The social cost of carbon — an important figure that global policymakers use to analyze the benefits of climate and energy policies — is too low, according to a study led by the University of California, Davis. The study, published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), shows that current estimates for the social cost of carbon, or SCC, fail to adequately represent important channels by which climate change could affect human welfare. When included, the SCC increases to just over $280 per ton of CO2 emitted in 2020 — more than double the ...

In 1969, fossilized leaves of the species Othniophyton elongatum — which translates to “alien plant” — were identified in eastern Utah. Initially, scientists theorized the extinct species may have belonged to the ginseng family (Araliaceae). However, a case once closed is now being revisited. New fossil specimens show that Othniophyton elongatum is even stranger than scientists first thought.  Steven Manchester, curator of paleobotany at the Florida Museum of Natural History, has studied 47-million-year-old fossils from Utah for several years. While visiting ...

String theory, conceptualized more than 50 years ago as a framework to explain the formation of matter, remains elusive as a “provable” phenomenon. But a team of physicists has now taken a significant step forward in validating string theory by using an innovative mathematical method that points to its “inevitability.”  String theory posits that the most basic building blocks of nature are not particles, but, rather, one-dimensional vibrating strings that move at different frequencies ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Childhood circumstances, such as parental divorce or growing up poor, have been shown to influence health and other outcomes later in life. But does a person’s experiences in childhood also influence their future ability to provide financial support to their children? According to a new study from a researcher from Penn State, parents who endured difficult childhoods provided less financial support to their children’s education such as college tuition compared to parents who experienced few or no disadvantages. Regardless of current socioeconomic ...

A recent study from Simon Fraser University researchers has revealed how an overlooked type of indirect brain damage contributes to ongoing disability after a stroke. The paper, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows how the thalamus – a sort of central networking hub that regulates functions such as language, memory, attention and movement – is affected months or years after a person has experienced a stroke, even though it was not directly damaged itself. The findings may lead to new therapies that could reduce the burden of chronic stroke, which remains one of the leading causes of disability in the world. “Our ...

Higher calorie foods were preferred among individuals with and without obesity despite similar taste and texture, according to a study published December 17th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Albino Oliveira-Maia from the Champalimaud Foundation, Portugal, and colleagues. Eating sends signals to the brain with information about a food’s energy content, which can influence food preferences irrespective of flavor. People with obesity often have impairments in areas of the brain where dopamine ...

An international team of researchers led by PD Dr Florian Peißker has found the first binary star in the immediate vicinity of the supermassive black hole Sgr A* (Sagittarius A star) at the centre of our galaxy. Although it is known that most stars in the universe do not form alone, so far there are only five confirmed binary stars at a greater distance from the black hole. None of the systems are so close. The researchers assume that the binary star system they found, named D9, will merge into a single star in the near future. The discovery was published in Nature Communications under the title ‘A binary ...

Penn Engineers have modified lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) — the revolutionary technology behind the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines — to not only cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB) but also to target specific types of cells, including neurons. This breakthrough marks a significant step toward potential next-generation treatments for neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. In a new paper in Nano Letters, the researchers demonstrate how peptides — short strings of amino ...

“Passive thermotherapy positively modulates multiple physiological parameters and represents a nonpharmacological approach for potential disease modifying treatment.” BUFFALO, NY- December 17, 2024 – A new research paper was published in Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as “Aging (Albany NY)” and “Aging-US” by Web of Science) Volume 16, Issue 21 on November 29, 2024, entitled, “Thermotherapy has sexually dimorphic responses in APP/PS1 mice.” Researchers Samuel A. McFadden, Mackenzie R. Peck, Lindsey N. Sime, MaKayla F. Cox, Erol D. Ikiz, Caleigh A. Findley, ...

An international team of researchers has detected a binary star orbiting close to Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. It is the first time a stellar pair has been found in the vicinity of a supermassive black hole. The discovery, based on data collected by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), helps us understand how stars survive in environments with extreme gravity, and could pave the way for the detection of planets close to Sagittarius A*. “Black holes are not as destructive as we thought,” says Florian Peißker, a researcher at the University of Cologne, Germany, and lead author of the ...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 17, 2024 – Solar power is currently the fastest growing energy sector worldwide. Solar photovoltaic power plants convert sunlight into electricity and their vast potential for producing clean, renewable energy make solar power a cornerstone of the NetZero Emissions by 2050 initiative, which seeks to cut carbon dioxide emissions to zero by the year 2050. Wind has both positive and negative effects on solar power grids. It helps maintain solar panel performance by eliminating the buildup of dirt and dust, and ...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 17, 2024 — Infertility affects an estimated 186 million people worldwide, with fallopian tube obstruction contributing to 11%-67% of female infertility cases. In AIP Advances, from AIP Publishing, researchers at the SIAT Magnetic Soft Microrobots Lab have developed an innovative solution using a magnetically driven robotic microscrew to treat fallopian tube blockages. “This new technology offers a potentially less invasive alternative to the traditional surgical methods currently used to clear tubal obstructions, which often involve ...

LOS ANGELES — Scientists at City of Hope®, one of the largest and most advanced cancer research and treatment organizations in the U.S. with its National Medical Center named top 5 in the nation for cancer by U.S. News & World Report, have collared a tricky culprit that helps cancer cells evade CAR T cell therapy. CAR T cell therapy harnesses the immune system to seek out and kill tumor cells. This treatment is used in certain types of leukemia and lymphoma — blood cancers. Some wily cancer cells, however, have learned how to hide from the immune system to avoid destruction. The study published today in the journal Cell could lead to more personalized therapies that ...

The decades-old anesthetic ketamine could be a game changer for treating severe depression, but there are still many questions about how the drug works, including exactly how it affects the brain’s cells and circuits. To help answer these questions, researchers are turning to an unlikely animal: tiny, days-old zebrafish. The millimeters-long, translucent zebrafish may not get depressed exactly like humans do, but the fish do exhibit a “giving up” behavior: they stop swimming after they realize they aren’t getting anywhere – a passive behavior that scientists use to study ...

About The Study: In this cohort study of Dutch children, early-life moderate to vigorous physical activity was not associated with executive function in middle childhood. Children participating in team sports at ages 10 to 11 consistently exhibited superior executive function compared with participants in individual sports. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Lu Yang, MSc, email l.yang@umcg.nl. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.49879) Editor’s Note: Please see ...

When doctors and nurses pass patient information from one shift to another — an exchange known as a “handoff” — the specific words they use behind closed doors matter more than they might realize. A new study published in JAMA Network Open shows that when clinicians hear a patient described with negatively biased language, they develop less empathy towards the patient and, in some cases, become less accurate in recalling the patient’s critical health details. Such shifts in perception may be subtle and unintentional in many cases, but as these hidden biases stack up, they can influence the care patients ultimately receive. “A lot is going on here ...

Study shows how language, education and age affect someone’s ability to engage with digital health tools. Digital health tools, such as patient portals, treatment apps and online appointment schedulers, are increasingly common. But not everyone is equally at home using them.  To find out how language, education and age may affect a person’s comfort in using digital tools, UC San Francisco researchers surveyed caregivers of hospitalized children at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals. The researchers found that being a Spanish speaker, having less education, and being older all made people feel less comfortable with digital health ...

Scientists mapped near-gap-free and near-error-free genomes of a susceptible bed bug strain and a superstrain around 20,000 times more insecticide-resistant, offering the broadest look yet at the full scope of their resistance mutations. Their findings were published in the journal Insects. Although there is no evidence that bed bugs transmit diseases to humans, their bites can cause itchy rashes and secondary skin infections. Widespread use of insecticides, including the now-banned DDT, nearly wiped out populations of these blood-sucking insects by the 1960s, making infestations ...

SAN ANTONIO — December 17, 2024 —NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recently awarded Southwest Research Institute a $26 million contract to develop magnetometers for NOAA’s Space Weather Next (SW Next) program for two missions to be launched in 2029 and 2032. The magnetometers will measure the interplanetary magnetic field carried by the solar wind. “The instruments provide critical data to NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center which issues forecasts, warnings and alerts that help mitigate space weather impacts,” said Dr. Roy Torbert, a program director in SwRI’s Earth, Oceans, and Space office ...

A new study has shown that employees are experiencing mental and physical techno-strain due to being ‘hyperconnected’ to digital technology making it difficult for people to switch off from work. Researchers from the University of Nottingham’s Schools of Psychology and Medicine conducted detailed interviews with employees from a range of professions and found that the cognitive and affective effort associated with constant connectivity and high work pace driven by the digital workplace is detrimental to employee wellbeing. The results have been published today in Frontiers in Organizational Psychology. This new paper is the final part of a research ...

Image Adolescent drug use continued to drop in 2024, building on and extending the historically large decreases that occurred during the pandemic onset in 2020. "I expected adolescent drug use would rebound at least partially after the large declines that took place during the pandemic onset in 2020, which were among the largest ever recorded," said Richard Miech, team lead of the Monitoring the Future study at U-M's Institute for Social Research.  "Many experts in the field had anticipated that drug use would resurge ...

NEW YORK CITY and ORLANDO— The American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR) and the McKnight Brain Research Foundation (MBRF) are pleased to announce the 2024 recipients of The McKnight Brain Research Foundation Innovator Awards in Cognitive Aging and Memory Loss: Janine Kwapis, PhD, of Pennsylvania State University, and Sanaz Sedaghat, PhD, of the University of Minnesota.  Now in its fourth year, the Innovator Awards provide funding to research scientists pursuing groundbreaking studies in the field of cognitive aging. Janine Kwapis, PhD, is an Assistant Professor and Paul Berg Early Career Professor ...

Despite national medical guidelines supporting the use of antiviral medications in young children diagnosed with influenza, a recent study reports an underuse of the treatment. “Antiviral Use Among Children Hospitalized with Laboratory-Confirmed Influenza Illness: A Prospective, Multicenter Surveillance Study” was published in Clinical Infectious Diseases, the flagship journal of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Flu illness accounts for up to 10% of all pediatric hospitalizations during ...

Hematopoietic progenitor kinase 1 (HPK1), a member of the Ste20 serine/threonine kinases family, negatively regulates T cell function and is considered a promising target for immunotherapy. Despite the promising efficacy demonstrated in preclinical models, no HPK1 inhibitors are currently approved for clinical use, due to challenges including balance between kinase selectivity and pharmacokinetic properties. CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec 17, 2024 --- Insilico Medicine (“Insilico”), a clinical-stage generative artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery company, is proud to announce its latest AI-powered ...

PHILADELPHIA – Following a several-year lull during the pandemic, cases of whooping cough are increasing across the United States. As of Nov. 30, early U.S. data show over 28,000 cases reported this year, or six times as many as in the same period in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Whooping cough or pertussis, a highly contagious bacterial infection of the respiratory tract, was one of the most common childhood diseases in the 20th century and a major cause ...