Directing light from place to the place is the backbone of our modern world. Beneath the oceans and across continents, fiber optic cables carry light that encodes everything from YouTube videos to banking transmissions—all inside strands about the size of a hair. University of Chicago Prof. Jiwoong Park, however, wondered what would happen if you made even thinner and flatter strands—in effect, so thin that they’re actually 2D instead of 3D. What would happen to the light? Through a series of innovative experiments, he and his team found ...

An experimental malaria vaccine appears safe and promotes an immune response in African infants, one of the groups most vulnerable to severe malaria disease. There is currently only one malaria vaccine, “RTS,S” that is approved by the World Health Organization and offers partial disease protection. However, in the results of the early-stage phase Ib trial conducted in Tanzania and published on August 11th in the journal Med, researchers find that targeting RH5 – a protein that the malaria pathogen Plasmodium falciparum uses to invade red blood cells – can generate a promising immune response ...

From text-generating ChatGPT to voice-activated Siri, artificial intelligence-powered tools are designed to aid our everyday life — as long as you speak a language they support. These technologies are out of reach for billions of people who don’t use English, French, Spanish or other mainstream languages, but researchers in Africa are looking to change that. In a study published August 11 in the journal Patterns, scientists draw a roadmap to develop better AI-driven tools for African languages. “It doesn’t ...

Scientists have developed a synthetic extracellular matrix (ECM) that can support the growth of a mini endometrium in a dish for at least two weeks. The endometrium—the mucosal lining of the uterus—has been historically hard to model in the lab, which has limited scientists’ ability to study its role in healthy and diseased states like endometriosis. The matrix, described on August 11 in the journal Med, allows cells to interact in an environment that recapitulates human physiology which could help researchers better simulate the healthy and pathological response to menstrual cycles. “With this matrix, we can begin to extrapolate and utilize ...

LA JOLLA (August 11, 2023)—Glioblastoma, the most common and deadly form of brain cancer, grows rapidly to invade and destroy healthy brain tissue. The tumor sends out cancerous tendrils into the brain that make surgical tumor removal extremely difficult or impossible. Now, Salk scientists have found the immunotherapy treatment anti-CTLA-4 leads to considerably greater survival of mice with glioblastoma. Furthermore, they discovered that this therapy was dependent on immune cells called CD4+ T cells infiltrating the brain and triggering the tumor-destructive activities of other immune cells ...

(Boston)—Identification of risk factors for Parkinson’s disease (PD) is essential for early diagnosis. Dating back to the 1920s, Parkinson’s disease and parkinsonism—an umbrella term that refers to motor symptoms found in Parkinson’s disease and also other conditions—have long been described in boxers. Repetitive head impacts from tackle football can also have long-term neurological consequences like chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). But research on the association between participation in tackle football and PD is limited.   In the largest study to describe the association between participation ...

About The Study: This survey study of 5,035 adults found that adults increasingly perceived daily smoking and secondhand exposure to cannabis smoke as safer than tobacco smoke from 2017 to 2021. Given that these views do not reflect the existing science on cannabis and tobacco smoke, the findings may have important implications for public health and policy as the legalization and use of cannabis increase.  Authors: Beth Cohen, M.D., M.A.S., of the University of California, San Francisco, 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.2023.28691) Editor’s ...

About The Study: The results of this study suggest that, in pregnancies conceived with infertility treatment, delivery at 39 weeks provided the lowest perinatal risk when comparing risk of delivery at this week of gestation versus the subsequent week of gestation.  Authors: Ira Hamilton, M.D., of the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine in Cincinnati, 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.2023.28335) Editor’s ...

About The Study: In this study, 729 participants with a history of playing organized football had higher odds of having a reported parkinsonism or Parkinson disease diagnosis compared with participants in other organized sports. Longer duration of play and higher level of football play were associated with higher odds of a reported diagnosis.  Authors: Michael L. Alosco, Ph.D., of the Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine 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.2023.28644) Editor’s ...

About The Study: Patients with Parkinson disease who had caregivers at higher risk of depression were more likely to have worse quality of life and higher emergency department use than patients who had caregivers not at higher risk of depression. Additional caregiving resources and interventions to reduce caregiver depression symptoms could potentially improve patient outcomes.  Authors: Nabila Dahodwala, M.D., M.S., of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, 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.2023.27485) Editor’s ...

A research group led by Kyoto University's Graduate School of Agriculture has deciphered buckwheat's high-precision chromosomal-level genome sequence, a key step toward unraveling the evolution of the buckwheat genome and the origins of the cultivated crop. By altering specific genes using a method independent of common genome-editing techniques, the researchers successfully developed a self-fertile buckwheat variety as well as a new type of the crop with a sticky, mochi-like texture. This breeding method may contribute to a more diverse range of orphan crops than what is possible with existing genome editing technologies. With the world's population predicted to reach ...

PHILADELPHIA— The recent discontinuation of pandemic-related food assistance benefits, known as the Supplemental Food Assistance Program (SNAP) Emergency Allotments, led to a substantial increase in food insufficiency in the United States, according to a new study led by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The primary goal of SNAP, which distributes cash-like benefits to low-income families to buy food, is to combat food insecurity, which affects 10 percent of U.S. households. The findings were published in JAMA Health Forum today. Comparing trends in food insufficiency ...

WHAT:  Receiving a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine or booster during pregnancy can benefit pregnant people and their newborn infants, according to findings recently published in Vaccine. The paper describes results from the Multisite Observational Maternal and Infant Study for COVID-19 (MOMI-VAX), which was funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health.  The MOMI-VAX study launched in June 2021 when data on COVID-19 vaccination in pregnant people were sparse. Researchers hoped to understand the ...

Ammonoids are a group of extinct marine mollusk animals that are now an iconic fossil group often collected by amateurs. Over 350 million years of evolution, ammonoids developed increasingly elaborate shells with fractal-like geometry. For nearly 200 years, scientists have debated the reason why these animals show a trend of increasing complexity in their shell structures. Dr. Robert Lemanis and Dr. Igor Zlotnikov from the B CUBE – Center for Molecular Bioengineering at TU Dresden created mechanical simulations of theoretical and computed tomography-based models to unveil a potential explanation: the intricate architecture of these shells may have been nature's ingenious ...

A novel catalysis scheme enables chemical reactions that were previously virtually impossible. The method developed at the University of Bonn is also environmentally friendly and does not require rare and precious metals. The researchers recorded the exact course of the catalysis in a kind of high-speed film. They did this using special lasers that can make processes visible that last only fractions of a billionth of a second. The results allow them to further optimize the catalyst. They have been published in the international edition of the renowned journal Angewandte Chemie. Let’s say you are playing mini ...

Specific receptors in the ears of mosquitoes have been revealed to modulate their hearing,  finds a new study led by researchers at UCL and University of Oldenburg. Scientists say, this discovery could help develop new insecticides and control the spread of harmful diseases, such as malaria. The ability of male mosquitoes to hear female mosquitoes is a crucial requirement for their reproduction. As a result, the finding could help develop novel insecticides or mating disruptors to prevent mosquito-borne diseases like malaria, dengue, and yellow fever In the study, published in Nature Communications, ...

Over the past decade, scientists have made tremendous progress in generating quantum phenomena in mechanical systems. What seemed impossible only fifteen years ago has now become a reality, as researchers successfully create quantum states in macroscopic mechanical objects. By coupling these mechanical oscillators to light photons - known as “optomechanical systems”-, scientists have been able to cool them down to their lowest energy level close to the quantum limit, “squeeze them” to reduce their vibrations even further, and entangle them with each other. These advancements have opened up new opportunities in quantum sensing, ...

As a crucial part of Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) technology, CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR) to carbon-based fuels and chemicals presents broad application prospects in renewable energy storage and CO2 negative emission. Recently, a team led by Prof. SONG Li and Associate Researcher HE Qun from the National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory of the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) put forth a novel understanding of the mechanism of CO2RR on the nickel (Ni) single-atomic sites. Their study, titled "Asymmetric ...

Researchers at The Jackson Laboratory have created a panel of genetically diverse mice that accurately model the highly variable human response to SARS-CoV-2 infection. Together with collaborators at NIH’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories, the team uncovered differences in the innate immune and regulated proinflammatory responses, the timing and strength of which are associated with disease severity. Moving forward, the diverse mouse strains will allow scientists to model patient variation in COVID-19 ...

A research team led by Prof. ZHU Shu from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) illustrated the role of Gasdermin D (GSDMD) protein in immunity tolerance to food in the small intestine. The study was published in Cell.  GSDMD, an executioner protein of cell pyroptosis, has garnered widespread attention. When cells are stimulated by pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) or damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs), the signaling receptors within the cells activate caspase-1/4/5/8/11, leading to the N-terminal cleavage of GSDMD and ...

A team led by Prof. LIU Guilin and Prof. HE Zhicheng from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) discovered superbubble pairs generated by quasar-driven outflows of three red quasars for the first time. This study was published in Science Advances.  The observed number of massive galaxies is significantly lower than the prediction of the current galaxy evolution theory, thus certain mechanism is needed to suppress star formation and modulate the growth of the galaxy. To bridge the gap between theory and observation, an outflow mechanism where a galaxy nucleus drives a massive amount of gas into intergalactic ...

Prof. REN Baohua and his team from the School of Earth and Space Sciences, the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), uncovered the connection between Arctic daily warming and the equator region as well as Atlantic storms. The series of studies have been published in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, Environmental Research Letters, and Advances in Atmospheric Sciences. As one of the coldest places where the average winter temperature is -30℃, the Arctic temperature has reached the melting point several times, for instance, in late December 2015 and 2022. Those Artic daily warming events ...

A research team led by Professor WANG Jian, the deputy chief designer of the Wide Field Survey Telescope（WFST）and a faculty member of the State Key Laboratory of Nuclear Detection and Nuclear Electronics of the School of Physics, University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences（CAS）, carried out the key technology of the main focus camera. The results were published in IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement in July ...

The research team led by Prof. LIU Xianwei from the Department of Environmental Science and Engineering of University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS) has made progress in the dynamic imaging of interfacial electrochemistry. The results were published in Nature Communications under the title of "Dynamic Imaging of Interfacial Electrochemistry on Single Ag Nanowires by Azimuth-modulated Plasmonic Scattering ...

A research team led by Prof. WU Dong from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) proposed a femtosecond laser 2-in-1 writing multi-material processing strategy to fabricate micromachined joints composed of temperature-sensitive hydrogels and metal nanoparticles, and developed multi-jointed humanoid micromachines with multiple deformation modes (>10). The results were published in Nature Communications. In recent years, femtosecond laser two-photon polymerization, as a true three-dimensional fabrication technique ...