Organisms rely on a biological clock known as the ‘circadian’ clock to regulate their activity according to the time of day. A central clock, constituted by a group of brain cells — the suprachiasmatic nuclei, or SCN — synchronises the circadian clocks present in all body’s organs, called ‘peripheral’ clocks. Until now, synchronisation of the circadian cycle in mammals was thought to be a one-way mechanism in which the suprachiasmatic nuclei alone synchronized the peripheral ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Decades of research show that experiencing traumatic things as a child -- such as having an alcoholic parent or growing up in a tumultuous home -- puts you at risk for poorer health and survival later in life. But mounting evidence suggests that forging strong social relationships can help mitigate these effects. And not just for people, but for our primate cousins, too. Drawing on 36 years of data, a new study of nearly 200 baboons in southern Kenya finds that adversity early in life can take years off their lifespan, but strong social bonds with other baboons in adulthood can help ...

Heart transplant recipients receiving organs from active COVID-19 positive donors may have an increased risk of death at six months and one year when compared to those receiving organs from recently recovered COVID-19 patients and COVID-19 negative patients, according to a study published today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. “These early trends should be concerning enough such that heart transplantation centers need to thoroughly evaluate and continue to weigh the risks/benefits of using hearts from active COVID-19 donors,” said Shivank Madan, MD, MHA, lead author of the study and a cardiologist ...

University of Queensland-led research has revealed liver cells influence the body’s internal circadian clock, which was previously believed to be solely controlled by the brain. Associate Professor Frédéric Gachon from UQ’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience and Dr Serge Luquet from Université Paris Cité/CNRS in France and their collaborators have demonstrated that mice with transplanted human liver cells had modified circadian rhythms. Dr Gachon said the ...

Researchers in the Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI) at the University of Colorado School of Medicine have reached a major milestone in developing standards and tools for creating phenopackets that may foster more innovation and advancement in the medical field by allowing health professionals to more easily collect and share data. A newly-released paper highlights the latest suite of coordinated standards and tools used to collect data related to rare diseases. The phenopackets, ...

The ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group (ECOG-ACRIN) announces the following cancer researchers as the recipients of the organization’s annual scientific leadership and mentorship awards. Through its Mentoring Program, ECOG-ACRIN formally recognizes outstanding scientific leadership through events and awards that identify, encourage, and recognize investigators in the early years of their careers. The program is expanding in 2023 with the addition of the Remarkable Mentor to Women in Oncology Award. Young Investigator of the Year Patrick M. Forde, MBBCh, is the 2023 recipient of the Young Investigator Award, a professional honor to recognize ...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Yogesh Vohra, Ph.D., is the principal investigator of a five-year, $8 million grant from the United States Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration Stewardship Science Academic Alliances program that supports fundamental research in materials under extreme conditions and in advanced manufacturing. Vohra, a professor university scholar in the University of Alabama at Birmingham Department of Physics and associate dean in the UAB College of Arts and Sciences, says the grant will leverage the expertise of nine faculty members across five disciplines at UAB and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, ...

Contacts: David Hosansky, NCAR/UCAR Manager of Media Relations hosansky@ucar.edu 720-470-2073 Ali Branscombe, NCAR/UCAR Communications Specialist abran@ucar.edu 651-764-9643 A new computer modeling technique developed by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) offers the potential to generate months-ahead summertime drought forecasts across the Western United States with the capability of differentiating between dry conditions at locations just a couple of miles apart. The technique uses statistical methods and machine learning to analyze key drought indicators during the winter and spring and correlate them with the likelihood of dryness throughout the ...

In everyday life we experience light in one of its simplest forms – optical rays or beams. However, light can exist in much more exotic forms. Thus, even beams can be shaped to take the form of spirals; so-called vortex beams, endowed with unusual properties. Such beams can make dust particles to spin, just like they indeed move along some intangible spirals.    Light modes with such added structure are called “structured,” and even more exotic forms of structured light can be attained in artificial optical materials – metamaterials, where ...

Surviving a stroke can bring many long-term effects – including a much higher risk of dementia. But a study suggests that blood sugar may play a key role in that risk. Loss of general thinking ability happened much faster in stroke survivors who had high blood glucose in the years after their health crisis, even after accounting for other things that might affect their brainpower, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open. Those whose blood pressures or cholesterol were high after their stroke did not lose points on tests of thinking ability, ...

WASHINGTON – Researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center, in collaboration with George Washington University, leveraged their understanding of auditory speech processing in the brain to enable volunteers to perceive speech through the sense of touch. This may aid in the design of novel sensory substitution devices -- swapping sound for touch, for example -- for hearing-impaired people. The findings appear in the Journal of Neuroscience on May 17, 2023. “In the past few years, our understanding of how the brain processes information from different senses has expanded greatly as we are starting to understand how brain networks are connected across different ...

DETROIT (May 17, 2023) – Researchers at Henry Ford Health — one of the nation’s leading integrated academic medical institutions — in collaboration with Ephemeral Tattoo, have conducted a study on the safety and efficacy of made-to-fade tattoos for medical markings. Fifty to 60 percent of cancer patients receive radiation therapy during their course of treatment. Patients have traditionally been required to receive small, permanent tattoos on their skin to ensure therapy is delivered accurately to the same place each time while minimizing healthy tissue exposure to radiation. On the heels of this study, Ephemeral will offer its innovative made-to-fade ...

In testing the genetic material of current populations in Africa and comparing against existing fossil evidence of early Homo sapiens populations there, researchers have uncovered a new model of human evolution — overturning previous beliefs that a single African population gave rise to all humans. The new research was published today, May 17, in the journal Nature. Although it is widely understood that Homo sapiens originated in Africa, uncertainty surrounds how branches of human evolution diverged and how people migrated ...

There is broad agreement that Homo sapiens originated in Africa. But there remain many uncertainties and competing theories about where, when, and how. In a paper published today in Nature, an international research team led by McGill University and the University of California-Davis suggest that, based on contemporary genomic evidence from across the continent, there were humans living in different regions of Africa, migrating from one region to another and mixing with one another over a period of hundreds of thousands of years. This view runs counter to some of the dominant theories about human origins in ...

A retrospective study of temperatures in the province of Barcelona reveals that low temperatures increase the risk of going on a period of sick leave, due in particular to infectious and respiratory diseases. The study, carried out by researchers from  Center for Research in Occupational Health (CISAL) and the Department of Medicine and Life Sciences at UPF (MELIS); the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), an institution supported by the "la Caixa" Foundation and CIBER of Epidemiology and Public Health (CIBERESP), shows that the sectors of the population most affected are women, young people and ...

In a study tracking climate-induced changes in the distribution of animals and their effects on ecosystem functions, North Carolina State University researchers show that resident species can continue managing some important ecological processes despite the arrival of newcomers that are similar to them, but resident species’ role in ecosystem functioning changes when the newcomers are more different.  The findings could lead to predictive tools for understanding what might happen as climate change forces new species into communities, such as the movement of species from lower to higher latitudes or elevations. “Species ...

Abu Dhabi, UAE: – A team of scientists led by researchers at the University of Montreal has recently discovered an Earth-sized exoplanet, a world beyond our solar system, that may be carpeted with volcanoes and potentially hospitable to life. Called LP 791-18 d, the planet could undergo volcanic outbursts as often as Jupiter’s moon Io, the most volcanically active body in our solar system. The team includes Mohamad Ali-Dib, a research scientist at the NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) Center for Astro, Particle, and Planetary Physics. The planet was found and studied using data ...

CHICAGO—May 17, 2023—Automated insulating window shades can cut energy consumption by approximately one-quarter and may recoup the cost of installation within three to five years, according to a landmark study conducted by Illinois Institute of Technology researchers at Willis Tower. The study, funded by ComEd, showcases a promising path for sustainability and energy efficiency in architectural design. Temperature regulation typically accounts for 30–40 percent of the energy used by buildings in climates similar to Chicago. The research team, led by Assistant Professor of Architectural Engineering Mohammad ...

A large international team led by astronomers at the Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets at Université de Montréal (UdeM) today announced in the journal Nature the discovery of a new temperate world around a nearby small star. This planet, named LP 791-18 d, has a radius and a mass consistent with those of Earth. Observations of this exoplanet and another one in the same system indicate that LP 791-18 d is likely covered with volcanoes similar to Jupiter’s moon Io, the most volcanically active body in our Solar System. “The discovery of this exoplanet is an extraordinary ...

A pair of internationally renowned stem cell cloning experts at the University of Houston is reporting their findings of variant cells in the lungs of patients with Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) which likely represent key targets in any future therapy for the condition.    IPF is a progressive, irreversible and fatal lung disease in which the lungs become scarred and breathing becomes difficult. The rapid development and fatal progression of the disease occur by uncertain mechanisms, but the most pervasive school of thought is that IPF arises from recurrent, subclinical lung ...

For more than a century, biologists have wondered what the earliest animals were like when they first arose in the ancient oceans over half a billion years ago. Searching among today's most primitive-looking animals for the earliest branch of the animal tree of life, scientists gradually narrowed the possibilities down to two groups: sponges, which spend their entire adult lives in one spot, filtering food from seawater; and comb jellies, voracious predators that oar their way through the world's oceans in search of food. In a new study published this week in the journal Nature, researchers use a novel approach based on chromosome structure to come up with ...

A team at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research has discovered a group of brain cells that boosts appetite when there is a prolonged surplus of energy in the body, such as excess fat accumulation in obesity. The researchers discovered that these cells not only produced the appetite-stimulating molecule NPY, but they in fact made the brain more sensitive to the molecule, boosting appetite even more. “These cells kickstart changes in the brain that make it more sensitive to even low levels of NPY when there is a surplus of energy in the body in the form of excess fat – driving appetite during obesity,” explains Professor Herbert Herzog, senior ...

About The Study: This study of 18.1 million beneficiaries of fee-for service Medicare found that, in contrast to in-person health services, receipt of medications for chronic conditions was relatively stable in the first 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic overall, across racial and ethnic groups, and for community-dwelling patients with dementia. This finding of stability may hold lessons for other outpatient services during the next pandemic.  Authors: Nancy E. Morden, M.D., M.P.H., of the Geisel ...

About The Study: This genetic association study including 39,000 participants with clinically diagnosed Alzheimer disease (AD) and 401,000 control participants without AD found novel genetic associations between high high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol concentrations and high systolic blood pressure with higher risk of AD. These findings may inspire new drug targeting and improved prevention implementation.  Authors: Ruth Frikke-Schmidt, M.D., D.M.Sc., Ph.D., of Copenhagen University Hospital–Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen, 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.2023.13734) Editor’s ...

In the latest issue of the journal Nature, astronomers from Stockholm University reveal the origin of a thermonuclear supernova explosion. Strong emission lines of helium and the first detection of such a supernova in radio waves show that the exploding white dwarf star had a helium-rich companion. Supernovae of Type Ia are important for astronomers since they are used to measure the expansion of the Universe. However, the origin of these explosions has remained an open question. While it is established that the explosion is that of a compact ...