The Lehigh University Industrial Assessment Center (IAC) will expand into the Mid-Atlantic Regional IAC Center of Excellence (MARICE) with newly awarded funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Lehigh’s IAC was established in 2001 as part of the DOE’s nationwide Industrial Assessment Center Program to reduce energy and waste and enhance productivity for manufacturing plants in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. The center, which was most recently renewed in 2021, is led by mechanical engineering and mechanics (MEM) faculty Professor Alparslan ...

Alzheimer's disease (AD) mainly affects the older population. Recent research found early disease signs in cell culture models of early human brain development, raising the possibility that the disease has its origins much earlier in life, possibly during embryogenesis – the formation and development of an embryo. Alzheimer’s disease is a highly prevalent, debilitating, and potentially fatal neurodegenerative disease with limited treatment options. Patients are typically diagnosed at an advanced disease stage, limiting the possibilities for early therapeutic intervention. Although for most patients ...

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have identified a group of nerve cells in the mouse brain that are involved in creating negative emotional states and chronic stress. The neurons, which have been mapped with a combination of advanced techniques, also have receptors for oestrogen, which could explain why women as a group are more sensitive to stress than men. The study is published in Nature Neuroscience. Just which networks in the brain give rise to negative emotions (aversion) and chronic stress have long been unknown to science. By using ...

Ian Dalziel of The University of Texas at Austin has been honored with the Polar Medal — the United Kingdom’s top award for polar exploration. The medal recognizes Dalziel’s contributions to Antarctic geology, including discoveries about the icy continent’s ancient past and the fragility of its ice sheet today. The award will be presented by King Charles III at Buckingham Palace later this year. Early recipients of the medal, which has existed for more than 150 years, include pioneers of polar exploration Capt. R.F. Scott and Sir Ernest Shackleton, who made the first attempt to reach the South Pole in 1902. Dalziel’s ...

Adhesive tape fulfills many purposes, from quickly fixing household appliances to ensuring a reliable seal on a mailed package. When using tape with a strong bond, removing it may only be possible by scraping and prying at the tape's corners, hoping desperately that surface pieces don’t tear away with the tape. But what if you could make adhesives both strong and easily removable? This seemingly paradoxical combination of properties could dramatically change applications in robotic grasping, wearables ...

A new study led by researchers from the Mass General Brigham healthcare system suggests that taking a “food is medicine” approach could increase nutrition security for families and lead to reductions in body mass index (BMI) in children. Working together with the MGH Food Pantry, researchers from the Massachusetts General for Children and Boston Children’s Hospital examined whether providing weekly plant-based foods to families seeking food assistance during the pandemic led to weight changes among children. The team found an association between increasing receipt of food packages and decreased BMI. The findings, published ...

The allocation process of funding to researchers is far from optimal. A recent project of the Open Science Initiative at the University of Lübeck (Germany) has put forward a new proposal to challenge and rethink the funding system. This proposal by researchers from Lübeck University, Humboldt University Berlin, the Academy of Fine Arts Munich, and the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods in Bonn involves an initial lottery determining which researchers can submit funding applications in a ...

Extreme weather caused by climate change - such as flooding - will be to easier to prepare for after scientists developed a new method that empowers citizens to identify solutions to the threats their communities face. The approach works by researchers bringing community groups together to discuss and understand the likely impacts of climate change in a local area. In the UK, these include indirect risks such as food shortages and energy disruption as well as physical threats like heat stress and flooding. Most climate adaptation initiatives are developed by governments or by businesses, rather than to help citizens help themselves. The new approach, published ...

About The Study: This study found that delivery-related mortality in U.S. hospitals decreased for all racial and ethnic groups, age groups, and modes of delivery during 2008 to 2021, likely demonstrating the impact of national strategies focused on improving maternal quality of care provided during delivery-related hospitalizations. Severe maternal morbidity prevalence increased for all patients, with higher rates for racial and ethnic minority patients of any age. Advanced maternal age, racial or ethnic minority group status, cesarean delivery, and comorbidities were associated with higher odds of mortality and severe maternal ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- The brain and the digestive tract are in constant communication, relaying signals that help to control feeding and other behaviors. This extensive communication network also influences our mental state and has been implicated in many neurological disorders. MIT engineers have now designed a new technology that can be used to probe those connections. Using fibers embedded with a variety of sensors, as well as light sources for optogenetic stimulation, the researchers have shown that they can control neural circuits connecting the gut and the brain, in mice. In a new study, the researchers demonstrated that they could induce feelings of fullness or reward-seeking ...

About The Study: Parental cancer is associated with greater likelihood of food insecurity, unaffordability of housing and other necessities, and transportation barriers to medical care for minor children. Strategies to identify such children and address their needs are warranted.  Authors: Zhiyuan Zheng, Ph.D., of the American Cancer Society in Atlanta, 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.2023.19359) Editor’s Note: Please ...

About The Study: The results of this study suggest that in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), the burden of suboptimally controlled cardiovascular (CV) risk factors and incident risk of stroke and heart attack are substantial. Modifiable CV risk factors are associated with risk of adverse CV events, and these events are associated with a higher risk of death. These findings identify populations at risk and potentially underscore the importance of modifiable CV risk factor control and motivate strategies to reduce CV risk in HNSCC survivorship care.  Authors: Lova Sun, M.D., ...

Under certain conditions — usually exceedingly cold ones — some materials shift their structure to unlock new, superconducting behavior. This structural shift is known as a “nematic transition,” and physicists suspect that it offers a new way to drive materials into a superconducting state where electrons can flow entirely friction-free. But what exactly drives this transition in the first place? The answer could help scientists improve existing superconductors and discover new ones. Now, MIT physicists have identified the key to how one class of superconductors undergoes a nematic transition, and it’s in surprising contrast to what ...

The herpes simplex virus-1 can sometimes cause a dangerous brain infection. Combining an anti-inflammatory and an antiviral could help in these cases, report scientists with the Rajewsky and Landthaler labs and the Organoid Platform at the Max Delbrück Center in Nature Microbiology. About 3.7 billion people — 67% of us — carry the herpes simplex virus-1 in our nerves cells where it lies quiescent until triggered by stress or injury. When activated, its symptoms are usually mild, limited to cold sores or ulcers in our mouth.  Very rarely, the virus ...

ATLANTA, June 22, 2023 – A new study by researchers at the American Cancer Society (ACS) found children of parents with a cancer history in the United States are more at risk of having unmet needs for housing, food, and other living necessities than their counterparts without a parental cancer history. The findings will be published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Network Open. “Cancer is a life-threatening disease and parents with a history of cancer are often saddled with worry about paying for food, the ...

Most stars in the Universe die in predictable ways, depending on their mass. Relatively low-mass stars like our Sun slough off their outer layers in old age and eventually fade to become white dwarf stars. More massive stars burn brighter and die sooner in cataclysmic supernova explosions, creating ultradense objects like neutron stars and black holes. If two such stellar remnants form a binary system, they also can eventually collide. New research, however, points to a long-hypothesized, but never-before-seen, fourth option. While searching for ...

While searching for the origins of a powerful gamma-ray burst (GRB), an international team of astrophysicists may have stumbled upon a new way to destroy a star. Although most GRBs originate from exploding massive stars or neutron-star mergers, the researchers concluded that GRB 191019A instead came from the collision of stars or stellar remnants in the jam-packed environment surrounding a supermassive black hole at the core of an ancient galaxy. The demolition derby-like environment points to a ...

The cosmos is a unique laboratory for testing the laws of physics, in particular those of Euler and Einstein. Euler described the movements of celestial objects, while Einstein described the way in which celestial objects distort the Universe. Since the discovery of dark matter and the acceleration of the Universe’s expansion, the validity of their equations has been put to the test: are they capable of explaining these mysterious phenomena? A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) has developed the first method to find out. It ...

They published their work on June. 9 in Energy Material Advances.   "The development of high safety and high energy density SIBs is imperative," said paper author Zhongyue Wang, lecture with the College of electronic and optical engineering & college of flexible electronics (future technology), Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications. "Currently, great progress has been made in sodium-ion batteries, but their energy density is still much lower than LIBs limited by the cathode." Wang explained that NASICON-type phosphate (NaxMM’(PO4)3, M, M' =transition metal Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co and Ni) is regarded ...

INDIANAPOLIS - A study of more than three-quarters of a million Indiana COVID-19 cases is one of the first to focus on the disease in the Midwest. The research examines the relationship between the presence of pre-existing disease and COVID-19 outcomes in a region that has some of the highest prevalence of comorbidities, including hypertension, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and diabetes. The study, conducted by researchers from Regenstrief Institute, Indiana University and The Ohio State University sourced data through the COVID-19 Research Data Commons. For COVID-19 patients, research demonstrated the pre-existing ...

An emotion recognition tool - developed by University of the West of Scotland (UWS) academics - could help people with neurodiverse conditions including autism.  Traditionally, emotion recognition has been a challenging and complex area of study. However, with recent advancements in vision processing, and low-cost devices, such as wearable electroencephalogram (EEG) and electrocardiogram (ECG) sensors, UWS academics have collaborated to harness the power of these technologies to create artificial intelligence (AI) which can accurately read emotion-related signals from brain and facial analysis. Professor Naeem Ramzan, ...

Older people with health problems often need some form of intermediate level monitoring, care and treatment services. They may not need the resources of a hospital but do require somewhat more advanced help than a nursing home can usually offer. "Intermediate care units" are primarily intended to replace an acute hospital admission, but are occasionally also used following admission. “Intermediate care units are the newest trend in health policy, and Norway is way ahead of the curve in this regard,” says Pål Erling Martinussen, a professor in the Department of Sociology and Political ...

The American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) has released its highly anticipated 2023 update to the recommended minimum gene list for the reporting of secondary findings (SF): “ACMG SF v3.2 List for Reporting of Secondary Findings in Clinical Exome and Genome Sequencing: A Policy Statement of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG).” In 2021, the ACMG Board of Directors and Secondary Findings Working Group (SFWG) stated that the College would update the list annually. Today’s update (SF v3.2) is being published in ACMG’s flagship journal, Genetics ...

NEW YORK, NY – June 22, 2023 – The Lupus Research Alliance awarded its 2023 Lupus Insight Prize to Carola Vinuesa, MD, PhD, of The Francis Crick Institute, for her seminal discovery that a mutation in a specific human gene causes systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), uncovering an important target for the development of novel treatment. The Lupus Insight Prize is awarded each year to an outstanding investigator who has made a significant discovery that will advance our understanding of the pathogenesis, diagnosis, or treatment of lupus. Dr. Vinuesa ...

In the United States, sickle cell disease affects about 100,000 people and about 2 million Americans carry this genetic mutation. The most common and serious problems caused by sickle cell disease are anemia, pain and organ failure – stroke affects about 10 out of 100 children who have this disease. The national median life expectancy for people who have sickle cell disease can reach up to age 50.  This inherited, lifelong blood disorder is characterized by rigid and sickle-shaped red blood cells due to a dramatic change in their morphology. They stick to blood vessels, blocking ...