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 ...

Lasers are an essential tool for materials processing. They can be used to cut, weld and remove material. A special kind of lasers known as femtosecond lasers can be used to create high-precision microstructures, such as those needed for smartphone displays and automotive technology. Professor Clara Saraceno from Ruhr University Bochum aims to introduce a cheaper and more efficient laser technology to the market. To this end, she is receiving a proof-of-concept grant amounting to 150,000 euros from the European Research ...

A new study presents a promising treatment method for so-called fusion-driven cancers, which are currently often difficult to cure. These fusion-driven cancers are caused by an error in cell division that creates a fusion of different genes. This fusion causes the cancer and drives the uncontrolled cell growth. Using the so-called molecular scissors CRISPR/Cas9, researchers from Aarhus University have developed a gene therapy that can stop cell division in a subtype of the aggressive blood cancer acute myeloid leukaemia (AML).  The study has just been published in the scientific journal Leukemia. Even though the ...

A new study reports conclusive evidence for the breakdown of standard gravity in the low acceleration limit from a verifiable analysis of the orbital motions of long-period, widely separated, binary stars, usually referred to as wide binaries in astronomy and astrophysics. The study carried out by Kyu-Hyun Chae, professor of physics and astronomy at Sejong University in Seoul, used up to 26,500 wide binaries within 650 light years (LY) observed by European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope. Kareem El-Badry, then at Harvard and now a faculty at ...

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, ...