The press release
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Science18 May 2023

Novel virtual coronary roadmap tool reduces volume of iodinated contrast needed during percutaneous coronary interventions

Phoenix, AZ (May 18, 2023)- Results from Dynamic Coronary Roadmap for Contrast Reduction (DCR4Contrast), a multi-center prospective, unblinded, randomized controlled trial were presented today as late-breaking clinical research at the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography & Interventions (SCAI) 2023 Scientific Sessions. The trial found that Dynamic Coronary Roadmap (DCR), a percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) navigation support tool developed by health technology company Philips, effectively reduces iodinated contrast during PCI. Iodinated contrast is used to enhance the ability ...

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Science18 May 2023

First-of-its-kind study confirms safety of distal radial artery access for cardiac catheterization

Phoenix, AZ (May 18, 2023)- One-year findings from the Distal versus Proximal Radial Artery Access for Cardiac Catheterization and Intervention (DIPRA) study were presented today as late-breaking clinical research at the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography & Interventions (SCAI) 2023 Scientific Sessions. The single-center, randomized-controlled trial evaluated outcomes of hand function and effectiveness of conventional proximal radial artery (PRA) access compared to distal radial artery (DRA) access for cardiac catheterization. Current guidelines for patients undergoing percutaneous intervention recommend PRA access. A complication of PRA is radial artery occlusion, ...

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Science18 May 2023

Historical memories have long reach in consumer preferences, study finds

Toronto - Zachary Zhong had heard his grandparents’ stories about the Japanese invasion in 1944 of neighbouring counties in his hometown in China. As the Japanese army continued their advance civilians were killed and injured, while others fled the invaders’ path, some taking shelter in his family’s ancestral home. Those events lodged deep into locals’ memory. Curious about the impact of a re-ignited territorial dispute between Japan and China in 2012, Zhong, now an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management looked at what happened to car sales in the province of Guangxi around ...

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Science18 May 2023

Forgetfulness, even fatal cases, can happen to anyone, study shows

Since 1998, approximately 496 children have died of pediatric vehicular heatstroke in the United States because their caregiver forgot they were in the car, according to recent data from NoHeatStroke.org. Advocacy groups have been lobbying Congress to enact laws to help protect against this particular forgetfulness by requiring certain safety mechanisms be installed into automobiles. Researchers at the University of Notre Dame set out to understand how and why this kind of forgetfulness is even possible. Nathan Rose, the William P. and Hazel ...

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Environment18 May 2023

FSU researchers analyze carbon sequestration in California Current Ecosystem

Florida State University researchers have analyzed the carbon exported from surface waters of the California Current Ecosystem — the first-ever study to quantify the total carbon sequestration for a region of the ocean. The study, published in Nature Communications, serves as a framework for assessing how the processes that sequester carbon might change in a warmer world, while also creating a blueprint for similar budgets in other ocean regions. Understanding the carbon cycle — the sources and reservoirs of carbon — is an important focus of Earth sciences. Many studies have examined the carbon sequestered ...

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Engineering18 May 2023

Smart material prototype challenges Newton’s laws of motion

COLUMBIA, Mo. – For more than 10 years, Guoliang Huang, the Huber and Helen Croft Chair in Engineering at the University of Missouri, has been investigating the unconventional properties of “metamaterials” — an artificial material that exhibits properties not commonly found in nature as defined by Newton’s laws of motion — in his long-term pursuit of designing an ideal metamaterial. Huang’s goal is to help control the “elastic” energy waves traveling through larger structures — such as an aircraft — without light and small “metastructures.” “For ...

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Medicine18 May 2023

MSU researchers uncover the hidden complexity of the Montmorency tart cherry genome

Highlights: Michigan State University researchers sequenced the Montmorency tart cherry genome for the first time. This will have a major impact on all future tart cherry research and breeding efforts worldwide. Michigan is the nation’s leading producer of tart cherries. EAST LANSING, Mich. – Since Michigan is the nation's leading producer of tart cherries, Michigan State University researchers were searching for the genes associated with tart cherry trees that bloom later in the season to meet the needs of a changing climate. They started by comparing DNA sequences from late-blooming ...

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Science18 May 2023

Historical fiction: a guarantee of critical success or a trap?

For 21st century authors, the odds of writing a critical hit are much higher if the novel takes place in the past, not the present or future. Between 2000 and 2020, about three quarters of the novels shortlisted for the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award took place in the historical past. “As a reader, you may not have even noticed the growing infatuation with history in literature because the historical novel has become such a diversely practiced form by such a wide array of writers, it's almost become invisible to us as a genre in itself,” ...

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Medicine18 May 2023

Using 3D printing to improve implantable biomedical devices, touchscreens and more

McGill researchers are exploring a new technique that uses 3D printing and hydrogels. It has the potential not only to improve biomedical implants but could also be useful in the development of human-machine interfaces such as touch screens and neural implants. Biomedical devices like pacemakers or blood pressure sensors that are implanted into the human body need to be fabricated in such a way that they conform and adhere to the body – and then dissolve at the right time. Using 3D printing and hydrogel technology, researchers in McGill University’s Department of Engineering ...

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Science18 May 2023

Amputees feel warmth in their missing hand

“When I touch the stump with my hand, I feel tingling in my missing hand, my phantom hand. But feeling the temperature variation is a different thing, something important... something beautiful,” says Francesca Rossi. Rossi is an amputee from Bologna, Italy. She recently participated in a study to test the effects of temperature feedback directly to the skin on her residual arm. She is one of 17 patients to have felt her phantom, missing hand, change in temperature thanks to new EPFL technology. More importantly, she reports feeling reconnected to her missing hand. “Temperature feedback is a nice ...

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Social Science18 May 2023

In years after El Niño, global economy loses trillions

In the years it strikes, the band of warm ocean water spanning from South America to Asia known as El Niño triggers far-reaching changes in weather that result in devastating floods, crop-killing droughts, plummeting fish populations, and an uptick in tropical diseases. With El Niño projected to return this year, Dartmouth researchers report in the journal Science that the financial toll of the recurring climate pattern can persist for several years after the event itself—and cost trillions in lost income worldwide. The study is among the first to evaluate the long-term costs of El Niño and projects losses that far exceed ...

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Science18 May 2023

Fear of large predators drives smaller predators into areas they perceive as safer, but where risk is greater

Medium-sized carnivorous species – mesopredators like coyotes or bobcats – tend to move into human-dominated areas to avoid predation by larger carnivores, a phenomenon also known as the “human shield” effect. However, according to a new study, doing so places these safety-seeking species at considerably greater risk for mortality due to human activities. The findings describe a “paradox of the lethal human shield” for mesopredators, which could become an increasingly important driver of carnivore community dynamics and ecological trophic structures as species restoration and recovery efforts expand the coexistence of ...

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Medicine18 May 2023

Ancient history of kissing and its role in disease transmission

In a Perspective, Troels Arbøll and Sophie Rasmussen review the ancient history of kissing, particularly the emergence of romantic-sexual kissing in Mesopotamia more than 4000 years ago and its role in the evolution and spread of orally transmitted diseases like herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1). They say the kiss cannot be regarded as a sudden biological trigger causing a spread of specific pathogens, as some research has recently proposed. “Evidence indicates that kissing was a common practice in ancient times, potentially representing a constant influence on the spread of orally transmitted microbes, such as HSV-1,” ...

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Energy18 May 2023

Global analysis reveals widespread decline in lake water storage worldwide

The amount of water stored in more than half of the largest lakes and reservoirs worldwide is declining, according to a new study. This drying is largely attributable to a warming climate and increased human impacts. The findings underscore the importance of accounting for these impacts in future surface water resources management strategies. Although they cover roughly 3% of the global land area, lakes hold 87% of Earth’s liquid surface fresh water. These features also provide essential ecosystem services and are key components in global biogeochemical processes. Many of these benefits are modulated by lake water storage (LWS), which ...

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Environment18 May 2023

Unmanaged global forests have limited carbon sequestration potential

Even if all direct human management of global forests ended immediately, their carbon sequestration potential would not be enough to curb ongoing climate change, according to a new study. The findings suggest that the planet’s current forests have only limited remaining carbon storage potential – even under the most unlikely of scenarios – to substantially mitigate atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) without major reductions in emissions. By capturing and storing carbon in biomass and soil organic matter, forests are integral to the global carbon cycle. As a result, the planet’s forests are often considered a central component in climate ...

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Science18 May 2023

Half of world's largest lakes losing water

More than 50 percent of the largest lakes in the world are losing water, according to a groundbreaking new assessment published today in Science . The key culprits are not surprising: warming climate and unsustainable human consumption. But lead author Fangfang Yao, a CIRES visiting fellow, now a climate fellow at University of Virginia, said the news is not entirely bleak. With this new method of tracking lake water storage trends and the reasons behind them, scientists can give water managers and communities insight into how to better protect critical sources of water and important regional ecosystems. “This is the first comprehensive assessment of trends ...

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Science18 May 2023

Humanity’s earliest recorded kiss occurred in Mesopotamia 4,500 years ago

Recent research has hypothesised that the earliest evidence of human lip kissing originated in a very specific geographical location in South Asia 3,500 years ago, from where it may have spread to other regions, simultaneously accelerating the spread of the herpes simplex virus 1. But according to Dr Troels Pank Arbøll and Dr Sophie Lund Rasmussen, who in a new article in the journal Science draw on a range of written sources from the earliest Mesopotamian societies, kissing was already a well-established ...

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Technology18 May 2023

Wiring up quantum circuits with light

Quantum computers promise to solve challenging tasks in material science and cryptography that will remain out of reach even for the most powerful conventional supercomputers in the future. Yet, this will likely require millions of high-quality qubits due to the required error correction. Progress in superconducting processors advances quickly with a current qubit count in the few hundreds. The advantages of this technology are the fast computing speed and its compatibility with microchip fabrication, but the need for ultra-cold temperatures ultimately confines the processor in size and prevents any physical ...

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Environment18 May 2023

Call for Canada, US to braid Indigenous rights, endangered species laws

Climbing caribou numbers in northeastern British Columbia prove that collaborations between Indigenous and colonial governments can reverse decades-long declines, but focus needs to shift to culturally meaningful recovery targets, a consortium of researchers and community members say in a new paper published this week in Science. UBC Okanagan’s Dr. Clayton Lamb and West Moberly First Nation Chief Roland Willson co-lead the paper, Braiding Indigenous Rights and Endangered Species Law, alongside nine others for the influential journal. “Abundance matters. There are many cases where endangered species laws have prevented extinction, but the warning signs ...

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Science18 May 2023

Rising rates of induced labor need to be reconsidered in the context of the UK maternity services staffing crisis, study suggests

A new study suggests that increasing rates of induction of labour (IOL) of pregnant women and people in the UK, without considering the accompanying, real-world impact on staffing workloads and patient care, may have unintended consequences. The study from City, University of London, the University of Edinburgh and others highlights the limited evidence around the delivery of home-based IOL services, which were seen as an important step to reducing maternity staff workload. It finds large gaps in knowledge on how to deliver home-based ...

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Science18 May 2023

Disentanglement——breaking the activity-selectivity “tradeoff” effect in catalytic conversion

Researchers have reported a strategy to disentangle the activity-selectivity tradeoff for direct conversion of syngas, a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, into desirable ethylene, propylene, and butylene. These hydrocarbons are known as light olefins and are the most-used building blocks for plastics. “Activity and selectivity are two primary indexes of a successful catalyst for chemical reactions. A higher activity means higher efficiency in converting feedstock to products, thereby reducing energy consumption,” said JIAO Feng, an associate professor at the ...

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Science18 May 2023

Perfection: The Enemy of Evolution

DURHAM, N.C. -- Scientists are often trained to seek out the absolute best solution to a given problem. On a chalk board, this might look something like drawing a graph to find a function’s minimum or maximum point. When designing a turbojet engine, it might mean tweaking the rotor blades’ angles a tiny degree to achieve a tenth of a percent increase in efficiency. Adrian Bejan, the J.A. Jones Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Duke University, was busy demonstrating the former for a class full of students ...

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Medicine18 May 2023

From Seattle to space: Science that began at the Allen Institute blasts off to International Space Station

SEATTLE — May 18, 2023 — This Sunday (May 21) at 2:37 p.m. PDT1, astronauts from Axiom Space in partnership with Cedars-Sinai will blast off to the International Space Station carrying cells from the Allen Institute for Cell Science, a division of the Allen Institute. There, Axiom Space astronauts will perform experiments and send real-time data back to researchers at Cedars-Sinai as part of their study on the effects of microgravity on human cells. The experiments are part of the Ax-2 mission, funded by NASA and ...

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Science18 May 2023

Award to lay new ground for information extraction without relying on humans

Considering the millions of research papers and reports from open domains such as biomedicine, agriculture, and manufacturing, it is humanly impossible to keep up with all the findings. Constantly emerging world events present a similar challenge because they are difficult to track and even harder to analyze without looking into thousands of articles. To address the problem of relying on human effort in situations such as these, Lifu Huang, an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and core faculty at the Sanghani Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics, is researching how machine learning can extract information without ...

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Medicine18 May 2023

Children’s Hospital Colorado Electron Microscopy Lab receives prestigious accreditation as Diagnostic Center for Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia (PCD)

Aurora, Colo. (May 18, 2023) – Children’s Hospital Colorado (Children’s Colorado) announces its official Electron Microscopy (EM) accreditation and becomes one of only two sites in the nation certified in the use of electron microscopy to diagnose primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD). This EM accreditation is granted by the PCD Foundation (PCDF), a patient-focused organization dedicated to providing resources for those with PCD, a rare and debilitating lung disease. "Children’s Colorado’s Electron Microscopy Lab has a long history of providing specialized electron microscopic imaging for many disease ...

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