BOSTON – A new study led by investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, offers an explanation for why light-to-moderate alcohol consumption may be associated with lower risk of heart disease. For the first time, researchers found that alcohol, in light to moderate quantities, was associated with long-term reductions in stress signaling in the brain. This impact on the brain’s stress systems appeared to significantly account for the reductions in cardiovascular events seen in light to moderate drinkers participating in the ...

HOUSTON – (June 12, 2023) – Two-thirds of the people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease are women, yet most research has ignored differences between the sexes. To help fill this gap, Rice University postdoctoral fellow Hannah Ballard will look at how Alzheimer’s risk, estrogen levels and menopausal status interact with memory-related brain function and behavioral outcomes in women age 35-80. Supported by a three-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Ballard’s research could help identify the physiological factors ...

Philadelphia, June 12, 2023—Challenging the assumption that short stature negatively impacts children and adolescents’ self-esteem, a new study by researchers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) has found that in otherwise healthy short youth, quality of life and self-esteem are associated with coping skills and how supported they feel and not the degree of their short stature. The findings were published in The Journal of Pediatrics.  “There is a notion among some parents and caregivers that short stature will negatively impact their children in terms of self-esteem and social adjustment, so they seek out growth hormone ...

A few minutes of data recorded from a single electrode placed on top of the head may be sufficient to predict thinking problems, including dementia, in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). The finding from a new University of Iowa study might help improve diagnosis of cognitive disability in PD and develop new biomarkers and targeted therapies for cognitive symptoms of the disease.  “Cognitive decline, including dementia, is a significant and underappreciated symptom of Parkinson’s disease. ...

Online, profile pictures of human faces are everywhere, and they play a crucial role in shaping the first impression we make on others. Right now, AI gives people the digital tools to transform their online appearance in any way they desire, often making themselves look younger or more attractive. But this is just the beginning: AI is not only helping us play this face game amongst ourselves, but it is also learning the game from us and quietly deciding which face it will showcase as itself when interacting with us. To better understand these mechanisms, researchers from the Max Planck ...

Making an Advance Research Directive: An Interview Study with Adults Aged 55 and Older with Interests in Dementia Research Nola M. Ries, Briony Johnston Many people with dementia are interested in taking part in research, including when they no longer have capacity to provide informed consent. Advance research directives (ARD) enable people to document their wishes about research participation prior to becoming decisionally incapacitated. However, there are few available ARD resources. This Australian interview study elicited the views of people aged 55 years and older about the content of an ...

Innovations in artificial intelligence (AI) are rapidly shaping our world, from virtual assistants and chatbots to self-driving cars and automated manufacturing. Seizing on the potential of AI to transform science, the nation’s leading experts in science and technology have released a blueprint for the United States to accelerate progress by expanding its capabilities in AI and big data analysis. “AI for Science, Energy, and Security” lays out a comprehensive vision ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Giraffes in eastern Africa may be even more endangered than previously thought. A new study led by researchers at Penn State reveals that populations of Masai giraffes separated geographically by the Great Rift Valley have not interbred — or exchanged genetic material — in more than a thousand years, and in some cases hundreds of thousands of years. The researchers recommend that the two populations be considered separately for conservation purposes, with separate but coordinated conservation efforts to manage each population. Populations of giraffes have declined rapidly in the last thirty years, with ...

Drugs used to treat rare conditions are earning pharmaceutical companies almost as much as those marketed to the general public, according to a researcher at West Virginia University. Sean Tu, a College of Law professor found lucrative so-called “orphan” drugs earn manufacturing tax credits, have longer patent exclusivities and face easier Food and Drug Administration review. Orphan drugs treat diseases that affect fewer than 200,000 Americans. In addition to tax credits, Congress has incentivized the pharmaceutical companies that manufacture orphan drugs with a waiver of ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – An international team of astronomers is the first to apply an old technique to discover a new type of planet that orbits two stars – what is known as a circumbinary planet.  As an added bonus, researchers found a second planet that is orbiting the same two stars, which is only the second confirmed multi-planet circumbinary system found to date. The study was published today in the journal Nature Astronomy.  Circumbinary planets were once relegated to only science fiction, but thanks to data collected from NASA’s Kepler mission, astronomers now know that multiple star systems are ...

– By Christina Nunez The U.S. electric grid faces simultaneous, evolving pressures. Demand for power from the grid is increasing as people adopt electric cars and building energy is transitioned from gas to electricity. At the same time, climate change is driving more extreme weather. Events like the 2020 heat wave that led to rolling blackouts in California are relatively infrequent, but they are happening more often – and utilities need to be ready for them. New research points to a flexible, cost-effective option for backup power when trouble strikes: batteries aboard trains. A study from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory ...

Denise Hines, Associate Professor, Social Work, received funding for the study: "Understanding Male Intimate Partner Violence Victims from Racial/Ethnic Minority Communities."  Hines will lead a four-phase study on the experiences of male victims of intimate partner violence, with a specific focus on men from racial/ethnic minority communities.   She will conduct the study in four, simultaneous phases.  In Phase 1, Hines will conduct a survey study of male Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) victims, including 300 White men, 300 Black men, and 600 Latino men from both immigrant and non-immigrant communities within the United States. The survey will ...

Peter Becker, Professor of Astrophysics and Space Sciences, received funding for: "Scientific Support in Solar Physics, Remote Sensing, Space Weather, High-Energy Astrophysics, and Associated Scientific Fields."   As part of this project, Mason researchers will conduct research in collaboration with the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL).  Areas covered by this research include: space sciences research (encompassing solar physics and studies of the integrated Sun-Earth system); computational physics and computational fluid dynamics; high-energy astrophysics; instrumentation ...

Foteini Baldimtsi, Assistant Professor, Computer Science, received funding from the National Science Foundation for the project: "Collaborative Research: SaTC: CORE: Medium: Cryptographic accumulators and revocation of credentials."  The goal of the project is to design efficient revocation mechanisms for the Web PKI and beyond.   Baldimtsi and her collaborators will tailor cryptographic accumulators to the problem of credential revocation making certificate revocation mechanisms ...

Four Mason researchers received funding from the National Science Foundation for the project: "Collaborative Research: CCRI: New: CoMIC: A Collaborative Mobile Immersive Computing Research Infrastructure for Multi-user XR."  Bo Han, Associate Professor, Computer Science; Parth Pathak, Assistant Professor, Computer Science; Lap-Fai (Craig) Yu, Associate Professor, Computer Science; and Songqing Chen, Professor, Computer Science, are designing and developing the infrastructure for Collaborative ...

A group of scientists and engineers that includes researchers from The University of Texas at Austin have created a new class of materials that can absorb low energy light and transform it into higher energy light. The new material is composed of ultra-small silicon nanoparticles and organic molecules closely related to ones utilized in OLED TVs. This new composite efficiently moves electrons between its organic and inorganic components, with applications for more efficient solar panels, more accurate medical imaging and better night vision goggles. The material is described in a new paper in Nature Chemistry. “This process gives us a whole new way of designing ...

Dietitians say a keto diet could help you lose up to 10% of your body weight. These high-fat, low-carb meal plans trick the body into burning its own fat. They could also help fight a variety of cancers by starving tumors of the glucose they need to grow. On the surface, this seems ideal. But research suggests these diets may have a deadly, unintended side effect for cancer patients. In mice with pancreatic and colorectal cancer, keto accelerates a lethal wasting disease called cachexia. Patients and mice with cachexia experience loss of appetite, extreme weight loss, fatigue, and immune suppression. The disease has no effective treatment and contributes to about 2 million ...

The earliest reptiles, birds and mammals may have borne live young, researchers from Nanjing University and University of Bristol have revealed. Until now, the hard-shelled egg was thought to be the key to the success of the amniotes - a group of vertebrates that undergo embryonic or foetal development within an amnion, a protective membrane inside the egg. However, a fresh study of 51 fossil species and 29 living species which could be categorised as oviparous (laying hard or soft-shelled eggs) or viviparous (giving birth to live young) suggests otherwise. The findings, published today in Nature Ecology & Evolution, show that all the great evolutionary branches ...

WASHINGTON --- Researchers at Georgetown University’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center and colleagues who have been exploring the complexities of biochemical pathways involved in cancer development have found that a form of glucose, a type of sugar, is intricately linked to a pathway used to build DNA molecules.  When this pathway is overactive, it can lead to cancer and resistance to chemoradiotherapy. The findings appear June 12, 2023, in Nature Chemical Biology. “For a good while, my lab has been exploring cell signaling and DNA transcription mechanisms by which cellular metabolism changes in response to environmental and genetic cues, with the goal of designing ...

Higher neighborhood density of unhealthy retail food establishments was associated with a higher risk of delivering a baby that was large-for-gestational age, according to a new study at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, while neighborhoods with a high density of healthy food retail establishments was linked with a lower risk of giving birth to a baby that was small-for-gestational age. Babies born either small- or large-for-gestational age, a measure of birth weight adjusted for length of pregnancy, are at greater risk for long term health complications, but until now little was known about how neighborhood characteristics including walkability and the ...

According to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, time and space are fused together in a quantity known as spacetime. The theory suggests that massive objects, like a galaxy or galaxy clusters, can cause spacetime to curve. Gravitational lensing is a rare yet observable example of Einstein’s theory in action; the mass of a large celestial body can significantly bend light as it travels through spacetime, much like a magnifying lens. When light from a more distant light source passes by this lens, scientists can use the resulting visual distortions to view objects that would otherwise be too far away and too faint to be seen.  An ...

HOUSTON – A new study by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center highlights novel insights into the evolution of multiple myeloma from precursor disease, which may help better identify patients likely to progress and develop new interventions. Published today in Cancer Cell, the study integrates paired single-cell RNA sequencing and B cell receptor sequencing from 64 patients with multiple myeloma or precursor disease. The study achieved several notable milestones in the effort to better understand ...

A new material, created at the little-explored intersection of organic and inorganic chemistry, could not only enable more powerful solar panels, but it could also usher in the next generation of cancer treatments. Described in a Nature Chemistry journal paper published today, the composite is made of ultra-tiny silicon nanoparticles, and an organic element closely related to those used in OLED televisions. It is capable of increasing the speed with which two molecules can exchange energy, and of converting lower-energy light into higher-energy light. Only a handful of laboratories ...

It's tough accomplishing everything we want to get done in a day. But it would have been even more difficult had we lived earlier in Earth's history. Although we take the 24-hour day for granted, in Earth's deep past, days were even shorter. Day length was shorter because the Moon was closer. "Over time, the Moon has stolen Earth's rotational energy to boost it into a higher orbit farther from Earth," said Ross Mitchell, geophysicist at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and lead author of a new study published in Nature Geoscience. "Most models of Earth's rotation predict that day length was consistently shorter ...

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have created a new method of studying the smallest bioparticles in the body. The study, which is published in Nature Biotechnology, has considerable scientific potential, such as in the development of more effective vaccines. Circulating around the body are nanoparticles that affect it in one way or another. For example, there are lipoproteins that maintain cell metabolism, pathogenic viruses that cause many diseases and lipid nanoparticles that are used to carry drugs, like recent lipid nanoparticle-based mRNA vaccines.   However, ...