HOUSTON ― The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Research Highlights showcases the latest breakthroughs in cancer care, research and prevention. These advances are made possible through seamless collaboration between MD Anderson’s world-leading clinicians and scientists, bringing discoveries from the lab to the clinic and back. Recent developments include the identification of disparities in end-of-life immunotherapy treatment, a new target to improve immunotherapy responses in KRAS-mutant lung cancer, a new connection for small RNAs in anti-tumor immunity and obesity, the benefits of fecal microbiome transplants ...

Virginia Tech researchers are working to increase access and inclusivity in ornithology as part of a collaborative effort funded by the National Science Foundation.  The Leading Cultural Change Through Professional Societies of Biology program has awarded $500,000 to help researchers in the co-creation of affinity groups to facilitate diverse and inclusive ornithological societies. The program supports the design, implementation, and evaluation of projects that leverage the work of professional societies to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in ...

For many, neighborhoods that offer children access to better resources, less crime and less violence often result in better opportunities for healthier and more prosperous lives. Indeed, researchers studying the effects of moving to “opportunity neighborhoods” argue that very point and many policymakers have taken notice. However, so far, researchers have only accounted for the neighborhoods where children grow up, ignoring the long-term effects that parents’ childhood neighborhoods have on children’s adult economic well-being. Expanding ...

Chicago, Illinois (Embargoed until 2:15 p.m. CDT, Tuesday, June 27, 2023)—A novel PET perfusion radiotracer, 18F-flurpiridaz, can diagnose coronary artery disease (CAD) in obese patients with a higher sensitivity and specificity compared to 99mTc-SPECT myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI), according to research presented at the 2023 Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging Annual Meeting. 18F-flurpiridaz PET MPI obtained images at a lower radiation dose than 99mTc-SPECT MPI and performed similarly in both obese and non-obese patients.  Obese individuals frequently have medical ...

The Gerontological Society of America (GSA) — the country’s largest interdisciplinary organization devoted to the field of aging — is proud to acknowledge the work of 20 outstanding individuals through its prestigious awards program. GSA salutes outstanding research, recognizes distinguished leadership in teaching and service, and fosters new ideas through a host of awards. Nominated by their peers, the recipients’ achievements serve as milestones in the history and development of gerontology. The award presentations will take place at GSA’s 2023 Annual Scientific Meeting, which will be held from November 8 to 12 in Tampa, Florida. Society-Wide Donald ...

Fascination surrounding spaceflight and rockets is at an all-time high. Sites near launchpads draw crowds of spectators, eager to witness the flash of fire and feel the vibrations as the rumble of the motor becomes a roar. People, squinting and craning their necks to watch the rocket hurtle out of sight, aren’t likely thinking about the science behind the propulsion that makes it all possible.  What are the key elements that influence the combustion process? Are there advantages to utilizing solid propellants versus liquid? Simplicity, lower cost, and ease of storage and handling make solid fuel sources ideal for military and space ...

A team led by scientists at The University of Texas at Austin has filled a major gap in the state’s fossil record – describing the first known Jurassic vertebrate fossils in Texas. The weathered bone fragments are from the limbs and backbone of a plesiosaur, an extinct marine reptile that would have swum the shallow sea that covered what is now northeastern Mexico and far western Texas about 150 million years ago. The bones were discovered in the Malone Mountains of West Texas during two fossil hunting missions led by Steve May, a research associate at UT Austin’s Jackson School of Geosciences Museum of Earth ...

The Department of Energy (DOE) today signed an implementation agreement with Sweden to further promote and facilitate basic science research in energy and related fields. The agreement reflects the United States and Sweden’s commitment to advancing scientific knowledge. It aims to foster joint research, shared facilities and exchanges of scientists in topics such as scientific computing, high energy physics, nuclear physics, fusion, basic energy sciences, and biological and environmental research. Present at the ...

FROM: James Urton University of Washington 206-543-2580 jurton@uw.edu   (Note: researcher contact information at the end)   For immediate release June 27, 2023   Researchers make a quantum computing leap with a magnetic twist   Quantum computing could revolutionize our world. For specific and crucial tasks, it promises to be exponentially faster than the zero-or-one binary technology that underlies today’s machines, from supercomputers in laboratories to smartphones in our pockets. But developing quantum computers hinges on building a stable network of qubits — or quantum ...

A University of Texas at Arlington faculty member is pioneering a transformative technique aimed at enhancing the utilization of tungsten in additive manufacturing processes, specifically overcoming significant challenges presented by tungsten’s high melting point, intrinsic brittleness and high susceptibility to cracking. Narges Shayesteh, assistant professor in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department and director of the Innovative Additive Manufacturing Laboratory, has earned a five-year, $582,358 Faculty Early Career Award Development Program (CAREER) grant from the National Science Foundation to advance her research and education initiatives. The ...

DURHAM, N.C. – What people say they’ve eaten and what they’ve actually eaten are often two very different lists of foods. But a new technique using DNA barcoding to identify the plant matter in human feces may get at the truth, improving clinical trials, nutrition studies and more. Building on earlier studies that attempted to compare DNA found in feces with reported diets, researchers in the lab of Lawrence David, an associate professor of molecular genetics and microbiology in the Duke ...

“This is the first report that showed the efficacy of methionine restriction to reverse old-age-induced obesity.” BUFFALO, NY- June 27, 2023 – A new research paper was published in Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 15, Issue 11, entitled, “Old-age-induced obesity reversed by a methionine-deficient diet or oral administration of recombinant methioninase-producing Escherichia coli in C57BL/6 mice.” Obesity increases with aging. Methionine restriction ...

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, PhD, was announced today as the recipient of the 2023 Ogawa-Yamanaka Stem Cell Prize by Gladstone Institutes. Zernicka-Goetz is a professor of mammalian development and stem cell biology in the Department of Physiology, Development, and Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge, as well as the Bren Professor of Biology and Biological Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. A pioneering stem cell scientist, Zernicka-Goetz was selected for the prize because of her work uncovering fundamental mechanisms that drive the development of mammalian embryos, which led to the ...

Nearly half of parents who relied on formula to feed their babies during the infant formula shortage last year resorted to potentially harmful feeding methods, according to a survey from researchers at the University of California, Davis. The study was published in the journal BMC Pediatrics. In an online anonymous survey of U.S. parents, the number of individuals that used at least one unsafe feeding practice increased from 8% before the formula shortage to nearly 50% during the shortage. Unsafe practices included watering down formula, using expired or homemade formula, or using human milk from informal sharing. The percentage of parents who shared human milk ...

URBANA, Ill. – In its simplest form, popcorn is pretty uncomplicated. Most supermarket varieties offer the choice of two kernel colors, yellow or white, and two kernel shapes, pointed or pearl. When popped, the flake typically expands into one of two shapes: mushroom or butterfly. But there’s more to popcorn than meets the eye. New research from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign reveals a wealth of untapped diversity lurking in popcorn’s genetic code. Analyzing 320 publicly available popcorn lines, crop sciences researchers found variation at more ...

Irvine, Calif., June 27, 2023 — As human-driven climate change amplifies natural disasters, hurricanes and typhoons stand to increase in intensity. Until now, there existed very few freely available computer models designed to estimate the economic costs of such events, but a team of researchers led by Jane W. Baldwin at the University of California, Irvine recently announced the completion of an open-source model that stands to help countries with high tropical cyclone risks better calculate just how much those storms will impact their people and their economies. “Tropical cyclones are some of the most impactful natural disasters on Earth. They pose huge risks ...

Two to three weeks after conception, an embryo faces a critical point in its development. In the stage known as gastrulation, the transformation of embryonic cells into specialized cells begins. This initiates an explosion of cellular diversity in which the embryonic cells later become the precursors of future blood, tissue, muscle, and more types of cells, and the primitive body axes start to form. Studying this process in the human-specific context has posed significant challenges to biologists, but new research offers an unprecedented window into this point in time in ...

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University, US, led by Calvin Kersbergen report that mice with the most common form of human congenital deafness develop normal auditory circuitry – until the ear canal opens and hearing begins. Publishing June 27th in the open access journal PLOS Biology, the study suggests that this is possible because spontaneous activity of support cells in the inner ear remains present during the first weeks of life. Mutations to the protein connexin 26 are the most common cause of hearing loss at birth, accounting for more than 25% of genetic hearing loss worldwide. To understand how these mutations lead to deafness ...

**EMBARGOED TILL TUESDAY, JUNE 27, AT 2 P.M. ET** For the first two weeks of life, mice with a hereditary form of deafness have nearly normal neural activity in the auditory system, according to a new study by Johns Hopkins Medicine scientists. Their previous studies indicate that this early auditory activity — before the onset of hearing — provides a kind of training to prepare the brain to process sound when hearing begins. The findings are published June 27 in PLOS Biology. Mutations in Gjb2 cause more than a quarter of all hereditary forms of hearing loss at birth in people, according to some estimates. The connexin 26 protein coded by ...

The universe is awash in billions of possible chemicals. But even with a bevy of high-tech instruments, scientists have determined the chemical structures of just a small fraction of those compounds, maybe 1 percent.   Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) are taking aim at the other 99 percent, creating new ways to learn more about a vast sea of unknown compounds. There may be cures for disease, new approaches for tackling climate change, or new chemical or biological threats lurking in the chemical universe.   The work is part of an initiative known as m/q or “m over q”—shorthand ...

Increasing access to prescription opioid painkillers may reduce opioid overdose deaths in the United States, according to a Rutgers study. “When access to prescription opioids is heavily restricted, people will seek out opioids that are unregulated,” said Grant Victor, an assistant professor in the Rutgers School of Social Work and lead author of the study published in the Journal of Substance Use and Addiction Treatment. “The opposite may also be true; our findings suggest that restoring easier access to opioid pain medications may protect against fatal overdoses.” America’s opioid crisis has ...

Science is a collaborative effort. What we know today would have never been, had it not been generations of scientists reusing and building on the work of their predecessors. However, in modern times, academia has become increasingly competitive and indeed rather hostile to the individual researchers. This is especially true for early-career researchers yet to secure tenure and build a name in their fields. Nowadays, scholars are left to compete with each other for citations of their published work, awards and funding.  So, understandably, many scientists have grown unwilling ...

A new USC study that zeros in on the workings of individual T cells targeting the hepatitis C virus (HCV) has revealed insights that could assist in the development of an effective vaccine. Every year, hepatitis and related illnesses kill more than one million people around the world. If unaddressed, those deaths are expected to rise—and even outnumber deaths caused collectively by HIV, tuberculosis and malaria by 2040. For that reason, the World Health Organization and other leading groups have pledged to work toward eliminating viral hepatitis by 2030. While there are vaccines for two of the three most common ...

Collaborative work by teams at the Department of Medicine and Life Sciences (MELIS) ​​at Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), University of California, Irvine (UCI), and the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) has shown that interplay between circadian clocks in liver and skeletal muscle controls glucose metabolism. The findings reveal that local clock function in each tissue is not enough for whole-body glucose metabolism but also requires signals from feeding and fasting cycles to properly maintain glucose levels in the ...

Children with disabilities, and their families, may face discrimination in in the hospitals and clinics they visit for their health care, according to a new study led by researchers at University of Utah Health. These attitudes may lead to substandard medical treatment, which could contribute to poor health outcomes, say the study’s authors. “They mistreated her and treated her like a robot. Every single time a nurse walked in the room, they treated her like she was not even there,” said one mother who was interviewed about her child’s health care encounters. The findings, published in the journal Pediatrics, ...