East Hanover, NJ – July 7, 2023 – June’s job numbers remained around all-time highs for people with disabilities, according to today’s National Trends in Disability Employment – semi-monthly update (nTIDE), issued by Kessler Foundation and the University of New Hampshire’s Institute on Disability (UNH-IOD). nTIDE experts cautioned that employment of people with disabilities may be negatively affected by further anti-inflationary efforts by the Federal Reserve. Month-to-Month nTIDE Numbers (comparing May 2023 to June 2023) Based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The ability to regenerate and pattern blood vessels, the literal lifelines extending deep into soft tissues, remains an elusive milestone in regenerative medicine. Known as tissue revascularization, stimulating blood vessel growth and pattern formation in damaged or diseased tissues could accelerate the field of regenerative medicine, according to Penn State researchers.  With a four-year, $3 million grant awarded by the National Institutes of Health’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, Penn State chemical engineering and reconstructive surgery researchers plan to develop a new way to help restore soft tissue loss in patients ...

Discovering new materials and drugs typically involves a manual, trial-and-error process that can take decades and cost millions of dollars. To streamline this process, scientists often use machine learning to predict molecular properties and narrow down the molecules they need to synthesize and test in the lab. Researchers from MIT and the MIT-Watson AI Lab have developed a new, unified framework that can simultaneously predict molecular properties and generate new molecules much more efficiently ...

A study led by Nagoya University in Japan has identified three previously unknown membrane proteins in ovarian cancer. Using a unique technology consisting of nanowires with a polyketone coating, the group succeeded in capturing the proteins, demonstrating a new detection method for identification of ovarian cancer.     The discovery of new biomarkers is important for detecting ovarian cancer, as the disease is difficult to detect in its early stages where it can most easily be treated. One ...

Ikoma, Japan – Plants have the unique ability to regenerate entirely from a somatic cell, i.e., an ordinary cell that does not typically participate in reproduction. This process involves the de novo (or new) formation of a shoot apical meristem (SAM) that gives rise to lateral organs, which are key for the plant’s reconstruction. At the cellular level, SAM formation is tightly regulated by either positive or negative regulators (genes/protein molecules) that may induce or restrict shoot regeneration, respectively. But which molecules are involved? Are there other regulatory layers that are yet to be uncovered? To seek answers to the above questions, a research group led by Nara ...

Leesburg, VA, July 7, 2023—According to an accepted manuscript published in the American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), patients discharged from the emergency department (ED) after CT with CTA alone could have benefitted from an alternative or additional MRI evaluation, including using a specialized abbreviated protocol for the modality. Compared with those patients discharged after CT with CTA only, “the use of MRI in select patients presenting to the ED with dizziness was associated with greater frequency of critical neuroimaging results, greater use of echocardiography, ...

A novel molecular pathway to explain how a mutation in the gene ACTA2 can cause individuals in their 30s – with normal cholesterol levels and no other risk factors — to develop coronary artery disease has been identified, according to researchers with UTHealth Houston. The study was published in the European Heart Journal. “The gene ACTA2 codes a specific protein that has nothing to do with cholesterol,” said Dianna Milewicz, MD, PhD, senior author of the study and professor and director of the Division of Medical Genetics at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. – The prevalence of moderate or severe joint pain due to arthritis varies strikingly across American states, ranging from 6.9% of the population in Minnesota to 23.1% in West Virginia, according to a new study led by a University at Buffalo researcher. The paper published in the journal PAIN is providing new insights − through its novel combination of individual- and macro-level measures − into geographic differences in pain and their causes. “The risk of joint pain is over three times higher in some states compared to others, with states in the South, ...

Rockville, MD (July 7, 2023) – Steven A. Abrams, MD, Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School has been named the next Editor-in-Chief of Advances in Nutrition. Dr. Abrams is a globally recognized leader in pediatric nutrition whose scientific contributions have helped establish the evidence base on nutrient requirements in infancy, childhood, and adolescence. Advances in Nutrition is the American Society for Nutrition’s journal that publishes reviews spanning basic, translational, ...

LONDON, ON – Recently published in The Journal of Translational Medicine, a team at Lawson Health Research Institute has discovered unique patterns of blood plasma proteins in patients with long COVID that could reveal potential drug targets to improve patient outcomes. Currently, 10-20 per cent of people with a confirmed case of COVID-19 will be diagnosed with long COVID. “Those patients experience a wide variety of symptoms, which may include fatigue, brain fog and difficulty breathing,” says Dr. Douglas Fraser, Lawson Scientist ...

Madison ­— A new study from researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison finds that ticks can harbor transmissible amounts of the protein particle that causes Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), implicating the parasites as possible agents in the disease’s spread between deer in Wisconsin. Her findings were published in the journal Nature.               CWD is caused by a pathogenic agent called a prion, which can pass from deer-to-deer through contact with things like prion-contaminated soil and infected ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A team of Penn State researchers investigated how seeing frightening news about climate change day after day may shape the way people feel about the phenomenon and how willing they are to take action to address it. Christofer Skurka, Jessica Myrick and graduate student Yin Yang found that seeing bad news about climate change can make people more afraid over time, but it also may encourage audiences to think about what society can do to address the problem. They published the results of two separate studies in an article titled “Fanning the flames or burning out? Testing competing hypotheses ...

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has named an asteroid after Pedro Machado, astrophysicist at Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences (IA), at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon (Portugal). Along with the nomination of Pedro Machado, there were over a hundred other nominations of asteroids and other small bodies. It is almost three kilometers in diameter and takes four and a half years to complete its orbit around the sun. We’re talking about 2001 QL160, or rather the asteroid 32599 Pedromachado. Pedro Machado has been honored by the Work group for the Nomenclature of Small Bodies (WGSBN 2) of the International Astronomical ...

LEXINGTON, Ky. (July 6, 2023) — Charles “Chipper” Griffith III, M.D., has been named dean of the University of Kentucky College of Medicine.  Pending approval from the Board of Trustees, Griffith will begin his appointment July 15, 2023. He has served as acting dean of the college since July 2021.  Through the years, he has played an instrumental role in the health and well-being of Kentuckians, and in the academic success of thousands of students.   “Dr. Griffith understands Kentucky needs the UK College of Medicine,” said Provost Robert ...

Updating pulse oximeters A portable device used to detect blood oxygen levels revolutionized the medical field 50 years ago and is now receiving essential updates Efforts to improve the accuracy of pulse oximetry readings for diverse groups of patients and in multiple settings are underway. Joel Moss, M.D., Ph.D., a senior investigator in NHLBI’s Laboratory of Translational Research, and Bennett Yang, a postbaccalaureate fellow in Dr. Moss’s lab, describe this process and the future of pulse oximetry research. Q: Why are portable pulse ...

The latest issues of three of the American Psychiatric Association’s journals, The American Journal of Psychiatry, Psychiatric Services and The American Journal of Psychotherapy are now available online. The July issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry features articles on social determinants of health relevant to racial and ethnic disparities as well as postmortem molecular studies. Highlights include: Recent Advances on Social Determinants of Mental Health: Looking Fast Forward. Differences in Social Determinants of Health Underlie Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Psychological Health and Well-Being: Study of 11,143 Older Adults. The Nature ...

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Cornell scientists have revealed a new phase of matter in candidate topological superconductors that could have significant consequences for condensed matter physics and for the field of quantum computing and spintronics. Researchers at the Macroscopic Quantum Matter Group at Cornell have discovered and visualized a crystalline yet superconducting state in a new and unusual superconductor, Uranium Ditelluride (UTe2), using one of the world’s most powerful millikelvin Scanned Josephson Tunnelling Microscopes (SJTM). This “spin-triplet electron-pair crystal” is a previously unknown state of topological quantum matter. The findings, ...

LONDON, ON – In a world-first clinical trial published in the journal Nature Medicine, a multi-centre study from Lawson Health Research Institute, the Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM) and the Jewish General Hospital (JGH) has found fecal microbiota transplants (FMT) from healthy donors are safe and show promise in improving response to immunotherapy in patients with advanced melanoma. Immunotherapy drugs stimulate a person’s immune system to attack and destroy cancer. While they can significantly improve survival outcomes in those with melanoma, they are only ...

To control pandemics like the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19), data such as the age, gender, family composition, and medical history of infected individuals are required. While patients themselves may provide this information to medical institutions, these details are highly confidential. If the data is properly handled for privacy protection, it can be shared with researchers worldwide without identifying the infected individual, which can help clarify the state of the pandemic and more accurately predict its progression.   There ...

They published their work on July. 6 in Energy Material Advances. "In 2017, we reported a new family of 2D transition metal borides as analogues to MXenes and coined a catchy name for them, MBenes," said paper author Zhimei Sun, professor of the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Beihang University. "Up till now, MBenes have been widely studied as catalysts or substrates of various reactions, including HER, ORR/OER, NRR and CO2RR. Notably, the exploration of electrocatalytic performance for MBenes mainly focuses on those with orthorhombic structures, while there are few studies on applying ...

Scientists have designed an AI tool that can rapidly decode a brain tumor’s DNA to determine its molecular identity during surgery — critical information that under the current approach can take a few days and up to a few weeks. Knowing a tumor’s molecular type enables neurosurgeons to make decisions such as how much brain tissue to remove and whether to place tumor-killing drugs directly into the brain — while the patient is still on the operating table.  A report ...

In males of many species, it pays to identify females that are nearing maturity to be the first in line for mating. Now researchers reporting in the journal iScience on July 7 have found a remarkable example: male spider mites guard and then actively strip off the skin of premature females that are soon to molt and mature to make them accessible for mating sooner. “Our study documents an exceptional male behavior in the animal kingdom, namely that male spider mites strip off the skin of premature females that are close to molting into adulthood,” said Peter Schausberger ...

About The Study: Deaths due to opioid toxicity increased substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic. By 2021, 1 of every 22 deaths in the U.S. was attributable to unintentional opioid toxicity, underscoring the urgent need to support people at risk of substance-related harm, particularly men, younger adults, and adolescents.  Authors: Tara Gomes, Ph.D., of the University of Toronto, 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.2023.22303) Editor’s Note: Please see the ...

About The Study: In this systematic review and meta-analysis, smoke-free legislation was associated with significant reductions in morbidity and mortality related to cardiovascular disease, respiratory system disease, and perinatal outcomes. These findings support the need to accelerate the implementation of smoke-free laws to protect populations against smoking-related harm.  Authors: Ryota Nakamura, Ph.D., of Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo, is the corresponding author.  To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media ...

Until now, scientific evidence has been inconclusive regarding the ability of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, to replicate in the human placenta. Answering this question, as well as understanding the response of the placenta to other viral infections during pregnancy, is crucial for the development of effective preventive and therapeutic strategies for both the mother and the baby. At Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital, researchers have taken a novel approach to shed light on ...