CONTACT: Camille Jewell cjewell@vancomm.com or 202-248-5460   SAN DIEGO—Contrary to the results of a seminal study in the field, a recent analysis presented today at the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery’s (SNIS) 20th Annual Meeting indicates that surgical approaches (embolization, microsurgery, radiosurgery) for treating selected patients with unruptured arteriovenous malformation (AVM) is safe and effective.   AVMs are tangled blood vessels with abnormal connection between arteries and veins, bypassing the capillary ...

CONTACT: Camille Jewell cjewell@vancomm.com or 202-248-5460   SAN DIEGO—Today at the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery’s (SNIS) 20th Annual Meeting, researchers discussed a smartphone app created that reliably recognizes patients’ physical signs of stroke with the power of machine learning.   In the study, “Smartphone-Enabled Machine Learning Algorithms for Autonomous Stroke Detection,” researchers from the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and multiple medical institutions in Bulgaria used data from 240 patients with stroke at four metropolitan stroke centers. Within 72 hours of the ...

Nose-picking healthcare workers were more likely to catch COVID-19 during the pandemic than their colleagues who refrained, per Netherlands cohort study ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0288352 Article Title: Why not to pick your nose: Association between nose picking and SARS-CoV-2 incidence, a cohort study in hospital health care workers Author Countries: The Netherlands Funding: This work was funded by the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development ZonMw (S3 study, grant agreement no. 10430022010023 to M.K.B.) and the Corona ...

Half of popular TikTok videos about Baby Boomers portray older adults negatively, risking reinforcing stereotypes and creating intergenerational conflict ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0285987 Article Title: Videos about older adults on TikTok Author Countries: Singapore Funding: We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Social Science Research Council SSHR Fellowship (MOE2018-SSHR-004). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to ...

Extreme climates may have driven Middle Pleistocene hominins towards (positive) assortative mating and evolution of bigger brains, according to economic model of climate change impacts ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0287964 Article Title: An economic model and evidence of the evolution of human intelligence in the Middle Pleistocene: Climate change and assortative mating Author Countries: USA Funding: The author received no specific funding for this work. END ...

Interest in local bird feeding appears to have ramped up in countries all over the world during the pandemic lockdowns, even in countries not historically noted for bird feeding practices, according to a study published August 2, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Jacqueline Doremus from California Polytechnic State University and Liqing Li from Texas A&M University College Station, US, and Darryl Jones from Griffith University, Australia. Feeding wild birds is a popular nature-based pastime because of its simplicity, low cost, and accessibility in even urban environments. ...

In an analysis of more than 5,000 people, frequently working in teams was associated with a greater tendency for women and white men to put in extra effort at work, while other links between job conditions and effort varied between genders and ethnoracial groups. Wei-hsin Yu of the University of California, Los Angeles, US, and Janet Chen-Lan Kuo of National Taiwan University, Taiwan, present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on August 2, 2023. Popular media has recently featured discussion of “quiet ...

In a study involving more than 500 people, participants correctly identified speech deepfakes only 73 percent of the time, and efforts to train participants to detect deepfakes had minimal effects. Kimberly Mai and colleagues at University College London, UK, presented these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on August 2, 2023. Speech deepfakes are synthetic voices produced by machine-learning models. Deepfakes may resemble a specific real person’s voice, or they may be unique. Tools for making speech deepfakes have recently improved, raising concerns about security threats. For instance, they have already ...

A single accessory – an ornate necklace from a child’s grave in ancient Jordan – provides new insights into social complexity of Neolithic culture, according to a study published August 2, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Hala Alarashi of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Spain, and the Université Côte d’Azur, France and colleagues. Body adornments are powerful symbols that communicate cultural values and personal identities, and they are therefore highly valuable in the study of ancient cultures. In this study, Alarashi and colleagues analyze materials that adorned ...

In the August 02, 2023 issue of Science Translational Medicine, University of California San Diego researchers lead a team that has published new insights on pelvic floor muscle (PFM) dysfunction, which is one of the key risk factors for pelvic floor disorders, a set of morbid conditions that include pelvic organ prolapse and urinary and fecal incontinence, that impact close to a quarter of women in the U.S. and have a strong association with vaginal childbirth. The work is part of a larger effort to advance understanding, treatment and prevention of pelvic floor muscle dysfunction in humans.  The ...

The study, published today in PLOS ONE, is the first to assess human ability to detect artificially generated speech in a language other than English. Deepfakes are synthetic media intended to resemble a real person’s voice or appearance. They fall under the category of generative artificial intelligence (AI), a type of machine learning (ML) that trains an algorithm to learn the patterns and characteristics of a dataset, such as video or audio of a real person, so that it can reproduce original sound or imagery. While early deepfake speech algorithms may have required thousands of samples of a person’s voice to be able ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- A study examining the effects of deportation on the health and wellbeing of noncitizen veterans who served in the United States military has found that this group is a vulnerable and often unrecognized health disparity population. Overseen by Ann Cheney, an associate professor of social medicine, population, and public health in the School of Medicine at the University of California, Riverside, the study reports the post-deportation economic, social, and political conditions of living abroad harm veterans’ physical and ...

A team of researchers have highlighted the role that the COVID-19 pandemic played in connecting people around the world more with our feathered friends while in lockdowns, finding a surge in interest for bird feeding information and providing more insight into global human-birds interactions. Professor Emeritus Darryl Jones, from Griffith’s Centre for Planetary Health and Food Security, and the research team used Google search index (a valid proxy parameter from Google Trends data) and found a surge of interest in bird feeding in 115 countries after Covid-19 led to lockdowns where people stayed home. Professor Jones, alongside lead author Associate Professor ...

UCLA-led research describes the role that a protein called CEACAM1 plays in protecting the liver from injury during the transplantation process, potentially improving transplant outcomes. But the features that regulate this protective characteristic remain unknown. In a new study, to be published online Aug. 2 in Science Translational Medicine, a research team has identified the molecular factors at the root of this protection and shown how using molecular tools and alternative gene splicing can make CEACAM1 more protective, thus reducing organ injury and ultimately improving post-transplant outcomes. Prior to transplantation, a solid organ, such as a liver, has no ...

In February, the train derailment and subsequent chemical spill and fires in East Palestine, Ohio, caused an environmental emergency that led thousands of people to evacuate their homes. A multi-university study led by the University of Illinois Chicago will investigate the aftermath of that disaster, collecting data on the experiences of nearby residents and the effectiveness of communication from authorities about water, soil and air quality. For the study, the researchers will conduct surveys and interviews with residents in and near East Palestine, including counties ...

HOUSTON ― The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Research Highlights showcases the latest breakthroughs in cancer care, research and prevention. These advances are made possible through seamless collaboration between MD Anderson’s world-leading clinicians and scientists, bringing discoveries from the lab to the clinic and back. Recent developments include a novel biomarker that may predict the aggressiveness of pancreatic cancer precursors, insights into the structure and function of a breast and ovarian cancer susceptibility gene, a new approach to overcoming treatment resistance in ovarian cancer, distinguishing features of young-onset ...

The latest issues of three of the American Psychiatric Association’s journals, The American Journal of Psychiatry, Psychiatric Services and Focus are now available online. The August issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry on the neurodevelopmental origins of psychopathology is focused on early-life adversity and genetics as mediators of the risk to develop psychiatric illnesses. Highlights include: Overview of Alcohol Use Disorder. A Comprehensive Multilevel Analysis of the Bucharest Early Intervention Project: Causal Effects on Recovery from Early Severe Deprivation. ...

On Thursday, 3 August 2023, the research vessel Polarstern is scheduled to set off from Tromsø, Norway, towards the North Pole. For two months, a good fifty scientific expedition participants will explore the Arctic in transition as sea ice extent reaches its annual minimum in September. They will explore the biology, chemistry and physics of sea ice as well as the effects of sea ice retreat on the entire ocean system from the surface to the deep sea. Eleven years ago, Antje Boetius was part of the largest ever sea ice minumum in the Arctic ...

ATLANTA — New research led by scientists working with Georgia State University’s TReNDS Center has identified age-related changes in brain patterns associated with the risk for developing schizophrenia. The discovery could help clinicians identify the risk for developing mental illness earlier and improve treatment options. The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The research is part of a collaboration by experts from the University of Bari Aldo Moro, the Lieber Institute of Brain Development and the Tri-institutional Center for Translational Research in ...

A common metal paper clip will stick to a magnet. Scientists classify such iron-containing materials as ferromagnets. A little over a century ago, physicists Albert Einstein and Wander de Haas reported a surprising effect with a ferromagnet. If you suspend an iron cylinder from a wire and expose it to a magnetic field, it will start rotating if you simply reverse the direction of the magnetic field.  “Einstein and de Haas’s experiment is almost like a magic show,” said Haidan Wen, a ...

Hockey leagues in Canada should overhaul current rules and regulations to raise the age of bodychecking in the game from 13 to 15, says new research into the effect of body contact on teens. The literature review was led by Dr. Kristian Gouletnorth_eastexternal link of the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Medicine and Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) and calls on provincial and territorial governments to mandate schools – including those involved with school sports – and sports organizations to establish, ...

Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a robotic gripping device that is gentle enough to pick up a drop of water, strong enough to pick up a 6.4 kilogram (14.1 pound) weight, dexterous enough to fold a cloth, and precise enough to pick up microfilms that are 20 times thinner than a human hair. In addition to possible manufacturing applications, the researchers also integrated the device with technology that allows the gripper to be controlled by the electrical signals produced by muscles in the forearm, demonstrating its potential for use with robotic prosthetics. “It is difficult ...

Previous studies in humans and animals showed that hosts in a social condition (sharing the same space) harbor a more similar microbiota composition. Microbial transmission between hosts, which is increased when living in the same household, leads to similar species inhabiting the gut. However, whether bacterial evolution in the gut is affected by microbiota transmission remained unknown. To fill this knowledge gap, the researchers used an innovative in vivo experimental evolution approach, which revealed an average transmission rate ...

‘A place for everything and everything in its place’–making sense of order, or disorder, helps us understand nature. Animals tend to fit nicely into categories: Mammals, birds, reptiles, whatever an axolotl is, and more. Sorting also applies to materials: Insulator, semiconductor, conductor, and even superconductor. Where exactly a material lands in the hierarchy depends on a seemingly invisible interplay of electrons, atoms, and their surroundings. Unlike animals, the boundaries are less sharp, and tweaking a material’s ...

Engineers are constantly searching for materials with novel, desirable property combinations. For example, an ultra-strong, lightweight material could be used to make airplanes and cars more fuel-efficient, or a material that is porous and biomechanically friendly could be useful for bone implants. Cellular metamaterials — artificial structures composed of units, or cells, that repeat in various patterns — can help achieve these goals. But it is difficult to know which cellular structure will lead to the desired properties. Even if one focuses on structures made of smaller building blocks like interconnected beams or ...