TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – A fifth of neighborhood blocks in the continental United States most vulnerable to natural disaster account for a quarter of the lower 48 states’ risk, according to a detailed assessment of vulnerability. Leaders in data-driven risk modeling, researchers at The University of Alabama used advanced data analysis and machine learning of more than 100 factors that influence vulnerability to natural hazards for about 11 million United States Census Bureau blocks, finding significant differences can exist between neighboring blocks. The result published in the journal Nature Communications is the first mapping ...

INDIANAPOLIS—A new study led by Indiana University School of Medicine researchers shows primary care clinicians who receive specialized training can make accurate autism diagnoses for over 80 percent of young children referred with developmental delays, providing compelling evidence that community-based models of autism evaluation are a potential solution for improving access to this needed service. They recently published their findings in Pediatrics. One in 36 children are now diagnosed with autism, according to the latest 2023 report from the Centers for Disease Control. In many regions of the county, waitlists ...

Vanderbilt University Medical Center has received a $7 million, five-year funding award from PCORI (Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute) to compare two sedatives used to place breathing tubes in the emergency department (ED) or intensive care unit (ICU).   To provide support with a breathing machine, doctors must place a breathing tube into a patient’s mouth and throat, and they are given a medication to make them sleep during this procedure. The two medications doctors most often give ...

Lewy body disease is the second most common neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer's disease. A research group from Lund University has now shown that the disease can be detected before symptoms appear, using a spinal fluid test. The studies are published in Nature Medicine, where the researchers also demonstrate that reduced sense of smell is strongly linked to Lewy body disease even before other clear symptoms have developed. The findings are also reported simultaneously at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference. Lewy ...

The landmark United States Supreme Court ruling in Loving v. Commonwealth of Virginia abolished bans on interracial marriage in the United States in 1967, but a new academic paper from Rice University and Texas A&M University said an uptick in interracial relationships since then has not ended discriminatory tendencies, even among individuals who are in these romantic partnerships. The paper, “Mixing races, maintaining racism? Considering the connection between interracial families, social distance and racial inequality,” is online and will appear in an upcoming edition ...

BESSY II's high-brilliance X-rays can be used to produce microscopic images with spatial resolution down to a few tens of nanometres. Whole cell volumes can be examined without the need for complex sample preparation as in electron microscopy. Under the X-ray microscope, the tiny cell organelles with their fine structures and boundary membranes appear clear and detailed, even in three dimensions. This makes cryo x-ray tomography ideal for studying changes in cell structures caused, for example, by external triggers. Until now, however, the evaluation of 3D tomograms has required largely manual and labour-intensive data ...

A bifacial perovskite solar cell, which allows sunlight to reach both sides of the device, holds the potential to produce higher energy yields at lower overall costs, according to scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The dual nature of a bifacial solar cell enables the capture of direct sunlight on the front and the capture of reflected sunlight on the back, allowing this type of device to outperform its monofacial counterparts. “This perovskite cell can operate very ...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Colleen McDonald, Sr. Consultant - Earned Media 414.801.3146 | cmcdonald@mcw.edu   Medical College of Wisconsin scientist and international team awarded $13 million NIH program project grant to study calcifications in diseases of aging Dr. Francesca Marassi and collaborators garner $13 million NIH grant to study misplaced calcified deposits that are a misunderstood factor in common diseases of aging Milwaukee, Wis., July 18, 2023 – Francesca Marassi, PhD, professor and chair of ...

Pregnant patients who received some of their prenatal care during the COVID-19 pandemic in a combination of virtual and in-office visits — known as multimodal prenatal care — had similar health outcomes as those who were seen mostly in person before the pandemic, according to a large new study of more than 151,000 births from the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research. The analysis compared pregnancy care, delivery, and outcomes for 3 different time periods: delivery before the pandemic (July 2018 to February 2020), early pandemic (March 2020 to December 2020), and mid-pandemic (December 2020 to October 2021). ...

Climates are changing in wetland ecosystems around the world. A research collaboration between the U.S. Geological Survey and Clayton State University examined the impact of historical land use on these key environments and proposed employing freshwater delivery techniques developed for inland wetlands to help manage coastal systems. In a recently published paper, the research team emphasized the impact of human use of land over time, focusing specifically on water delivery to inland wetlands. The ...

Developing Novel & Safe Contrast Agent Platform For Photoacoustic Imaging   Remi Veneziano, Assistant Professor, Bioengineering, received funding from the National Science Foundation I-Corps Program for the project: "Towards a clinically translatable and standardized tissue ‘paint/contrast agent’ for photoacoustic imaging."   Veneziano is collaborating with Shrishti Singh, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Bioengineering, and Elizabeth Pyle, Life Science Business Mentor, Innovation Commercialization Assistance Program (ICAP), Virginia Small Business Development ...

Lowder Receives Funding For Indiana Justice Reinvestment Advisory Council Racial Equity Project  Evan Lowder, Assistant Professor, Criminology, Law and Society, received funding for: "Indiana Justice Reinvestment Advisory Council Racial Equity Project."  The goals of this study are to understand criminal-legal decision points that may be contributing to racially disparate outcomes and to further data collection efforts at the state and local levels that can facilitate improved tracking of decisions and outcomes in the criminal-legal system.   The broader ...

WASHINGTON, July 18, 2023 – Self-sustained levitation of millimeter-sized droplets was recently discovered by researchers at Tyumen State University, in Russia, during an experiment to select combinations of immiscible liquids, which don’t form homogeneous mixtures. Researchers Natalia Ivanova and Denis Klyuev noticed something amazing happen: Droplets of butyl alcohol, after being detached from the syringe needle, levitated above the surface of the layer of another liquid without collapsing onto it for a long period of time. In Applied Physics Letters, from AIP Publishing, ...

Ottawa, July 18, 2023 – Canadian and Chinese scientists have described an unusual fossil from around 125 million years ago that shows a dramatic moment in time when a carnivorous mammal attacked a larger plant-eating dinosaur. “The two animals are locked in mortal combat, intimately intertwined, and it’s among the first evidence to show actual predatory behaviour by a mammal on a dinosaur,” explains Dr. Jordan Mallon, palaeobiologist with the Canadian Museum of Nature and co-author on the study published today in the journal Scientific Reports. The ...

About The Study: In an analysis of 89,000 individuals providing a week of accelerometer-based physical activity data, a weekend warrior pattern of physical activity (i.e., most moderate to vigorous physical activity achieved over 1-2 days) was associated with similarly lower risks of incident atrial fibrillation, heart attack, heart failure, and stroke compared with more evenly distributed physical activity. Authors: Patrick T. Ellinor, M.D., Ph.D., of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2023.10875) Editor’s ...

About The Study: This study found that better sleep consolidation and the absence of obstructive sleep apnea were associated with better global cognition over five years of follow-up. These findings suggest that the role of interventions to improve sleep for maintaining cognitive function requires investigation.  Authors: Matthew P. Pase, Ph.D., of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, is the corresponding author.  To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at ...

About The Study: The findings of this study of 151,000 pregnant individuals suggest that a multimodal prenatal health care model combining in-office and telemedicine visits performed adequately compared with in-office only prenatal health care, supporting its continued use after the pandemic.  Authors: Assiamira Ferrara, M.D., Ph.D., of Kaiser Permanente Northern California in Oakland, is the corresponding author.  To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/  (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.24011) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, ...

Bottom Line: The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) concludes that the current evidence is insufficient to assess the balance of benefits and harms of screening for lipid disorders in children and adolescents 20 years or younger. Familial hypercholesterolemia and multifactorial dyslipidemia are two conditions that cause abnormally high lipid levels in children, which can lead to premature cardiovascular events (e.g., heart attack and stroke) and death in adulthood. The USPSTF routinely makes recommendations about the effectiveness of preventive care services and this recommendation statement is consistent with its 2016 recommendation. To access the embargoed ...

BOSTON – People who find it difficult to find time to exercise during a busy work week may concentrate their moderate-to-vigorous physical activity to one to two days of the week or weekend. In a recent analysis published in JAMA that was conducted by investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), this “weekend warrior” pattern was associated with similarly lower risks of heart disease and stroke compared with more evenly distributed exercise. Guidelines recommend at least 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per week for overall health, but it’s unclear if concentrated ...

BepiColombo, the joint European Space Agency (ESA) and Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) mission, has revealed how electrons raining down onto the surface of Mercury can trigger high-energy auroras.  The mission, which has been enroute to the Solar System’s innermost planet since 2018, successfully carried out its first Mercury flyby on 1 October 2021. An international team of researchers analysed data from three of BepiColombo’s instruments during the encounter. The outcomes of this study have been published today in the scientific ...

July 18, 2023    WASHINGTON, DC – The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) today announced funding awards totaling $208 million to support 17 new comparative clinical effectiveness research (CER) studies, including four trials of particularly large scale and scope tackling complex questions. All the approved studies aim to fill evidence gaps and enhance health care decision making with a focus on a variety of high-burden concerns.  In addition, PCORI awarded $2 million for a project intended to accelerate the adoption of strategies ...

A team led by Prof. WANG Wei from the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IBCAS) has unraveled the evolutionary history of the Arctic flora. The study was published in Nature Communications. The Arctic tundra, to the north of the natural tree line, is a relatively young and new type of biome and is particularly sensitive to the effects of global warming. The composition, density, and distribution of Arctic vegetation have been changing as a result of climate warming. Therefore, there is an urgent need to better understand how the Arctic flora has been shaped over time. In this study, the researchers selected 32 angiosperm clades comprising ...

Asymmetric synthesis and catalysis have been actively pursued in chemical and materials sciences. Increasing numbers of drugs and pesticides contain chiral structural units in their structures since drug actions require conformational matching to increase their potency and selectivity toward receptors and other active targets inside and on the surfaces of cells. Structural design of pharmaceuticals plays key role in reducing or avoiding severe side effects during their action processes. In the meanwhile, more advanced materials, ...

New research is tackling the mental health crisis in the construction industry – highlighting the benefits of an on-site Health Hub on worker wellbeing. The construction industry has the highest number of deaths by suicide compared to other employment sectors, accounting for 20% of all suicides by occupation between 2011-2019 (ONS). Now, in a joint collaboration between the University of Warwick and National Grid, researchers are attempting to address this problem. A Health Hub was set up on a construction site in Sellindge, Kent which employees could use during their long working days. The Health Hub, a pilot for future projects which could be implemented ...

CABI joined an international team of researchers from 57 institutions around the world to share its expertise in a ground-breaking study which highlights the urgent need to protect the world’s forests from non-native pests amid climate change. The study, led by Dr Iva Franić* – who at the time of the research was a PhD student co-supervised by CABI’s Dr René Eschen – stresses an urgent need to limit tree pests and enhance the resilience of forest ecosystems in the face of rising temperatures. Published ...