DETROIT – Wanqing Liu, Ph.D., professor of pharmaceutical sciences in the Wayne State University Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences and of pharmacology in Wayne State’s School of Medicine, received a $3 million, five-year award from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health. The study, “Interaction between Genome and Heavy Metals in Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease,” aims to discover and validate the gene Х heavy metal (GXM) interactions in human livers ...

New Haven, Conn. — For many, the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic seems over. However, for patients whose immune systems are compromised by cancer or by cancer therapies, fear of COVID-19 infection and severe disease remains very real. Currently, CDC guidance recommends that immunocompromised patients receive COVID-19 booster shots “as needed.” While this flexibility is useful for patients with complex medical conditions, more specific guidance is lacking as to when additional COVID-19 boosting would be most effective.  New ...

“Our findings may provide a useful therapeutic approach for treating breast cancer patients who may suffer from early relapse and intrinsic resistance.”  BUFFALO, NY- August 16, 2023 – A new editorial paper was published in Oncotarget's Volume 14 on June 12, 2023, entitled, “Are cis-spliced fusion proteins pathological in more aggressive luminal breast cancer?” A vast majority of breast cancers (~70%) are estrogen receptor-alpha positive (ER+), for which endocrine therapy is the common ...

Markers that indicate the presence of Parkinson’s disease in patients on average seven years before clinical presentation have been identified by a UCL and Moorfields Eye Hospital research team. This is the first time anyone has shown these findings several years before diagnosis, and these results were made possible by the largest study to date on retinal imaging in Parkinson’s disease. The study, published today in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, identified markers of Parkinson’s in eye scans with the help of artificial ...

When a sabertooth tiger called out, what noise did it make – a mighty roar or a throaty purr? A new study from North Carolina State University examined the data behind the arguments for each vocalization and found that the answer was more nuanced than they thought – and that it could depend on the shape of a few small bones. Modern cats belong to one of two groups: either the pantherine “big cats,” including the roaring lions, tigers and jaguars; or Felinae “little cats,” which include purring ...

Two Georgia Tech researchers, Alex Robel and Shi Joyce Sim, have collaborated on a new model for how water moves under glaciers. The new theory shows that up to twice the amount of subglacial water that was originally predicted might be draining into the ocean – potentially increasing glacial melt, sea level rise, and biological disturbances. The paper, published in Science Advances, “Contemporary Ice Sheet Thinning Drives Subglacial Groundwater Exfiltration with Potential Feedbacks on Glacier Flow”, is co-authored by Colin Meyer (Dartmouth), Matthew Siegfried (Colorado School of Mines), and Chloe Gustafson (USGS). While there are pre-existing methods to understand ...

Children’s views of inequality may be influenced by how its causes are explained to them, finds a new study by a team of psychology researchers. The work offers insights into the factors that affect how larger social issues are perceived at a young age and points to new ways to reduce bias toward lower-status economic groups. “When making sense of social inequalities, adults may consider the structural forces at play—for example, people may cite policies related to legacy admissions when thinking about how disparities first arise,” says Rachel Leshin, a New York University doctoral student and the lead ...

Plants are not exposed to herbivores without defenses. When an insect feeds on a leaf, thereby wounding it and releasing oral secretions, a signaling cascade is elicited in the plant, usually starting with a rapid increase in the amount of the plant hormone jasmonic acid and its active isoleucine conjugate. Jasmonic acid regulates various reactions in plants, including defenses against herbivores and responses to environmental stress. Mutants with disadvantageous properties do not necessarily disappear An important thesis of evolutionary theory is natural selection and the conclusion that mutants with disadvantageous properties disappear ...

The Arizona Bioindustry Association announced that renowned Valley fever researcher John Galgiani, MD, professor and director of the Valley Fever Center for Excellence at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson, is the 2023 recipient of the AZBio Pioneer Award for Lifetime Achievement. The Pioneer Award is the highest honor awarded by Arizona’s bioscience community and is extended to an Arizonan whose body of work has made life better for people at home and around the world. Galgiani’s four decades of Valley fever research, ...

The University of Arkansas celebrated an important milestone with the groundbreaking on a building that Chancellor Charles Robinson suggested might someday rival the U of A’s most iconic structure, Old Main, in significance to the university and the state of Arkansas. Robinson and other university leaders, including University of Arkansas System President Don Bobbitt and members of the U of A System Board of Trustees, as well as researchers and industry leaders, gathered at the Arkansas Research and Technology Park in South Fayetteville to celebrate construction of the national Multi-User Silicon Carbide ...

With opioid overdose deaths surging in the United States, many communities are in desperate need of solutions to bring down the body count. Among the most promising is strengthening prison reentry programs for highest-risk users, a Rutgers-led study has found.   “For people who use drugs and have been in prison for several years, the reentry period can be chaotic and disorienting,” said Grant Victor, an assistant professor in the Rutgers School of Social Work and lead author of the study published in the Journal of Offender Rehabilitation.   “Closing ...

The COVID-19 pandemic dealt a huge blow to healthcare systems and highlighted their major shortcomings. As of June 2023, there have been over 760 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, with almost 7 million deaths worldwide. During the major COVID-19 outbreaks, hospitals often had their intensive care units (ICU) running at full capacity for providing invasive mechanical ventilation to patients who were diagnosed as positive for COVID-19. These ICUs often operated with insufficient staff and intubation equipment. One way to mitigate such problems is to accurately predict the prognosis ...

Research Highlights: An analysis of a clinical trial of more than 2,500 people with Type 2 diabetes and kidney disease found that high levels of four biomarkers are strongly predictive for the development of heart and kidney issues. People who took canagliflozin, a sodium glucose co-transporter 2 inhibitor (SGLT2 inhibitor), had lower levels of the four biomarkers compared to those who took a placebo over the three-year study period. Treatment with canagliflozin helped to substantially reduce the risk of hospitalization for heart failure and other heart complications among patients considered to have the highest risk. Embargoed until 1 p.m. CT/2 p.m. ET Monday, ...

Scientists spectacularly confirmed the existence of gravitational waves several years ago, but now they are searching the cosmos for new and different types of these waves that result from different objects in deep space. Benjamin Owen, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Texas Tech University, was recently awarded a three-year National Science Foundation (NSF) grant that aims to uncover and confirm additional types of gravitational waves. “So far with gravitational waves we’ve seen what happens when you have ...

ST. LOUIS, MO, August 21, 2023 – Agrela Ecosystems, a startup launched by Nadia Shakoor, PhD, principal investigator, at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center announced the pilot launch of its flagship product, PheNodeTM. This milestone marks the first step towards a full-scale commercial release set for 2025. PheNode is an advanced, scalable environmental sensor platform designed to empower users with customizable data collection and the rapid integration of new technologies. Already creating a buzz, the platform is now collecting data and generating customer feedback, ...

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (08/21/2023) — A new study from the University of Minnesota is the first to demonstrate the ability for gene therapy to repair neural connections for those with the rare genetic brain disorder known as Hurler syndrome. The findings suggest the use of gene therapies — an entirely new standard for treatment — for those with brain disorders like Hurler syndrome, which have a devastating impact on those affected. The study was published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports. Hurler syndrome, also known as mucopolysaccharidosis type I (MPS I), is a genetic disorder affecting newborns ...

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $16 million for 15 projects that will implement artificial intelligence (AI) methods to accelerate scientific discovery in nuclear physics research. DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory will lead two of those projects and be a collaborator on another. These projects will use AI and Machine Learning (ML) tools and methods for nuclear physics experiments, simulation, theory and accelerator operation to expand and accelerate scientific reach. “Artificial intelligence has the potential to shorten the timeline ...

Michael Bloom, Associate Professor, Global and Community Health, received $158,900 from the National Institutes of Health for the project: "Impact of Exposure to Perfluoroalkyl Substances on Weight Loss: A Pilot Study of Hispanic Children with Overweight/Obesity Participating in a Community-based Weight Loss Intervention Program." In this pilot study, Bloom is evaluating associations between exposures to perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and weight lost during a 10-week weight loss intervention among Hispanic children with overweight and obesity. He and his collaborators will quantify the association between 12 different PFAS ...

Laurie Schintler, Associate Professor, Schar School of Policy and Government, is set to receive funding for the project: "Perceptions of Efficiency and Bias in Peer Review: Algorithmic versus Human Decision Making."  This project is a collaboration between the Schar School of Policy and Government (GMU) and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology (CHSS-GMU). The investigators on the team include:  PI Laurie A. Schintler;   Co-PI Connie L. McNeely, Professor, Schar School of Policy and ...

Nora McDonald, Assistant Professor, Information Sciences and Technology, is set to receive funding from the National Science Foundation for the project: "Collaborative Research: SaTC: CORE: Medium: Beyond App-centric Privacy: Investigating Privacy Ecosystems among Vulnerable Populations." Prior research shows that people who have privacy concerns may be reluctant to access medical services. This is especially true for vulnerable populations, such as those who because of their gender, race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, or other marginalizations are more susceptible to privacy risk. These risks go beyond individual apps ...

Paul Acosta, Postdoctoral Scholar, Atmospheric, Oceanic and Earth Sciences (AOES), and Natalie Burls, Associate Professor, AOES; Graduate Program Director, Climate Dynamics, received funding from the National Science Foundation for the project: "Collaborative Research: Using a weather model and geologic data to test tectonic mechanisms in an intercontinental setting: The Altai Mountains of Central Asia."  This project seeks to apply new advances in atmospheric and geosciences to ...

Jinwei Ye, Assistant Professor, Computer Science, received funding for the project: "CAREER: Towards Polarimetric Visual Understanding."  In this project, Ye will study how the way surfaces reflect polarized light can be used to help recognize objects more effectively.   Ye will address the following two questions: (1) How does the polarization of light change after interacting with various types of surfaces? (2) What can polarized light tell us about the kinds of objects that it has interacted with?   Addressing these questions can lead to significant improvements in machine vision systems by strengthening their capability to do geometric ...

One of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease is disruption to the body’s circadian rhythm, the internal biological clock that regulates many of our physiological processes. Nearly 80% of people with Alzheimer’s experience these issues, including difficulty sleeping and worsening cognitive function at night. However, there are no existing treatments for Alzheimer’s that target this aspect of the disease. A new study from researchers at University of California San Diego School ...

How does a gambler maximize winnings from a row of slot machines? This is the inspiration for the "multi-armed bandit problem," a common task in reinforcement learning in which "agents" make choices to earn rewards. Recently, an international research team led by Hiroaki Shinkawa at the University of Tokyo developed an extended photonic reinforcement learning scheme that moves from the static bandit problem towards a more challenging dynamic environment. This study was published July 25 in Intelligent Computing, a Science Partner Journal. The success of ...

August 21, 2022 – Implantable penile prostheses (IPPs) are an established treatment option for erectile dysfunction (ED), and are covered by insurance in about 80% of cases, reports a paper in the September issue of Urology Practice®, an Official Journal of the American Urological Association (AUA). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer. However, some employer-sponsored insurance plans specifically exclude this guideline-recommended treatment option for ED, according to the new research by Dr. Mohit Khera, MD, MBA, MPH, of Baylor College ...