Experts have found that at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020, Americans chose not to become pregnant as they grappled with stay-at-home restrictions, anxiety, and economic hardship. Now, a new study led by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine shows that some states actually experienced steeper decreases in fertility than others. The findings revealed that nine months after the pandemic began, there were 18 fewer births a month per 100,000 women of reproductive age across the U.S. compared with the year ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Over the past few years, the Department of Family Medicine and the Department of Psychiatry in UNC’s School of Medicine have been working together to spearhead the development of a new “enhanced primary care” model to provide better primary care for patients who have severe mental illnesses. A new analysis led by Alex K. Gertner, MD, PhD, psychiatry resident at UNC Hospitals, has added further evidence that the new model is effective. Gertner found that the enhanced primary care model resulted in lower hemoglobin A1c and blood pressure for patients with severe mental illness when compared to other primary care clinics throughout ...

Adoptive cell therapy (ACT) has become a promising immunotherapy tool to help treat advanced melanoma. The therapy, which harnesses immune cells collected from the patient’s own tumors, could provide a new treatment option to cancer patients, potentially bypassing radiation therapies and harsh chemotherapy drugs. For the first time, Northwestern University scientists have discovered it is possible to isolate a tumor’s attack cells non-invasively from blood, rather than from tumors. The finding opens the door for ACT to treat harder-to-reach cancer types and makes it a more viable option ...

Research led by scientists at UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center found that responses to a type of immunotherapy called PD-1 checkpoint blockade in patients with advanced melanoma depended on whether or not they had previously received another immunotherapy – CTLA-4 blockade – as well as other factors. Their findings, based on analysis of seven data sets generated over the past decade, which included results of tumor biopsies from more than 500 patients, are published in Cancer Cell. “In our large set of data, features that have been used to predict response ...

As their plane flew low on its approach to land at the airport on the island of Dominica, researchers from Clemson and Harvard universities looked out the window to see miles of forests with trees that looked like matchsticks. It was nine months after the island in the West Indies had taken a direct hit from Category 5 Hurricane Maria. But when the researchers actually got into the forests and examined the trees more closely, they discovered that while 89% of the trees sustained damage — 76% of which had major damage —only 10% were immediately killed. Many of the trees had resprouted. “These ...

A Roundtable Discussion was recently held to discuss the importance of community voice in developing 21st century public health systems. Expert panelists emphasized the need to redefine measures, foster new ideas, and work to ensure that historically excluded populations are represented in the data collection process. The Roundtable transcript is now published in the peer-reviewed journal Big Data. Click here to read the transcript. The discussion was moderated by Michael Crawford, Associate Dean for Strategy, ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The amount of dissolved oxygen in a river is a matter of life or death for the plants and animals living within it, but this oxygen concentration varies drastically from one river to another, depending on their unique temperature, light and flow. To better understand which factor has the greatest impact on the concentration of dissolved oxygen, researchers at Penn State used a deep learning model to analyze data from hundreds of rivers across the United States.  Oxygen concentration is an important measure of water quality because fish and other aquatic organisms require dissolved oxygen to breathe, according to Wei Zhi, assistant ...

“[...] the study of immunotherapy for treating triple negative breast cancer might still be at its early stages of development but is full of future promise.”  BUFFALO, NY- April 10, 2023 – A new review paper was published in Oncotarget's Volume 14 on March 31, 2023, entitled, “Crosstalk between triple negative breast cancer and microenvironment.” Although many advances have been made in the treatment of breast cancer, for triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) these therapies have not significantly increased overall survival. Tumor microenvironment (TME) plays an essential role to develop and control TNBC progression. ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A research lab at Penn State will equally share a three-year, $2.55 million grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) with three other teams at Carnegie Mellon University and the Adolphe Merkle Institute of the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. The multidisciplinary research collaboration aims to develop a framework for the design and production of soft, self-charging, bio-inspired power sources for applications in space.   Joseph Najem, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Penn State, will lead ...

HOUSTON – (April 10, 2023) – Improving lighting in the operating room could cut the duration of some surgeries by as much as 25%, according to Dr. Munish Gupta, an orthopedic spine surgeon at Washington University in St. Louis. With that in mind, he tasked Rice University engineering students on the OR Lights team — Ellice Gao, Bryn Gerwin, Justin Guilak, Rosemary Lach, Renly Liu and Hemish Thakkar — with building a tunable lighting system that allows surgeons to better illuminate their working ...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – An ideal nanovesicle to fight cancer would have three functionalities: 1) a precision-targeting molecule to preferentially bind it to surface markers on cancer cells, 2) a strongly bound radionuclide signal that would allow a PET scan to locate the vesicles in the body, and 3) the ability to carry and release a drug treatment, such as a chemotherapy, at the cancer tumor. It would also meet two other requirements — having a simple and facile method of manufacture, and being biocompatible and biodegradable in the body. A University of Alabama at Birmingham team has now described a tiny polymersome that — in initial preclinical ...

DALLAS, April 10, 2023 — The American Heart Association sends fans of the two-time Emmy Award winning best drama series “Succession” our heartfelt condolences following the sudden cardiac death that killed off main character, Logan Roy, played by Brian Cox. (SPOILER ALERT) Those who watched last night’s episode on HBO in stunned silence, saw patriarch businessman Logan suffer a cardiac arrest while on a plane as his eldest son, Connor, celebrated his wedding. Logan’s other three children ...

Purdue receives $1 million USDA grants for sustainable agriculture projects WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University has received two grants of $1 million each from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture for five-year projects to enhance sustainable agricultural systems. One grant is part of a $10 million project led by Michigan State University’s Brent Ross to develop more resilient food systems for coping with multiple ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new study’s finding that urban light pollution may disrupt the winter dormancy period for mosquitoes that transmit West Nile virus could be considered both good news and bad news. The good news is that the disease-carrying pests may not survive the winter if their plans to fatten up are foiled. The bad news is their dormancy period, known as diapause, may simply be delayed – meaning they’re biting humans and animals longer into the fall. “We see the highest levels ...

Xingpeng Li, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Houston’s Cullen College of Engineering, has been named an Emerging Leader by the 2023 Offshore Technology Conference. Of the nine honorees, Li is the only one from an institution of higher education. The program selects young professionals with fewer than 10 years of experience in the offshore energy sector who demonstrate exceptional talents, commitment and promise as future leaders, according ...

The relationship between alcohol use and burn injuries is a negative one in multiple ways. Not only are about 50% of adults who sustain burn injuries intoxicated at the time of injury, suggesting that alcohol use may have contributed to the incident, but alcohol use among burn-injured patients is associated with more severe complications, delayed recovery, and increased morbidity and mortality.  “Return to work or normal life can be impaired or delayed for burn-injured patients who use alcohol,” says Elizabeth Kovacs, PhD, vice chair of research and professor of GI, trauma, and endocrine surgery ...

People who avoid COVID-19 precautions to prevent illness are more likely to purchase firearms – a pattern of behavior most common among moderate and conservative individuals, according to a Rutgers study. The researchers surveyed a sample of 6,404 adults from three states: Minnesota, Mississippi and New Jersey. The survey was conducted in early 2021, before COVID-19 vaccines were widespread, and participants were asked about their intent to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, how often they wear masks in public, ...

For the last six years, Indiana University researchers and collaborators from around the world have sought to answer important questions about the most basic laws of physics that govern our universe. Their experiment, the Majorana Demonstrator, has helped to push the horizons on research concerning one of the fundamental building blocks of the universe: neutrinos. The experiment’s final report was published in Physical Review Letters in February. Neutrinos – subatomic particles similar to an electron but that have no electric ...

Researchers at the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil are using artificial intelligence (AI) and Twitter, one of the world’s largest social media platforms, to try to create anxiety and depression prediction models that could in future provide signs of these disorders before clinical diagnosis. The study is reported in an article published in the journal Language Resources and Evaluation.  Construction of a database, called SetembroBR, was the first step in the study. The name is a reference to Yellow September, an annual suicide awareness and prevention campaign, and also to the fact that ...

An interdisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Oklahoma has published a perspective article in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences advocating for convergent research that integrates the fields of biogeography and behavioral ecology to more rapidly respond to challenges associated with climate change and biodiversity loss. While news about climate change fills headlines, the crisis of biodiversity loss has gotten less attention. In their article, the authors contend that “identifying solutions that prevent large-scale extinction requires addressing critical questions about biodiversity dynamics that – ...

The American College of Cardiology will host the annual Advancing the Cardiovascular Care of the Oncology Patient course on April 14-16, 2023, in Washington, DC. The course is intended for all members of the interprofessional care team—including cardiologists, oncologists, pharmacists and nurses—and aims to equip the global cardio-oncology community with the tools they need to improve patient care. Ana Barac, MD, PhD, FACC, and Bonnie Ky, MD, MSCE, FACC, will serve as co-directors for the course, which ...

PHILADELPHIA—Brain development does not occur uniformly across the brain, but follows a newly identified developmental sequence, according to a new Penn Medicine study. Brain regions that support cognitive, social, and emotional functions appear to remain malleable—or capable of changing, adapting, and remodeling—longer than other brain regions, rendering youth sensitive to socioeconomic environments through adolescence. The findings were published recently in Nature Neuroscience. Researchers charted how developmental processes unfold across the human brain from the ages of 8 to 23 years old ...

The story of how ancient wolves came to claim a place near the campfire as humanity’s best friend is a familiar tale (even if scientists are still working out some of the specifics). In order to be domesticated, a wild animal must be tamable — capable of living in close proximity to people without exhibiting dangerous aggression or debilitating fear. Taming was the necessary first step in animal domestication, and it is widely known that some animals are easier to tame than others. But did humans also favor certain wild plants for domestication because they were more easily “tamed”? Research from Washington University in St. ...

Captain of her high school tennis team and a four-year veteran of varsity tennis in college, Amanda Studnicki had been training for this moment for years. All she had to do now was think small. Like ping pong small. For weeks, Studnicki, a graduate student at the University of Florida, served and rallied against dozens of players on a table tennis court. Her opponents sported a science-fiction visage, a cap of electrodes streaming off their heads into a backpack as they played against either Studnicki or a ball-serving machine. That cyborg look was vital ...

You’d be hard pressed to find an industry today that doesn’t use data in some capacity. Whether it's health care workers using data to report the rate of flu infections in a certain state, manufacturers using data to better understand average production times, or even a small coffee shop owner flipping through sales data to learn about the previous month’s bestselling latte, data can reveal patterns and offer insights into our everyday behavior. All of this data plays a critical role in artificial intelligence ...