A new study co-authored by Patrick Hill, associate professor of psychological and brain sciences, offers an important message for our times: A sense of purpose in life — whether it’s a high-minded quest to make a difference or a simple hobby with personal meaning — can offer potent protection against loneliness.  “Loneliness is known to be one of the biggest psychological predictors for health problems, cognitive decline, and early mortality,” Hill said. “Studies show that it can ...

Demand for modern biofuels is expected to grow substantially in order to mitigate climate emissions. However, they are far from being a climate neutral alternative to gasoline and diesel. A new study in Nature Climate Change shows that under current land-use regulations, CO2 emission factors for biofuels might even exceed those for fossil diesel combustion due to large-scale land clearing related to growing biomass. Before bioenergy can effectively contribute to achieving carbon neutrality, international agreements need to ensure the effective protection of forests and other natural lands by introducing carbon ...

The biological roots of autism continue to perplex researchers, despite a growing body of studies looking at an increasing array of genetic, cellular and microbial data. Recently, scientists have homed in on a new and promising area of focus: the microbiome. This collection of microbes that inhabit the human gut has been shown to play a role in autism, but the mechanics of this link have remained awash in ambiguity. Taking a fresh computational approach to the problem, a study published today in Nature Neuroscience sheds new light on the relationship between the microbiome and autism. This research — which originated ...

(COLUMBUS, Ohio) – Firearms are the leading cause of death among children and teens 1-19 years old in the United States. According to new research from Nationwide Children’s Hospital, most unintentional firearm fatalities in which a child shoots another child involve boys, occur in the child’s home or at the home of a friend, and involve firearms that were stored loaded and unlocked.    In a new study, researchers at the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide ...

The Gerontological Society of America (GSA) — the nation’s largest interdisciplinary organization devoted to the field of aging — has named 49 exemplary professionals as its newest fellows. Fellow status is peer recognition for outstanding contributions to the field of gerontology and represents the highest category of GSA membership. This distinction comes at varying points in a person’s career and is given for diverse activities that include research, teaching, administration, public service, practice, and notable participation in the Society. Fellows are chosen from across GSA’s membership groups. The new fellows will be formally ...

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., June 26, 2023 — A groundbreaking theoretical proof shows that a technique called overparametrization enhances performance in quantum machine learning for applications that stymie classical computers. “We believe our results will be useful in using machine learning to learn the properties of quantum data, such as classifying different phases of matter in quantum materials research, which is very difficult on classical computers,” said Diego Garcia-Martin, a postdoctoral researcher ...

Weill Cornell Medicine and Columbia University have been awarded a $9.8 million, five-year grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, to help combat cancer disparities fueled by persistent poverty. The competitive award, will engage faculty members from Weill Cornell Medicine, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University School of Nursing and SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University in a collaborative effort to develop a specialized research center and spearhead two large projects in ...

Chicago, Illinois (Embargoed until 9:30 am CDT, Monday, June 26, 2023)—Jean-Luc C. Urbain, MD, PhD, FASNC, professor of radiology/nuclear medicine and medicine, vice chair of theranostics, and director of nuclear medicine at Roswell Park Cancer Center at the University of Buffalo in New York, has been elected vice president-elect for the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI). SNMMI introduced a new slate of officers during its 2023 Annual Meeting, held June 24-27.   “With the advent of new precision oncology nuclear therapies and the explosion of the field of theranostics, there has never been a more exciting ...

Chicago, Illinois (Embargoed until 9:30 am, CDT, Monday, June 26, 2023)—Umar Mahmood, MD, PhD, chief of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, director of the Center for Precision Imaging, and associate chair for imaging sciences in the Department of Radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, has been named as the first recipient of the new Minoshima-Pappas Transformational Leadership Award. Mahmood was presented the award by the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) at its 2023 Annual Meeting. The Minoshima-Pappas Transformational Leadership Award was ...

Chicago, Illinois (Embargoed until 9:30 am, CDT, Monday, June 26, 2023)—Peter J. H. Scott, PhD, associate professor of radiology and pharmacology, division director of nuclear medicine, and director of the PET Center at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has been named as the 2023 recipient of the Sam Gambhir Trailblazer Award. Scott was presented the award by the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) at its 2023 Annual Meeting.  Scott's nuclear medicine and molecular imaging research spans ...

Cambridge scientists have set out principles for how computational science – which powers discoveries from unveiling the mysteries of the universe to developing treatments to fight cancer to improving our understanding of the human genome, but can have a substantial carbon footprint – can be made more environmentally sustainable. Writing in Nature Computational Science, researchers from the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge argue that the scientific community needs to act now if it is to ...

New research led by the University of East Anglia (UEA) reduces uncertainty in future climate change linked to the stratosphere, with important implications for life on Earth.  Man-made climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing us today, but uncertainty in the exact magnitude of global change hampers effective policy responses.  A significant source of uncertainty relates to future changes to water vapour in the stratosphere, an extremely dry region of the atmosphere 15–50 km above the Earth’s surface.  Future increases in water vapour here risk amplifying climate change and slowing down the recovery ...

The opioid crisis continues to pose a grave public health concern, with synthetic opioids such as fentanyl posing a major risk for development of addiction and death due to overdose. In a ground-breaking development, a recent study by the research group led by Prof. Ami Citri at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences has unveiled crucial insights into the brain's potential ability to regulate the urge to consume fentanyl. This discovery offers a glimmer of hope in the ongoing battle against ...

About The Study: Racial disparities in food insecurity were found among low-income households that do not participate in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) but not among those that do, suggesting that access to SNAP should be improved. These results also highlight the need to examine the structural and systemic racism in food systems and in access to food assistance that may contribute to disparities.  Authors: Laura J. Samuel, Ph.D., R.N., of the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in Baltimore, 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.2023.20196) Editor’s ...

Pioneering analysis of deep-sea corals has overturned the idea that ocean currents contributed to increasing global levels of carbon dioxide in the air over the past 11,000 years. The study, led by the University of Bristol in the UK and Nanjing University in China, examined historic deep-sea corals to shed intriguing new light on the history of ocean chemistry.         Understanding what has led to the pre-industrial rise in carbon dioxide (CO2) levels during the Holocene period, which dates back some 11,700 years to the present day, is a source of scientific debate. One theory suggests the increase in physical ...

By Benjamin Boettner (Boston) — The successful campaign of adoptive T cell therapies, a type of immunotherapy in which immune T cells are collected from a patient, enhanced outside of the body, and reinfused back into the same patient, especially against blood cancers is well under way. But improving the ability to create patient-specific T cell populations with specific traits and functions could broaden clinicians’ repertoire of T cell therapies.  One way to approach this goal is to better understand how T cells’ traits and functions, including their cytotoxic effects on ...

HOUSTON ― Researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer have engineered a new model of aggressive renal cell carcinoma (RCC), highlighting molecular targets and genomic events that trigger chromosomal instability and drive metastatic progression. The study, published today in Nature Cancer, demonstrates that the loss of a cluster of interferon receptor (IFNR) genes plays a pivotal role in allowing cancer cells to become tolerant of chromosomal instability. This genomic feature may be used to help clinicians predict a tumor’s potential to become metastatic and treatment resistant. Researchers led by Luigi Perelli, ...

Scientists at the Sainsbury Laboratory Cambridge University (SLCU) have discovered a new molecular signalling pathway, triggered when leaves are exposed to low humidity, that ensures plant roots keep growing towards water.  In dry soil conditions, plants take action to try and conserve water by producing the drought stress hormone abscisic acid (ABA). For decades plant scientists thought that in response to dry soil, ABA was made in the roots and then transported to the leaves. In this root-to-shoot signalling pathway, ABA closes microscopic leaf pores, called stomata, to prevent water loss from leaves. In recent years, scientists ...

New research examining how frequently our bodies produce broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) capable of thwarting a range of SARS-CoV-2 variants offers clues on the strategy tweaks that could potentially future-proof COVID-19 vaccines. To counter invading viruses, our body deploys specific antibodies, among them the neutralizing kind targeting the receptor-binding domain (RBD) — the “Velcro hooks” used by pathogens to fasten onto our cells. As SARS-CoV-2 accumulates genetic mutations, new variants emerge donning sneaky disguises to outsmart our defenses. So-called bnAbs are elite neutralizing antibodies that can keep up ...

Carbon dioxide capture, storage, and utilization have been widely researched to achieve CO2 zero emission and resolve climate change issues. Molten salt electrolysis is one promising method to simultaneously capture and convert CO2 into valuable carbon materials and oxygen with high current efficiencies, to provide a promisingly positive cash flow. However, this method still requires investigation for future scale-up applications. A team of scientists reviews the molten salt CO2 electrolysis’s ...

Copenhagen, Denmark: Scientists have discovered that the cells of early human embryos are often unable to repair damage to their DNA. The researchers say that this has important implications for the proposed use of gene editing techniques to remove serious inherited diseases from embryos, as well as for IVF in general. Presenting the research to the 39th annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) [1], Dr Nada Kubikova from the University of Oxford (UK), said: “Gene editing has the potential to correct defective genes, a process that usually involves first breaking and then ...

Media Inquiries to Laura Muntean, laura.muntean@ag.tamu.edu, 6012481891 Written by Gabe Saldana, 956-408-5040, gabe.saldana@ag.tamu.edu Texas A&M AgriLife Research scientists and collaborators at Iowa State University have developed a sensor chip that can detect many disease pathogens with 10 times the sensitivity of currently available methods. The chip also eliminates the need for chemical dye reagents typically used in the diagnostic process. The new technology shows promise for rapid, low-cost point-of-care diagnostic capabilities in plants, foods, animals and humans, including detecting foodborne pathogens, bird flu and COVID-19.   An ...

Copenhagen, Denmark: More than 40% of women who chose to freeze their eggs in their 30s were able to have babies later in life when they returned to the fertility clinic, according to research presented today (Monday) at the 39th annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) [1]. However, many of the women in the study who had frozen their eggs (known as elective oocyte cryopreservation) had not returned to the fertility clinic and many who did return chose fertility treatments that did not involve their frozen eggs. The research was presented by Dr Ezgi Darici, a clinical fellow at the Centre for Reproductive Medicine at ...

Copenhagen, Denmark: Women treated for childhood Hodgkin lymphoma may face declining fertility at a younger age, according to research presented today (Monday) at the 39th annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) [1]. The research also found that women treated for Hodgkin lymphoma may have to try for longer to become pregnant; however, the majority of women in the study who had tried to become pregnant were ultimately successful. The research was presented by Dr Katja Drechsel from the Princess Máxima Centre for Paediatric Oncology, ...

A $162 million investment from the U.S. National Science Foundation will drive the creation of advanced materials capable of remarkable things — from being tough enough to withstand the heat of a fusion reactor to processing information at the quantum level. Nine Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers (MRSECs) will each receive $18 million over six years. The centers aim to transform fundamental scientific breakthroughs into tangible benefits for multiple sectors of the U.S. economy and innovations ...