SAN FRANCISCO —The Public Library of Science (PLOS) is pleased to announce an agreement with the University of Padua to facilitate unlimited publishing across all 12 PLOS titles with no fees for researchers. This agreement encompasses PLOS’ three innovative publishing models, ensuring researchers from the University of Padua to benefit from frictionless, fee-free publishing with PLOS. This agreement represents another in the Europe, following agreements in Germany, Sweden, Ireland and the UK (Jisc). “We are excited to expand our footprint ...

Statement Highlights: More than half of people who survive a stroke develop cognitive impairment within the first year after their stroke, and as many as 1 in 3 may develop dementia within 5 years. The high risk of cognitive impairment and dementia after a stroke suggests early screening is essential for determining initial treatment, such as multidisciplinary care, cognitive rehabilitation or increased physical activity. It’s also important to assess stroke survivors for cognitive changes over time to offer appropriate treatment modifications and support for longer-term care. Cognitive impairment after stroke may fluctuate, particularly ...

Different market products give very different results when it comes to liberating the antioxidant lutein from spinach in smoothies. Researchers at Linköping University, Sweden, have examined 14 common dairy and plant-based products and found that only four of these increased lutein liberation. Compared to water, some drinks had a negative effect on the lutein content in spinach smoothies.   Most people know that spinach is good for your health. One substance found in, for instance, spinach and kale is lutein. Several experimental studies have shown that lutein can suppress processes linked to inflammation, and there is now ample research indicating ...

It’s generally accepted we will lose muscle strength and slow down as we age, making it more difficult to perform simple tasks such as getting up, walking and sitting down.   But new Edith Cowan University (ECU) research indicates this could also be a signal for another sinister health concern of ageing: late-life dementia.   To investigate the relationship between muscle function and dementia, the research teams from ECU’s Nutrition & Health Innovation Research Institute and Centre for Precision Health used data from the Perth Longitudinal Study of Ageing in Women to examine more than 1000 women with an average age of 75.   In collaboration with the ...

Does air pollution affect your heart? Acute exposure to air pollution was found to be associated with an increased risk of arrythmia — irregular heartbeat — in a large study of 322 Chinese cities published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) https://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.220929. The common arrhythmia conditions atrial fibrillation and atrial flutter, which can progress to more serious heart disease, affect an estimated 59.7 million people globally. Air pollution is a modifiable risk factor for heart disease, but the evidence linking it with ...

The United States is in the midst of a mental health crisis with rising rates of hospitalization for suicide and self-harm events among children and adolescents. A study, “Characteristics Associated with Serious Self-Harm Events in Children and Adolescents,” set to be published in the June issue of Pediatrics, looked at how best to determine which children are at elevated risk for self-harm. Researchers identified four separate profiles to help medical professionals better assess children at elevated ...

The way our senses adjust while playing high-intensity virtual reality games plays a critical role in understanding why some people experience severe cybersickness and others don’t. Cybersickness is a form of motion sickness that occurs from exposure to immersive VR and augmented reality applications. A new study, led by researchers at the University of Waterloo, found that the subjective visual vertical – a measure of how individuals perceive the orientation of vertical lines – shifted considerably after participants played a high-intensity ...

In the race to make the world more livable for people and nature, progress on land outpaced successes in the seas, raising red flags that wealthier countries’ advantages may be upsetting a balance, a Michigan State University study shows. Progress in oceans actually slowed after the United Nations member states adopted the 17 Sustainable Development Goals in 2015. That action aims to facilitate global partnerships among developed and developing countries in sustainable development. So far, though, a new study in the open-access journal iScience reveals evidence that ...

About The Study: The intervention examined in this randomized clinical trial resulted in improvements in the receipt of preventive care services versus usual care for children insured by Medicaid by incorporating community health workers in a team-based approach to early childhood well-child care. Authors: Tumaini R. Coker, M.D., M.B.A., of Seattle Children’s Research Institute in Seattle, 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/jama.2023.7197) Editor’s ...

About The Study: This case series demonstrated that prostate cancer occurs in transgender women and is not as rare as published case reports might suggest. However, rates were lower than expected based on prior prostate cancer incidence estimates in cisgender male veterans. Authors: Farnoosh Nik-Ahd, M.D., of the University of California, San Francisco, 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/jama.2023.6028) Editor’s Note: Please see the ...

Transgender women keep their prostates even after gender-affirming surgery, but the extent to which they remain at risk of prostate cancer has been unclear. Now a first of its kind study led by UC San Francisco has estimated the risk at about 14 cases per 10,000 people.  The study drew on 22 years of data from the Veterans Affairs Health System. Although the sample size was necessarily small, it is still the largest study of its kind. It publishes Saturday, April 29, 2023 in the Journal ...

At least 3,700 out-of-state mental health providers utilized New Jersey’s COVID-19 Temporary Emergency Reciprocity Licensure program to provide mental health services to more than 30,000 New Jersey patients during the first year of the pandemic, according to a Rutgers study.   The study, published in The Journal of Medical Regulation, surveyed health care practitioners who received a temporary license in New Jersey to examine the impact of the temporary licensure program on access to mental health care.   “The New Jersey program enabled patients with ...

Tokyo, Japan – Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have developed a way of mapping the distribution of carnitine in skeletal muscle cells. Carnitine is a small compound that helps transport fatty acids and reduce metabolic byproducts. They discovered that slow-type muscle fibers contained the most, and that activity promptly led to rises in acetylcarnitine, a product of the immediate response of carnitine contained in the cell. Their technique promises new insights into how muscle cells work. Our muscles require ...

The human body relies heavily on electrical charges. Lightning-like pulses of energy fly through the brain and nerves and most biological processes depend on electrical ions traveling across the membranes of each cell in our body. These electrical signals are possible, in part, because of an imbalance in electrical charges that exists on either side of a cellular membrane. Until recently, researchers believed the membrane was an essential component to creating this imbalance. But that thought was turned on its head when researchers at Stanford University discovered that similar imbalanced electrical ...

Astronomers from McGill University are part of an international team that has discovered 25 new sources of repeating fast radio bursts (FRBs), these explosions in the sky that come from far beyond the Milky Way. This discovery brings the total number of confirmed FRB sources to 50. Based on data gathered by the CHIME/FRB collaboration, the new study, published this week in The Astrophysical Journal, may also bring scientists closer to understanding the origins of these mysterious phenomena. A new way of identifying FRBs Thanks to the radio telescopes such as those at CHIME, which scan the entire northern sky every day, the number of detected FRBs has grown exponentially in recent years. ...

The human body relies heavily on electrical charges. Lightning-like pulses of energy fly through the brain and nerves and most biological processes depend on electrical ions traveling across the membranes of each cell in our body. These electrical signals are possible, in part, because of an imbalance in electrical charges that exists on either side of a cellular membrane. Until recently, researchers believed the membrane was an essential component to creating this imbalance. But that thought was turned on its head when researchers at Stanford University discovered that similar imbalanced electrical charges can exist between microdroplets of water ...

Research led by a team of scientists from the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences puts to bed the heated scientific debate regarding the history of mammal diversification as it relates to the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs. Their work provides a definitive answer to the evolutionary timeline of mammals throughout the last 100 million years. The study, published in Science, is part of a series of articles released by the Zoonomia Project, a consortium of scientists from around the globe that is using the largest mammalian genomic dataset in history to determine the evolutionary history of the human genome in the context of mammalian evolutionary history. ...

WOODS HOLE, Mass. –Twelve accomplished science and health journalists have been awarded a highly competitive fellowship in the Logan Science Journalism Program at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL). Now in its 36th year, the Logan Science Journalism Program provides journalists with immersive, hands-on research training, giving them invaluable insight into the practice of science as well as some of the major news stories of today. The program, which offers a Biomedical course and an Environmental course, will run May 30-June 9 in Woods Hole. Biographies ...

PHILADELPHIA— A new approach to the genetic engineering of cells promises significant improvements in speed, efficiency, and reduction in cellular toxicity compared to current methods. The approach could also power the development of advanced cell therapies for cancers and other diseases, according to a study from researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. In the study, which appeared this week in Nature Biotechnology, researchers found that protein fragments used by some viruses to help them get into cells could ...

“[...] developing targeted therapies that specifically inhibit ATAD3A in cancer cells while sparing normal cells will be a challenging but critical task.” BUFFALO, NY- April 28, 2023 – A new research perspective was published in Oncoscience (Volume 10) on April 4, 2023, entitled, “Mitochondrial regulator ATAD3A: a molecular determinant favoring head and neck cancer development.” In addition to their role in energy metabolism, mitochondria play important roles in other cellular processes, such as apoptosis, calcium signaling and the synthesis of certain biomolecules. Mitochondria have also been ...

The colonization and expansion of plants on land represent a defining landmark for the path of life on Earth. Terrestrial colonization has been attributed to a series of major innovations in plant body plans, anatomy, and biochemistry that transformed global biogeochemical cycles and climates. It is crucial to identify the onset and track the expansion of those earliest land plants. However, the precise timing of land colonization by vascular plants remains controversial due to the sparseness of early land plant megafossils, poor stratigraphic controls ...

Researchers have figured out a way to predict bacteria’s environmental pH preferences from a quick look at their genomes, using machine learning. Led by experts at the University of Colorado Boulder, the new approach promises to help guide ecological restoration efforts, agriculture, and even the development of health-related probiotics. “We know that in any environment, there’s a ton of bacteria with important ecological functions, but their environmental preferences often remain unknown,” said Noah Fierer, a fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental ...

The Zhurong rover has found evidence of water on dune surfaces on modern Mars by providing key observational proof of liquid water at low Martian latitudes, according to a study led by Prof. QIN Xiaoguang from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics (IGG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). The study was published in Science Advances on April 28. Researchers from the National Astronomical Observatories of CAS and the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of CAS were also involved in the study. Previous ...

Vallia Antoniou, an assistant professor of practice in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Texas Tech, has been awarded observing time on the powerful Chandra X-Ray Telescope to explore some of the deepest recesses of the universe. It marks the second major Chandra program led by Antoniou, who is also a research associate with the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Each year, astronomers from around the world follow a rigorously competitive process to receive Chandra time. The telescope was launched aboard the space shuttle Columbia in 1999 and orbits Earth, offering previously unavailable views of deep space at wavelengths that are not accessible from ground telescopes. During ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA — Emerging AI applications, like chatbots that generate natural human language, demand denser, more powerful computer chips. But semiconductor chips are traditionally made with bulk materials, which are boxy 3D structures, so stacking multiple layers of transistors to create denser integrations is very difficult. However, semiconductor transistors made from ultrathin 2D materials, each only about three atoms in thickness, could be stacked up to create more powerful chips. To this end, MIT researchers have now demonstrated a novel technology that can effectively ...