Montreal — The North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) today released a new report compiling and analyzing data reported by approximately 24,000 industrial facilities in Canada, Mexico and the United States to their respective national pollutant release and transfer registers. The report reveals important gaps in the reporting and tracking of transfers to disposal across the region due to differing reporting requirements, shared responsibilities across agencies and jurisdictions, and the lack of information about the fate of waste pollutants when they are transferred to third parties (such as waste management service providers) or across national ...

Cedars-Sinai Cancer welcomes Karine Sargsyan, MD, formerly director of one of the world’s largest clinical biobanks, as scientific director of its OncoBiobank. Sargsyan is charged with leading biobank development and creating new strategies for the optimal deployment and use of the Cedars-Sinai Cancer Molecular Twin Precision Oncology Platform for both research and clinical practice. She will work collaboratively with Nicholas Tatonetti, PhD, associate director of Computational Oncology, on the ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - In an effort to make textiles more sustainable, a new method allows researchers to break old clothing down chemically and reuse polyester compounds to create fire resistant, anti-bacterial or wrinkle-free coatings that could then be applied to clothes and fabrics. The proof-of-principle study provides hope for unsustainable textile, apparel and footwear industries that together generate 20% of global solid waste. Many so-called recyclers end up illegally dumping textiles as trash in countries in Asia and Africa. “We think that our clothes are recycled or reprocessed, but most ...

Joyful music could be a game changer for virtual reality headaches Listening to music could reduce the dizziness, nausea and headaches virtual reality users might experience after using digital devices, research suggests. Cybersickness – a type of motion sickness from virtual reality experiences such as computer games – significantly reduces when joyful music is part of the immersive experience, the study found. The intensity of the nausea-related symptoms of cybersickness was also found to substantially decrease with both joyful and calming music. Researchers from the University of Edinburgh assessed the effects of music ...

LAWRENCE — Governments and private contractors work together on countless functions, but when something goes wrong, who is to blame? Zach Mohr, associate professor of public affairs & administration at the University of Kansas, is involved in a series of studies to examine how people determine blame and hold those in power accountable. While research has shown deaths in prisons have increased in recent years, there is little public data available about how those deaths occur in specific ...

A University of Missouri School of Medicine researcher examining the circumstances behind pediatric firearm assaults found that most child shooting victims were shot outdoors for unknown reasons and were likely not intentionally targeted. Firearm injuries surpassed motor vehicle accidents as the leading cause of child deaths in 2020. Assault has become the most common cause of firearm injury among American children and adolescents, surpassing firearm suicide and accidental firearm injuries. However, very little research exists examining the circumstances ...

About The Study: Over the last 10 years, the proportion of pediatric emergency department visits for mental health reasons have approximately doubled, including a 5-fold increase in suicide-related visits. These findings underscore an urgent need to improve crisis and emergency mental health service capacity for young people, especially for children experiencing suicidal symptoms.  Authors: Greg Rhee, Ph.D., of the University of Connecticut School of Medicine in Farmington, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this ...

Bottom Line: The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommends screening for latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) in populations at increased risk. Populations at increased risk for LTBI based on increased prevalence of active disease and increased risk of exposure include persons who were born in, or are former residents of, countries with high tuberculosis prevalence and persons who live in, or have lived in, high-risk congregate settings (e.g., homeless shelters or correctional facilities). The precise prevalence rate of LTBI in the U.S. is difficult to determine; however, estimated prevalence is about 5.0%, or up to 13 million persons. ...

WASHINGTON, May 2, 2023 – Cancer cells that initiate metastasis, or the spread of the disease from its primary location, are different from cancer cells that stay in the original tumor. Distinguishing metastasis-initiating cell types can determine the severity of cancer and help medical practitioners decide on a course of treatment. In APL Machine Learning, by AIP Publishing, researchers from Texas Tech University developed a deep learning model to classify cancer cells by type. The tool requires only a simple microscope and a ...

About The Study: This study found that most of the national decrease in racial and ethnic disparities in COVID-19 mortality between the initial and Omicron waves was explained by increased mortality among non-Hispanic white adults and changes in the geographic spread of the pandemic. These findings suggest that despite media reports of a decline in disparities, there is a continued need to prioritize racial health equity in the pandemic response. Authors: Andrew C. Stokes, Ph.D., of the Boston University School of Public Health in Boston, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For ...

States that provide stronger social safety nets have lower socioeconomic disparities in the brain development and mental health of children 9 to 11 years old, according to research supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) at the National Institutes of Health. The disparity in brain structure between children from high- versus low-income households was more than a third lower in states with greater cash assistance than in those offering less, and the disparity in mental health symptoms was reduced by nearly a half. The study, published in Nature Communications, ...

Scientists have developed two new drug candidates for potentially treating addiction and depression, modeled on the pharmacology of a traditional African psychedelic plant medicine called ibogaine. At very low doses, these new compounds were able to blunt symptoms of both conditions in mice. The findings, published on May 2 in Cell, took inspiration from ibogaine’s impact on the serotonin transporter (SERT), which is also the target of SSRI antidepressants like fluoxetine (Prozac). A team of scientists from UCSF, Yale and Duke universities virtually screened 200 million molecular structures to find ones that blocked SERT in the same way ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – Artificial intelligence (AI) can analyze breast mass images from low-cost portable ultrasound machines and accurately identify cancer, according to a study published in Radiology, a journal of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). This could prove useful for triage in low-resource settings. Breast lumps are often found accidentally, during breast self-exam or during a breast exam by a medical professional. Breast cancer screening can find cancers in the breast before the lump can be felt. While cancer screening has been the focus in Western countries, low- and middle-income ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – Incorrect advice by an AI-based decision support system could seriously impair the performance of radiologists at every level of expertise when reading mammograms, according to a new study published in Radiology, a journal of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). Often touted as a “second set of eyes” for radiologists, AI-based mammographic support systems are one of the most promising applications for AI in radiology. As the technology expands, there are concerns that it may make radiologists susceptible to automation bias—the tendency of humans ...

An AI model has been developed to automatically translate Akkadian text written in cuneiform into English. Hundreds of thousands of clay tablets from ancient Mesopotamia, written in cuneiform and dating back as far as 3,400 BCE, have been found by archeologists, far more than could easily be translated by the limited number of experts who can read them. Shai Gordin and colleagues present a new machine learning model that can automatically translate Akkadian cuneiform into English. Two versions of the model were trained. One version translates the Akkadian from representations of the cuneiform signs in Latin ...

A popular explanation for climate denialism is that humans will adopt beliefs that accord with their political orientation, using their cognitive abilities to explain away identity-inconsistent information in a process called “motivated reasoning.” To test this hypothesis, Bence Bago and colleagues challenged volunteers’ ability to think rationally using time pressure and cognitive loads of varying intensity. The team recruited American participants from Lucid, a website that connects academics with online survey participant pools. The authors found that people who had the ability to deliberate free of cognitive load or time ...

SAN ANTONIO – May 2, 2023 - Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) have developed a method to synthesize the highly potent antimalarial drug artemisinin, which could lead to a more cost-effective treatment for malaria. The work, recently featured on the cover of the scientific journal Organic Letters, was supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as well as a grant from the Connecting through Research Partnerships (Connect) program, a joint effort by SwRI and UTSA to enhance scientific collaboration between the two institutions. In 2021, 247 million cases of malaria led to 619,000 deaths worldwide. The most effective ...

The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology sent recommendations to the National Institutes of Health on April 14 to improve working conditions for postdocs. The society recommended that the NIH: Ensure a livable wage, benefits, etc. for postdocs Require that principle investigators help postdocs craft a training plan Require that principal investigators complete mentor training programs Expand programs to create more academic staff scientist positions Collect data on postdoc career outcomes “Many of our members who run labs are struggling to recruit and retain qualified postdocs,” Sarina Neote, public affairs director ...

A multi-lab replication of a 2006 study supports the role of peer sanction in promoting human cooperation. Cooperation is imperative for society to successfully solve complex problems, including climate change. One approach many groups have adopted is a system of peer sanctions for noncooperators. Such a system incurs costs to participants, who must impose the sanctions, but can allow cooperators to feel more secure that their investments in the shared project will be matched by others. A 2006 study suggested that groups with peer sanctions outgrew and outperformed groups without a peer-sanctioning institution. In light ...

In a world that is slowly distancing itself from carbon-based energy, there has been a meteoric rise in the use of lithium-ion batteries as a next-generation energy storage solution. However, this has resulted in another problem - an increase in the amount of lithium battery waste. Lithium-ion batteries degrade slowly over their lifetime, losing anywhere from 12% to 24% of their total capacity over 500 charging and discharging cycles. The electrolyte and other materials inside the battery can also degrade, causing a decrease in capacity over time. The disposal of lithium batteries ...

 WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) today began inviting proposals for new studies and implementation projects through nine funding opportunities. These PCORI Funding Announcements (PFAs) include four offering up to $452 million for comparative clinical effectiveness research (CER) studies comparing health care approaches to help patients and their caregivers make better-informed health choices given their particular circumstances. Additional PFAs offer funding for a range of projects that support and advance patient-centered CER and use of PCORI-funded research results.     “With ...

New York, NY (May 2, 2023)—Applying machine learning models, a type of artificial intelligence (AI), to data collected passively from wearable devices can identify a patient’s degree of resilience and well-being, according to investigators at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. The findings, reported in the May 2nd issue of JAMIA Open, support wearable devices, such as the Apple Watch®, as a way to monitor and assess psychological states remotely without requiring the completion of mental health questionnaires. The ...

Three high school students – Andrea Olsen from Oslo, Norway; Zachary Harpaz from Boca Raton, Florida; and Chris Ren from Shanghai, China – co-authored a paper using a generative artificial intelligence (AI) engine for target discovery from Insilico Medicine (“Insilico”) called PandaOmics to identify new therapeutic targets for glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). GBM is the most aggressive and common malignant brain tumor, accounting for 16% of all primary brain tumors. The findings were published on April 26 in the journal Aging. Olsen, a student at Sevenoaks School in Kent, UK, began interning at Insilico Medicine in 2021, after discovering ...

People often assume that the products they use every day are safe. Now a new study by Silent Spring Institute and University of California, Berkeley exposes how much people come into contact with toxic ingredients in products, used at home and at work, that could harm their health. Findings from the analysis could help state and federal agencies strengthen chemical regulations and guide manufacturers in making safer products. Many common products like shampoos, body lotions, cleaners, mothballs, and paint removers contain toxic volatile organic compounds or VOCs—chemicals that escape as gases, accumulate in indoor air, and cause a variety of health ...

There are no plants, and only very few animals: people rarely come here. The large glaciers in Greenland have long been perceived as ice deserts. Gigantic ice sheets where conditions for life are extremely harsh. But now, it seems, we have been wrong. There is much more life on the glaciers than we thought. Headed by Professor Alexandre Anesio, a group of researchers from the Department of Environmental Science at Aarhus University have discovered that the glaciers are teeming with life. Microbes that have adapted to ...