Toy company Mattel has been criticised for “stealth marketing” after giving away free Barbie and Ken dolls to schools as part of a programme to teach empathy to children, finds an investigation published by The BMJ today. Investigative journalist Hristio Boytchev reports that Mattell’s “Barbie School of Friendship” programme, in which free dolls are given for children to carry out role play exercises, has been rolled out to 700 schools across the UK, "with the potential to ...

A new study published in CABI Reviews suggests that the impact of climate change on animals will be “multi-faceted” with “cascading effects” across five welfare domains including nutrition, environment, behaviour, physical and mental health. The research, highlights how researchers need to carefully consider which domains are immediate and future priority to safeguard the welfare and longevity of animals for food, as domestic pets and those for conservation in nature reserves and zoos. Animals at risk from the impacts of climate change highlighted ...

Charlottesville, VA –The Center for Open Science (COS) is delighted to announce the appointment of Yvette Seger, PhD to its Board of Directors. Seger brings impressive experience and strategic leadership across a range of areas that aligns well with COS’s mission, vision, and activities, including policy analysis, advocacy, and implementation. Seger holds multiple roles as Director of Science Policy, Deputy Director of the Office of Public Affairs, and Director of Strategic Scientific Program ...

A newly described type of chemistry in fungi is both surprisingly common and likely to involve highly reactive enzymes, two traits that make the genes involved useful signposts pointing to a potential treasure trove of biological compounds with medical and chemical applications. It was also nearly invisible to scientists until now. In the last 15 years, the hunt for molecules from living organisms — many with promise as drugs, antimicrobial agents, chemical catalysts and even food additives — has relied on computer algorithms trained to search the DNA of bacteria, ...

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) officially recognized that medical care can be delivered on the street, making it possible for providers like USC’s Street Medicine team to be reimbursed for services provided to people who are currently unhoused.  The decision, which was announced on June 28, 2023, was the result of a multi-year effort on the part of leaders of USC Street Medicine and the Street Medicine Institute to have CMS create a place of service (POS) code for the street. As a result of this designation, street medicine providers nationwide will be able ...

A University of Arizona Cancer Center researcher was awarded a $1.3 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to study the effectiveness of lifestyle interventions in American Indian patients with obesity-related solid tumor cancers who are preparing for surgery. According to principal investigator Jennifer Erdrich, MD, MPH, there are 13 cancer subtypes linked to obesity that account for 40% of all cancers diagnosed annually in the United States. American Indian and Alaska Native populations are more than 1.5 times more likely to be obese than the general population and have some of the lowest cancer survival rates in the nation. Many factors ...

Key takeaways A UCLA-led study has shown that hardship experienced by mothers during their own childhood or during pregnancy is reflected in the composition of their 2-year-old children’s gut microbiome. It was previously understood that in rodents, prenatal stress affects microbiomes into adulthood, but how long after birth the effects lasted in humans was unknown. The changes to this community of microorganisms are likely among the ways that hardship affects a child’s socioemotional development. Hardship experienced by mothers during their own childhood or during pregnancy is reflected ...

Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the release of a Draft Request for Proposals (RFP) for the selection of a management and operating (M&O) contractor for the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL). DOE is soliciting public feedback on the draft RFP. Interested parties are encouraged to take advantage of this opportunity to provide comments regarding the draft contract performance requirements. The draft RFP will be open for public comment until August ...

“It’s a great privilege to host the World Conference of Science Journalists 2025,” says Mandi Smallhorne, president of SASJA.  “As it is the first time the conference has ever been held on African soil, this is truly a historic event, we’re delighted to be the pioneers! We look forward to welcoming the science journalists of the world to our home; we are sure it will be an eye-opening and rewarding experience. Our beautiful country has a lot to share, and that includes some fascinating scientific experiences, from the Square Kilometre Array, to cutting edge genomic sequencing, to the Cradle of Humankind. We are brewing ...

Pulsed laser scanning lidar is a core technology for autonomous driving and robotic mobility. Herein, a directional light pulse is backscattered by a reflective object and the elapsed time between emission and detection of the pulse is used to calculate depth. These direct time-of-flight (d-ToF) measurements of returning light pulses enable the three-dimensional imaging of complex scenes. At present, lidar technology requires numerous developments, including enhancement of the observation field of view (FoV) with high angular resolution, improvement of the imaging frame rate, extension of the ambiguity range by reducing the signal-to-noise ...

Researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago have identified a process by which enzymes can help prevent heart damage in chemotherapy patients.  The enzymes are normally found in a cell’s mitochondria, the powerhouse that produces energy. But when heart cells are put under stress from certain types of chemotherapy drugs, the enzymes move into the cell’s nucleus, where they are able to keep the cells alive. The paper is published in Nature Communications.  “As chemotherapy has become more and more effective, we have more and more cancer survivors. But the tragic ...

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. ...