Up to eight percent of the sand in concrete and mortar used to make a single-story house could be replaced with shredded used disposable diapers without significantly diminishing their strength, according to a study published in Scientific Reports. The authors suggest that disposable diaper waste could be used as a construction material for low-cost housing in low- and middle-income countries. Disposable diapers are usually manufactured from wood pulp, cotton, viscose rayon, and plastics such as polyester, polyethylene, and polypropylene. ...

Globally, critical thinking (CT) is regarded as a highly desirable cognitive skill that enables a person to question, analyze, and assess an idea or theory from multiple perspectives. CT has become an integral and mandatory part of global educational curricula, but its definition varies across contexts and cultural backgrounds.   To assess the implementation of CT, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) conducts the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS). In a 2018 survey (TALIS 2018), only 12.6% of lower secondary ...

Solar cells are a critical component to the transition to renewable energy sources, and enhanced power conversion efficiency (PCE), or amount of power captured with a given amount of sunlight, increases the practicality of solar power in a society with high energy demands.  Perovskite solar cells that use all-inorganic perovskite light-absorbing materials are more thermally stable than organic-inorganic hybrid counterparts, but suffer from lower PCE.  Researchers have overcome this hurdle in all-inorganic perovskite solar cells ...

Children’s Cancer Research Fund has awarded $250,000 to an innovative new approach to treating leukemia – blood cancer – being developed at UVA Cancer Center. The grant to John H. Bushweller, PhD, of the University of Virginia School of Medicine, is part of the national nonprofit’s efforts to accelerate the development of new and better treatments for difficult-to-treat cancers. “This funding makes it possible to continue developing a novel approach to treatment for a form of pediatric leukemia with a very poor prognosis,” said Bushweller, of UVA’s Department of Molecular Physiology and Biological Physics. “For ...

INDIANAPOLIS – Every 40 seconds, someone in the U.S. has a stroke. Every 3.5 minutes, someone in the U.S. dies of a stroke. Stroke patients have multifaceted needs, requiring complicated care delivered by multidisciplinary teams. In the journal Stroke’s annual review of quality improvement advances in stroke care studies, Regenstrief Institute Research Scientist Dawn Bravata, M.D., and colleagues update researchers, clinicians and healthcare administrators on advances in the field, highlighting the challenges of scalability and sustainability. “Quality improvement exists to ensure that every patient with stroke or at risk of stroke is getting the care ...

High-temperature shock (HTS) is an emerging synthesis method with kinetics-dominated non-equilibrium characteristics, which can achieve an ultrafast heating/cooling rate of ~10^5 K/s and a peak temperature larger than ~3000 K within a time scale of seconds or milliseconds, and is widely used in the preparation of high entropy content, thermodynamic metastable phase and defect-rich materials. Amongst these significant advances, nanoscale high entropy alloys (HEA) are particularly prominent in heterogeneous catalytic reactions with remarkable ...

DANVERS, Mass., May 18, 2023 – Abiomed, part of Johnson & Johnson MedTech[1], announces results of a third-party analysis showing that utilizing Impella during high-risk percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) procedures may help physicians achieve a more complete revascularization compared to high-risk PCIs supported using an intra-aortic balloon pump (IABP). Previous studies have shown that a more complete revascularization can lead to longer survival[2],[3], a greater reduction in heart failure and angina symptoms[4], and an improved quality of life for the patient[5]. This analysis shows ...

The gene ECHS1 encodes for enoyl-CoA hydratase short-chain 1, a mitochondrial enzyme involved in branched-chain amino acid and fatty acid metabolism. Rare inherited mutations in the ECHS1 lead to mitochondrial ECHS1 deficiency, resulting in the disruption of the metabolism of the essential amino acid valine and accumulation of valine intermediates.   In fact, ECHS1 is one of the most common causative genes of mitochondrial diseases. These mutant enzymes also cause brain lesions and severe delays in a child’s psychomotor development, along with elevating blood lactate levels. ECHS1 variants have been reported globally, and many disease-causing ...

Every second, the planet loses a stretch of forest equivalent to a football field due to logging, fires, insect infestation, disease, wind, drought, and other factors. In a recently published study, researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center presented a comprehensive strategy to detect when and where forest disturbance happens at a large scale and provide a deeper understanding of forest change.   The study was published on Feb. 28 in the Journal of Remote Sensing.   “Our strategy leads to more accurate land cover ...

Most global scenarios and governmental targets for decarbonizing the transport sector consider battery-powered electric vehicles as a main part of the solution. Enormous amounts of raw materials are needed to build enough batteries and ensure a transition to low-emission vehicles. Access to lithium is critical, as it is used in all types of EV batteries. Future demand needs to decrease “It seems very likely we'll have a shortage. The key lies in the demand. The demand needs to decrease to avoid long-term supply problems,” ...

Satellites launched into outer space could send back improved warnings of dangerous solar storms thanks to a breakthrough in the way scientists use space weather measurements.    Experts from the University of Reading have found that using satellite data that is less reliable but is returned to Earth rapidly can be used to improve the accuracy of solar wind forecasts - which are harmful streams of charged particles sent from the sun - by nearly 50 per cent. Their research, published today (Thursday, 18 May) in Space Weather, ...

A new study uncovers how the interplay between Sargassum spp., plastic marine debris and Vibrio bacteria creates the perfect “pathogen” storm that has implications for both marine life and public health. Vibrio bacteria are found in waters around the world and are the dominant cause of death in humans from the marine environment. For example, Vibrio vulnificus, sometimes referred to as flesh-eating bacteria, can cause life-threatening foodborne illnesses from seafood consumption as well as disease and death from open wound infections. Since 2011, ...

A new study by Dr. Lucie Kvasničková Stanislavská from Czech University of Life Sciences, Prague published in PeerJ Computer Science titled ‘Global analysis of Twitter communication in corporate social responsibility area: sustainability, climate change, and waste management’ has found that social media is an increasingly important tool for companies to communicate their corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts. The study analyzed over half a million tweets from 2017 to 2022 and identified the key topics and trends communicated in connection with CSR on Twitter.    “Our results aid enterprises in developing communication ...

PHOENIX (May 18, 2023) – The Society for Cardiovascular Angiography & Interventions (SCAI) today release an expert consensus on the management of in-stent restenosis and stent thrombosis. The statement was published online in the Journal of the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography & Interventions (JSCAI). In-stent restenosis is a blockage or narrowing that comes back in the portion of the coronary artery previously treated with a stent and remains a common clinical problem despite numerous improvements in stent design and polymer coatings in recent years. In addition to significant health care costs, it is also associated with an increased risk of death and re-hospitalization. ...

Scientists have discovered the cause of giant underwater landslides in Antarctica which they believe could have generated tsunami waves that stretched across the Southern Ocean. An international team of researchers has uncovered layers of weak, fossilised and biologically-rich sediments hundreds of metres beneath the seafloor. These formed beneath extensive areas of underwater landslides, many of which cut more than 100metres into the seabed. Writing in Nature Communications, the scientists say these weak layers – made up of historic biological material – made the area ...

Short-term exposure to cold temperatures activates brown fat that burns calories and has become an attractive target to promote cardiometabolic health. Now new research being presented at this year’s European Congress on Obesity (ECO) in Dublin, Ireland (17-20 May) suggests that this biological response differs depending on the time of day and in men and women. The preliminary study by Dr Mariëtte Boon from Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands and colleagues, suggests that cold exposure in ...

DUBLIN—A new secondary analysis of the STEP TEENS trial presented at this year’s European Congress on Obesity (ECO 2023, Dublin 17-20 May) and published in the journal Obesity shows that almost half (45%) of the adolescents assigned to semaglutide in the trial managed to lose enough weight to drop below the clinical cutoff for obesity. The study, led by Aaron S. Kelly, PhD, co-director of the Center for Pediatric Obesity Medicine at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, and colleagues, also showed almost three quarters (74%) moved down by at least one weight category. The full STEP TEENS trial, published in 2022 in the New England Journal ...

The number of women and non-white people in academic medicine and biomedical research continues to increase, yet the proportion of women among Lasker Award recipients has not changed in more than 70 years, finds a study published by The BMJ today. And only one non-white woman was identified as having received a Lasker Award over the course of seven decades, the findings show. The researchers say these results are difficult to reconcile given the ever increasing number of qualified scientists from diverse backgrounds, and they call for more transparency around ...

Most high income countries, including the UK, do not have a national prostate cancer screening programme, but instead allow men without symptoms to get a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test if they wish, after talking to their doctor. But experts writing in The BMJ today argue that these shared decision policies have led to high rates of PSA testing and clear medical harm, with minimal benefit and inequity. Andrew Vickers and an international group of colleagues argue that high income countries should either implement a comprehensive risk based approach ...

Scientists say tonsil removal is both clinically and cost effective for adults who get recurrent severe sore throats. The biggest study of its kind, carried out by Newcastle University, revealed that patients who had a tonsillectomy had 50% less sore throats over two years, compared to patients who did not undergo tonsillectomy. Publishing today (17 May) in The Lancet, the study was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). Experts also found that a tonsillectomy for those aged 16 years and over was cost effective ...

This collaborative study between researchers in the UK and Australia is a huge step towards aligning outcome reporting with patient priorities in advanced cancer settings. The study, published in the journal eClinical Medicine (The Lancet Discovery Science), details the development, testing and analysis of this design-specific measure to assess quality of life in patients with recurrent rectal cancer, regardless of treatment intent. This new measure – called the LRRC–QoL – consists of nine multi-item scales (healthcare services, psychological ...

Substantive changes are needed to improve patient safety in prisons, according to a new study published by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (JRSM) and funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). Practical changes such as timely access to healthcare services and better processes to mitigate medication-related harm should be prioritised, according to the researchers. In the first nationwide analysis of patient safety incidents in prisons in England, researchers found that security, staffing constraints and the high turnover of prisoners are among the main barriers to the safe delivery of healthcare ...

As we age, our muscles start to waste. Called sarcopenia, it happens to us all, yet no one has ever understood why and how it happens. Now new research from the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute (ARMI) at Monash University has used a surprising animal model – the African killifish – to reveal that towards the end of life, our muscles actually reverse to an “early-life” state, slowing mortality. This finding may provide a clue to slowing, halting or even reversing age-related loss of muscle mass and strength. The research, published ...

UCL Press Release Under embargo until Thursday 18th May, 01:00 UK time / Wednesday 17th May, 20:00 Eastern US time Peer reviewed | Literature review | People One of the world’s largest fundamentalist Christian education groups is teaching its students climate change denial as fact, and still presents the theory of evolution as an ‘absurd and discredited’ conspiracy theory, finds a report by UCL researchers. Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) is one of the world’s biggest providers of creationist science materials, consisting of reading programmes and a core ...

For the first time, astronomers have observed radio waves emitted by a Type Ia supernova, a type of explosion originating from a white dwarf star. This provides important clues to understand how white dwarfs explode. A Type Ia (One-A) supernova is the nuclear explosion of a white dwarf star. This type of supernova is well known; these supernovae are used by astronomers to measure cosmological distances and the expansion of the Universe. But the explosion mechanism of Type Ia supernovae is not well understood. Solitary white dwarfs don’t explode, so it is thought that mass accretion from a neighboring companion ...