The fastest way to heat food and drink might also rank as the fastest route to ingesting massive quantities of minuscule plastic particles, says new research from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Experiments have shown that microwaving plastic baby food containers available on the shelves of U.S. stores can release huge numbers of plastic particles — in some cases, more than 2 billion nanoplastics and 4 million microplastics for every square centimeter of container. Though the health effects of consuming micro- and nanoplastics remain unclear, the Nebraska team further found that three-quarters of cultured embryonic ...

Cancer is one of the most devastating diseases in the world. In 2023, more than 1.9 million new cancer cases and 609,820 deaths are projected to occur in the United States alone. As efforts are underway to improve diagnostic tools, microRNAs are at the forefront biomedical research. MicroRNAs, or miRNAs, are a class of small non-coding ribonucleic acids (RNAs), which are essential for all biological functions. The main role of miRNA in the human body is gene regulation. As such, they regulate a variety of biological and pathological processes, including the formation and development of cancer. In fact, many cancers are closely associated with ...

The majority of older adults with cognitive impairment are still driving, despite concerns raised by caregivers and others, a Michigan Medicine study in a South Texas community finds. Researchers assessed more than 600 adults over 65 years old in Nueces County, Texas, who had cognitive assessment scores that indicated a likelihood of impairment. Of those people with cognitive impairment, 61.4% were current drivers, and around one-third of all caregivers had concerns about their care-recipient driving. The results are published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. “It is likely appropriate that some with mild cognitive impairment are ...

-With pictures- Over the last 30 years European breeding birds have shifted their range by, on average, 2.4km per year, according to new research. However, these changes were significantly different from expectations based on changing climate and landcover during that period. Based on climate alone, the researchers predicted that the average range shifts by species should have been around 50% faster. The study led by experts from Durham University, UK, used survey data collected as part of two Europe-wide ...

Birmingham researchers are to set to collaborate on a study that could result in a rapid non-invasive diagnostic test to quickly and accurately identify stroke patients who need time-critical treatment before irreversible brain damage occurs. Funded by the Stroke Association, the Golden HOur for STroke (GHoST) study will involve the West Midlands Ambulance Service University NHS Foundation Trust, Midlands Air Ambulance Charity, and University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Trust and industry partner Marker Diagnostics. A successful outcome could also revolutionise ...

Employment levels for people with learning disabilities in the UK are 5 to 10 times lower than they were a hundred years ago. And the experiences of workers from the 1910s–50s offer inspiration as well as lessons about safeguarding. A new study by Cambridge historian Professor Lucy Delap (Murray Edwards College) argues that loud voices in the 20th-century eugenics movement have hidden a much bigger picture of inclusion in British workplaces that puts today’s low rates to shame. Professor Delap found that in some parts of Britain, up to 70% of people variously labelled ‘defective’, ...

By Kimberly Flynn PISCATAWAY, NJ — Despite the harm that excessive alcohol consumption can cause in a community, use of some alcohol-related enforcement strategies remained low or decreased from 2010 to 2019, according to a new report in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. In particular, researchers found a drop in enforcement of underage drinking laws. Researchers at the University of Minnesota first surveyed 1,028 county and municipal law enforcement agencies throughout the United States in 2010 about their practices regarding three factors to alcohol harms in communities: underage drinking, impaired ...

In some African countries that have traditionally faced issues such as undernourishment and hunger, being overweight is perceived as a good sign of health and prosperity. However, in most of these countries, a malnutrition paradox is evident. Obesity, a chronic disease that affects millions of people worldwide, is increasing at an alarming rate in countries like Zimbabwe, where the consumption of processed, energy-dense foods associated with western lifestyles, has been adopted. An insightful study led by graduate student Ashleigh Pencil, from the Graduate School of Human Life ...

A team of computer scientists and designers based out of the University of Waterloo have developed a tool to help people use colour better in graphic design.  The tool, De-Stijl, uses powerful machine learning technology to suggest intuitive colour palettes for novice designers and inexperienced users. The software combines and improves on the functionalities of existing tools like Figma, Pixlr, and Coolor, allowing users to select important theme colors and quickly visualize how they’ll impact a design. “You put your graphical ...

It’s been 22 years since UC Davis MIND Institute Medical Director Randi Hagerman and her husband, researcher Paul Hagerman, discovered the neurodegenerative condition called FXTAS (fragile X-associated tremor ataxia syndrome). Hagerman, a pediatrician known for her enthusiasm for her work and patients, has been studying FXTAS ever since, seeking to develop treatments for it. She was recently awarded her 24th consecutive year of funding from the National Institutes of Health for her fragile X-related work, a ...

Scientists are urging caution before artificial intelligence (AI) models such as ChatGPT are used in healthcare for ethnic minority populations. Writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, epidemiologists at the University of Leicester and University of Cambridge say that existing inequalities for ethnic minorities may become more entrenched due to systemic biases in the data used by healthcare AI tools. AI models need to be ‘trained’ using data scraped from different sources such as healthcare websites and scientific research. However, evidence shows ...

LA JOLLA, CA—Scripps Research scientists have shown that analyzing a certain type of immune cell in the blood can help identify people at risk of developing type 1 diabetes, a life-threatening autoimmune disease. The new approach, if validated in further studies, could be used to select suitable patients for treatment that stops the autoimmune process—making type 1 diabetes a preventable condition. In the study, which appeared in Science Translational Medicine on July 5, 2023, the researchers ...

Humanity has a long track record of making big changes with little forethought. From fossil fuels to AI, plastics to pesticides, we love innovating away our problems, only to find we’ve created different ones. So it can be refreshing to hear about cases where we’ve taken a step back to deliberate before committing to a drastic new idea, like carbon dioxide removal. With carbon emissions continuing to climb, many scientists, environmentalists and policy-makers have advocated taking action to directly ...

Private equity ownership of healthcare services such as nursing homes and hospitals is associated with harmful impacts on costs and quality of care, suggests a review of the latest evidence published by The BMJ today. No consistently beneficial impacts of private equity ownership were identified, and the researchers say these results confirm the need for more research on private equity ownership in healthcare and possibly increased regulation. Private equity firms use capital from wealthy individuals and large institutional investors to buy companies, and, after a relatively brief period of ownership, ...

People who experienced disrupted access to healthcare (including appointments and procedures) during the covid-19 pandemic were more likely to have potentially preventable hospital admissions, finds a study published by The BMJ today. This is the first study to examine the impact of disruption on health outcomes using individual level longitudinal data, and the researchers say reducing the backlog from covid-19 disruption is vital to tackle the short and long term implications of the pandemic. The ...

PITTSBURGH, July 19, 2023 — Most mothers who took prescription antiseizure medications during pregnancy can breathe a sigh of relief: A new study published today in Lancet Neurology found that young children who were exposed to commonly-prescribed medications in utero do not have worse neurodevelopmental outcomes than children of healthy women.   Commonly used antiseizure medications such as lamotrigine and levetiracetam are generally considered effective and safe, especially compared to many first-generation epilepsy treatments that carried profound risks to the unborn child. ...

Leesburg, VA, July 19, 2023—According to an accepted manuscript published in the American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), lacking Medicare coverage could contribute to greater income-based differences in use of screening CT colonography (CTC) than of other recommended screening strategies or of diagnostic CTC. Noting that Medicare’s non-coverage for screening CTC may account for lower adherence with screening guidelines among lower-income beneficiaries, “Medicare coverage of CTC could reduce income-based disparities for individuals avoiding optical colonoscopy due to invasiveness, need for anesthesia, or complication ...

A new study identifies how certain proteins in the immune system interact leading to organ rejection. The study, which involved experiments on mice and human patients, uncovered an important communication pathway between two molecules called CEACAM1 (CC1) and TIM-3, finding that the pathway plays a crucial role in controlling the body's immune response during liver transplantation. When an organ is transplanted from a donor to a recipient, the recipient's immune system recognizes the transplanted tissue as foreign, activating an immune response that can lead to rejection. T cells play a significant role ...

Alzheimer’s is considered a disease of old age, with most people being diagnosed after 65. But the condition actually begins developing out of sight many years before any symptoms emerge. Tiny proteins, known as amyloid-beta peptides, clump together in the brain to form plaques. These plaques lead to inflammation and eventually cause neuronal cell death. Interplay of proteins in the brain reveals disease mechanism Exactly what triggers these pathological changes is still unclear. “We’re lacking good diagnostic markers that would allow us to reliably detect the disease at an early stage or make predictions about its course,” says Professor ...

UPTON, NY—Putting a suite of new materials synthesis and characterization methods to the test, a team of scientists from the University of Iowa and the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory has developed 14 organic-inorganic hybrid materials, seven of which are entirely new. These uranium-based materials, as well as the detailed report of their bonding mechanisms, will help advance clean energy solutions, including safe nuclear energy. The work, currently published online, was recognized as both a Very Important Paper and a Hot Topic: Crystal Engineering in ...

Research is shedding light on kidneys, their critical functions, and predictors of disease. The research co-led by Matthias Kretzler, M.D. describes the creation of a cellular atlas of the kidney describing nearly 100 cell types and states. It represents the most comprehensive study of cellular states, neighborhoods, and outcome-associated signatures in the kidney. Researchers from more than twenty institutions collaborated on this project. Kidneys monitor and maintain the internal balance in the body, filter out ...

Research conducted at the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil shows that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, can infect liver cells (hepatocytes), stimulating glucose production and leading to a condition similar to diabetes (hyperglycemia) in hospitalized patients, even if their blood sugar level was normal before they were admitted to hospital. An article on the study is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The findings describe part of the mechanism used by the virus to infect liver cells and impair glucose metabolism, and point ...

Carbon-based materials have several qualities that make them attractive as catalysts for speeding up chemical reactions. They are low-cost, lightweight and their high surface area provides a good scaffold on which to anchor catalysts, keeping them stable and dispersed far apart, while providing molecules a lot of surface area to work. This makes carbons useful for energy storage and sensors. Over the last 10 years, carbons have been used in electrochemistry to catalyze reactions to make chemicals and fuel cells. However, ...

In a world increasingly concerned about the environmental and geopolitical implications of fossil fuel usage, nuclear energy has resurfaced as a subject of great interest. Its ability to generate electricity at scale without greenhouse gas emissions holds promise as a sustainable clean energy source that could bridge society’s transition away from fossil fuels to a net-zero future. However, nuclear power generation does produce radioactive waste. The safe management of nuclear waste remains a crucial challenge that must be addressed to gain public confidence in this transformative power solution. Now, a team of University of Houston researchers has come up with an innovative ...

  A widely-used tool that finds the exact references needed to pinpoint differences in our DNA just got a refresh. On 17 July, the Standards Steering Committee of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH) voted to release refget v2.0. With better compatibility for a range of reference genome names, formats, and systems, the new version of refget makes it easier than ever to retrieve verified genomic reference sequences.   A vital infrastructure You may not even realise that you’re using refget already. “Almost ...