Kyoto, Japan -- Humans may never be able to tame the Sun, but hydrogen plasma -- making up most of the Sun's interior -- can be confined in a magnetic field as part of fusion power generation: with a caveat.  The extremely high temperature plasmas, typically as high as 100 million degrees Celsius, confined in the tokamaks -- donut-shaped fusion reactors -- cause damage to the containment walls of these mega devices. Researchers inject hydrogen and inert gases near the device wall to cool the plasma by radiation and recombination, ...

Bio-LUSH, a Horizon Europe project led by Stockholm University, extracts high-quality fibers from diverse plants, maximizing resource utilization for sustainable bio-based innovation. Supported by the EU-call Circular Bio-based Europe Joint Undertaking (CBE JU), the research project establishes a value chain for sustainable products such as textiles, food packaging and reinforced composites ready for the consumer market, thus driving plant-based solutions for a circular bioeconomy. The four-year Bio-LUSH project, launched in May 2023, supports the establishment of a ...

Undernutrition during pregnancy is one of the factors linked to an increased risk of diseases in children as they grow older. Yet, maternal malnutrition remains a problem for women worldwide. Animal studies have shown that a low-fiber diet during pregnancy impairs brain nerve function in offspring. Now, in the first human cohort study on the relation of maternal nutritional imbalance and infants’ brain development, researchers in Japan have investigated if the same effects can be found in humans. “Most pregnant women in Japan consume far less dietary ...

A new meta-analysis (an analysis of past research) published by the scientific journal Addiction has found that cannabis legalisation is associated with increased rates of cannabis poisoning.  The risk of cannabis poisoning was higher among studies that focused on children. Cannabis poisoning occurs when too much cannabis is consumed at one time.  The effects of cannabis poisoning include lethargy, drowsiness, dizziness, hypertension, palpitations, tachycardia (elevated heart rate), nausea, vomiting, irritability, agitation, coma, and slowing of the central nervous system.  Cannabis use in children ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio (July 27, 2023) — Preparing to head back to school can be a time of many emotions, from excitement to nerves. But for children who found the previous school year to be challenging, it can be an especially stressful experience.  In a new national survey conducted online by The Harris Poll on behalf of The On Our Sleeves Movement for Children’s Mental Health, 71% of American parents say their children experienced challenges last school year.  The top factors identified by parents included safety concerns (37%), academic challenges (26%), bullying (24%), ongoing social challenges ...

The planet experienced the hottest day on record earlier this month and climate projections estimate the intensity of heat waves and poor air quality will increase and continue to cause severe impacts. Researchers from the University of Waterloo and Toronto Metropolitan University have refined and expanded a method of data collection to assess their health impacts.   They discovered that even moderate temperature increases, for example night-time temperatures starting at 18.4 degrees Celsius, can lead to increased hospital ...

Circularly conjugated compounds with 4n+2 pi-electrons are known as aromatic compounds. They are generally stable and are therefore found in our surroundings. On the other hand, anti-aromatic compounds with 4n pi-electrons have been conventionally considered unstable, and the creation of stable anti-aromatic compounds has been one of the challenging issues in organic chemistry. Several studies on the synthesis, isolation, and characterization of stable and clearly anti-aromatic compounds have been reported in recent years. In general, anti-aromatic compounds are considered to be more susceptible to substituents than aromatic compounds because of their narrower HOMO-LUMO gap. However, ...

Kundalini yoga, a form of yoga that focuses on breathing, meditation, and mental visualization, appeared beneficial for older women who had risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease and concerns about episodes of memory decline, according to a UCLA Health study. Researchers at UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, using a type of MRI that measures activity in regions and subregions of the brain, found that Kundalini yoga, which combines movement and meditation and focuses on breathing, mantra recitation and mental visualization, increased connectivity in an area of the brain that can be impacted by stress and ...

New York, NY (July 27, 2023) – Cigarette smokers have higher odds of tobacco dependence than those who vape or use a variety of types of tobacco products, according to a Mount Sinai study published in July in Nicotine & Tobacco Research. The findings suggest that tailored tobacco cessation programs are needed for people with different tobacco use habits. The researchers identified three clear types of tobacco users: those who predominantly smoke cigarettes, those who predominantly use smokeless tobacco, and those who predominantly use a combination of cigarettes, e-cigarettes, and cigars. This discovery is important for tailoring tobacco use reduction ...

Esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC) is a highly lethal cancer, with a five-year survival rate of less than 20 percent. Although a precursor lesion to EAC, called Barrett's esophagus (BE), is present in roughly seven percent of middle-aged adults, less than one percent of BE patients will progress to EAC, making it difficult to determine which individuals are at risk of developing this deadly cancer. To better understand why only a small fraction of individuals with BE develop EAC, investigators from the Mass ...

Royal colleges in the UK have received more than £9 million in marketing payments from drug and medical devices companies since 2015, but do not always disclose the payments publicly, finds an investigation published by The BMJ today.  Investigative journalist Hristio Boytchev asked the colleges to disclose all payments from industry, campaign groups or patient associations, including the specific amount received from each donor, but they all refused to do so.  Instead, data was compiled from Disclosure ...

Pupils in state secondary schools in England are much more likely to be excluded if they have a history of receiving social care or special educational needs services, finds a new study by UCL researchers. The research, published in Child Abuse and Neglect, used anonymised data from the Department for Education’s National Population Database, which covered all children starting state secondary school in September 2011 and 2012 across the country – equating to around one million students. The team examined the proportion of pupils who had been excluded – either temporarily suspended or permanently expelled – during their time at secondary ...

In what could lead to a revolutionary advancement in the treatment of temporal lobe epilepsy, UC San Diego Health has become one of the first health systems in the country to inject regenerative cells into the brain to treat epileptic seizures.  Part of a national clinical trial, UC San Diego Health’s multidisciplinary team performed the third ever experimental regenerative brain cell therapy procedure earlier this month. UC San Diego Health is the only nationally designated Level 4 Adult Epilepsy Center in the region. During the surgery, Sharona ...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ON WEDNESDAY, JULY 26, 2023 AAN Issues Guidance on New Treatments for Early Alzheimer’s Disease   MINNEAPOLIS – New therapies for early Alzheimer’s disease, monoclonal antibodies that remove amyloid-β plaques in the brain, are bringing hope to people whose lives have been affected by the disease. To help neurologists discuss these therapies with patients and caregivers, the American Academy of Neurology has developed an Emerging Issues in Neurology article, published online on July 26, 2023, in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Emerging Issues in Neurology articles are designed ...

Many families whose transgender children need gender-affirming care will need to drive much further than before because of laws and other actions passed since 2021 in 20 states, a new study shows. The restrictions mean that 25% of Americans age 10 to 17 now live more than a day’s drive away, round trip, from a clinic that could provide medications and hormones to support their gender transition. Before the restrictions, less than 2% lived this far from a clinic that could provide such care. One ...

Researchers from MIT and Stanford University have devised a new machine-learning approach that could be used to control a robot, such as a drone or autonomous vehicle, more effectively and efficiently in dynamic environments where conditions can change rapidly.  This technique could help an autonomous vehicle learn to compensate for slippery road conditions to avoid going into a skid, allow a robotic free-flyer to tow different objects in space, or enable a drone to closely follow a downhill skier despite being buffeted by strong winds. The researchers’ approach incorporates certain structure from control theory into the process for learning a model in such a way that leads ...

LAS VEGAS – July 26, 2023 – Black holes are the most mysterious objects in the universe, with features that sound like they come straight from a sci-fi movie.  Stellar-mass black holes with masses of roughly 10 suns, for example, reveal their existence by eating materials from their companion stars. And in some instances, supermassive black holes accumulate at the center of some galaxies to form bright compact regions known as quasars with masses equal to millions to billions of our sun. A subset of accreting stellar-mass black holes that can launch jets of highly magnetized plasma are called microquasars.  An international ...

Increased skin cancer screening in individuals with skin of color is not sufficient to address racial disparities in melanoma survival rates, according to a new JAMA Dermatology study by UPMC and University of Pittsburgh researchers. Melanoma causes the most deaths of any skin cancer, but is usually treatable if caught early. Although the disease is most common in white individuals, survival odds are worse in people with darker skin tones. “In this study, we asked whether screening could address this disparity by helping detect melanoma early,” said senior author Laura Ferris, M.D., Ph.D., dermatologist at UPMC and professor of dermatology at the Pitt School of Medicine. ...

American Geophysical Union 25 July 2023 AGU Release No. 23-29 For Immediate Release This press release and accompanying multimedia are available online at: https://news.agu.org/press-release/petrified-trees-reveal-yellowstone-geysers-ongoing-battle-with-drought/  AGU press contact: Liza Lester, +1 (202) 777-7494, news@agu.org (UTC-4 hours) Contact information for the researchers: Shaul Hurwitz, U.S. Geological Survey, shaulh@usgs.gov (UTC-7 hours)  WASHINGTON — Yellowstone’s Steamboat Geyser has had decades-long dry spells brought on by a history of droughts, a new study finds. With global temperatures on the rise, the American West is projected to become drier. ...

https://www.massgeneral.org/news/research-spotlight/lab-on-chip-technology-red-blood-cellsZiya Isiksacan, PhD, a research fellow in the Center for Engineering in Medicine and Surgery (CEMS) is the lead author, and Osman Berk Usta, PhD, an investigator in the CEMS at Massachusetts General Hospital and an associate professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, is the senior author of a new study published in PNAS, Assessment of Stored Red Blood Cells Through Lab-on-a-Chip Technologies for Precision Transfusion Medicine. The article is a collaboration between multiple international institutes ...

Scientists have developed a novel method for storing biological materials such as RNA and proteins in a solid-state. The storage in solid-state resembles the form of a pill or a tablet, which dissolves in water for on-demand use.  The innovation provides a new way to overcome current limitations in the storage and handling of products derived from living cells used for a variety of health care and scientific research purposes.  Biological materials that are frequently used in developing new medicines and diagnostic testing tools such as mRNA, enzymes, and antibodies are highly ...

Alessandra Corsi knows that when you shoot for the stars, anything can happen. It’s in that spirit of intellectual curiosity that Corsi, an associate professor in Texas Tech University’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, will peer into some of the farthest recesses of space in search of gravitational waves. “We are at a critical moment in this field,” she said. “We had one event in 2017 that was amazing where everyone in multi-messenger astronomy started caring more about gravitational wave data, but now we need more of those type of events so we can study them and understand them better.” Corsi has received a three-year grant from the ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A Penn State-led team of researchers developed a potentially promising approach to make fuel cells more affordable. The new method reduces the amount of platinum-group metal (PGM) loadings by replicating a process used in computer chip manufacturing.   They published their results this week (July 24) in JACS Au, an open-access journal of the American Chemical Society. According to corresponding author Christopher Arges, an associate professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and a faculty member in the Institutes ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- A new study from the University of Missouri Sinclair School of Nursing found that barriers, including poverty, low health literacy, cultural beliefs, lack of infrastructure and political issues, all work together to hinder diabetes self-management for Haitian migrants working in sugar cane fields in the Dominican Republic.   Rosalia Molina, a nurse who has taken previous medical missionary trips to the Dominican Republic to help impoverished individuals self-manage their diabetes, led the study as part of her doctoral studies at the MU Sinclair School of Nursing. She interviewed health care workers in the Dominican Republic about their challenges providing ...

Key Takeaways Researchers have discovered that the NLRP11 protein plays critical roles in alerting the body to a bacterial infection and initiating an immune response against it NLRP11 is present in humans and other primates but absent in mice The discovery could enable the development of mouse models that are more similar to humans for bacterial infection experiments BOSTON – A team led by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has discovered a protein that plays critical roles in alerting the body to a bacterial ...