Surgeons can ease their patients' pain from common operations without prescribing opioids, and avoid the possibility of starting someone on a path to long-term use, a pair of new studies suggests. Treating post-surgery pain with non-opioid pain medications such as ibuprofen or acetaminophen didn't lead to higher pain levels or more serious issues during recovery, and didn't dampen patients' satisfaction with their care, according to new results from a study of more than 22,000 patients who had one of seven common operations at 70 hospitals. The team behind the study has also produced a free, evidence-based guide for surgeons and other acute care providers, ...

People often think about human behavior in terms of what is happening in the present--reading a newspaper, driving a car, or catching a football. But other dimensions of behavior extend over weeks, months, and years. Examples include a child learning how to read; an athlete recovering from a concussion; or a person turning 50 and wondering where all the time has gone. These are not changes that people perceive on a day-to-day basis. They just suddenly realize they're older, healed, or have a new development skill. "The field of neuroscience looks at the brain in multiple ways," says Franco Pestilli, a neuroscientist at The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin). "For ...

Researchers have discovered that the common bacteria E. coli can be deployed as a sustainable way to convert post-consumer plastic into vanillin, a new study reveals. Vanillin is the primary component of extracted vanilla beans and is responsible for the characteristic taste and smell of vanilla. The transformation could boost the circular economy, which aims to eliminate waste, keep products and materials in use and have positive impacts for synthetic biology, experts say. The world's plastic crisis has seen an urgent need to develop new methods to recycle polyethylene terephthalate (PET) - the strong, lightweight plastic derived from non-renewable materials such as oil and gas and widely used for ...

High-speed internet access has gone from an amenity to a necessity for working and learning from home, and the COVID-19 pandemic has more clearly revealed the disadvantages for American households that lack a broadband connection. To tackle this problem, Michigan State University researchers have developed a new tool to smooth the collection of federal broadband access data that helps pinpoint coverage gaps across the U.S. The research was published May 26 In the journal PLOS ONE. "Nearly 21% of students in urban areas are without at-home broadband, while 25% and 37% lack at-home broadband in suburban ...

Researchers at Michigan Medicine found a subset of middle-aged men with cerebral palsy are up to 5.6 times more likely to suffer fractures than men without the disorder. "We are not really sure why this happens," said Edward A. Hurvitz, M.D., professor and chair of the Michigan Medicine Department of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation. "It may be related to structural differences that occur during adolescent growth, or to greater bone mineral loss at earlier age for people with cerebral palsy compared to peers." For a study published in BONE, the team examined the timing and site of bone fractures for around ...

JUNE 10, 2021, NEW YORK - A Ludwig Cancer Research study adds to growing evidence that immune cells known as macrophages inhabiting the body cavities that house our vital organs can aid tumor growth by distracting the immune system's cancer-killing CD8+ T cells. Reported in the current issue of Cancer Cell and led by Ludwig investigators Taha Merghoub and Jedd Wolchok at Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) and Charles Rudin of MSK, the study shows that cavity-resident macrophages express high levels of Tim-4, a receptor for phosphatidylserine (PS), a molecule that they surprisingly ...

Earlier this year, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) acknowledged the impact of structural racism on biomedical science and committed to doing more to dismantle it. Now, in a commentary appearing June 10 in the journal Cell, NIH Director Francis Collins (@NIHDirector) and colleagues describe the NIH's UNITE initiative and how it differs from the agency's previous diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. The UNITE initiative was launched on February 26, 2021 and, for the first time, brings together all 27 NIH institutes to focus on structural racism. It is made up of five committees with members from across the agency and aims to accelerate efforts to address racism ...

A new device that fits over a person's ears and enables non-invasive measurement of real-time changes in blood alcohol levels through the skin is presented in a proof-of-principle study in Scientific Reports. The device, devised by Kohji Mitsubayashi and colleagues, consists of a modified pair of commercial earmuffs that collect gas released through the skin of a person's ears, and an ethanol vapour sensor. If the sensor detects ethanol vapour, it releases light, the intensity of which allows for ethanol concentrations to be calculated. The authors used their device to continuously monitor ethanol vapour released through the ears of three male volunteers, who had consumed alcohol with a concentration of 0.4 g per kg body weight, for 140 ...

A new study, published now in Nature Ecology and Evolution, draws on pollen records from tropical regions formerly claimed by the Spanish Empire in both the Atlantic and the Pacific, to test the significance and extent of forest regrowth following widespread mortality among Indigenous populations after European contact in the 15th and 16th centuries. By analyzing microscopic pollen grains preserved in lake sediments, scientists are able to build up a picture as to how environments have changed over time. It is well documented that the arrival of Europeans in the Americas ...

MELVILLE, N.Y., June 10, 2021 -- As more and more people are taking advantage of music on the go, personal audio systems are pumping up the volume to the detriment of the listener's hearing. Children, teenagers, and young adults are listening to many hours of music daily at volumes exceeding the globally recommended public health limit of 70 decibels of average leisure noise exposure for a day for a year. During the 180th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, which will be held virtually June 8-10, Daniel Fink, from The Quiet Coalition, and audiologist Jan Mayes will talk about the current research into personal audio system usage and the need for public health hearing conservation policies. Their session, "Personal ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- On Earth right now, there are about 10 trillion gigabytes of digital data, and every day, humans produce emails, photos, tweets, and other digital files that add up to another 2.5 million gigabytes of data. Much of this data is stored in enormous facilities known as exabyte data centers (an exabyte is 1 billion gigabytes), which can be the size of several football fields and cost around $1 billion to build and maintain. Many scientists believe that an alternative solution lies in the molecule that contains our genetic information: DNA, which evolved to store massive quantities of information at very high density. A coffee mug full of DNA could theoretically store all of the world's data, says Mark Bathe, an MIT professor of biological engineering. "We need new ...

Fast Facts: - In 2019, 409,000 people died of malaria--most were young children in sub-Saharan Africa. - The annual economic costs of malaria to Africa alone amount to USD 12 billion. - Through extensive fieldwork and close follow-up of the children in rural areas of Burkina Faso, the new study has led to the discovery of a molecular mechanism that alters the immune response to infection. Abu Dhabi, UAE - June 10, 2021: In the first and largest global metabolomic study of African children before and after malaria infection, NYU Abu Dhabi Assistant Professor of Biology Youssef Idaghdour and his colleagues at the Centre National de Recherche et de Formation sur le Paludisme ...

If the trend of declining coral growth continues at the current rate, the world's coral reefs may cease calcifying around 2054, a new Southern Cross University study has found. Drawing on research from the late 1960s until now, the paper published in Communications & Environment reveals the global spatiotemporal trends and drivers of coral reef ecosystem growth (known as calcification). One hundred and sixteen studies from 53 published papers were analysed. "It is known that coral reefs have been degrading over time. Our study relies on historical data to quantify the current rate of decline and indicates what could be happening in the future," said project ...

What The Study Did: This survey study among women with breast cancer in Mexico evaluates their specific concerns about and high hesitancy rate toward COVID-19 vaccination. Authors: Cynthia Villarreal-Garza, M.D., D.Sc., of the Breast Cancer Center, Hospital Zambrano Hellion TecSalud in Nuevo León, Mexico, 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/jamaoncol.2021.1962) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support. INFORMATION: Media advisory: The ...

What The Study Did: The incidence of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) among people with SARS-CoV-2 infection in the United States was estimated in this study. Authors: Angela P. Campbell, M.D., M.P.H., of the COVID-19 Response Team at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, was 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.2021.16420) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support ...

Children with documented child protection concerns are four times as likely to die before they reach their 16th birthday, according to confronting new research from the University of South Australia. The world first study identifies the extreme seriousness of familial child abuse and neglect, measuring for the first time the excess risk of death that children with documented child protection concerns face. Child abuse and neglect are prominent worldwide public health concerns affecting 20-50 per cent of children worldwide. In Australia, 20-25 per cent of children endure child maltreatment. Published in JAMA Network Open today, the study analysed deidentified data ...

A combination of ibrutinib and venetoclax was found to provide lasting disease remission in patients with newly diagnosed chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), according to researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Findings from the single-institution Phase II study were published today in JAMA Oncology and provide the longest follow-up data on patients treated with this drug regimen. Lead researchers included Nitin Jain, M.D., associate professor of Leukemia, William Wierda, M.D., Ph.D., professor of Leukemia; and Varsha Gandhi, Ph.D., department chair ad interim of Experimental Therapeutics. MD Anderson researchers previously reported results from this study showing that ibrutinib ...

The 30,000 or so genes making up the human genome contain the instructions vital to life. Yet each of our cells expresses only a subset of these genes in their daily functioning. The difference between a heart cell and a liver cell, for example, is determined by which genes are expressed--and the correct expression of genes can mean the difference between health and disease. Until recently, researchers investigating the genes underlying disease have been limited because traditional imaging techniques only allow for the study of a handful of genes at a time. A new technique developed by Jun Hee Lee, Ph.D., and his team at the University of Michigan Medical School, part of Michigan Medicine, uses high-throughput ...

A study published in the June 10, 2021 issue of Cell describes a remarkable new mechanism by which the body's own immune system can eliminate cancer cells without damaging host cells. The findings have the potential to develop first-in-class medicines that are designed to be selective for cancer cells and non-toxic to normal cells and tissues. If successful, this discovery may improve the practice of precision medicine by ensuring the right drug is delivered at the right dose at the right time. Our immune system plays a critical role in our ability to fight off diseases ...

Organic semiconductors have earned a reputation as energy efficient materials in organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) that are employed in large area displays. In these and in other applications, such as solar cells, a key parameter is the energy gap between electronic states. It determines the wavelength of the light that is emitted or absorbed. The continuous adjustability of this energy gap is desirable. Indeed, for inorganic materials an appropriate method already exists - the so-called blending. It is based on engineering the band gap by substituting atoms in the material. This allows for a continuous tunability as, for example in aluminum gallium arsenide semiconductors. Unfortunately, this is not transferable to organic semiconductors ...

Leipzig. Soot particles from oil and wood heating systems as well as road traffic can pollute the air in Europe on a much larger scale than previously assumed. This is what researchers from the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS) conclude from a measurement campaign in the Thuringian Forest in Germany. The evaluation of the sources showed that about half of the soot particles came from the surrounding area and the other half from long distances. From the researchers' point of view, this underlines the need to further reduce emissions of soot that ...

It is generally agreed that sperms "swim" by beating or rotating their soft tails. However, a research team led by scientists from City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has discovered that ray sperms move by rotating both the tail and the head. The team further investigated the motion pattern and demonstrated it with a robot. Their study has expanded the knowledge on the microorganisms' motion and provided inspiration for robot engineering design. The research is co-led by Dr Shen Yajing, Associate Professor from CityU's Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME), and Dr Shi Jiahai, Assistant Professor of the Department of Biomedical Sciences (BMS). Their findings have been published in ...

An electrode coating just one molecule thick can significantly enhance the performance of an organic photovoltaic cell, KAUST researchers have found. The coating outperforms the leading material currently used for this task and may pave the way for improvements in other devices that rely on organic molecules, such as light-emitting diodes and photodetectors. Unlike the most common photovoltaic cells that use crystalline silicon to harvest light, organic photovoltaic cells (OPVs) rely on a light-absorbing layer of carbon-based molecules. Although OPVs cannot yet rival the performance of silicon cells, they could be easier and cheaper to manufacture at a very large scale using ...

The type of material present under glaciers has a big impact on how fast they slide towards the ocean. Scientists face a challenging task to acquire data of this under-ice landscape, let alone how to represent it accurately in models of future sea-level rise. "Choosing the wrong equations for the under-ice landscape can have the same effect on the predicted contribution to sea-level rise as a warming of several degrees", says Henning Åkesson, who led a new published study on Petermann Glacier in Greenland. Glaciers and ice sheets around the world currently lose more than 700,000 Olympic swimming pools of water every day. Glaciers form by the transformation of snow into ice, which is later melted by ...

With the start of the United Nations' Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, which runs through 2030, a tremendous amount of money and effort will be put into re-growing forests, making over-exploited farmland productive, and reviving damaged marine environments. This is a good, and vital, initiative. Without quick action to clean up the fallout of humanity's scorched-earth economic systems, goals on hunger, biodiversity and climate will be unattainable. But in examining restoration projects already underway across the globe, a group of scientists has found that restoration action is at risk of failure if it doesn't make ...