts of matter, similar to cosmic cannonballs, are launched into ...

The COVID-19 pandemic made it very clear that we need better methods to quickly screen for dangerous pathogens and substances. One such compound that regularly flies under the radar is lipopolysaccharide (LPS), largely known as "endotoxins." This molecule, which is found in the outer membrane of Gram-negative bacteria, can be very harmful to humans. It can trigger a major immune response, producing fever and inflammation. In the worst cases, it can cause organ failure due to sepsis. Surprisingly, for such a ubiquitously present toxin, there are very few ways to effectively detect the presence of LPS. The gold standard for its detection is the limulus amebocyte ...

A new study has found that 12% of Americans are responsible for eating half of all beef consumed on a given day, a finding that may help consumer groups and government agencies craft educational messaging around the negative health and environmental impacts of beef consumption. Those 12% – most likely to be men or people between the ages of 50 and 65 – eat what researchers called a disproportionate amount of beef on a given day, a distinction based on the latest Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which suggest 4 ounces per day of meat, poultry, and eggs combined for those consuming 2200 ...

Living in a racially segregated neighborhood puts Black children at a higher risk of having elevated blood lead levels, and this association has persisted over more than two decades, according to new research from the Children’s Environmental Health Initiative, which is led by University of Illinois Chicago Chancellor Marie Lynn Miranda. The study, published in Pediatrics, analyzed data from the early 1990s and from 2015 from blood lead level tests of more than 320,000 children younger than 7 in North Carolina. Researchers ...

PULLMAN, Wash. – Grandparents appeared to serve as an important private safety net when COVID-19 first hit the U.S., according to a study led by a Washington State University researcher.   The pandemic’s arrival in 2020 coincided with a surge of nearly 510,000 children living in “doubled-up” households, co-residing with other adults in addition to their parents or parents’ partners. While these living arrangements had already been increasing before COVID-19, this was an additional increase beyond what would be expected based on previous trends ...