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 ...

Our intuition tells us that it should be impossible to see whether two identical objects have been swapped back and forth, and for all particles observed to date, that has been the case. Until now.  Non-Abelian anyons - the only particles that have been predicted to break this rule - have been sought for their fascinating features and their potential to revolutionize quantum computing by making the operations more robust to noise. Microsoft and others have chosen this approach for their quantum computing effort. But after decades of efforts by researchers in the field, observing non-Abelian anyons and their strange behavior has proven challenging, ...

CHICAGO, May 11, 2023 – Imagine if sending your science experiment 70,000 ft in the air just took painter’s plastic, tape, a dash of charcoal dust, and plenty of sunlight.    Daniel Bowman of Sandia National Laboratories will present his findings using solar-powered hot air balloons to eavesdrop on stratospheric sounds at the upcoming 184th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, running May 8-12 at the Chicago Marriott Downtown Magnificent Mile Hotel. His presentation will take place Thursday, May 11, at 2:50 p.m. Eastern U.S. in the Purdue/Wisconsin ...

Homo species – particularly Homo sapiens­ – were uniquely equipped to adapt to highly diverse environmental conditions and landscape mosaics, according to a new study, which may have enabled our species and that of our closely related ancestors to survive and thrive in highly fluctuating Pleistocene environments. Homo sapiens are the only surviving hominin species today. However, whether this is because our species was uniquely successful at adapting to Pleistocene environments, because we outcompeted other contemporary Homo species through unique physiological or social adaptations, ...

LA JOLLA, CA— Scripps Research chemists have solved a long-standing problem in the field of pharmaceutical chemistry with a relatively simple and controllable method for making benzocyclobutenes (BCBs)—a class of reactive compounds that are highly valued as building blocks for drug molecules, but have been relatively hard to access. The new method, described in a paper in Science on May 12, uses designer ligand molecules with palladium-atom catalysts to break pairs of adjacent methylene-type C-H bonds in relatively cheap and abundant carboxylic acids. Breaking these bonds enables the making ...

Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are the brightest millisecond-duration cosmic explosions in radio bands. Their unknown origin poses challenges for astronomy as well as physics. The Commensal Radio Astronomy FAST Survey (CRAFTS), a key program of the Five-hundred-meter Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), discovered the world's first persistently active repeating FRB, known as FRB 20190520B. Now this FRB has provided clues that may help clarify the origin of FRBs. An international team led by Dr. LI Di from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) carried out a monitoring campaign of FRB 20190520B, using the Parkes telescope in Australia and ...

Commercial fishing employs 1.2 million Americans and generates more than $165 billion annually. Yet warming waters are threatening fish populations and disrupting fisheries around the world—a challenge set to worsen as climate change advances. Despite the importance of sustaining fisheries, the reauthorization of the cornerstone policy protecting them in the United States—the Magnuson-Stevens Act—has been stalled in Congress for a decade. The holdup? Some blame the policy for being too stringent and leading to what they call “underfishing,” while others ...

A new study published in the journal Science by an international team finds that early human species adapted to mosaic landscapes and diverse food resources, which would have increased our ancestor’s resilience to past shifts in climate. Our genus Homo evolved over the past 3 million years – a period of increasing warm/cold climate fluctuations. How early human species have adapted to the intensification of climate extremes, ice ages, and large-scale shifts in landscapes and vegetation remains elusive. ...

Scalloped hammerhead sharks hold their breath to keep their bodies warm during deep dives into cold water where they hunt prey such as deep sea squids. This discovery, published today in Science by University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa researchers, provides important new insights into the physiology and ecology of a species that serves as an important link between the deep and shallow water habitats.  “This was a complete surprise!” said Mark Royer, lead author and researcher with the Shark Research Group at the Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) in the UH Mānoa School of ...

From low-carb to intermittent fasting, surgery to Ozempic—people turn to a seemingly never-ending array of diets, procedures and drugs to lose weight. While it has been long understood that limiting the amount of food eaten can promote healthy aging in a wide range of animals, including humans, a new study from University of Michigan has revealed that the feeling of hunger itself may be enough to slow aging. Previous research has demonstrated that even the taste and smell of food can reverse the beneficial, life-extending effects of diet restriction, even without its consumption. These intriguing findings drove first author Kristy Weaver, Ph.D., principal investigator ...

When people leave their rural lives behind to seek their fortunes in the city or agriculture is no longer profitable, the lands they toiled on are often left unused. A new perspective piece in Science shows that these abandoned lands could be both an opportunity and a threat for biodiversity, and highlights why abandoned lands are critical in the assessment of global restoration and conservation targets. The past 50 years have seen an increased exodus of populations from rural to urban areas. Today, 55% ...

Thanks to data from a magnified, multiply imaged supernova, a team led by University of Minnesota Twin Cities researchers has successfully used a first-of-its-kind technique to measure the expansion rate of the Universe. Their data provide insight into a longstanding debate in the field and could help scientists more accurately determine the Universe’s age and better understand the cosmos. The work is divided into two papers, respectively published in Science, one of the world’s top peer-reviewed academic journals, and The Astrophysical Journal, a peer-reviewed scientific journal of astrophysics and astronomy. In astronomy, there are two precise ...