Receiving therapy for problematic social media use can be effective in improving the mental wellbeing of people with depression, finds a new study by UCL researchers. The research, published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, found that social media use interventions could help adults for whom social media use has become problematic or interferes with their mental health. Problematic use is when a person’s pre-occupation with social media results in a distraction from their primary tasks and the neglect of responsibilities in other aspects of their life. Previous research* has suggested that social media use can become problematic ...

Scientists have identified two types of mole which they believe have been living undiscovered in the mountains of eastern Turkey for as many as 3 million years. The new moles – named Talpa hakkariensis and Talpa davidiana tatvanensis – belong to a familiar group of subterranean, invertebrate-eating mammals found across Europe and Western Asia. While only one species, Talpa europaea, is found in Britain, further east there are a number of different moles, many of which have very small geographical ranges. The researchers – using cutting edge DNA technology – ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Using a novel method to detect microbial activity in biological soil crusts, or biocrusts, after they are wetted, a Penn State-led research team in a new study uncovered clues that will lead to a better understanding of the role microbes play in forming a living skin over many semi-arid ecosystems around the world. The tiny organisms — and the microbiomes they create — are threatened by climate change.   The researchers published their findings in Frontiers of Microbiology. “Biocrusts ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Systems in the Universe trend toward disorder, with only applied energy keeping the chaos at bay. The concept is called entropy, and examples can be found everywhere: ice melting, campfire burning, water boiling. Zentropy theory, however, adds another level to the mix.   A team led by Zi-Kui Liu, the Dorothy Pate Enright Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Penn State, developed the theory. The “Z” in zentropy stands for the German word Zustandssumm, meaning ‘‘sum over states” of entropy. Alternatively, Liu said, zentropy may be considered as a play on the term “zen” ...

Think you know everything about a material? Try giving it a twist­—literally. That’s the main idea of an emerging field in condensed matter physics called “twistronics,” which has researchers drastically changing the properties of 2D materials, like graphene, with subtle changes—as small as going from a 1.1° to 1.2°—in the angle between stacked layers. Twisted layers of graphene, for example, have been shown to behave in ways that single sheets have not, including acting like magnets, like electrical superconductors, or like a superconductor’s opposite, insulators, all due to small changes in the twist angle between sheets. In theory, you ...

MADISON – Although many Americans dutifully deposit their plastic trash into the appropriate bins each week, many of those materials, including flexible films, multilayer materials and a lot of colored plastics, are not recyclable using conventional mechanical recycling methods. In the end, only about 9 percent of plastic in the United States is ever reused, often in low-value products. With a new technique, however, University of Wisconsin–Madison chemical engineers are turning low-value waste plastic into high-value ...

On July 24, 2023, Israel's Parliament sanctioned a substantial amendment to the Basic Law, prompting apprehensions regarding power equilibrium and its potential influence on public well-being. In response, a coalition of prominent Israeli and global public health experts has united to dissect the profound ramifications of this revision in an article titled “Israel's Judicial Overhaul: A Threat to the Health in All Policies Approach” featured in The Lancet. The amendment, restricts ...

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 10, 2023 — Period products come in a variety of styles — liners, pads, tampons, cups and underwear — to help people feel comfortable during a menstrual bleed. But their labels don’t usually list the ingredients, so consumers don’t know what’s in their product of choice. Now, researchers have analyzed over 100 period products for fluorinated compounds, an indicator of potentially harmful per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. Their results show that while PFAS are absent from many products, ...

Yoga and breathing control practices, in combination with aerobic training, are particularly key exercises for asthmatic people seeking to improve their lung function, a new peer-reviewed study suggests. The research which is published today in the journal Annals of Medicine highlights the importance of integrating appropriate exercise training into asthma management plans. The findings demonstrate just how effective specific types of exercise training can be to enhance lung function for those with adults, explains ...

New York, NY [August 10, 2023]—The best heart rate for burning fat differs for each individual and often does not align with the “fat burning zone” on commercial exercise machines, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai researchers report. Instead, the researchers said, clinical exercise testing—a diagnostic procedure to measure a person’s physiological response to exercise—may be a more useful tool to help individuals achieve intended fat loss goals. The study, which used a machine learning-based modeling approach, was published online today in Nutrition, Metabolism and Cardiovascular Disease. “People with a goal of weight or fat loss may ...

A Monash University-led study has proposed a solution for the urgent need to capture real-time data on the impact of climate change-related events on human health, healthcare workforces, and healthcare systems at the point of care. As the global community faces growing climate challenges, the study calls for action, collaboration, and innovation to safeguard human health and wellbeing in the face of environmental crises. Published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, it highlighted key climate ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Previous research has revealed that the Apolipoprotein-ε4 (APOE-ε4) allele increases the risk for a variety of diseases in aging populations, specifically Alzheimer’s and cardiovascular disease. And yet, despite the negative effects of this genetic variant, it remains prevalent in approximately 20% of the human population. In a quest to determine how this negative allele is surviving natural selection, a group of researchers have discovered that the APOE-ε4 allele is associated with higher fertility in women.  In a new paper released in Science Advances, researchers including UC Santa ...

Researchers at Trinity College Dublin study the factors influencing healthy brain ageing in Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries and find the lessons learned there, can also be applied to home. Ageing is not a uniform process across the globe. Most research into cognitive and functional ageing has been conducted in the US and Europe, in high-income settings. Researchers from the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI) at Trinity College are filling the knowledge gap that exists for Latin American populations on the factors ...

Key Takeaways Lung and heart transplant recipients experienced diminished and delayed antibody responses to the first two COVID-19 mRNA vaccine doses, but most developed stronger responses following a third dose A third dose also boosted cross-protection against SARS-CoV-2 viral variants For lung and heart transplant recipients, vaccine doses beyond the third dose are likely important for maintaining immunity BOSTON – Transplant recipients must take life-long immunosuppressive medications to prevent rejection, but these drugs ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $11 million in funding for 15 projects in exploratory research for extreme-scale science that will leverage emerging trends and advances in high-end computing, massive datasets, scientific machine learning, artificial intelligence, and novel computing architectures. “There is a wide expanse of exciting opportunities as we reach beyond exascale computing,” said Ceren Susut, DOE Acting Associate Director of Science for Advanced Scientific Computing Research. “These ...

Researchers working with Chuan Wang, an associate professor of electrical and systems engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, have developed ink pens that allow individuals to handwrite flexible, stretchable optoelectronic devices on everyday materials including paper, textiles, rubber, plastics and 3D objects. In a paper published Aug. 7 in Nature Photonics, the team reports their simple and versatile fabrication approach to allow anyone to make a custom light-emitting diode (LED) or photodetector ...

URBANA, Ill. – Madagascar is one of the poorest countries in the world and access to health care is limited for many people. Childhood vaccinations are a crucial component of preventative care, but vaccination rates remain below the World Health Organization’s goal of reaching 95% of children. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign examines the effectiveness of a health intervention program that enlists community-based health workers to promote child vaccination uptake. “Childhood vaccinations are a cost-effective investment that can have large ripple effects. Vaccines can reduce child mortality ...

It is now almost a rule of thumb: As soon as an athlete falls to the ground with a sudden cardiac arrest, social media is awash with claims that COVID-19 vaccinations are to blame. This was the case with English footballer Charlie Wyke, cyclist Sonny Colbrelli and, most recently, with college basketballer, and son of LeBron, Bronny James. In the view of Harald Jorstad, Sports Cardiologist at Amsterdam UMC, there is no evidence to support these claims, but timing of the vaccination can be structured to not ...

BEAUFORT, N.C. – Microscopic plastic particles have been found in the fats and lungs of two-thirds of the marine mammals in a graduate student’s study of ocean microplastics. The presence of polymer particles and fibers in these animals suggests that microplastics can travel out of the digestive tract and lodge in the tissues. The study, slated for the Oct. 15 edition of Environmental Pollution, appeared online this week. Harms that embedded microplastics might cause to marine mammals are yet to be determined, ...

Text-to-image (T2I) generative artificial intelligence tools are increasingly powerful and widespread tools that can create nearly any image based on just a few inputted words. T2I generative AI can create convincingly realistic photos and videos which are being used more and more for a multitude of purposes, from art to political campaigning.  However, the algorithmic models that power these tools are trained on data from humans, and can replicate human biases in the images they produce, such as biases around gender and skin tone. These biases can harm marginalized populations, reinforcing stereotypes and potentially leading to discrimination.  To address these implicit biases, ...

Sodium, Potassium and zinc have all been promising contenders for lithium’s place in rechargeable batteries of the future, but researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) have added an unusual and more abundant competitor to the mix: chloride, the richest negatively charged ions in seawater.  Xiaowei Teng, the James H. Manning professor of Chemical Engineering at WPI, has discovered a new redox chemistry empowered by chloride ions for the development of seawater green batteries. Modern lithium-ion batteries used in various applications, including electric vehicles, can be problematic for grid storage, given their ...

A new analysis shows that infectious bacteria exposed to the antibiotic albicidin rapidly develop up to a 1,000-fold increase in resistance via a gene amplification mechanism. Mareike Saathoff of Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, and colleagues present these findings August 10th in the open access journal PLOS Biology. Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is a growing problem associated with millions of deaths around the world every year. Understanding how bacteria evolve resistance is key to developing more effective antibiotics and strategies for using them. In recent years, albicidin has emerged as a promising antibiotic capable of killing a wide range of bacterial species ...

Pushing into a new chapter of technologically advanced biological sensors, scientists from the University of California San Diego and their colleagues in Australia have engineered bacteria that can detect the presence of tumor DNA in a live organism. Their innovation, which detected cancer in the colons of mice, could pave the way to new biosensors capable of identifying various infections, cancers and other diseases. The advancement is described Aug. 11, 2023, in the journal Science. Bacteria previously have been designed to carry out various diagnostic and therapeutic functions, but lacked the ability to identify specific DNA sequences and mutations outside ...

In two studies, researchers demonstrate how climate modeling approaches can fill gaps in our understanding of hominin evolution and migration. Over the last several decades, research efforts into the lives of hominins – humans and their close ancestors – have shifted from identifying fossils and artifacts to understanding the environmental and climate settings in which they lived and how these factors could have influenced hominin evolution and migration. However, like the hominin fossil record, environmental and climate records that accurately capture environmental change and span the period over which ...

In two studies, researchers present new ways to convert common waste plastics, polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), into high-value chemical products, including alcohols, aldehydes, surfactants, and detergents. The approaches provide a pathway toward creating a circular plastics economy and the ability to produce high-value chemicals more sustainably. Waste plastics are increasingly being considered a potentially abundant source of feedstock to produce valuable chemical compounds. However, some plastics, particularly polyolefin plastics like PE and PP – widely used commodity plastics that account ...