How useful a memory is for future situations determines where it resides in the brain, according to a new theory proposed by researchers at HHMI"s Janelia Research Campus and collaborators at UCL. The theory offers a new way of understanding systems consolidation, a process that transfers certain memories from the hippocampus – where they are initially stored – to the neocortex -- where they reside long term. Under the classical view of systems consolidation, all memories move from the hippocampus to the neocortex over time. But this view doesn’t always hold up; research shows some memories permanently reside ...

Key Takeaways: At job separation, 41.4% of employees cash out 401(k) savings, most draining their entire accounts. Cashing out increases with the proportion of the 401(k) balance contributed by employers. The “account composition effect” is most likely driven by behavioral rather than economic explanations. The cash-out option was presented to terminating employees in a salient way, unintentionally nudging them to withdraw their 401(k) savings.   BALTIMORE, MD, July 17, 2023 – When researchers set out to study 401(k) retirement savings ...

The popular 1954 rock song "Shake, Rattle and Roll," could be the theme music for the Hubble Space Telescope's latest discovery about what is happening to the asteroid Dimorphos in the aftermath of NASA's DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) experiment. DART intentionally impacted Dimorphos on September 26, 2022, slightly changing the trajectory of its orbit around the larger asteroid Didymos. Astronomers using Hubble's extraordinary sensitivity have discovered a swarm of boulders that were possibly shaken off the asteroid when NASA deliberately slammed the half-ton DART impactor spacecraft into Dimorphos ...

Rockville, MD (July 20, 2023) Xingen Lei, PhD, professor of molecular nutrition and associate dean of research and innovation at Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, has been named the next editor-in-chief of The Journal of Nutrition, effective January 1, 2024. Established in 1928, The Journal of Nutrition is the oldest journal devoted to publishing influential original research, reviews, and perspectives of molecular, cellular, animal, human, and population nutrition and mechanisms. Dr. Lei has published extensively in The Journal of Nutrition ...

https://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/Connect/MediaCentre/NewsReleases/20230720 Toronto - It’s become so darn easy to order stuff thanks to the miracles of online shopping. But it’s not so simple on the retailer end, especially when more than 16 per cent of those sales are later sent back. In the U.S., that adds up to a staggering $816 billion in lost revenue. Cross-selling can help, say a pair of researchers. Their experiments show that once we’ve chosen to buy something, we tend to consider that money as already spent or gone, also called ...

The ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group (ECOG-ACRIN) has enrolled the first patient in a new treatment trial to evaluate the effectiveness of adding nilotinib to standard paclitaxel chemotherapy. The trial (EAY191-E4) is for the treatment of adults with cancers that are getting worse after being treated with taxane-based chemotherapy. It is a new addition to the recently launched ComboMATCH precision medicine initiative, which uses tumor biology as a guiding point for testing new combinations of cancer drugs.   James M. Ford, MD, the ECOG-ACRIN Chair for ComboMATCH and Professor of Medicine (Oncology) and Genetics at Stanford University, ...

In Africa, climate change impacts are experienced as extreme events like drought and floods. Through the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (which leverages expertise from USG science agencies, universities, and the private sector) and the IGAD Climate Prediction and Applications Center, it has been possible to predict and monitor these climatic events, providing early warning of their impacts on agriculture to support humanitarian and resilience programming in the most food insecure countries of the world. Science is beginning to catch up with and even ...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Remember what it’s like to twirl a sparkler on a summer night? Hold it still and the fire crackles and sparks but twirl it around and the light blurs into a line tracing each whirl and jag you make. A new patented software system developed at Sandia National Laboratories can find the curves of motion in streaming video and images from satellites, drones and far-range security cameras and turn them into signals to find and track moving objects as small as one pixel. The developers say this system can enhance the performance of any remote sensing application. “Being able to track each pixel from a distance matters, ...

For the first time, Oxford chemists have generated fluorochemicals – critical for many industries – without the use of hazardous hydrogen fluoride gas. The innovative method was inspired by the biomineralization process that forms our teeth and bones. The results are published today in the leading journal Science. A team of chemists have developed an entirely new method for generating critically important fluorochemicals that bypasses the hazardous product hydrogen fluoride (HF) gas. ...

Inducing labor at 39 weeks of pregnancy has the greatest benefit in risk reduction for women from more socioeconomically deprived areas, according to a new study published July 13th in the open access journal PLOS Medicine by Ipek Gurol-Urganci of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK, and colleagues. The findings suggest that increased uptake of induction of labor at 39 weeks may help reduce inequities in adverse perinatal outcomes. Adverse perinatal outcomes— which include stillbirths, neonatal ...

A new ultra-small and ultra-flexible electronic neural implant, delivered via blood vessels, can record single-neuron activity deep within the brains of rats, according to new study. “This technology could enable long-term, minimally invasive bioelectronic interfaces with deep-brain regions, writes Brian Timko in a related Perspective. Brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) enable direct electrical communication between the brain and external electronic systems. They allow brain activity to directly ...

Sediments recovered from the base of the Camp Century ice core show that northwestern Greenland was ice-free during a period of history known to have exhibited some of the lowest global ice volumes -- the Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 11 interglacial period. The absence of ice at that location means that the Greenland Ice Sheet must have contributed more 1.4 meters of sea-level equivalent to global sea level during the interglacial – a period in which average global air temperature was similar to what we’ll soon experience, given human-caused climate warming. The climate conditions of past interglacials – periods during Earth’s climatic history ...

Analysis of Global Positioning System (GPS) time-series data from nearly 100 large earthquakes worldwide has provided evidence for the existence of a precursory phase of fault slip occurring two hours before seismic rupture. “If it can be confirmed that earthquake nucleation often involves an hours-long precursory phase, and the means can be developed to reliably measure it, a precursor warning could be issued,” writes Roland Bürgmann in a related Perspective. The ability to predict large earthquakes has been a longstanding yet elusive goal. Short-term ...

Combining data from full-body x-ray images and associated genomic data from more than 30,000 UK Biobank participants, researchers have helped illuminate the genetic basis of human skeletal proportions. The findings not only provide new insights into the evolution of the human skeletal form and its role in musculoskeletal disease, but they also demonstrate the utility of using population-scale imaging data from biobanks to understand both disease-related and normal physical variation among humans. Of all primates, humans are the only ones to have evolved to be normally bipedal, an adaptation that may have facilitated the use of tools and accelerated cognitive development. ...

Using artificial intelligence to analyze tens of thousands of X-ray images and genetic sequences, researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and New York Genome Center have been able to pinpoint the genes that shape our skeletons, from the width of our shoulders to the length of our legs. The research, published as the cover article in Science, pulls back a curtain on our evolutionary past and opens a window into a future where doctors can better predict patients’ risks of developing conditions such as back pain or arthritis in later life. “Our research is a powerful demonstration of the impact of AI in medicine, particularly when it comes to analyzing ...

Immune systems develop specific genes to combat common bacteria such as those found in food, new research shows. Previous theories have suggested that antimicrobial peptides – a kind of natural antibiotics – have a general role in killing a range of bacteria. However, the new study, published in Science, examined how the immune systems of fruit flies are shaped by the bacteria in their food and environment. The researchers, from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the University of Exeter, found two peptides that each control a single bacterial species commonly encountered by the flies. “We know that an animal’s food and environment ...

NEW YORK, NY--Perhaps the most profound advance in primate evolution occurred about 6 million years ago when our ancestors started walking on two legs. The gradual shift to bipedal locomotion is thought to have made primates more adaptable to diverse environments and freed their hands to make use of tools, which in turn accelerated cognitive development. With those changes, the stage was set for modern humans. The genetic changes that made possible the transition from knuckle-based scampering in great apes to upright walking in humans have now been uncovered in a new study by researchers ...

Led by Director CHANG Sukbok, scientists from the Center for Catalytic Hydrocarbon Functionalizations within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) have made a breakthrough in understanding the structure and reactivity of a key intermediate in catalytic reactions. This intermediate, known as a transition metal-nitrenoid, plays a crucial role in converting hydrocarbons into amides, which are important in pharmaceuticals and materials science. In chemical reactions, intermediates are substances that are formed and consumed during the transformation of reactants into products. Hence, understanding these intermediates ...

Microbial communities are widely used biotechnology suppliers for processes like manufacturing biofuels and new foods, or helping crops grow better. To engineer successful communities, scientists need to predict whether microorganisms can live and work together. One popular predictive rule states that if a pair of microbes will coexist, they will also coexist in a bigger community of microbes. A study published in Science now found that this simple rule will not always work. Just like plants and animals, microorganisms live in complex ecological communities consisting of multiple species that ...

LOGAN, UTAH, USA -- New analysis of samples collected from underneath Greenland’s ice sheet reveal the Arctic island was much greener as recently as 416,000 years ago. The findings overturn previous views that Greenland’s continental glacier, which covers about 80 percent of the 836,3000-square-mile land mass, has persisted for the last two and a half million years. “We’re discovering the ice sheet is much more sensitive to climate change than we previously thought,” says Utah State University geoscientist ...

Oak Brook, IL – The July 2023 issue of SLAS Discovery, the open access journal focused on research progressing drug discovery, is now available. Volume 28, Issue 5, contains one short communication and four full-length articles covering assay quality metrics, fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) and small molecule glycomimetics and other high-throughput screening-related research. Full-length articles Mathematical relationships between control group variability and assay quality metrics Authored by early ...

The world's computing needs have grown exponentially in recent years due to an explosion of technology. To meet the needs for the next technological leap, the scientific community is working to improve current processing capabilities and simultaneously develop entirely new computing methods. Two new papers from the research group of Jean Anne Incorvia, a professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering’s Chandra Family of Electrical and Computer Engineering, aim to contribute to both of these scientific needs. Together, they offer improvements ...

A new study published in Gastroenterology aims to improve the effectiveness of screening and surveillance practices for early cancer detection in Barrett’s esophagus (BE). BE is the only identifiable precursor lesion for esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC), a lethal cancer with increased incidence and mortality rates over the last several decades. The research, led by faculty at the University of Colorado (CU) Cancer Center, analyzed a large international database of over 20,000 newly diagnosed BE patients in Nordic countries to provide a more accurate look at how many patients have normal ...

The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation has named six new Damon Runyon Clinical Investigators. The recipients of this prestigious award are outstanding, early-career physician-scientists conducting patient-oriented cancer research at major research centers under the mentorship of the nation's leading scientists and clinicians.   The Clinical Investigator Award program was designed to increase the number of physicians capable of moving seamlessly between the laboratory and the patient’s ...

HOUSTON – (July 20, 2023) – Rice University professors Qimiao Si and Jeffrey Tabor, are recipients of prestigious Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowships from the United States Department of Defense. Si, a theoretical quantum physicist, and Tabor, a bioengineer and synthetic biologist, are among 10 members of the 2023 class of Bush fellows named by the department’s Basic Research Office. The highly competitive, five-year fellowships are among the federal government’s most prestigious individual research honors. Bush fellowships are awarded annually and include $3 million to pursue ...