The rigidity, transparency and hardness of PET (Polyethylene Terephthalate) make it one of the most valuable plastics for the manufacture of plastic bottles, packaging and other single-use products. However, these characteristics make it highly persistent in the environment, to the point that a plastic PET bottle may take several hundred years to degrade in the ocean.   At the molecular level, PET, and all plastics, have a polymeric structure made up of tens of thousands of repetitions of small subunits called monomers. In the last decades, the degradation ...

WESTMINSTER, Colorado – 9 May, 2023 – Buffelgrass is a highly invasive perennial found in arid regions around the globe. It is known to reduce the biodiversity of native ecosystems and to increase the frequency and intensity of wildfires. A team of researchers recently took a close look at efforts to control buffelgrass in Arizona’s Saguaro National Park, located in the Sonoran Desert. An article featured in volume 16, issue 1 of the journal Invasive Plant Science and Management describes what that investigation can tell us about effective control strategies. ...

The difficult-to-treat brain cancer glioblastoma steals a person’s mental faculties as it spreads, yet the tumor’s insidious ability to infiltrate neighboring networks in the brain could also prove its undoing. Scientists at UC San Francisco have discovered that neural activity in these deadly tumors can restructure connections in surrounding brain tissue, causing the cognitive decline associated with the disease, and that the drug gabapentin, commonly used to prevent seizures, could block this growth-causing ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Gene editing is a powerful method for both research and therapy. Since the advent of the Nobel Prize-winning CRISPR/Cas9 technology, a quick and accurate tool for genome editing discovered in 2012, scientists have been working to explore its capabilities and boost its performance.  Researchers in UC Santa Barbara biologist Chris Richardson’s lab have added to that growing toolbox, with a method that increases the efficiency of CRISPR/Cas9 editing without the use of viral material to deliver the genetic template used to edit the target genetic sequence. According to their new paper ...

**Note: the release below is a special early release from the European Congress on Obesity (ECO, Dublin, 17-20 May). Please credit the conference if you use this story** New research to be presented at next week’s European Congress on Obesity (ECO) in Dublin, Ireland (17-20 May), has found that tweets about obesity are predominantly negative. The analysis, by researchers in Switzerland and the UK, also found that Twitter activity spiked around the time of significant political events. These included comments about Donald Trump’s weight when he was US president and ...

Cutting-edge cancer treatments like immunotherapy are offering new hope for patients, often in combination with more common approaches such as chemotherapy. But determining the best treatment combination isn't always straightforward. Many patients spend valuable time on expensive therapies with serious side effects that aren’t effective against their cancer. Now, a new discovery is poised to help. Researchers from USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center have identified a biomarker that indicates which patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) will respond well to chemoimmunotherapy. The biomarker, ...

CHAPEL HILL, NC -- Researchers at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center found mailing human papillomavirus (HPV) self-collection tests and offering assistance to book in-clinic screening appointments to under-screened, low-income women improved cervical cancer screening nearly two-fold compared to scheduling assistance alone. Scheduling assistance primarily consisted of helping to book an appointment for in-person screening at a clinic, regardless of whether an at-home test was offered or returned, or whether the HPV test was negative or positive. The findings from the randomized ...

Peer-reviewed / Randomised Controlled Trial / People Clinical trial with 665 under-screened women in North Carolina (USA) investigated use of high-risk human papillomavirus (hrHPV) self-collection kits to increase cervical cancer screening uptake. Screening uptake among participants sent self-collection kits and given support to attend an in-person appointment was almost double (72%) the cervical cancer screening uptake in those only given appointment support alone (37%). More than three quarters (78%) of these underserved participants ...

At a recent event to celebrate the Association’s 85th Anniversary, the Association of British Paediatric Nurses awarded Honorary Fellowships to eight children’s nurses in recognition of their outstanding contribution to the nursing care of children and young people. The 2023 Honorary Fellows Ann Bisbrown Lee for services to children’s nursing and for many years’ service to the Association of British Paediatric Nurses, especially in leading marketing and conference activities. Professor Steven Campbell for services to children’s nurse education and to the Association ...

Interventions aimed at reducing work-related stress for individual healthcare workers may lead to improvements in how people cope with stress up to a year later. Findings from a Cochrane review of the latest available evidence build on the conclusions of a previous review in 2015 that found low-quality evidence that interventions, such as cognitive behavioural training (CBT), mental and physical relaxation, were better than none. The researchers included 117 studies of the effects of different interventions on stress alleviation in the current review, of which 89 studies were new. These 89 studies were published between 2013 and ...

New research has identified the month when people have the strongest suicidal thoughts, and that these thoughts occur a few months before the peak of suicide behaviours in spring/early summer. It also showed the daily peak in suicidal thought is between 4-5 am.    Most people assume suicide rates will be highest in winter, yet spring/early summer is when suicidal behaviours peak and this finding has baffled researchers since first identified.  Research from the University of Nottingham’s School of Psychology, led in collaboration with the University of Amsterdam and Harvard University, ...

Using artificial intelligence (AI) to process natural language, a research group evaluated the characteristics of speech among patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). AI analysis of their data determined that these patients spoke using more verbs and fewer nouns and fillers. The study was led by Professor Masahisa Katsuno and Dr. Katsunori Yokoi, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, in collaboration with Aichi Prefectural University and Toyohashi University of Technology. They published their results ...

A team of astronomers led by the University of Southampton have uncovered the largest cosmic explosion ever witnessed. The explosion is more than ten times brighter than any known supernova (exploding star) and three times brighter than the brightest tidal disruption event, where a star falls into a supermassive black hole. The explosion, known as AT2021lwx, has currently lasted over three years, compared to most supernovae which are only visibly bright for a few months. It took place nearly 8 billion light years away, when the universe was around 6 billion years old, and is still being detected by a network of telescopes. The researchers believe that the explosion is ...

A previously unrecognised sedimentary archive in sand dunes could unlock a repository of fire records, a discovery that could expand fire histories across the globe. The research, conducted by Dr Nicholas Patton during his PhD at The University of Queensland, has solved a persistent problem facing historians investigating changing fire patterns. “Knowing how the frequency and intensity of wildfires has changed over time offers scientists a glimpse into Earth’s past landscapes, as well as an understanding of future climate change impacts,” Dr Patton said. “To reconstruct fire records, researchers usually rely heavily ...

Could changing your diet play a role in slowing or even preventing the development of dementia? We’re one step closer to finding out, thanks to a new UNLV study that bolsters the long-suspected link between gut health and Alzheimer’s disease. The analysis — led by a team of researchers with the Nevada Institute of Personalized Medicine (NIPM) at UNLV and published this spring in the Nature journal Scientific Reports — examined data from dozens of past studies into the belly-brain connection. The results? There’s a strong link between particular kinds of gut bacteria and Alzheimer’s disease. Between 500 and 1,000 species of bacteria ...

AMHERST, Mass. – Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently published a study in the journal PLOS Water that focuses on the Sudbury-Assabet and Concord watershed in eastern Massachusetts, and which links hydrological changes, including floods, drought and runoff, to changing patterns of land use. “We all live in a watershed” says Timothy Randhir, professor of environmental conservation at UMass Amherst and the paper’s senior author. “We’re constantly modifying our landscape, turning what were once forests into ...

Irvine, Calif., May 11, 2023 – Researchers from the University of California, Irvine have found that exposure to traffic-related air pollution in Irvine led to memory loss and cognitive decline and triggered neurological pathways associated with the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. “The link between air pollution and Alzheimer’s disease is concerning, as the prevalence of toxicants in ambient air is not just on the rise globally, but also hitting close to home here in Irvine,” said corresponding ...

Across the United States, legislators and the public have debated the issue of bail reform, which aims to reduce pretrial jail populations by eliminating cash bail. New York State passed legislation in 2019 to limit the use of money bail and expand pretrial release. In a new study,  researchers evaluated the effect of the law on state crime rates, considering the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although rates of murder, larceny, and motor vehicle theft rose after the bail reform law went into effect, none of the increases were statistically significant when compared with a control group. This suggests that the effect of bail reform on crime rate increases was negligible. The study, ...

Sometimes life’s most meaningful relationships grow from the briefest of connections. Like when you go to a party and meet someone wearing your favorite band’s T-shirt, or who laughs at the same jokes as you, or who grabs that unpopular snack you alone (or so you thought) love. One small, shared interest sparks a conversation—that’s my favorite, too!—and blossoms into lasting affection. This is called the similarity-attraction effect: we generally like people who are like us. Now, new findings from a Boston ...

About The Study: Lecanemab and associated ancillary services could add an estimated $2 billion to $5 billion annually to Medicare spending with substantial out-of-pocket costs for beneficiaries lacking supplemental coverage, according to a cost analysis using nationally representative survey data. Lecanemab, an antidementia medication with modest clinical benefit, received accelerated Food and Drug Administration approval.  Authors: John N. Mafi, M.D., M.P.H., of the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, is the corresponding ...

LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 11, 2023) — The University of Kentucky, as lead organization, together with partners across Kentucky and Tennessee, has been awarded $1 million from the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Regional Innovation Engines, or NSF Engines, program. This team’s proposal, “Advancing carbon centric circular economy technologies for advanced manufacturing solutions (KY, TN),” is led by a coalition named Generate Advanced Manufacturing Excellence for Change (GAME Change).  The GAME Change team is among the more than 40 unique teams to receive one of the first-ever NSF Engines ...

Key takeaways UCLA and Keck Observatory scientists analyzed over a decade’s worth of data about 16 young supermassive stars orbiting the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Supermassive stars typically are formed in pairs, but the new study found that all 16 of the stars were singletons. The findings support a scenario in which the supermassive black hole drives nearby stars to either merge or be disrupted, with one of the pair being ejected from the system. When supermassive stars are born, they’re almost always paired ...

Discussions of cancer often stress the genetic mutations that drive disease by altering the normal function of cellular proteins. KRAS, for example, normally acts as an on/off switch for cellular proliferation, but mutations to the gene — common in lung cancer, colorectal cancer and pancreatic cancer — cause that switch to stay on. Yet mutations are only half of the story. Interactions between these genetic mutations and external factors, such as tissue injury that leads to inflammation, reshape both cells’ identities and their local environment in ways that foster cancer’s emergence and runaway growth. In pancreatic cancer, these changes start ...

Key takeaways​​​​​​ Stem cells travel along a collagen network to reach damaged muscle tissue and heal it. In Duchenne muscular dystrophy, stiff, scarred collagen prevents stem cells from reaching their target. A protein called sarcospan lessens this scarring and allows stem cells to do their job more successfully, pointing toward potential new treatments for the disorder. Muscles that ache after a hard workout usually don’t hurt for long, thanks to stem cells that rush to the injured site along “collagen highways” within the muscle and repair the damaged tissue. ...

SAN ANTONIO — May 11, 2023 —Southwest Research Institute has entered into a five-year, $7.5-million cooperative agreement with NASA to lead the Center for Lunar Origin and Evolution (CLOE), which will conduct basic research to support science enabled by human exploration of the Moon and the Endurance-A mission concept, a far side lunar rover mission prioritized by the 2022 Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey report, “Origins, Worlds, and Life.” CLOE will be part of NASA’s Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI). “The Moon is unmatched in its potential to provide ...