Doctors at UI Health performed the first islet transplant with Lantidra, the only therapy approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat brittle type 1 diabetes. A 69-year-old man from Illinois received the therapy on Aug. 26 and subsequently was able to stop taking daily, life-saving insulin injections. Lantidra became available exclusively at UI Health last November. Pancreatic islet cell therapy is a treatment approved by the FDA only for adults with type 1 diabetes who ...

As protein-rich diets become increasingly popular, a new study suggests that categorizing dietary proteins as either animal- or plant-based fails to effectively capture the source-specific differences in their composition, digestive efficiency and accessibility to the gut microbiota. The North Carolina State University study shows that not all proteins are digested the same way. Some are digested less completely than others, instead moving to the large intestine where their interactions with the gut microbiota – the microscopic life within the gut – can often have significant effects. Using high-resolution ...

MSU has a satellite uplink/LTN TV studio and Comrex line for radio interviews upon request. Why this matters: A new MSU study found that wireless ultrasounds, compared to standard ultrasounds, provide accurate measurements of muscle size and muscle quality in female Division I athletes. Wireless ultrasounds can shorten the time needed to perform scans, are more cost-effective, and are easier to use in the field — making them especially valuable for sports medicine professionals monitoring athletes during a season. Although more research is needed, muscle assessments using wireless ultrasound are a reasonable alternative to standard ultrasound. EAST ...

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), often called “forever chemicals,” are among the most persistent and harmful contaminants threatening global water safety. A new review published in New Contaminants provides the most comprehensive assessment to date of cutting-edge physicochemical technologies for PFAS removal, offering guidance for sustainable solutions. PFAS are widely used in products such as non-stick cookware, food packaging, firefighting foams, and electronics manufacturing. Their remarkable stability makes them resistant to natural degradation, allowing them to accumulate in rivers, groundwater, and even drinking water supplies. Long-term exposure has been ...

Male “ghost sharks” — eerie deep-sea fish known as chimaeras that are related to sharks and rays — have a strange rod jutting from their foreheads, studded with sharp, retractable teeth. New research reveals these are not merely lookalikes, but real rows of teeth that grow outside the mouth. What’s more, the toothy appendage is likely used for mating. Found only in males, the forehead rod — called a tenaculum — is the ghost sharks’ only source of distinct teeth, and it seems to be used to grasp females in much the same way sharks use their toothy mouths in mating. “If ...

As obesity in America continues to rise at alarming rates, researchers are finding that diet and exercise are not the only driving factors. A new scientific review from UCLA Health explains how stress, hardship and other social challenges can reshape a person’s gut bacteria and brain performance in ways that make it harder to keep weight off.  Published in the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, the paper describes how social determinants of health, such as income, education, healthcare access, neighborhood disadvantages, experiences of discrimination, adverse childhood life events, and isolation and loneliness, ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — New research found similarities in how humans and artificial intelligence integrate two types of learning, offering new insights about how people learn as well as how to develop more intuitive AI tools.  Led by Jake Russin, a postdoctoral research associate in computer science at Brown University, the study found by training an AI system that flexible and incremental learning modes interact similarly to working memory and long-term memory in humans. “These results help explain why a human looks like a rule-based learner in some circumstances and an incremental ...

In a study published in Science on September 4, a research team led by Prof. WANG Feng from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, along with Prof. Paolo Fornasiero from the University of Trieste in Italy, has developed a photochemical strategy for heterolytic hydrogen (H2) dissociation at ambient temperature, a long-standing challenge in H2 activation chemistry. Hydrogenation is one of the most fundamental reactions in the ...

Cells on the inner surface of the intestine are replaced every few days. But, how does this work? It was always assumed that cells leave the intestinal surface because excess cells are pushed out. In a recent publication in the journal Science, researchers of the Hubrecht Institute and AMOLF show that this is not correct. In reality, the situation is exactly the opposite: the cells do not push, but pull at each other. These pulling forces lead to the removal of the weakest cells. This insight gives a new perspective on how a malfunctioning intestine can lead to disease or infection. Pulling rather than pushing The general idea was as follows: old and malfunctioning ...

Researchers led by Ken Shirasu at the RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science (CSRS) in Japan have identified an ancient protein that has the potential to help defend plants against tens of thousands of different bacteria and other pathogens. Dubbed “SCORE”, this receptor detects cold-shock protein—variations of which are found in more than 85% of known bacteria, as well as fungi and insects. Experiments published Sep 4 in Science revealed that simply swapping out key sections of SCORE with substitutes can predictably change the type of cold-shock protein, and thus pathogen, it recognizes. This strategy could be used engineer synthetic ...

The humble rodent “thumb” may not seem like an obvious window into evolution, but its keratinized tip – the unguis (hoof, claw, or nail) – turns out to reveal striking insights into rodent history and adaptation, according to a new study. The findings suggest that rodents owe much of their evolutionary success to their thumb-nail (the first digit, D1), an adaptation that gave them dexterous hands for cracking seeds and nuts. The tetrapod (four-limbed vertebrate) hand is a crucial structure for interacting with the environment, and its digits show great evolutionary diversity in both form and function. Among them, the first ...

A new study in mice provides insights into why females in their reproductive years appear to be relatively protected from chronic kidney disease, a leading public health concern. The study reports that estrogen-regulated signaling promotes the regeneration of key filtration cells in female kidneys. The study also links pregnancy complications like preeclampsia to failures in this regenerative process. Chronic kidney disease (CKD) – which affects more than 10% of the global population – is a leading ...

LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, has been called the most precise ruler in the world for its ability to measure motions more than 10,000 times smaller than the width of a proton. By making these extremely precise measurements, the US National Science Foundation-funded LIGO, which consists of two facilities—one in Washington and one in Louisiana—can detect undulations in space-time called gravitational waves that roll outward from colliding cosmic bodies such as black holes. LIGO ushered in the field of gravitational-wave astronomy beginning in 2015 when it made the first-ever direct detection of ...

In a Policy Forum, Ben Belton and colleagues discuss the rapidly growing use of drone technology in agricultural applications and the important, yet understudied, benefits and trade-offs involved. “There are strong indications that drones can raise the efficiency and productivity of farming, improve worker safety, and enhance rural livelihoods, but these impacts have yet to be evaluated rigorously,” Belton et al. write. “Applied interdisciplinary research and corresponding policy responses are urgently needed to steer the global ...

Following injury from a heart attack, immune cells called neutrophils release a peptide that punctures stressed heart cells and destabilizes their electrical activity. This triggers life-threatening arrhythmias. These findings offer a novel explanation – and potential therapeutic target – for these deadly cardiac events. Ischemic heart disease – cardiac damage caused by narrowed coronary arteries – is among the leading causes of death worldwide. It can lead to heart attacks and sudden cardiac death. When a coronary ...

Scientists are using artificial intelligence to understand escalating unrest in Italy’s Campi Flegrei, a volcanic area that is home to hundreds of thousands of people. Like adjusting a camera lens so a blurry image becomes clear, the new approach makes it possible for researchers to identify earthquakes that previous tools could not pick out from massive sets of seismic monitoring data.  The research, a collaboration between Stanford University, Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) - Osservatorio Vesuviano, and ...

An international research team of photovoltaics scientists has taken a crucial step toward the industrialization of perovskite silicon tandem solar cells. They demonstrated that passivation of the perovskite top cell is possible in combination with textured silicon bottom cells featuring large pyramid size, which are the current industry standard for solar cells. Additionally, they discovered that the passivation affects the entire perovskite layer—unlike silicon, where surface treatment only influences the upper layers—leading to further efficiency improvements. The researchers from King Abdullah University of Science and ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — The seas have long sustained human life, but a new UC Santa Barbara study shows that rising climate and human pressures are pushing the oceans toward a dangerous threshold. Vast and powerful, the oceans can seem limitless in their abundance and impervious to disturbances. For millennia, humans have supported their lives, livelihoods and lifestyles with the ocean, relying on its diverse ecosystems for food and material, but also for recreation, business, wellness and tourism. Yet the future of our oceans is worrying, ...

Improving living conditions for Parkinson's patients, and diagnoses for patients suffering from inflammatory processes. The medical field is the common factor in these Politecnico di Milano research projects, which have been awarded two ERC (European Research Council) Starting Grants with a funding of 1.5 million each, for a duration of five years. The prestigious awards were won by researchers Emanuele Riva from the Department of Mechanical Engineering with the LUMEN project and Claudio Conci from the Department of Chemistry, Materials, and Chemical Engineering “Giulio Natta” with the ALFRED project. ...

Ekaterina Zaharieva, European Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation, said: ‘Among the winners in this new round of EU funding are researchers of 51 nationalities. They will be advancing knowledge across a wide range of scientific fields, including cancer, mental health and quantum science. We see leading scientists coming to Europe with these new grants, and many choosing to remain here thanks to this support. This demonstrates Europe’s potential to attract and keep top scientific talent.’ ...

ANN ARBOR—The University of Michigan, in collaboration with more than a dozen academic, governmental and community partners across the country, will launch the Center for Land Surface Hazards. CLaSH is a new center aimed at advancing research on the fundamental science processes that cause landsliding, river erosion, debris flows and flooding.       When hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes or other natural disasters tear through communities, the change they wreak upon the landscape can trigger other disastrous events such as landslides and flooding. But it has been difficult to predict how these events connect to ...

Hydrogels—materials like gelatin that can absorb and hold water—can aid wound healing and enable slow-release drug delivery, but they usually break down in acidic environments like the stomach. Inspired by the properties of gastric mucus, a team of researchers and clinicians led by Zuankai Wang of Hong Kong Polytechnic University have developed an acid-resistant hydrogel called “ultrastable mucus-inspired hydrogel” (UMIH). Publishing September 4 in the Cell Press journal Cell Reports Physical Science, ...

Researchers from University of California San Diego Sanford Stem Cell Institute have discovered that spaceflight accelerates the aging of human hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs), which are vital for blood and immune system health. In a study published in Cell Stem Cell, the team used automated artificial intelligence (AI)-driven stem cell-tracking nanobioreactor systems in four SpaceX Commercial Resupply Services missions to the International Space Station (ISS) to track stem cell changes in real time. The findings show that the cells lost some of their ability to make healthy new cells, became more prone to DNA damage and showed signs of faster aging ...

About The Study: In participants with moderate to severe generalized anxiety disorder, a single dose of MM120 (lysergide D-tartrate) produced a dose-dependent reduction in anxiety. Lysergide, or lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug. An oral pharmaceutical formulation of LSD is MM120. These results support the dose-dependent efficacy of MM120 and inform the dose selection for phase 3 pivotal trials. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Daniel R. Karlin, MD, MA, email medaffairs@mindmed.co. To ...

About The Study: In this study of short message service (SMS) vs human phone advising, a customizable SMS system produced significant 12-month walking increases for aging Latino/a adults comparable to the significant improvements attained by participants in the human advisors group. These results provide support for such mobile health platforms, which can expand program choices for broader segments of the population. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Abby C. King, PhD, email king@stanford.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.28858) Editor’s ...