A study involving UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers found when ribociclib, a targeted therapy drug, is added to hormone therapy there are a significant invasive disease-free survival benefit in patients with early hormone-receptor (HR) positive/HER2 negative breast cancer. Researchers found that patients who took the combination therapy had substantially longer invasive disease-free survival compared to those who were treated with the hormone therapy alone, regardless of whether the cancer has spread to the lymph nodes. The addition of the targeted therapy reduced the risk of recurrence by 25%. The results were shared today during the American Society of Clinical ...

The world is getting hotter, causing shifts in seasonal patterns and increasing the amount of extreme weather such as severe droughts and heat waves, which can affect crop yields and food supplies. A recent study led by a researcher at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University found that the likelihood of extreme temperatures that could affect crop yields has increased significantly in wheat-producing regions of the U.S. and China.  The findings predict heat waves that happened approximately ...

New theoretical research by Michael Wondrak, Walter van Suijlekom and Heino Falcke of Radboud University has shown that Stephen Hawking was right about black holes, although not completely. Due to Hawking radiation, black holes will eventually evaporate, but the event horizon is not as crucial as had been believed. Gravity and the curvature of spacetime cause this radiation too. This means that all large objects in the universe, like the remnants of stars, will eventually evaporate. Using a clever combination of quantum physics and Einstein’s theory of gravity, Stephen Hawking argued that the spontaneous creation and annihilation ...

Human activity has degraded ecosystems and damaged biodiversity around the world, but ecosystem restoration offers hope for the future. Scientists studying the restoration of underwater seaweed forests which provide other species with food and shelter have found that 10 years of restoration efforts have helped a damaged forest regrow to richness and strength comparable to forests that have never been disturbed. “Macroalgal forests are found along over one-third of the world’s coastlines and underpin ...

Green hydrogen, which produces hydrogen without the use of fossil fuels or the emission of carbon dioxide, has become increasingly important in recent years as part of efforts to realize a decarbonized economy. However, due to the high production cost of water electrolysis devices that produce green hydrogen, the economic feasibility of green hydrogen has not been very high. However, the development of a technology that drastically reduces the amount of rare metals such as iridium and platinum used in polymer electrolyte membrane water electrolysis devices is opening the way to lower production costs. A research team led by Dr. Hyun S. Park and Sung Jong ...

Sarcomas Dr. Jonathan C. Trent, a medical oncologist specializing in Sarcoma and Connective Tissue Medical Oncology at Sylvester, is available to discuss a wide range of issues related to Sarcoma research and experimental therapeutics. He and collaborators are involved in multiple ASCO23 presentations, including: Multi-omic characterization of gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST) in a large real-world patient cohort. Outcomes in patients with advanced gastrointestinal stromal tumor who did not have ...

Adolescents who show signs of alcohol dependence are more likely to develop depression by their mid-20s, according to a new study led by UCL (University College London) and University of Bristol researchers. Drinking large amounts of alcohol regularly, but with no signs of dependency, did not predict depression risk, according to the findings published in The Lancet Psychiatry. Co-lead author Dr Gemma Lewis (UCL Psychiatry) said: “By using a large, longitudinal dataset, we have found evidence that problematic drinking patterns in late adolescence may increase the risk of developing ...

The UK’s growing mismatch between the fish we catch and the fish we want to eat has clear implications for our future food security, according to new research.  Led by the University of Essex and the Centre for Environment Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas), the study, published in the international peer-reviewed journal Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries, for the first time offers a comprehensive, long-term analysis of how major policy changes in the past 120 years have influenced patterns in UK seafood production, trade and consumption.  It shows that even if we changed our fish-eating habits away from choosing flaky white fish such as cod ...

A new study of 3,745 families from across the UK demonstrates a “sizeable” gap in the financial knowledge of children depending on which socio-economic group they come from. The research highlights significant inequalities in young people’s financial capabilities, with the results pointing toward disadvantaged children not developing key financial skills. In findings published in the peer-reviewed British Journal of Educational Studies, an expert team from UCL are calling for a greater emphasis on developing financial skills amongst children starting at primary school, particularly aimed towards those from disadvantaged social backgrounds, with “a particular need ...

DOWNLOADABLE B-ROLL/VIDEO   MIAMI, FLORIDA (June 1, 2023) – Historically, surgery was the first line of treatment for patients with thyroid cancer. Now, as targeted therapies and other new medications emerge, surgery for certain patients may become more of a secondary option if those treatments fail. This new context could potentially change how some procedures are conducted. Otolaryngologist and head and neck surgeon Dr. Zoukaa Sargi, will join a June 2 panel discussion on thyroid cancer care ...

In a multicenter phase 1 and 2 trial (BRUIN, NCT03740529), researchers from leading cancer centers across the globe, including the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) in Milwaukee, tested Bruton tyrosine kinase inhibitor (BTKi), pirtobrutinib, in patients with pre-treated mantle cell lymphoma (MCL). Results of the study, which assessed the efficacy of the drug in a cohort of 90 patients with poor survival prognosis, demonstrated the reversible BTKi drug to be both safe and effective in achieving inhibition of defective B-cells. The results were published by the Journal of Clinical Oncology on May 16.   MCL is an aggressive, rare subtype of ...

Beech leaf disease is an emerging threat to North American forest ecosystems. It was first discovered in northeastern Ohio in 2012, and has already spread to 12 additional U.S. states and Canadian provinces. At first the cause of the disease was unknown, and the sick and dying trees were diagnosed on symptoms alone: Dark banding along the leaf veins and shriveled, leathery leaves. But in 2017, nematodes were found in diseased leaves, and by 2020 we had the answer: A newly recognized subspecies of the wormlike creature, Litylenchus crenatae mccannii, was definitely associated with the symptoms.  In order to monitor the spread of the disease, to understand the nemotode’s ...

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. – June 01, 2023) Infections and other diseases can cause red blood cells to rupture, releasing the oxygen-binding molecule hemoglobin, which breaks down into heme. Free heme can cause significant inflammation and organ damage, leading to morbidity and mortality. Researchers from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital discovered NLRP12, an innate immune pattern recognition receptor, to be the key molecule responsible for inducing inflammatory cell death and pathology in response to heme combined with other cellular damage or infection. The finding provides a new potential drug target to prevent morbidity in certain illnesses. ...

HOUSTON – (June 1, 2023) – An international team of marine biologists has discovered the remnants of ancient RNA viruses embedded in the DNA of symbiotic organisms living inside reef-building corals. The RNA fragments are from viruses that infected the symbionts as long ago as 160 million years. The discovery is described in an open-access study published this week in the Nature journal Communications Biology, and it could help scientists understand how corals and their partners fight off viral infections today. But it was a surprising find because most RNA viruses are not known ...

Davis, CA - The Necrotizing Enterocolitis (NEC) Society is thrilled to release the Neonatal Probiotics Toolkit. The Toolkit provides structure to clinicians in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) as they consider the complex process and decision of whether to implement probiotics to help prevent NEC. The Toolkit is not a recommendation for or against the routine use of probiotics in the NICU, nor for or against the use of any product or preparation method.  NICUs and clinicians are encouraged to use the Toolkit to foster thoughtful, intentional dialogue and inclusive conversations amongst key stakeholders in the NICU, including the need for patient-families to understand ...

Tumors are composed of rapidly multiplying cancer cells. Understanding which biochemical processes fuel their relentless growth can provide hints at therapeutic targets. Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis have developed a technology to study tumor growth in another dimension — literally. The scientists established a new method to watch what nutrients are used at which rates spatially throughout a tissue. By using this multidimensional imaging approach, they identified pathways whose activities are uniquely elevated in brain cancer, offering clues for potential treatment strategies. The study was published May 19 in Nature Communications. “We ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The results of a new clinical trial suggest that the first drug therapy to slow the progression of nearsightedness in kids could be on the horizon. The three-year study found that a daily drop in each eye of a low dose of atropine, a drug used to dilate pupils, was better than a placebo at limiting eyeglass prescription changes and inhibiting elongation of the eye in nearsighted children aged 6 to 10. That elongation leads to myopia, or nearsightedness, which starts in young kids and ...

New Haven, Conn. — Yale University’s museums, libraries, and archives contain vast troves of cultural and scientific heritage that fire curiosity and fuel research worldwide. Now there’s a simple new way to make astonishing connections among millions of objects. Starting today, anyone can explore the university’s unparalleled holdings online through LUX: Yale Collections Discovery — a groundbreaking discovery and research platform that provides single-point access to more than 17 million items, including defining specimens ...

Microbial communities are especially active near hydrothermal seeps like those in the Guaymas Basin in the Gulf of California. The team of researchers has been working on understanding these communities for many years. Organic material deposited in the Guaymas Basin is cooked by heat sources from within the Earth, which breaks it down into crude oil and natural gas. Their components provide the primary source of energy for microorganisms in an otherwise hostile environment. In their latest study, the researchers have demonstrated that archaea use a previously unknown mechanism to degrade liquid petroleum ...

– Cutting-edge spatial omics technologies to map cancer cells and their immune environment in high resolution, allowing AI to unlock potential for new breakthrough treatments – – Landmark research project is 100x larger than existing efforts –  – Data will be generated from thousands of patients across multiple cancers – – University of Pittsburgh, Gustave Roussy, Lausanne University Hospital, Uniklinikum Erlangen/Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg , Charité ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – On July 1, North Carolina’s new abortion limits go into effect. As restrictions on abortions are being tightened across the United States, adolescents may encounter mounting obstacles that could prevent them from accessing abortion care. Bianca A. Allison, MD MPH, an assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics, sought to examine the awareness and knowledge that adolescents have about the legal landscape of abortion and how these changes might affect them and their communities. The study, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, found that many adolescents – across a diversity of ...

LA JOLLA, CA—Scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) are investigating how the immune system's T cells react to a wide variety of coronaviruses, ranging from SARS to common cold coronaviruses. Their goal is to guide the development of vaccines that could halt future pandemic by combatting many types of coronaviruses at once.   "While it was recognized that coronaviruses were potentially dangerous viruses, because of SARSCoV and MERS viruses causing very severe disease in humans, nobody knew that the next pandemic was going to be caused by SARS-CoV-2," says LJI Professor Alessandro Sette, Dr.Biol.Sci. ...

Traffic-related air pollution is a pervasive problem across the United States. Vehicle emissions are highest near major roadways with around 19% of the U.S. population living in the vicinity of a major roadway. In more densely populated states, like California, up to 40% live near a major roadway. Exposure to these pollutants, such as fine particulate matter (PM2.5 ) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a byproduct of burning fossil fuel, can lead to a host of health effects including premature death. Minority communities often live along these corridors and experience disproportionate exposures. A ...

The endangered Antillean manatee faces a growing threat from boat strikes in Belize, according to a new study that raises concerns about the survival of what had been considered a relatively healthy population. Belize hosts a population of around 1,000 manatees. With the growth of tourism in recent decades, however, Belize has seen a substantial increase in boat traffic, making boat strikes an increasingly important cause of manatee deaths and injuries. The new study, published June 1 in Endangered Species Research, used 25 years of data on manatee strandings (dead or injured ...

Driven by a lifelong curiosity about the natural world and the diversity of life, Elizabeth King, associate professor in the Division of Biological Sciences at the University of Missouri, found inspiration to spend her formative years studying science — and along the way she discovered her passion for biology. That foundation has led her to pursue an ongoing career working to develop a better understanding of genetic traits from a biological perspective. Recently, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded King a five-year, $1.9 million grant to expand her lab’s research ...