URBANA, Ill. — New mothers can expect sleep deprivation in the first few years of baby’s life. But too little sleep can take a toll on the health of both mother and child. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign looks at maternal and infant sleep patterns, identifying predictors and providing recommendations for instilling healthy habits. “The first two years is a really critical period where a lot of development is going on, and sleep is important for health. We wanted to look at the association of mother and infant sleep and whether it changes over time,” said Tianying ...

During our history, ancient civilisations have considerably shaped the global ecosystems through a coevolution of landscape and local populations. In some cases, the legacy of the disappeared civilizations is still visible in the form of buildings and other monuments such as the Stonehenge, the buildings of the Roman and Hellenic Empires, and ancient burial places and fortresses built by several cultures. These monuments are invaluable parts of our history and cultural heritage. Although it is often not in the spotlight, they can also hold a considerable biodiversity conservation potential. In the vast steppes of Eurasia (and probably ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. —  Developing technology to quickly and efficiently bioprint human tissues at scale is the goal of a new project led by Penn State researchers. When fully developed, the technology will be the first to enable the fabrication of scalable, native tissues such as bones, tracheas and organs. The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Engineering at the National Institute of Health has awarded over $2 million in support of the project, led by Ibrahim T. Ozbolat, professor of engineering science and mechanics, biomedical engineering, and neurosurgery at Penn State. “This will be a platform technology, which can be used for multiple purposes,” ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Worldwide, high rates of obesity and other inflammatory conditions are associated with increased risk for cancer, cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. Investigating how environmental chemical exposure impacts the gut microbiome to exacerbate these conditions is the goal of a new $7 million grant awarded to Andrew Patterson, professor of molecular toxicology and the John T. and Paige S. Smith Professor in the College of Agricultural Sciences. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, part of the National ...

About one in two women are affected by cystitis during her lifetime, and many suffer from recurrent urinary tract infections. Bladder infections are not only painful and potentially dangerous, but they also pose a significant dilemma for physicians. With antibiotic resistance becoming widespread in urinary tract infections and continually increasing, physicians are often forced to blindly prescribe antibiotics without knowing their effectiveness against the pathogen causing the infection. This is because it takes several days to identify a specific ...

Saturable absorbers as passive modulators in passively mode-locked fiber lasers play a crucial role in the generation of ultrashort pulses. Germanene, a graphene-like two-dimensional material with fast carrier relaxation time and large nonlinear absorption coefficient comparable to that of graphene, is a saturable absorber material with very fast response. Researchers led by Prof. Wei Xia at University of Jinan (UJN), are interested in modulation switches in fiber lasers, and two-dimensional material saturable absorbers have been a hot research topic in recent years. Two-dimensional materials make up for the disadvantages of ...

About The Study: This study of more than 70 million births or spontaneous abortions showed the prevalence of hepatitis C (HCV)-positive pregnancies in the U.S. increased 16-fold between 1998 and 2018. Maternal HCV infection was associated with increased odds of preterm labor, poor fetal growth, or fetal distress. These data may support recent recommendations for universal HCV screening with each pregnancy.  Authors: Po-Hung Chen, M.D., Ph.D., of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, ...

About The Study: The findings of this study of births to females ages 18 to 24 suggest that additional recommended cervical cancer screenings before birth were associated with an increased risk of preterm delivery. Cervical cancer screening guidelines should consider the downstream implications for preterm delivery risk when weighing the population-level costs of screenings against the benefits of reduced cervical cancer mortality.  Authors: Rebecca Bromley-Dulfano, M.S., of Harvard University Medical School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is the corresponding author. To ...

Francis Crick Institute press release Under strict embargo: 16:00hrs BST 21 July 2023 Peer reviewed Experimental study Cells Research reveals the scale of disorder underpinning Motor Neurone Disease Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute and UCL have shown that hundreds of proteins and mRNA molecules are found in the wrong place in nerve cells affected by Motor Neuron Disease (MND), also known as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). ALS is a rapidly progressing and devastating condition that causes paralysis by affecting ...

LA JOLLA, CA — Scripps Research scientists have developed a machine-learning system—a type of artificial intelligence (AI) application—that can track the detailed evolution of epidemic viruses and predict the emergence of viral variants with important new properties. In a paper in Cell Patterns on July 21, 2023, the scientists demonstrated the system by using data on recorded SARS-CoV-2 variants and COVID-19 mortality rates. They showed that the system could have predicted the emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 “variants of concern” (VOCs) ahead of their official designations by the World Health Organization (WHO). Their ...

Researchers from the University of Liverpool have created a biomedical compound that has the potential to stop the spread of breast cancer. A recently published paper details these early findings. Scientists from the Chemistry and Biochemistry Departments at the University of Liverpool and Nanjing Medical School in China have discovered a possible way to block proteins produced in the body when a patient has cancer and which causes its spread to other parts of the body. This process, called metastasis, is largely responsible for patient deaths. The major problem hindering the successful treatment of commonly occurring cancers is not the primary tumour which can usually be removed by ...

Male crickets sing in unison to attract females – but stop singing if a rival gets too close, new research shows. University of Exeter scientists watched more than 100 male field crickets, and measured how often they chirped at the same time (called “singing overlap”). Singing by males one to five metres away from a listening male had a “stimulatory effect”, leading to a chorus of crickets singing together. However, males were less likely to sing if another cricket chirped within one metre – possibly because the territorial insects instead chose to fight ...

Some people’s brain function still affected by Long COVID years after infection  UK researchers have found that people with longer-term COVID-19 symptoms including brain fog showed reduced performance in tasks testing different mental processes up to two years after infection with the virus.   Researchers from King’s College London looked at whether infection with COVID-19 affected performance in two rounds of online cognitive testing that took place in 2021 and 2022. Data was collected for over 3,000 participants of the COVID Symptom Study Biobank study, across 12 tasks that tested memory, attention, reasoning, processing speed and ...

A scientist from Northumbria University has been awarded almost half a million pounds to develop a new technology which could transform deep-space communication, radio astronomy, medical imaging and airport security scanning. Dr Juna Sathian has received a grant from the government’s Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to develop a new type of MASER (Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) device. The forerunner to LASERs, MASERs were first discovered in the 1950s. But there has been ...

Benjamin Franklin may be best known as the creator of bifocals and the lightning rod, but a group of University of Notre Dame researchers suggest he should also be known for his innovative ways of making (literal) money. During his career, Franklin printed nearly 2,500,000 money notes for the American Colonies using what the researchers have identified as highly original techniques, as reported in a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research team, led by Khachatur Manukyan, an associate research professor ...

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and collaborating institutions are developing a strategy to predict the response of triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) to chemotherapy, which would be a valuable tool for physicians deciding on the treatment with better probability of success on an individual basis. The study appears in Cancer Research Communications, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. “Multiple research innovations in cancer diagnostics are on display in this work,” said co-corresponding author Dr. Matthew Ellis, member of the Lester and Sue Smith Breast Center and the Dan ...

NEWPORT NEWS, VA – Peter Hurck has been searching for strange particles, named such because they contain strange quarks, since beginning work on his Ph.D. As the 2023 Jefferson Science Associates (JSA) Postdoctoral Prize winner, he’ll continue conducting data analyses to identify strange particles and learn about their properties. Many of these experiments that contribute to the data Hurck is analyzing are conducted at the U.S. Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, which is managed and operated by JSA. “Strangeness hasn't been studied as much because it's quite ...

On July 19, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology released a statement expressing concerns on the National Institutes of Health budget proposed in the House Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies funding bill. The bill allocates only $44.7 billion for NIH, which represents a 6.4% decrease from fiscal year 2023 levels and would have detrimental repercussions for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke, the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute ...

Microparticle dust aggregates, which are thought to play a role in the formation of new planets, are less likely to stick together after a collision when the aggregates are larger. Current evidence suggests that microparticles of cosmic dust collide and stick together to form larger dust aggregates that may eventually combine and develop into planets. Numerical models that accurately characterize the conditions required for colliding microparticle aggregates to stick together, rather than bounce apart, are therefore ...

Changes in ocean wave and storm conditions have not caused long-term impacts on sandy coastlines in the past 30 years, a new study has found. Published today in Scientific Reports, the study draws on data from 30 years of global satellite and model studies to investigate whether changes in ocean wave conditions will have an impact on the stability of coastal environments. The compounding effect of climate change driven variations in waves, storm surge and sea level rise is projected to lead to shoreline position change along most of the world’s sandy coasts. A team ...

The “warm Arctic–cold Eurasia” is one of the most significant patterns of winter climate system changes in the mid-high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. In winter 2020/21, this large-scale pattern underwent a significant and intense subseasonal reversal between the early and late winter. At the same time, the sea-ice anomalies in the Barents–Kara Sea changed from being significantly negative in early winter to positive in late winter. For the slow-varying process of winter sea ice, the rapid freezing ...

An exquisitely preserved fossil forest from Japan provides missing links and helps reconstruct a whole Eurasia plant from the late Miocene epoch. Complete plant fossils are seldom found as a single piece, as wood, leaves, flowers, fruits, seeds, or pollen detach easily from plants. This results in leaves and trunks having separate scientific names. Putting together the different parts to reveal the complete plant is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Connecting these dots and reconstructing plants is important to establish their taxonomic identity—their ...

A better way to wirelessly charge over long distances has been developed at Aalto University. Engineers have optimized the way antennas transmitting and receiving power interact with each other, making use of the phenomenon of “radiation suppression”. The result is a better theoretical understanding of wireless power transfer compared to the conventional inductive approach, a significant advancement in the field. Charging over short distances, such as through induction pads, uses magnetic near fields to transfer power with high efficiency, but at longer distances the efficiency dramatically drops. New research shows that this high efficiency ...

This research was conducted by Nazlı Sönmez, ESMT Berlin; Kavitha Srinivasan and Rengaraj Venkatesh, Aravind Eye Hospital (India); Ryan W. Buell, Harvard Business School; and Kamalini Ramdas, London Business School. The researchers wanted to understand the impact of shared medical appointments on patient experience (knowledge gained and satisfaction) and behavior (follow-up rates and medication compliance rates).  In shared medical appointments (SMAs), patients with the same medical condition meet with the physician in a group, with each patient receiving attention in turn. The physician shares information customized to a patient’s specific needs as well ...

A research team from the School of Public Health, LKS Faculty of Medicine of the University of Hong Kong (HKUMed), provides genetic evidence that metformin might promote healthy ageing using a cohort study of more than 300,000 participants of European descent (UK Biobank). This proof-of-concept work supports further clinical research into the drug repositioning of metformin in healthy longevity. The findings are now published in The Lancet Healthy Longevity, a leading peer-reviewed, international journal in the field of geriatrics and gerontology [link to the publication]. Background Metformin is a first-line medication for type 2 diabetes. ...