Novel blood testing technology being developed by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center that combines genome-wide sequencing of single molecules of DNA shed from tumors and machine learning may allow earlier detection of lung and other cancers. The test, called GEMINI (Genome-wide Mutational Incidence for Non-Invasive detection of cancer), looks for changes to DNA throughout the genome. First, a blood sample is collected from a person at risk for developing cancer. Then, cell-free DNA (cfDNA) shed by tumors is extracted from the plasma and sequenced using cost-efficient ...

Kamaʻehuakanaloa (formerly Lōʻihi Seamount), a submarine Hawaiian volcano located about 20 miles off the south coast of the Big Island of Hawai‘i, has erupted at least five times in the last 150 years, according to new research led by Earth scientists at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. For the first time, scientists were able to estimate the ages of the most recent eruptions of Kamaʻehu, as well as the ages of eight additional older eruptions at this volcano going back about 2,000 years. Their findings were published recently in Geology.  Hawaiian volcanoes are thought to transition through a series of growth stages. ...

Research from the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience has identified a mechanism through which insulin-like growth factors facilitate brain plasticity. The insulin superfamily of hormones, including insulin, insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1), and insulin-like growth factor 2 (IGF2), play a crucial role not only in regulating blood sugar, metabolism, and growth, but also in healthy brain development and function, including learning and memory. These hormones can enter the brain through the bloodstream from the liver or can be synthesized directly in neurons and glial cells within the brain. They bind to receptors, ...

Mothers who eat apples and herbs in early pregnancy could be protecting the brain health of their children and grandchildren, a Monash University study using genetic models has found. The discovery is part of a project that found a mother’s diet can affect not just her child’s brain but also those of her grandchildren. Published in Nature Cell Biology, the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute study found that certain foods could help protect against the deterioration of brain function. More specifically, the study used roundworms (Caenorhabditis elegans) as the genetic model because many of ...

In a new study published in Nature Geosciences, researchers, led by a Tulane University sedimentologist , investigated why the paths of meandering rivers change over time and how they could be affected by climate change. Chenliang Wu, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at Tulane University School of Science and Engineering, began this research by looking at the Mississippi River before adding other rivers on Earth and ancient riverbeds on Mars to the study. The study specifically looks at river sinuosity, or how much rivers curve. The sinuosity of rivers changes over time, depending on the age of the river and environmental changes. Some of these changes ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. – Sometimes, the best place to hide a secret is in broad daylight. Just ask the sun. “The sun is more surprising than we knew,” said Mehr Un Nisa, a postdoctoral research associate at Michigan State University. “We thought we had this star figured out, but that’s not the case.” Nisa, who will soon be joining MSU’s faculty, is the corresponding author of a new paper in the journal Physical Review Letters that details the discovery of the highest-energy ...

Key points: A cohort study of millions of Medicare beneficiaries found that chronic exposures to PM2.5 and NO2 over a 10-year period increased the risk of developing colorectal and prostate cancers. Even in areas with low pollution levels, researchers found substantial associations between exposures to these pollutants and the risk of developing colorectal and prostate cancers, in addition to breast and endometrial cancers. For immediate release: August 3, 2023 Boston, MA—Chronic exposure to fine particulate air pollutants (PM2.5) ...

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (08/03/2023) — Published in the International Journal of Obesity, University of Minnesota Medical School and School of Public Health researchers led a study on the relationship between dietary intake and cardiovascular disease risk factors.  Over 20 years, the research team examined people's regular dietary intake, paying particular attention to non-nutritive sweeteners commonly found in artificial sweeteners. They found that long-term consumption of aspartame, saccharin and diet beverages were linked to increased fat stores in the abdomen and fat within muscle. However, ...

The key to understanding proteins — such as those that govern cancer, COVID-19, and other diseases — is quite simple.  Identify their chemical structure and find which other proteins can bind to them. But there’s a catch. “The search space for proteins is enormous,” said Brian Coventry, a research scientist with the Institute for Protein Design, University of Washington and The Howard Hughes Medical Institute.  A protein studied by his lab typically is made of 65 amino acids, and ...

AUGUST 3, 2023, NEW YORK – A Ludwig Cancer Research study has identified a pair of genes whose expression by a type of immune cell within tumors is predictive of outcomes for cancer patients and is linked to a vast network of gene expression programs, engaged by multiple cell types in the tumor microenvironment, that control human cancers. Researchers led by Ludwig Lausanne’s Mikaël Pittet report in the current issue of Science that patients with higher expression of the gene CXCL9 in their tumor-associated macrophages had far better clinical outcomes than those with higher expression of a gene named SPP1 by the immune cells. Macrophages expressing the former ...

After decades of decline, fatal coronary heart disease may rise again unless Americans modify three major risk factors: smoking, drinking, and obesity. A Rutgers study just published in American Heart Journal found that deaths from coronary heart disease among people ages 25 to 84 dropped to 236,953 in 2019 from 397,623 in 1990, even though Americans’ median age increased to 38 from 33 over the last three decades. Between 1990 and 2019, the US age-standardized coronary heart disease mortality rate per 100,000 fell from 210.5 to 66.8 for females (4 percent decline per year) and from 442.4 to 156.7 for males (3.7 percent decline per year). However, the decline has slowed significantly ...

UCF, MIT Designing Technology To Fight Bacterial Infections, Improve Aquaculture Farming    BY SUHTLING WONG | AUGUST 3, 2023 11:11 AM UCF and MIT researchers are using farm-raised seafood as a model to create new technologies that fight pathogenic bacteria. University of Central College of Medicine microbiologist Dr. Salvador Almagro-Moreno and Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Dr. Otto Cordero were recently awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation  to create synthetic microbiomes –  communities of microorganisms – that will better protect aquatic environments from bacteria.  The team ...

A population genetics team recently identified the genetic relationship between over 40,000 23andMe users and a population of enslaved and free African Americans that lived in Catoctin Furnace, Maryland between 1776–1850. Over the course of this study, the researchers considered how best to inform descendants and other genetic relatives of their genetic connection to the site. The group has published their considerations and the ethical questions they have encountered on August 3rd in the American Journal of Human Genetics. “This study required us to consider several ethical issues that had not been explicitly addressed in the existing literature ...

Tropical forests often harbor hundreds of species of trees in a square mile, but scientists often struggle to understand how such a diversity of species can coexist. In a study published in Science, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have provided new insights into the answer by uncovering a key characteristic of the spatial distribution of adult trees. Combining computational modeling with data collected during a 30-year period, the researchers discovered that adult trees in a Panamanian forest are three times as distant from other adults of the same species as what the proverbial “the apple doesn’t fall far from ...

A research group led by Prof. LI Runwei at the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering (NIMTE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have proposed a "slight crosslinking" method that imparts elastic recovery to ferroelectric materials. The study was published in Science. Ferroelectric materials are very useful for applications such as data storage and processing, sensing, energy conversion, and optoelectronics, etc., making them highly desirable in mobile phones, tablets and other ...

In an Editorial, Cynthia Bulik and Andrew Hardaway highlight the recent advances in medical treatments for obesity and weight loss. “With the emergence of new, highly effective weight-loss drugs, might the ‘fat decades’ become a closed chapter in the history of public health?” ask the authors. The “obesity epidemic” is a global health concern, with more than a billion people affected by obesity and many more overweight. Although various environmental, biological, and behavioral factors have been implicated in obesity, few consistently effective treatments exist for the disease. Recently, however, new weight-loss ...

In this Policy Forum, Robin Gregory and colleagues highlight how a suite of methodological approaches can be used to bring less tangible social and cultural losses that marginalized groups incur into the formal compensation assessment framework. “Though the issues and approaches we describe are applicable in many contexts,” the authors write, “we illustrate them … with a focus on Indigenous communities, for whom the neglect of social and cultural losses in assessments of compensation ...

Tropical trees distance themselves from members of their own species more than they do other species, a new study shows. What’s more, trees of the same species exist at distances farther apart than would be expected by chance or the limits of seed dispersal. The results reveal pervasive within-species spatial repulsion in adult trees, providing new insights into the ecological dynamics that stabilize species diversity and enable the exceptionally high diversity of tropical forests. Tropical forests host an unusually high diversity of tree species. For example, some tropical forests contain more than 250 tree species per hectare. However, how hundreds of species coexist on relatively small ...

Peptide YY (PYY), a hormone produced by gut endocrine cells that was already known to control appetite, also plays an important role in maintaining the balance of fungi in the digestive system of mammals, according to new research from the University of Chicago. In a study published this week in Science, researchers found that specialized immune cells in the small intestine called Paneth cells express a form of PYY that prevents the fungus Candida albicans from turning into its more virulent form. PYY was already known to be produced by endocrine cells in the gut as a hormone that signals satiety, or when an animal has had enough to eat. The new research shows that it also ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Chemical structures called cyclopropanes can increase the potency and fine-tune the properties of many drugs, but traditional methods to create this structure only work with certain molecules and require highly reactive—potentially explosive—ingredients. Now, a team of researchers from Penn State has identified and demonstrated a safe, efficient and practical way to create cyclopropanes on a wide variety of molecules using a previously undescribed chemical process. With additional development, the new method—described ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- A signaling protein known as STING is a critical player in the human immune system, detecting signs of danger within cells and then activating a variety of defense mechanisms. STING is primarily on the lookout for DNA, which can indicate either a foreign invader such as a virus or damage to the host tissue or cell. When STING detects that danger signal, it can turn on at least three different pathways — one leading to interferon production, one to non-canonical autophagy (involved in recycling cell components and clearing pathogens), and a third to formation of the inflammasome, a complex of proteins that activates ...

The Gulf Stream, which brings warm water from the Gulf of Mexico to Europe and keeps the climate mild, is only part of a larger system of oceanic currents called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC for short. It runs through the Atlantic like a giant climate machine: as warm water from the tropics is transported northwards at the surface, the current reverses in the North Atlantic – the water cools, becomes heavier and flows south at depth. Where exactly these sinking processes take place is the subject of current research, and recent measurement programmes have located them to the east of Greenland. ...

Paris, France – August 3, 2023 – The First International Congress on Artificial Intelligence and Medicine, AI & Medicine 2024, is set to take place on April 11-12, 2024, in Paris, France. Building on the success of IA & Néphrologie 2023, the conference aims to bridge the gap between cutting-edge technology and health care. AI & Medicine 2024 aims to inform medical professionals about the capabilities of advanced machine learning techniques, and simultaneously raise awareness within the tech industry regarding the unique challenges and requirements of the healthcare sector. The congress will offer a platform to discuss the current applications of AI in diagnostics, ...

Spinouts, or new ventures started by employees leaving a parent firm, often outperform other types of new firms. But a new study published in Strategic Management Journal finds that when parent firms identify and implement ideas internally, they outperform spinouts. For example, if employees at Microsoft leave the parent and start their own spinout in the competing industry, the spinout potentially needs to compete against a new establishment formed by Microsoft in the same industry. New ventures by former employees often have an edge over competitors because of the knowledge transfer from their ...

Research at the Florida State University College of Medicine has identified a potential low-cost method for predicting if a person is at risk of developing dementia. By analyzing data from nearly 13,000 subjects who participated in a long-term aging study, researchers found that an interviewer’s rating of a cognitively healthy person’s memory successfully predicted the likelihood of developing dementia over a 15-year period. Their findings will be published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. “Our findings show that interviewers ...