People in the earliest stage of Alzheimer’s disease — after brain changes have begun but before cognitive symptoms become apparent — harbor an assortment of bacteria in their intestines that differs from the gut bacteria of healthy people, according to a study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The findings, published June 14 in Science Translational Medicine, open up the possibility of analyzing the gut bacterial community to identify people at higher risk of developing dementia, and of designing microbiome-altering preventive treatments to stave off cognitive decline. “We don’t yet know ...

A research group from the Graduate School of Medicine and iGCORE at Nagoya University in Japan, has discovered that using an antibiotic to target Fusobacterium reduced the formation of lesions associated with endometriosis, a gynecological disorder characterized by endometrial tissue usually found inside the uterus being found outside it. Their findings suggest an alternative treatment for this disorder. The study was published in Science Translational Medicine.    Endometriosis affects one in ten women between the ages of 15 and 49. The disorder can cause lifelong health problems, including pelvic pain and infertility. ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Newly planted vegetation on coastal sand dunes can accelerate erosion from extreme waves, a study involving researchers from the Oregon State University College of Engineering suggests. The authors note the findings run counter to the widely accepted paradigm that vegetation always acts to reduce erosion on dunes, the first line of storm defense for landscapes that are among the world’s most ecologically important and economically valuable. The experiments involved building beach dune profiles 70 meters long and 4.5 meters high and subjecting ...

A recent study led by scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of Zurich has revealed that the organic compounds proposed for carbon sequestration in deep soil are highly vulnerable to decomposition under global warming. The finding has implications for a key strategy in carbon management that relies on soil and forests – natural carbon “sinks” – to mitigate global warming. About 25 percent of global carbon emissions are captured by forests, grasslands, and rangelands. During photosynthesis, plants store carbon in their cell walls and in the soil. Because ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — A new treatment tested on a high-quality steel alloy produces extraordinary strength and plasticity, two traits that must typically be balanced rather than combined. Ultra-fine metal grains that the treatment produced in the outermost layer of steel appear to stretch, rotate and then elongate under strain, conferring super-plasticity in a way that Purdue University researchers cannot fully explain. The researchers treated T-91, a modified steel alloy that is used in nuclear and petrochemical ...

NEW YORK – June 14, 2023 – The Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF) has announced the TCT 2023 Program Guide is now available. TCT is the annual scientific symposium of CRF and the world’s premier educational meeting specializing in interventional cardiovascular medicine. TCT 2023 will take place October 23-26 in San Francisco, California, at the Moscone Center and will celebrate 35 years of leading the field. Every year, TCT features major medical research breakthroughs and gathers ...

Scientists have taken a journey back in time to unlock the mysteries of Earth’s early history, using tiny mineral crystals called zircons to study plate tectonics billions of years ago. The research sheds light on the conditions that existed in early Earth, revealing a complex interplay between Earth’s crust, core, and the emergence of life. Plate tectonics allows heat from Earth’s interior to escape to the surface, forming continents and other geological features necessary for life to emerge. Accordingly, “there has been the assumption that plate tectonics is necessary for life,” says John Tarduno, who teaches in the Department ...

For Immediate Release   Contact Colleen McDonald Sr. Consultant, Earned Media - MCW 414.801.3146 | cmcdonald@mcw.edu   Milwaukee, Wis., June 14, 2023 – In a new multi-center study, researchers from the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) joined with leading cancer centers from across the nation to examine whether cancer and its treatments accelerate aging. Using novel epigenetic measures to assess biological aging, investigators found that older breast cancer survivors – particularly those exposed to chemotherapy – showed greater epigenetic aging than their same-aged peers without cancer, which ...

WOODS HOLE, Mass. – Nearly a third of Earth’s freshwater resources lie in groundwater – much more than in all lakes, rivers and the atmosphere combined, and exceeded only by the frozen water in polar ice caps. Accordingly, about half of humankind depends on groundwater as a source of drinking water. Despite the global occurrence and essential importance of groundwater, however, knowledge of the organisms that inhabit it, and how they survive, remains thin. A recent investigation led by microbial ecologist Emil Ruff of the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) has discovered ...

The IEEE Photonics Society invites applications and nominations for the volunteer position of Editor-in-Chief (EiC) for the IEEE Photonics Journal, delivered through IEEE’s research digital library IEEE Xplore. The term for the current EiC will end this year and the Society is conducting an open search for potential candidates.   “The IEEE Photonics Journal led the way for the IEEE, being the IEEE’s first open access journal. We’re excited to find a candidate who can lead this pioneering journal for the next term, and I encourage all qualified ...

WASP-76b is a strange world. Located 634 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation of Pisces, the Jupiter-like exoplanet orbits its host star at an exceptionally close distance — approximately 12 times closer than Mercury is to the Sun — which heats its atmosphere to a searing 2000°C. Such extreme temperatures have “puffed up” the planet, increasing its volume to nearly six times that of Jupiter. At such extreme temperatures, mineral- and rock-forming elements, which would otherwise remain hidden in the atmosphere of a colder gas-giant planet, can reveal themselves.  Using ...

Experts have identified coordinated efforts to saturate YouTube’s recommender algorithm, flooding users with pro- Bolsonaro content during the 2022 Brazil election. Researchers from the University of Exeter and Instituto Vero have uncovered a complex, web-like influencer system of channels that shaped political narratives during this period. This is in addition to YouTube’s own recommender algorithm which also generates suggestions based on users’ viewership patterns.  This network of influencer-driven videos was promoted by mentions, tags, interviews, and cuts (shorter video formats) and heavily contributed ...

Oxidative stress – characterized by elevated levels of unstable molecules called reactive oxygen species– is associated with neurodegeneration and cardiovascular disease. However, until recently it has not been possible to demonstrate a causal relationship between oxidative stress and disease states. A new study used “chemogenetics” to activate a recombinant yeast protein expressed in mouse tissues to manipulate levels of oxidative stress in living mice. Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and the Novartis ...

Study shows improvements in depression and anxiety scores among individuals supplementing  with probiotics alongside standard antidepressant medication Data from a randomised double-blind placebo-controlled pilot trial published today in JAMA Psychiatry A new study published today (14 June) in JAMA Psychiatry has found evidence that supplementing the diet with a probiotic blend containing 14 strains of bacteria can help individuals who are being treated for major depressive disorder with antidepressants. The research, led by the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) ...

About The Study: This survey study of a nationally representative sample suggests that the prevalence of food allergies was highest among Asian, Hispanic, and non-Hispanic Black individuals compared with non-Hispanic white individuals in the U.S. Further assessment of socioeconomic factors and corresponding environmental exposures may better explain the causes of food allergy and inform targeted management and interventions to reduce the burden of food allergies and disparities in outcomes.  Authors: Ruchi S. Gupta, M.D., M.P.H., of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, is the corresponding ...

About The Study: Many physicians and scientists in this survey study reported being harassed on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic, often due to their advocacy and on the basis of gender, race, sexual orientation, or disability. Many reported sexual harassment and sharing of their private information. Authors: Regina Royan, M.D., M.P.H., of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, 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.2023.18315) Editor’s ...

SAN ANTONIO —Wednesday,  June 14, 2023 —The search for extraterrestrial life in our solar system just got more exciting. A team of scientists including Southwest Research Institute’s Dr. Christopher Glein has discovered new evidence that the subsurface ocean of Saturn’s moon Enceladus contains a key building block for life. The team directly detected phosphorus in the form of phosphates originating from the moon’s ice-covered global ocean using data from NASA’s Cassini mission. Cassini explored Saturn and its system of rings and moons for over ...

Neuroscientists have long searched for ways to reopen “critical periods” in the brain, when mammals are more sensitive to signals from their surroundings that can influence periods of brain development. Now, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine say a new study in mice shows that psychedelic drugs are linked by their common ability to reopen such critical periods, but differ in the length of time the critical period is open — from two days to four weeks with a single dose. The findings, published June 16 in the journal Nature, provide a new explanation for how psychedelic drugs work, say the scientists, and suggest potential to treat a wider ...

Despite some of the most successful international vaccination campaigns in history, the poliovirus continues to circulate around the world, posing a threat of neurological damage and even paralysis to anyone who is not vaccinated. While the original polio strains, called wildtype, have largely been eliminated, new strains can develop from the oral polio vaccine (OPV), which is the one most used in the developing world. Oral vaccines use live, weakened virus that occasionally mutates to an active form, leading to outbreaks even in countries believed to have eliminated polio.  Scientists at UCSF and the UK’s National Institute of Biological Standards and Control (NIBSC) have developed ...

·  Many racial and ethnic groups not well aware of food allergies ·  Lack of food allergy research in racial and ethnic communities ·  ‘These individuals need to be aware so they can be diagnosed and treated’   CHICAGO --- Food allergy has not been on the radar of most racial and ethnic communities. But a new Northwestern Medicine study — the first population-based food allergy study in the U.S. to explore racial and ethnic differences in all age groups — shows why it should be.  The new study found the prevalence of food allergy is highest among Hispanic, non-Hispanic Black and ...

Ants navigate their richly aromatic world using an array of odor receptors and chemical signals called pheromones. Whether foraging or defending the nest, mating or tending to their young, ants both send and receive chemical signals throughout their lives. The importance of this system is underscored by how well equipped the ant brain is to process the abundance of scents: The olfactory processing center in the ant’s brain has 10 times as many subdivisions as fruit flies do, for example, even though their brains are about the same size. And yet how the ant olfactory system encodes scent data has remained largely unknown. To whittle ...

AMHERST, Mass. – A team of physicists, including University of Massachusetts assistant professor Tigran Sedrakyan, recently announced in the journal Nature that they have discovered a new phase of matter. Called the “chiral bose-liquid state,” the discovery opens a new path in the age-old effort to understand the nature of the physical world. Under everyday conditions, matter can be a solid, liquid or gas. But once you venture beyond the everyday—into temperatures approaching absolute zero, things smaller than a fraction ...

Researchers from the UvA Institute of Physics and ENS de Lyon have discovered how to design materials that necessarily have a point or line where the material doesn’t deform under stress, and that even remember how they have been poked or squeezed in the past. These results could be used in robotics and mechanical computers, while similar design principles could be used in quantum computers. The outcome is a breakthrough in the field of metamaterials: designer materials whose responses are determined by their structure rather than their chemical composition. To construct a metamaterial with mechanical memory, physicists ...

When we walk around in our everyday life, we might not think of the Earth itself very often. But this planet is the foundation of our life. The air we breathe, the water we drink and the gravity that pins us to the ground.   Up until now, researchers believed that it took more than 100 million years for the Earth to form. And it was also common belief that water was delivered by lucky collisions with water-rich asteroids like comets. However, a new study from the University of Copenhagen suggests that it might not have happened entirely by chance. “We show that the Earth formed by the very ...

An international team led by Stefan Pelletier, a Ph.D. student at Université de Montréal's Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets announced today having made a detailed study of the extremely hot giant exoplanet WASP-76 b. Using the MAROON-X instrument on the Gemini-North Telescope, the team was able to identify and measure the abundance of 11 chemical elements in the atmosphere of the planet. Those include rock-forming elements whose abundances are not even known for giant planets in the Solar System such as Jupiter or Saturn. The team's study is published in ...