Philadelphia, August 21, 2023 – As a single organ, our skin is able to perform a broad repertoire of vital functions. Dermatology experts call for a reference guide to single-cell composition of normal human skin, which is still lacking. A grassroots movement to establish a Human Skin Cell Atlas is taking shape, as reported in a review in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, published by Elsevier. A global team of experts has outlined a roadmap as a first step towards creating a comprehensive and inclusive reference work on this important topic. Our skin performs vital functions, such as protecting us from external threats ...

Experts at UCL have teamed up with leading women’s health charities to design a new education and support programme for women across the country experiencing menopause. The National Menopause Education and Support Programme will be led by Professor Joyce Harper (UCL EGA Institute for Women’s Health), Dr Shema Tariq (UCL Institute for Global Health) and Dr Nicky Keay (UCL Division of Medicine). It is in partnership with two charities, Wellbeing of Women and Sophia Forum. The programme also has the support of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and British Menopause ...

As a manned spacecraft operating in orbit for a long time, a space station embodies a country’s scientific and technological strength comprehensively. China’s manned space project was approved in 1992 with a 3-step strategic plan, and building a space station is the final goal of this plan. In September 2010, China’s manned space station project was officially established. After 11 years of unremitting efforts, on 2021 April 29, the Tianhe core module was successfully launched into orbit by the carrier rocket ...

Research at a Glance: A Murdoch Children’s Research Institute-led review has found COVID-19 vaccines are effective against severe cases of the disease in children and adolescents. However, with most children now having caught the SARS-CoV-2 virus and building up a natural immunity, the additional benefit of vaccination in healthy children is minimal The review explored the challenges and considerations around COVID-19 vaccination of children, especially in low- and middle-income countries, in the context of high levels of community transmission and infection-derived ...

Ecosystem services (ESs) provide a variety of services and benefits for human well-being, but the supply-demand mechanism of ecosystem services under different spatio-temporal scales is unclear. The Taihu Lake Basin (TLB) is a microcosm of degraded and unsustainable ecosystem services. Rapid industrialization and urbanization poses a great threat to the environment and ecology. Therefore, it is urgent to assess the changes in supply and demand for TLB ecosystem services from a spatio-temporal and multi-stakeholder perspective, and ...

Medical students who reported a disability to their school increased by more than 25% during the COVID-19 pandemic, a study shows. The proportion of students reporting attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or chronic health and/or psychological disabilities has increased between 2015 and 2021. Despite the increase in medical students reporting these conditions, the requests for more inclusive preclinical testing accommodations, like extra time for test completion or a less distracting environment, decreased during the pandemic between 2019 and 2021. According to authors of the new research letter in JAMA Network Open, the remote curriculum delivery during the pandemic may have allowed ...

The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded an LSU-led consortium a $4.9 million grant to support the first phase of the Pelican Gulf Coast Carbon Removal project. The Pelican Consortium, which includes Shell and the University of Houston, will evaluate the feasibility of building a direct air capture (DAC) hub in Louisiana. DAC technologies capture carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere. The captured carbon dioxide can then be used to manufacture products or be permanently stored in deep geological formations. The project will leverage existing regional infrastructure in one of the highest emitting areas in the Gulf Coast, benefit the local energy workforce, and support ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced $70 million in funding to support research by historically underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and to diversify leadership in the physical sciences. The funding, through DOE’s Reaching a New Energy Sciences Workforce (RENEW) initiative, will support internships, training programs, and mentor opportunities at 65 different institutions, including 40 higher-learning institutions that serve minority populations. Ensuring America’s best and brightest students have pathways to STEM fields will be key to leading the world’s energy transition ...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Findings from a two-year study of nearly 2,400 solid organ transplant recipients, conducted by the Johns Hopkins Transplant Research Center (TRC) in collaboration with the New York University Center for Surgical and Applied Transplant Research, indicate spikes of post-vaccination SARS-CoV-2 viral infections (commonly known as COVID-19 breakthrough cases) remain common, yet hospitalization rates have dramatically dropped following the first wave of the virus’ omicron subvariant. “These results mirrored ...

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA — Tulane University, Ochsner Health and the community nonprofit RH Impact have been awarded a seven-year, $16.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to establish a research center of excellence focused on finding solutions to address Louisiana’s disproportionately high maternal mortality rate. The new Southern Center for Maternal Health Equity will be one of 10 newly announced Maternal Health Research Centers of Excellence nationwide funded by the NIH’s Implementing a Maternal health and PRegnancy Outcomes Vision for Everyone (IMPROVE) initiative. The center will develop and evaluate innovative approaches to reduce pregnancy-related ...

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 ...