Cancer immunotherapy has transformed the treatment of many types of cancer. Yet, for reasons that remain poorly understood, not all patients get the same benefit from these powerful therapies.  One potent factor in treatment outcome appears to be an individual’s gut microbiota — the trillions of microorganisms that live in the human intestine — according to new research led by investigators at Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The study, done in mice and published May 3 in Nature, pinpoints how gut microbes enhance the body’s response to a common type of immunotherapy known as PD-1 checkpoint ...

Volcanic eruptions are spectacular, violent and dangerous. Large explosive eruptions can even have global impacts. To classify the size of volcanic eruptions, the magma volume and the deposition volume are determined. Volcanologists estimate these values in order to compare the size of different volcanic eruptions or to obtain a measure of the explosiveness of the eruption. However, it is often not possible to determine the values accurately. This makes it difficult to infer the actual volume of magma and to measure the complete extent of such eruptions. In particular, because the deposits of the most violent historical eruptions are partially or completely under water, which makes geological ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — In the face of global warming and other environmental changes, corals in the Atlantic Ocean have declined precipitously in recent years, while corals in the Pacific and Indian Oceans are faring better. By describing several species of symbiotic algae that these corals need to grow, an international team led by Penn State has found that these mutualistic relationships from the Indo-Pacific may be more flexible and ultimately resilient to higher ocean temperatures than those in the Atlantic. Coral reefs are vast geological structures made of calcium carbonate produced by coral animals whose colonies possess dense populations ...

Hiking, cycling, climbing and boating. When we take time off from work or school, we like to go out into nature. The landscape in other words play an important role for our vacations. To promote biodiversity and carbon sequestration there is a focus on planting more trees, especially in upland areas such as Howgill Fells. The Howgill Fells is located in the north-west of England and is known for its soft, rolling and open landscape.  It is a popular area for tourists seeking the outdoors and hill-walking in particular. But how ...

An article published in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering brings good news for coffee buffs: the plastic in used coffee pods can be recycled to make filament for 3D printers, minimizing its environmental impact. The solution was successfully tested by research groups in Brazil at the Federal University of São Carlos (USFCar) and the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), and in the United Kingdom at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU). “We produced new conductive and non-conductive filaments from waste polylactic acid [PLA] from used coffee machine ...

DALLAS, May 3, 2023 — Six local stroke heroes from across the country are being recognized by the American Stroke Association, a division of the American Heart Association, for their resiliency and dedication to rise up against stroke. Approximately 800,000 Americans have a stroke each year,[1] a leading cause of disability in the U.S., and one in four survivors will have another one. The American Stroke Association’s annual Stroke Hero Awards honors stroke survivors, health care professionals and family caregivers. The ...

SAN ANTONIO — May 3, 2023 —Southwest Research Institute is designing innovative hydrogen combustion systems for gas turbines used in power generation. The designs prevent flashback, a common concern in hydrogen-fueled combustion systems wherein the flame from the combustor travels into the nozzle, which can result in damaged equipment. Hydrogen fuel has numerous benefits including the fact that it produces no carbon emissions during the combustion process. However, one of the things that is especially challenging is that it’s highly reactive, which makes it more difficult to work with than natural gas or the liquid fuels ...

Thermoelectric materials, substances that convert temperature difference into electricity, find a multitude of applications involving the conversion of waste heat into useful electrical energy. However, they often need to rely on heavy rare earth elements for efficient thermoelectric conversion. This, unfortunately, makes them expensive and environmentally hazardous. In recent years, conjugated polymer-based material has received attention as an environmentally benign alternative to the conventional rare earth metal-based thermoelectric materials. Owing to their high ...

Researchers at the Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, have now contributed to solving this problem for a specific gene called GCK. The study has just been published in Genome Biology. Figure: GCK gene   Rasmus Hartmann-Petersen, Professor at the Department of Biology, explains: - “The GCK gene, which codes for the enzyme glucokinase, regulates the secretion of insulin in the pancreas. GCK gene variants can therefore cause a form of hereditary diabetes. ...

A new technique designed to allow surgeons to identify and remove residual tumor tissue during breast-conserving surgery showed promising results in a multi-center trial led by investigators from the Mass General Cancer Center, a member of Mass General Brigham. The clinical trial, which was funded in part by Lumicell, Inc., evaluated Lumicell’s investigational optical imaging agent pegulicianine in fluorescence-guided surgery (pFGS). In pFGS, pegulicianine is activated to a fluorescent form at sites of residual tumor, allowing surgeons to identify tumor remaining in the surgical site during breast cancer surgery. Investigators found that ...

New York, NY, 3 May 2023 - Today, Eric and Wendy Schmidt announced the members of the 2023 cohort of Schmidt Science Fellows. The 32 exceptional early career scientists will receive support to develop research projects and the leadership skills necessary to harness interdisciplinary science to tackle some of the world’s most intractable problems. Schmidt Science Fellows is the inaugural program of Schmidt Futures, the philanthropic initiative of Eric and Wendy Schmidt with a mission to find and connect talented people to solve our world’s hardest ...

Researchers from Duke University, University of Notre Dame, and Microsoft published a new Journal of Marketing article that examines using “true normal prices” during a sale as a way to reduce deceptive pricing tricks. The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled “Competition and the Regulation of Fictitious Pricing” and is authored by Richard Staelin, Joel E. Urbany, and Donald Ngwe. Does competition make firms more honest? Over 50 years ago, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) assumed the answer was yes when it stopped enforcing ...

Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), researchers have found for the first time the fingerprints left by the explosion of the first stars in the Universe. They detected three distant gas clouds whose chemical composition matches what we expect from the first stellar explosions. These findings bring us one step closer to understanding the nature of the first stars that formed after the Big Bang. “For the first time ever, we were able to identify the chemical traces of the explosions of the first stars in very distant ...

A new study shows that sleep spindles, brief bursts of brain activity occurring during one phase of sleep and captured by EEG, may regulate anxiety in people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The study shines a light on the role of spindles in alleviating anxiety in PTSD as well as confirms their established role in the transfer of new information to longer-term memory storage. The findings challenge recent work by other researchers that has indicated spindles may heighten intrusive and violent thoughts in people with PTSD. The final draft of the preprint publishes in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging on ...

KANSAS CITY, MO—May 3, 2023—The Stowers Institute for Medical Research announced the hiring of three principal investigators to further expand its team of scientists who seek to answer life’s biggest mysteries through foundational research. Siva Sankari, Ph.D., from Massachusetts Institute for Technology, Neşet Özel, Ph.D., from New York University, and Ameya Mashruwala, Ph.D., from Princeton University, will join the Institute’s current team of 17 principal investigators and staff of 500. The addition of these scientists ...

ROCKVILLE, MD – The Biophysical Society is pleased to announce that Padmini Rangamani of the University of California, San Diego has been named as the new Editor-in-Chief of the The Biophysicsist, the Society’s open access education journal. The journal was developed under the leadership and vision of founding and  current Editor-in-Chief, Sam Safran of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, to highlight and nurture biophysics education and its scholarship and development. “Now, more than ever, is the time for an education journal such as The Biophysicist to steer the ...

VANCOUVER, Wash. – Women researchers received substantially less funding in grant awards than men—an average of about $342,000 compared to men’s $659,000, according to a large meta-analysis of studies on the topic. Women were also less likely to receive second grants to continue their research. In first-time grant applications, proportional numbers of women and men scientists were approved for funding, but for re-applications, 9% fewer women who applied were approved than their male ...

In 2016, Oregon became the first state to adopt and implement an Automatic Voter Registration (AVR) system. Now, twenty-two states, plus Washington D.C., have such systems in place. Early research on the impacts of this innovation has shown an increase in the number of people registered, and greater diversity among the registrants.  Now, a researcher using Oregon voter data has identified an unintended consequence of Automatic Voter Registration: a steep drop in party registration. These results have been published in the journal Electoral Studies ...

PRESS RELEASE: PRINCESS MÁXIMA CENTER FOR PEDIATRIC ONCOLOGY EMBARGO: WEDNESDAY 3 MAY 2023 AT 10:00AM BST (11:00AM CEST) Scientists of the Princess Máxima Center for pediatric oncology and Hubrecht Institute in the Netherlands have revealed new scientific insights into the features of fibrolamellar carcinoma (FLC), a rare type of childhood liver cancer. Their findings, published today in Nature Communications, may help in developing new drug therapies in the future. Mini organs and the ‘molecular scissor’ system CRISPR-Cas9, allowed the researchers to better understand tumor biology and biological ...

Short-terms clinical trials have demonstrated the health benefits of low-carbohydrate diets (LCDs) and low-fat diets (LFDs) for weight loss and heart protection. Now a study published in the Journal of Internal Medicine looks at the effects of these diets on mortality in middle-aged and older adults. In the study of 371,159 individuals aged 50 to 71 years, 165,698 deaths occurred over a median follow-up of 23.5 years. A healthy LFD—characterized by low intake of saturated fat and high intakes of plant protein and high-quality carbohydrates—was related to fewer deaths from all causes, from cardiovascular diseases, and from cancers. In ...

The American mink Neogale vison is an invasive species in Europe introduced for fur farming in the 1920s and later established in the wild after escapes and illegal releases. As a feral species, it threatens native species and biodiversity, and poses a risk for boosting disease circulation, including mink-related strains of COVID-19. New research published in Mammal Review provides information on the presence of the species in Europe over the past 15 years. The study, which was conducted by an international team of scientists, compiled a diverse set of data resources covering 32 nations. The work uncovers a progressive spread of the American mink in most ...

New research published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society found a link between regular use of the internet and a lower risk of dementia. For the study, investigators followed 18,154 dementia-free adults aged 50 to 64.9 years for a median of 7.9 years and a maximum of 17.1 years. During follow-up, 4.68% of participants were diagnosed with dementia. Regular internet usage was associated with approximately half the risk of dementia compared with non-regular usage. This link was found regardless of educational attainment, race-ethnicity, sex, and generation. “Online engagement may help to develop and maintain cognitive reserve, which ...

New research published in Pediatric Investigation provides evidence that face masks reduce the release of exhaled particles when used by school-aged children. For the study, 23 healthy children were asked to perform activities that ranged in intensity (breathe quietly, speak, sing, cough, and sneeze) while wearing no mask, a cloth mask, or a surgical mask. The production of exhaled particles that were 5 μm or smaller, which is the dominant mode of transmission of many respiratory viruses, increased with coughing and sneezing. Face masks—especially surgical face masks—effectively reduced the release of ...

Glucocorticoid therapy is widely used during pregnancies at risk of premature delivery to promote fetal lung maturation. While it is an effective treatment, it can also trigger heart and blood vessel problems. New research published in The FASEB Journal uncovers the mechanisms behind the cardiovascular-related effects of the most commonly used glucocorticoids, Dexamethasone (Dex) and Betamethasone (Beta). When investigators treated chicken embryos with these different glucocorticoids, they found that both caused growth restriction, with Beta being more severe. At the level ...

Cigarette filters are the world’s most common form of litter. Researchers from the University of Gothenburg can now show that the filters leak thousands of toxins and plastic fibres that are toxic to aquatic larvae. The researchers are therefore calling for these filters to be completely banned. On the footpath, at the bus stop, in the park and on the beach. You can hardly avoid seeing cigarette butts in the streetscape. And these butts aren’t just butt-ugly to behold – they’re also really bad for the environment. A research ...