FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday, August 8, 2023                            Contact: Michael Saunders, msaunder@bu.edu Jillian McKoy, jpmckoy@bu.edu ## As worsening climate change and increased global travel create ideal conditions for a resurgence of malaria in areas where it has long been eradicated, clinicians must be vigilant of the disease’s symptoms and act swiftly once cases are detected, health experts warn in a new commentary published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. In the last few months, Florida and Texas have reported ...

Research led by the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity (Doherty Institute) and the Kirby Institute found that inflammation in the body can slow down the development of malaria parasites in the bloodstream – a discovery that may constitute a potential new strategy for preventing or limiting severe disease. A mosquito-borne disease, malaria is caused by Plasmodium parasites, which invade and multiply within red blood cells. Previous research has shown that the parasites can rapidly sense and respond to conditions within the host by intimately syncing with their internal body clocks. While it is known that the body’s nutrient levels and daily circadian rhythms affect ...

The proverb “It takes a village to raise a child” takes on new significance when a mother of a child is experiencing depression. “Being a mother with depression carries increased risks for a child’s physical and psychological health,” says Dr. Sarah Dow-Fleisner, Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work and Director of the Centre for the Study of Services to Children and Families at UBC Okanagan. “But it’s not fated to be, especially if mothers have external supports.” Dr. Dow-Fleisner’s findings, recently published in the ...

EL PASO, Texas (Aug. 8, 2023) – Two University of Texas at El Paso researchers have earned one of the nation’s highest awards for early-career faculty in 2023. Laura Alvarez, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Earth, Environmental and Resource Sciences, received a $550,000 grant from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program. The funds will support her research in understanding how river landscapes and their ecological and economic values such as hydroelectric ...

The American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) has been awarded a workshop grant (Award No. 2303588) from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support the development of a series of discussions on enabling interdisciplinary and collaborative science through the integration of biological and environmental data. AIBS, in collaboration with the Biodiversity Collections Network (BCoN), will organize a set of domain-focused virtual listening sessions and a subsequent interdisciplinary workshop to engage an expansive set of stakeholders toward Building an Integrated, Open, Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (BIOFAIR) Data Network.   During the last two decades, a wealth ...

A five-year, $3.1 million grant to study preventive strategies for sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP) has been awarded to UTHealth Houston by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Nuria Lacuey Lecumberri, MD, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Neurology with McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston, is principal investigator of the study, which builds upon her years of research analyzing breathing during epileptic seizures and the localization of brain areas involved in breathing regulation. SUDEP is a devastating ...

Bogotá, 04 August 2023. The Sustainable Cocoa Innovation Challenge for Colombia has been launched as the result of the joint effort between CGIAR research initiatives AgriLAC Resiliente and Mitigate+ and the project “Implementing Sustainable Agricultural and Livestock Systems for Simultaneous Targeting of Forest Conservation for Climate Change Mitigation (REDD+) and Peacebuilding in Colombia,” otherwise known as the IKI-SLUS Project. The CGIAR Accelerate for Impact ...

“Together, these results suggest a critical role for the NLRP3 inflammasome in podocyte and liver aging.” BUFFALO, NY- August 8, 2023 – A new research paper was published in Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 15, Issue 14, entitled, “Inhibiting NLRP3 signaling in aging podocytes improves their life- and health-span.” The decrease in the podocyte’s lifespan and health-span that typify healthy kidney aging cause a decrease in their normal structure, physiology and function. The ability to halt and even reverse these changes becomes clinically relevant ...

Structured light waves with spiral phase fronts carry orbital angular momentum (OAM), attributed to the rotational motion of photons. Recently, scientists have been using light waves with OAM, and these special "helical" light beams have become very important in various advanced technologies like communication, imaging, and quantum information processing. In these technologies, it's crucial to know the exact structure of these special light beams. However, this has proven to be quite tricky. Interferometry ...

Scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), the Ministry of Environment, and the Ministry of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries of the Royal Government of Cambodia have documented the first case of lumpy skin disease (LSD) in wildlife in Cambodia. The case involved a banteng (Bos javanicus), an endangered wild cattle species, that was discovered by community patrol members from Our Future Organization while on patrol in Phnom Tnout – Phnom Pork Wildlife Sanctuary in September 2021.  It is suspected that the banteng contracted ...

Primary care provides critical support for the global health care system. But in many communities across the country and around the world, primary care physicians are in short supply. To help bridge that gap and inspire more students to choose careers in primary care, the Keck School of Medicine of USC launched its Primary Care Initiative in 2011. A key part of the initiative, the Primary Care Program (PCP), is an educational track that provides medical students with a range of patient-centered, hands-on experiences in the local community to prepare them for a career ...

Everyone has scents that naturally appeal to them, such as vanilla or coffee, and scents that don’t appeal. What makes some smells appealing and others not? Barani Raman, a professor of biomedical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, and Rishabh Chandak, who earned bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in biomedical engineering in 2016, 2021 and 2022, respectively, studied the behavior of the locusts and how the neurons in their brains responded to appealing and unappealing odors to learn more about how the brain encodes ...

Entrepreneur-fellows in Innovation Crossroads, a Department of Energy Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Program at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, will complete the Spark Cleantech Accelerator, a 12-week program offered by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Spark Innovation Center at the UT Research Park. “By combining the resources of Innovation Crossroads and the Spark Cleantech Accelerator, we are building a stronger program for entrepreneurs,” said Dan Miller, program lead for Innovation Crossroads. “Entrepreneurial ecosystems depend on relationships among early-stage companies. This new collaboration — ...

The USC Neuro Revascularization Center (USC NRV Center) performs approximately 40-50 complex revascularization procedures per year, making it one of the most clinically robust programs in the country. Its multidisciplinary approach—combining plastic surgery, vascular surgery, and neurosurgery—is what allows the center to treat the most complex clinical cases and answer some of the toughest research questions.  A recent $500,000 gift from Alfred E. Mann Charities will support clinical excellence, novel research, and educational opportunities at the center with a clear focus ...

LOS ANGELES (August 8, 2023) — Whatever the opioid crisis calls to mind, it likely isn’t pacifiers and diapers. But when 1 out of every 5 hospitalized infants receives opioids, and when some infants require methadone treatment, it’s time to widen the scope. A new study led by pediatric surgeons at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles shows that methadone use after surgery can prolong a baby’s recovery and increase an infant’s dependence on ventilators and intravenous (IV) nutrition.  To call the opioid problem in the United States a crisis is not hyperbole. The rate of death due to opioid overdose has risen ...

Investors have been buying houses at a steady rate since the last recession, but how much does it affect availability in the housing market? New research from the Georgia Institute of Technology shows investors are most likely to push out Black, middle-class homeowners from neighborhoods. Data from 800 neighborhoods in the Atlanta metropolitan area between 2007 and 2016 revealed that major investors bought homes in majority-minority neighborhoods far from downtowns and in lower-income areas. These homes were often undervalued because of their minority populations, but they remained desirable and offered good market value. The neighborhoods ...

From building fighter jets to automobiles, the manufacturing world is increasingly adapting digital instruction as technology advances. Mechanical parts can be designed on a computer and shipped over the network to a manufacturing machine that follows digital instructions to produce a specific part. The move into the digital world makes securing online information a national interest.  Dr. Narasimha Reddy, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University, recently received a National Science Foundation grant to research cybersecurity ...

Researchers from the United Kingdom hope that a new, publicly available database they have created will shrink, not grow, over time. That’s because it is a compendium of the thousands of understudied proteins encoded by genes in the human genome, whose existence is known but whose functions are mostly not. The database, dubbed the “unknome”, is the work of Matthew Freeman of the Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford, England, and Sean Munro of MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, and ...

Dissolved organic matter (DOM) can be found in every water body on Earth, encompassing both saltwater and freshwater. It is a significant carbon source and is critical in environmental carbon cycling, which is the circulation of carbon in various forms through the environment and nature that makes the Earth sustainable for life. The interaction between DOM and sunlight is essential for the carbon cycle to function effectively. However, the chemical structure of light-absorbing compounds, also known as chromophores, in DOM remains limited. Dr. Garrett McKay, principal investigator of the Aquatic Chemistry Lab and assistant professor ...

WASHINGTON — Researchers have reported the first 3D measurements acquired with quantum ghost imaging. The new technique enables 3D imaging on a single photon level, yielding the lowest photon dose possible for any measurement. “3D imaging with single photons could be used for various biomedical applications, such as eye care diagnostics,” said researcher Carsten Pitsch from the Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, both in Germany.  “It can be applied to image materials and tissues that are sensitive to light or drugs that become toxic when exposed ...

This October, NASA is launching the Heliophysics Big Year ­– a global celebration of solar science and the Sun’s influence on Earth and the entire solar system. Modeled after the “Big Year” concept from citizen scientists in the bird-watching community, the Heliophysics Big Year challenges everyone to get involved with fun Sun-related activities. For each month from October 2023 to December 2024, the Heliophysics Big Year will celebrate under a theme, sharing opportunities to participate in many solar science events from watching eclipses to joining citizen science projects. During ...

The world of at-home stroke rehabilitation is growing near, incredible news for the 795,000 people in the United States who annually suffer a stroke. A new low cost, portable brain-computer interface that connects the brain of stroke patients to powered exoskeletons for rehabilitation purposes has been validated and tested at the University of Houston.   “We designed and validated a wireless, easy-to-use, mobile, dry-electrode headset for scalp electroencephalography (EEG) recordings for closed-loop brain–computer ...

Listening to music and drinking coffee are the sorts of everyday pleasures that can impact a person’s brain activity in ways that improve cognitive performance, including in tasks requiring concentration and memory. That’s a finding of a new NYU Tandon School of Engineering study involving MINDWATCH, a groundbreaking brain-monitoring technology. Developed over the past six years by NYU Tandon's Biomedical Engineering Associate Professor Rose Faghih, MINDWATCH is an algorithm that analyzes a person's brain activity from data collected via any wearable device that can monitor electrodermal activity ...

Washington, DC— As climate change progresses, rising temperatures may impact nitrogen runoff from land to lakes and streams more than projected increases in total and extreme precipitation for most of the continental United States, according to new research from a team of Carnegie climate scientists led by Gang Zhao and Anna Michalak published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The conditions predicted by these findings are opposite to recent decades, when increasing precipitation has outpaced warming and led to more aquatic nitrogen pollution. Understanding the relative roles of changes in temperature and rainfall is critical for designing ...

In a series of three editorials published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, the international team of scientists discuss issues facing the wearables field including lack of standardisation of devices and data, disconnects between research and industry and the impact of inequality in ownership. Currently around a third of UK adults own a smartwatch or fitness tracker. A 2021 Australian-based survey reported 24 percent used fitness trackers and 23 percent used smartwatches. Some use them to track their steps, others their sleep, but few understand the potential of these devices to transform our understanding of how everyday activity influences health. “If you ...