E-cigarettes do have value as a smoking cessation aid, according to a new study just released by a team of MUSC Hollings Cancer Center researchers.   Whether e-cigarettes should be considered for smoking cessation is a hotly debated topic, and different countries have taken different approaches. E-cigarettes contain harmful chemicals, which has led many public health advocates to shun them. But they are less harmful than traditional cigarettes, which can cause a dozen types of cancer as well as heart disease, stroke, diabetes and chronic obstructive ...

LA JOLLA, CA—According to new research in the journal Immunity, T cells have a nuclear receptor doing something very odd—but very important—to help them fight pathogens and destroy cancer cells. This receptor, called retinoic acid receptor alpha (RARα), is known to control gene expression programs in the nucleus, but it also now appears to operate outside the cell nucleus to coordinate the early events triggered at the cell surface that lead to T cell activation. Scientists wouldn’t normally expect to see a nuclear receptor ...

Organisms across the globe are facing unprecedented levels of stress from climate change, habitat destruction, and many other human-driven changes to the environment. Predicting and mitigating the effects of this increasing stress on organisms, and the environmental services on which we depend, requires understanding why some species can exist in a wide range of environments while others exist in only a few habitats. In the scientific world of ecology, researchers often try to sort organisms on our planet into two categories: specialists and generalists. Generalists can survive across a wide variety of environmental conditions and habitats, while specialists ...

CHICAGO—August 18, 2023—A paper recently published in Nature Energy based on pioneering research done at Illinois Institute of Technology reveals a promising breakthrough in green energy: an electrolyzer device capable of converting carbon dioxide into propane in a manner that is both scalable and economically viable. As the United States races toward its target of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, innovative methods to reduce the significant carbon dioxide emissions from electric power and industrial sectors ...

BOSTON– A team led by researchers from Mass Eye and Ear, a member of Mass General Brigham, reports the results of a phase I trial of a revolutionary stem cell treatment called cultivated autologous limbal epithelial cell transplantation (CALEC), which was found to be safe and well-tolerated over the short term in four patients with significant chemical burns in one eye. According to the study published August 18 in Science Advances, the patients who were followed for 12 months experienced restored cornea surfaces — two were able to undergo a corneal transplant and two reported significant improvements in vision without additional treatment. While ...

Chiral molecules are those that have two versions that are mirror images, like our right and left hands. These molecules have the same structure but different properties when they interact with other molecules, including those inside our bodies. This is important for example in drug molecules, where only the right- or left-handed version may have the desired effect. Detecting and quantifying the chirality of matter however has been difficult. Current methods using a form of light that produces a (right- or left-twisting) helix ...

In a recent Science paper, researchers led by JILA and NIST Fellow Jun Ye, along with collaborators JILA and NIST Fellow David Nesbitt, scientists from the University of Nevada, Reno, and Harvard University, observed novel ergodicity-breaking in C60, a highly symmetric molecule composed of 60 carbon atoms arranged on the vertices of a “soccer ball” pattern (with 20 hexagon faces and 12 pentagon faces). Their results revealed ergodicity breaking in the rotations of C60. Remarkably, they ...

With the juggling act of maintaining grades while also keeping a job, undergraduate students pursuing STEM degrees often graduate without any research experience, despite the benefits that research can have on their careers. To provide more graduates from diverse backgrounds with research and mentoring experiences, Rebecca Zufall and Richard Meisel, associate professors of biology and biochemistry at the University of Houston’s College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, are leading a multi-institutional program that will provide ...

Rutgers scientists have devised a highly accurate method for creating coatings of biologically active materials for a variety of medical products. Such a technique could pave the way for a new era of transdermal medication, including shot-free vaccinations, the researchers said. Writing in Nature Communications, researchers described a new approach to electrospray deposition, an industrial spray-coating process. Essentially, Rutgers scientists developed a way to better control the target region within a spray zone as well as the electrical properties of microscopic ...

Controversial research can put people on the defensive and may even lead to calls to censor findings that conflict with a particular ideological perspective. However, a pair of studies published in Psychological Science, by authors Cory J. Clark (University of Pennsylvania), Maja Graso (University of Groningen), Ilana Redstone (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), and Philip E. Tetlock (University of Pennsylvania), suggest a tendency to overestimate the risk that research findings will fuel public support for harmful actions.  Harmful actions related to research findings, according ...

A new study by University of Arizona Cancer Center researchers piloted a unique outreach strategy to foster dialogue between basic scientists and community members to demystify basic science research and facilitate culturally tailored approaches to address health disparities of vulnerable communities. The paper, published in the journal Cancer Causes and Control, analyzes the processes, experiences and lessons learned during the establishment of the Research Outreach for Southern Arizona, or ROSA, program. “Basic science research is critical ...

(Toronto, August 18, 2023) JMIR Publications is happy to announce that JMIR AI has been accepted and indexed with the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). The DOAJ applies strict criteria to review and index Open Access journals, which include licensing and copyright criteria, quality control processes, journal website technical and usability setups, and editorial evaluation. JMIR AI (JMIR AI ISSN 2817-1705, Editors-in-Chief: Khaled El Emam, PhD and Bradley Malin, PhD) is a new journal (launched in 2022) focusing on the applications of AI in health settings. This includes contemporary developments as well as historical examples, with an emphasis on sound ...

At the outset of the COVID pandemic, men appeared to suffer higher rates of severe illness and death, leading researchers to suspect a link between androgen receptors—which bind to hormones like testosterone--and SARS-CoV-2 viral infection. This observation spurred Michigan Medicine researchers to look into a drug in development to treat prostate cancer called proxalutamide, which works by blocking an enzyme called TMPRSS2 (transmembrane protease, serine 2) that is regulated by androgen receptors, as a potential therapeutic for COVID. “We were already studying TMPRSS2 as part of the key gene driver ...

NYU Langone Health’s MCIT Department of Health Informatics, Institute for Innovation in Medical Education, and Institute for Excellence in Health Equity will hold the first Generative AI Prompt-A-Thon in Health Care on Aug 18. During the event, teams of clinicians, educators, and researchers will work together to find artificial intelligence (AI)-powered solutions to healthcare challenges using real-world, de-identified patient data. The event addresses large language models (LLMs) that predict likely options for the next word in any sentence, paragraph, or essay, based on how real people used words in context billions of times in documents on the internet. Also called ...

Archaeologists have long been drawing conclusions about how ancient tools were used by the people who crafted them based on written records and context clues. But with dietary practices, they have had to make assumptions about what was eaten and how it was prepared. A new study published in the journal iScience on August 18 analyzed protein residues from ancient cooking cauldrons and found that the people of Caucasus ate deer, sheep, goats, and members of the cow family during the Maykop period (3700–2900 BCE). “It’s really exciting to get an idea of what people were making ...

The US has committed to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. To accomplish this goal, large cuts in emissions are necessary, especially in high-emission sectors like the building industry. In an article publishing on August 18 in the journal One Earth, a team of researchers use a computational model to analyze several scenarios of future building energy use in the US. They find that by tackling emissions on multiple fronts and placing focus on “demand-side measures” that affect how power is drawn from the ...

The summertime barbecue – an American tradition synonymous with celebrating freedom – may be tainted by a decidedly unfree market. A new Stanford study reveals how meat and dairy industry lobbying has influenced government regulations and funding to stifle competition from alternative meat products with smaller climate and environmental impacts. The analysis, published Aug. 18 in One Earth, compares innovations and policies related to plant-based meat alternatives and lab-grown meat in the U.S. and European Union. Its findings could help ensure ...

About The Study: The findings of this study that included 612 women suggest that adherence to preconception healthy dietary patterns before infertility treatment may be associated with a lower likelihood of pregnancy loss.  Authors: Jorge E. Chavarro, M.D., Sc.D., of the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, 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.2023.29982) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including ...

About The Study: In a racially and ethnically diverse cohort of 34,000 adolescents, those from neighborhoods with extreme concentrations of racial and economic disadvantage were more likely to screen positive for depressive symptoms and suicidality at well-teen visits compared to their counterparts from the most racially and economically privileged neighborhoods.  Authors: Julia Acker, M.S., of the University of California, Berkeley, 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.2023.29825) Editor’s ...

About The Study: Telemedicine was rapidly adopted in skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) in early 2020 but subsequently stabilized at a low use rate that was nonetheless higher than before 2020 in this study of more than 4.4 million residents at 15,000 SNFs. Higher telemedicine use in SNFs was associated with improved access to psychiatry visits in SNFs.   Authors: Michael L. Barnett, M.D., M.S., of the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, 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.2023.29895) Editor’s ...

An estimated 1 in 4 older Americans with dementia or mild cognitive impairment lives alone and is at risk of practices like unsafe driving, wandering outside the home, mixing up medications and failing to attend medical appointments.  In a study publishing in JAMA Network Open on Aug. 18, 2023, researchers led by UC San Francisco concluded that the United States health system is poorly equipped to serve patients living solo with cognitive decline, a group whose numbers are predicted to swell as the population ages.  For these patients, living alone ...

A study published in Engineering introduces a novel image-based visual servoing (IBVS) method for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to track dynamic targets in GPS-denied environments. Titled "Dynamic Target Tracking of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Under Unpredictable Disturbances," the research article presents a comprehensive approach that addresses the challenges of estimating target velocities, image depth estimation, and tracking stability in the presence of external disturbances. The proposed method utilizes a constructed virtual camera to derive simplified and decoupled image dynamics for underactuated UAVs. By considering ...

The Jovian system has greatly attracted the interest of human exploration because of the important scientific value. However, Jupiter and its 4 Galilean moons form a unique and complex multi-body dynamical environment that greatly challenges trajectory design and optimization. Moreover, the extremely strong radiation environment of Jupiter and the low available fuel of spacecraft further increase the difficulty of trajectory design. In order to satisfy the requirements of diverse missions of the Jovian system exploration, develop new mission concepts, and obtain higher merit with lower cost, a variety of theories and methodologies of ...

A research group led by Dr. Tomoaki Murakami from the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology has revealed that fibrinogen Aα-chain amyloidosis, a previously unreported disease in animals other than humans, is highly prevalent in Japanese squirrels (Sciurus lis). In this study, they compared the pathology with that of humans, and suggested the importance of Japanese squirrels in the comparative pathological analysis of fibrinogen Aα-chain amyloidosis. The researchers published their results on August 8th in the Journal of Pathology. Amyloidosis is a disease group in which amyloid, generated by misfolding ...

A new study highlights the potential of artificial DNA structures that, when fitted with antibodies, instruct the immune system to specifically target cancerous cells. Immunotherapy is viewed as an exceptionally promising weapon in the fight against cancer. In essence, the aim is to activate the body’s immune system in such a way that it identifies and destroys malignant cells. However, the destruction must be as effective and specific as possible, to avoid damaging healthy cells. A team of researchers from LMU, the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and Helmholtz Munich have now published a new study in Nature Nanotechnology in which they present ...