WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – NASA has awarded a $799,954 Phase II STTR contract to AnalySwift LLC, a Purdue University-affiliated commercial software provider. The company will develop DATC, or Design tool for Advanced Tailorable Composites, and launch it at the end of the two-year contract. Allan Wood, AnalySwift president and CEO, said advancements in simulation capabilities have not always kept pace with those in manufacturing techniques. He said DATC will significantly improve NASA’s capabilities to design and analyze aerospace structures made from advanced tailorable composites. “DATC will be used to design next-generation aerospace structures, such as hybrid/blended ...

Gene editing and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have been topics of significant debate in recent years. A new study from the Alliance for Science, an initiative based at the Boyce Thompson Institute, has revealed a positive shift in public sentiment towards one aspect of agricultural biotechnology, showing that gene editing consistently receives higher favorability ratings than GMOs in both social and traditional English-language media.  The study was published after analyzing data from a five-year period between January 2018 and December 2022. The data provides valuable insights for the scientific community and professionals in science communication.  "Our ...

The Russian writer and philosopher Leo Tolstoy may have been onto something when he wrote the opening line of Anna Karenina: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” A recent study published in Psychological Science and led by a scholar now at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, suggests that when it comes to their brains processing information, people who are not lonely are all alike, but every lonely person processes the world in their own, idiosyncratic way. Copious research shows that loneliness is detrimental to well-being ...

Changes to the flow of the Labrador Current along the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador to Nova Scotia are leading to sudden warmings or drops in the oxygen levels of the waters in several regions including the St. Lawrence Gulf and Estuary. This change has dire consequences for marine ecosystems and fisheries. To better predict what could happen in the future, researchers from McGill University set out to answer the question: what controls the pathway of the Labrador Current? The Labrador Current supplies cold, oxygen rich waters The Labrador Current is a cold water current in the North Atlantic Ocean that flows south along the coast of Newfoundland ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 28, 2023 MINNEAPOLIS – Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a degenerative brain disease linked to repeated head impacts that athletes get from contact sports. However, the definitive diagnosis of the disease can be made only after death through an autopsy. New research criteria for identifying who may be more likely to develop the disease proved accurate in distinguishing a group who would have changes in brain volume and cognitive skills years later, according to a study published in the June 28, ...

HOUSTON ― A blood-based test developed by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center can efficiently predict an individual’s risk of dying from lung cancer when combined with a personalized risk model. According to new data published today in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, a blood-based four-protein panel (4MP), when combined with a lung cancer risk model (PLCOm2012), can better identify those at high risk of dying from lung cancer than the current U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) criteria. These findings build upon previous MD Anderson research demonstrating the ...

HOUSTON – (June 28, 2023) – Engineers from Rice University and the University of Maryland have created full-motion video technology that could potentially be used to make cameras that peer through fog, smoke, driving rain, murky water, skin, bone and other media that reflect scattered light and obscure objects from view. “Imaging through scattering media is the ‘holy grail problem’ in optical imaging at this point,” said Rice’s Ashok Veeraraghavan, co-corresponding author of an open-access study published today in Science Advances. ...

Scientists have wondered what happens to the organic and inorganic carbon that Earth’s Pacific Plate carries with it as it slides into the planet’s interior along the volcano-studded Ring of Fire. A new study suggests a notable amount of such subducted carbon returns to the atmosphere rather than traveling deep into Earth’s mantle.  The finding can improve long-term projections about Earth’s climate. A study led by a University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute scientist has shown that volcanoes of the Aleutian-Alaska Arc return more subducted slab carbon to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide than previously thought. This occurs ...

Glioblastoma is the most aggressive form of brain cancer. Despite decades of major efforts and clinical trials, the tumor’s survival rate has remained stagnant. For years, scientists understood the cells in these tumors as static and relatively fixed. But recent studies have uncovered that glioblastomas contain active cells moving in complex patterns known as “oncostreams”, which determine how aggressively the tumors grow. Research led by Michigan Medicine and the University of Michigan, published in Science Advances, suggests that glioblastoma ...

Dog breeds differ in pain sensitivity, but these differences don’t always match up with the beliefs people – including veterinarians – hold about breed-specific pain sensitivity. The results appear in a new study from North Carolina State University, which also found that a dog’s temperament (specifically in the way they interact with strangers) may influence the way veterinarians view breed pain sensitivity. “Veterinarians have a fairly strong consensus in their ratings of pain sensitivity ...

A new analysis of nearly 60 million Facebook posts investigates how users’ interest in posts evolves over time, suggesting that the amount of controversy generated by a post is strongly linked to the speed with which it reaches a broad audience—regardless of the specific topic being discussed. Gabriele Etta of Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on June 28, 2023. This study adds to mounting research examining the influence ...

A meditation that guides people to practice unconditional kindness to themselves and others helps people with a history of depression recall specific personal memories, according to a new study published this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Amanda Lathan and Barbara Dritschel of the University of St. Andrews, UK. Autobiographic memory is essential to human functioning in areas such as self-concept, emotion regulation and problem-solving. Research has suggested that, among the cognitive processes disrupted by depression, the retrieval of autobiographical memory is often impaired. In the new ...

Intranasal insulin treatment might boost cognition in people with mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer's Disease, according to meta-analysis of 29 studies across multiple disorders ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0286887 Article Title: Outcomes and clinical implications of intranasal insulin on cognition in humans: A systematic review and meta-analysis Author Countries: Canada Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. END ...

In animal assisted therapy, horses may aid the treatment of patients with substance use disorders by boosting mood and quality of life ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0286867 Article Title: An evaluation of the effect of equine-facilitated psychotherapy on patients with substance use disorders Author Countries: Czech Republic Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. END ...

Embargoed until 2 p.m. ET, Wednesday June 28, 2023 COLUMBUS, Ohio – Imagine strapping on a virtual reality headset and “walking” through a long-gone neighborhood in your city – seeing the streets and buildings as they appeared decades ago. That’s a very real possibility now that researchers have developed a method to create 3D digital models of historic neighborhoods using machine learning and historic Sanborn Fire Insurance maps. But the digital models will be more than just a novelty – they will give researchers a resource to conduct studies that would have been nearly ...

NYC researchers' community-led response to the mpox outbreak used principles learned from Global South colleagues. #### Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/globalpublichealth/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgph.0002042 Article Title: Global North learning from Global South: A community-led response to mpox in New York City Author Countries: USA Funding: This work was supported by amfAR (110396-72-PAGN to KM), the Harvard University Center for AIDS Research (HU CFAR NIH/NIAID fund 5P30AO060354-18 to KM), the Harvard University ...

Scientists studying endangered southern resident killer whales have observed a strong increase in the prevalence of skin disease in this population.  In a study published today, June 29, in PLOS ONE, researchers document a steady increase in the occurrence of highly correlated gray patches and gray targets on the whales’ skin from 2004 to 2016. Despite not knowing the underlying cause, the study’s authors are concerned.  After ruling out potential environmental factors, such as changes ...

An international team of researchers has developed a new method to deliver drugs into the inner ear.  The discovery was possible by harnessing the natural flow of fluids in the brain and employing a little understood backdoor into the cochlea. When combined to deliver a gene therapy that repairs inner ear hair cells, the researchers were able to restore hearing in deaf mice.  “These findings demonstrate that cerebrospinal fluid transport comprises an accessible route for gene delivery to the adult inner ear and may represent an important step towards using gene therapy to restore hearing in humans,” ...

Benzodiazepine use and discontinuation is associated with nervous system injury and negative life effects that continue after discontinuation, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. The study was published today in the journal PLOS One. “Despite the fact that benzodiazepines have been widely prescribed for decades, this survey presents significant new evidence that a subset of patients experience long-term neurological complications,” said Alexis Ritvo, M.D, M.P.H., an assistant professor in psychiatry at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and  medical director of the nonprofit ...

PHILADELPHIA – An experimental antibody treatment largely prevented a bone marrow transplant complication called graft versus host disease (GVHD) in the intestines, without causing broad immune suppression, in a preclinical study led by researchers from Penn Medicine and Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center and published today in Science Translational Medicine. Even when a bone marrow transplant cures leukemia or lymphoma, GVHD—in which T cells in the donor graft attack the recipient’s own tissues—can still be fatal. The condition ...

A recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Zurich delved into the capabilities of AI models, specifically focusing on OpenAI’s GPT-3, to determine their potential risks and benefits in generating and disseminating (dis)information. Led by postdoctoral researchers Giovanni Spitale and Federico Germani, alongside Nikola Biller-Andorno, director of the Institute of Biomedical Ethics and History of Medicine (IBME), University of Zurich, the study involving 697 participants sought to evaluate whether individuals could differentiate between disinformation and accurate ...

Vehicle Color Recognition (VCR) is vital in intelligent traffic management and criminal investigation assistance. However, the existing vehicle color datasets only cover 13 classes, which can not meet the current actual demand. Besides, although lots of efforts are devoted to VCR, they suffer from the problem of class imbalance in datasets. To solve the problems, a research team led by Mingdi HU published their new research in Frontiers of Computer Science co-published by Higher Education Press and Springer·Nature. The team propose a novel VCR method ...

The Science Partner Journal (SPJ) program is pleased to announce the inclusion of five SPJs in the 2023 Journal Citation Reports (JCR) from Clarivate. Research, launched in 2018, received its second Journal Impact Factor (JIF) this year, 11.0, ranking it #9 among 73 journals in the Multidisciplinary category in Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE).   Plant Phenomics also launched in 2018 and received its second JIF this year, 6.5, ranking it #5 among 88 journals in the Agronomy, #21 among ...

Scientists identify the first genetic marker for MS severity, opening the door to preventing long-term disability. A study of more than 22,000 people with multiple sclerosis has discovered the first genetic variant associated with faster disease progression that can rob patients of their mobility and independence over time. Multiple sclerosis (MS) is the result of the immune system mistakenly attacking the brain and the spinal cord, resulting in symptom flares known as relapses as well as longer-term degeneration known as progression. Despite the development of effective treatments for relapses, ...

ITHACA, N.Y. -- When it comes to e-cigarette warning labels, respondents in focus groups organized by Cornell researchers were clear: Give it to me straight. But approximately 20 years after they hit the market, electronic cigarettes’ precise health risks remain unclear. And for adults trying to quit smoking conventional cigarettes, ambiguity in messaging can skew perceptions of the health benefits of using these products as an alternative to combustible cigarettes. A multidisciplinary team led by Jeff ...