The Science Coastal forests are increasingly exposed to the effects of climate change and sea level rise. However, scientists have an incomplete understanding of what this means for soil stability. This experiment examined how soil might change when transplanted between parts of a tidal creek that differed in salinity. Scientists found that soils with a history of salinity and inundation by seawater were more resistant to changes in water properties and movement. This suggests that the soils had already “learned” how to adapt to environmental changes. The researchers suggest that differences in the resilience of soils’ carbon ...

Unleashing the power of cybersecurity: 2023 CyberForce® Conquer the Hill — Reign Edition competition set the stage for virtual showdown. In an exciting showdown of talent and skill, Cameron Whitehead of University of Central Florida emerged as the champion of U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) 2023 CyberForce® Conquer the Hill — Reign Edition Competition. This virtual event, organized by DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory, involved 144 individual participants from collegiate institutions across ...

“The prognosis of recurrent/metastatic SS remains poor, highlighting the need for a novel therapeutic strategy.” BUFFALO, NY- July 18, 2023 – A new case report was published in Oncotarget's Volume 14 on July 7, 2023, entitled, “Intrathoracic synovial sarcoma with BRAF V600E mutation.” Synovial sarcoma (SS) is a highly malignant mesenchymal tumor that occurs mainly in adolescents and young adults. The treatment of SS is multimodal, involving surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. The overall prognosis ...

ROCKVILLE, MD—JULY 13, 2023 – The American Association for Anatomy (AAA) announced the deserving recipients of the AAA Predoctoral Fellowship, the DEI Dissertation Completion Award, and the EUReka EDI Undergraduate Research Award. In 2023, AAA expanded its portfolio of awards, grants, and scholarships by an additional $100,000, now topping out at over $650,000. These opportunities provide much-needed financial support to undergraduate and graduate students, enabling them to conduct groundbreaking research and make valuable contributions to the field. AAA has continuously demonstrated ...

Ischemic stroke, which occurs when a blood vessel in the brain gets blocked by a clot, is among the leading causes of death worldwide. Fortunately, surgeons now have access to advanced imaging techniques that allow them to visualize the interior of a patient’s brain during a stroke. This helps them pinpoint the location of the clot and analyze the extent of damage to the brain tissue. Computed tomography-perfusion (CT-P) is one of the most useful imaging modalities in the early stages of an acute stroke. However, it is challenging to accurately identify ...

David Luther, Assistant Professor, Biology, received funding from the National Science Foundation for: "Collaborative Research: LTREB: Forest fragmentation and climate change result in understory warming that adversely affects tropical avian biodiversity at the BDFFP."  Luther and his collaborators posit that remnant bird communities in Amazonian forest fragments are a precursor of future bird assemblages in continuous forest due to understory forest drying from edge effects in fragments and climate change in continuous ...

Stanford engineers Michael Lepech and Zhiye Li have a unique vision of the future: buildings and roads made from plastic waste. In a new white paper commissioned by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), Lepech and Li study the current status, challenges, and needs of recycling plastics in a circular economy, and examine the long-term durability and environmental costs of doing so for use in infrastructure.  Using a mix of computer modeling, scientific research, experimental and field data, as well as interviews with recycling industry stakeholders, Lepech and Li analyze case studies using plastic ...

MIAMI, FLORIDA (JULY 18, 2023) – Researchers from Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston have been awarded $7 million in total funding to study how diet and exercise impact mental and physical functioning in older cancer survivors and their caregivers. The funding is being provided by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), a nonprofit, Washington, D.C.-based organization that supports research designed to help patients, caregivers and clinicians make better informed healthcare decisions. Tracy ...

English serves as a convenient, common language for science. However, this practice poses insurmountable barriers to those whose first language is not English — the majority of people around the world. According to research published on July 18th in the open access journal PLOS Biology, led by Dr. Tatsuya Amano at the University of Queensland, Australia, the disadvantages of being a non-native English speaker in science range from difficulties in reading and writing papers to reduced participation in international conferences. Few studies to date have ...

A “clear and significant” language barrier cost faced by non-native English-speaking scientists has been quantified by a University of Queensland-led international survey. The study, led by UQ’s Dr Tatsuya Amano, surveyed 908 environmental science researchers on scientific activities across five categories – paper reading, writing, publication, dissemination, and conference participation – finding a substantial disadvantage for non-native English speakers in all five. “Compared to native English speakers, non-native English speakers need up to twice as ...

Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infections are commonly associated with abdominal pain, bloating, and acidity. Clinical evidence suggests that infection with H. pylori cagA+ strains dramatically increases the risk of developing gastric cancer. A specialized protein delivered by H. pylori to the host, oncoprotein “CagA,” has been shown to interact with multiple host proteins and promote gastric carcinogenesis (transformation of normal cells to cancer cells). However, the underlying mechanisms associated with its biochemical activity have not been fully determined yet.   A new study published in Science Signaling on 18 July 2023 shares insights ...

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 ...