The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has appointed Vasileios Maroulas associate vice chancellor and director of the AI Tennessee Initiative. AI Tennessee was established in 2022 to strengthen UT’s research in AI, expand the number of UT students developing AI skills and competencies, and position the state of Tennessee as a national and global leader in the data-intensive knowledge economy. “I look forward to advancing UT into a leader for AI research, innovation, and education,” said Maroulas. “By harnessing the power of transdisciplinary research, pioneering new learning ...

New chickadee research finds cognitive skills impact lifespan Working ‘smarter’ not harder important to natural selection and survival rates While there is no denying ‘survival of the fittest’ still reigns supreme in the animal kingdom, a new study shows being smartest – or at least smarter – is pretty important, too.   Western University animal behaviour and cognition researcher Carrie Branch and her collaborators at the University of Nevada, Reno and the University of Oklahoma tracked the spatial cognition and ...

Cognitive behavioral therapy, one of the most common treatments for depression, can teach skills for coping with everyday troubles, reinforce healthy behaviors and counter negative thoughts. But can altering thoughts and behaviors lead to lasting changes in the brain? New research led by Stanford Medicine has found that it can — if a therapy is matched with the right patients. In a study of adults with both depression and obesity — a difficult-to-treat combination — cognitive behavioral therapy that focused on problem ...

September 6, 2024 —Researchers at the Terasaki Institute for Biomedical Innovation have been awarded a multi-million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to advance research in organ transplantation and antibody-mediated rejection. This funding will facilitate the development of an innovative multi-organs-on-a-chip platform aimed at transforming our understanding of transplant rejection and immune tolerance. Organ transplantation is widely recognized as the most effective treatment for organ failure. However, the need for lifelong immunosuppressive ...

Typically, electrons are free agents that can move through most metals in any direction. When they encounter an obstacle, the charged particles experience friction and scatter randomly like colliding billiard balls.  But in certain exotic materials, electrons can appear to flow with single-minded purpose. In these materials, electrons may become locked to the material’s edge and flow in one direction, like ants marching single-file along a blanket’s boundary. In this rare “edge state,” electrons can flow without ...

NEWPORT NEWS, VA – When Debaditya Biswas was a high school student in India, his math teacher, Dr. Satyabrata Das, sparked his interest in physics. “Before I joined his class, I was really not sure what I was going to do in life,” said Biswas, a postdoctoral research associate at Virginia Tech. “He revealed the beauty of science to me.” Now, as the 2024 Jefferson Science Associates (JSA) Postdoctoral Prize winner, Biswas hopes to reveal a new method for the U.S. Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility to detect muons. By themselves, muons aren’t actually that difficult for physicists to detect. They are a type ...

As a rule, GPS indicates our location with an accuracy of just a few meters. But we have all experienced situations where the possible error increases to a few hundred meters or the indicated location is simply wrong. One reason for this can be the small number of satellites with line-of-sight contact to the navigation device or unfavorable relative alignment of the satellites. How does GPS work? GPS satellites are equipped with an extremely accurate atomic clock and know their positions at all times. They continually transmit the time and their location using radio waves. A mobile phone ...

Researchers have demonstrated a new multi-functional device that could help advance the scalability of solid-state color centers, enabling them to be used in larger and more complex quantum computers and networks. As efficient photon-spin interfaces, solid-state color centers are promising candidates for qubit nodes — essential units for storing and processing quantum information. Solid-state color centers are point defects that can absorb and emit light at specific wavelengths. To be useful in real-world quantum applications, they must be optically addressable in a fast and controllable manner while also allowing ...

Older adults who are more vulnerable to financial scams may have brain changes linked to a higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a first-of-its-kind study led by researchers at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. Nearly 7 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s disease, the fifth leading cause of death among those 65 and older. The disease will carry an estimated $360 billion in health care costs this year alone, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.  Researchers led by Duke Han, professor ...

In a new study, researchers compared the orientations of nerve fibers in a human brainstem using two advanced imaging techniques: diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI)-based tractography and polarization sensitive optical coherence tomography (PS-OCT). The findings could aid in combining these techniques, which each offer unique advantages, to advance our understanding of the brain’s microstructure and help inform new techniques for early diagnosis of various brain disorders. Isabella Aguilera-Cuenca from ...

With recent advances in neuroimaging, moving from qualitative to quantitative outputs, an understanding is needed of what normal data look like to be able to apply these advances to diagnosis and outcomes prediction in traumatic brain injury (TBI). A new article in the peer-reviewed Journal of Neurotrauma introduces the large Normative Neuroimaging Library (NLL) to the research community. Click here to read the article now. The American College of Radiology and Cohen Veterans Bioscience created a reference ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in scientific research is a top priority at the Department of Energy (DOE), which today announced $68 million in funding for 11 multi-institution projects, comprising 43 awards. The funded projects will develop new ways to create foundation models, which are machine learning or deep learning models that can be used across a wide range of applications because they’re trained on broad data. Foundation models are a key building block of AI. Those models will be used in computational science, to automate workflow in laboratories, to accelerate scientific programming, and much more. The possibilities ...

The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science today announced a new research and development opportunity led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to advance technologies and drive new capabilities for future supercomputers. This industry research program worth $23 million, called New Frontiers, will initiate partnerships with multiple companies to accelerate the R&D of critical technologies with renewed emphasis on energy efficiency for the next generation of post-exascale computing in the 2029 and beyond time frame. “There is a growing consensus that urgent action is needed to address an array of bottlenecks ...

A team led by scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory identified and successfully demonstrated a new method to process a plant-based material called nanocellulose that reduced energy needs by a whopping 21%. The approach was discovered using molecular simulations run on the lab’s supercomputers, followed by pilot testing and analysis.  The method, leveraging a solvent of sodium hydroxide and urea in water, can significantly lower the production cost of nanocellulosic fiber — a strong, lightweight biomaterial ideal as a ...

Older women struggling with urinary incontinence can benefit from regular, low-impact exercise, with yoga as well as stretching and strengthening showing benefits in a new study published Aug. 27 in Annals of Internal Medicine. The research, led by scientists at Stanford Medicine and the University of California, San Francisco, is part of a larger effort to identify low-risk, low-cost ways to treat one of the most common health problems women face as they age. After 12 weeks of a low-impact yoga program, study participants had about 65% fewer episodes of incontinence. Women in a control group doing stretching and strengthening exercises ...

In a comprehensive review of recent genetic and population studies, published in the peer-reviewed medical journal Genomic Psychiatry (Genomic Press, New York), Professors Michael Owen and Michael O'Donovan of Cardiff University's Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics present evidence that challenges conventional wisdom about cognitive deficits in schizophrenia. Their analysis reveals that premorbid cognitive impairment – lower IQ and other cognitive deficits present before the onset of psychosis – is largely explained by non-familial factors rather than by the same inherited genetic variants that ...

As the world transitions to cleaner energy sources, the need for energy-relevant metals and critical minerals has surged dramatically. Driven by the rise of electric vehicles and other green technologies, these essential materials are in high demand across the globe.   Metals, such as lithium, cannot be grown. They must be mined or recycled, making this a top priority for researchers in the mining industry. Traditional methods of mining lithium are expensive and can be harmful to the environment, but researchers at Virginia Tech have found a way to minimize this environment impact. They will optimize and scale up this method with ...

As an innovative concept in materials science and engineering, the inspiration of self-healing materials comes from living organisms that have the innate ability to self-heal. Along with this line, the search for self-healing materials has been generally focused on “soft” materials like polymers and hydrogels. For solid-state metals instead, one may intuitively imagine that any form of self-healing will be much more difficult to achieve. While a few past studies showcased the self-healing behavior in metals that more or less requires the assistance ...

East Hanover, NJ – September 6, 2024 – Employment and labor force participation trends for people with disabilities appear to be stabilizing after several years of growth that reduced the gaps between individuals with and without disabilities, according to today’s National Trends in Disability Employment – semi-monthly update (nTIDE) issued by Kessler Foundation and the University of New Hampshire’s Institute on Disability (UNH-IOD). Over the past three months, both groups have seen declines in employment and labor force participation, reflecting a broader workforce ...

Wiley, one of the world’s largest publishers and a global leader in research and learning, today announced the addition of ten computed CNMR databases totaling over 384,000 records to its KnowItAll NMR Spectral Library collection. With this addition, the KnowItAll NMR collection now provides access to over 1.3 million spectra, making it one of the most comprehensive collections of NMR spectral data available.  “These new databases significantly enhance our ability to support researchers in their quest ...

Montreal, Canada - The "Innovators & Ideas: Research Leader" section of Genomic Psychiatry (ISSN: 2997-2388), published by Genomic Press, New York, features an illuminating Genomic Press Interview with Dr. Gustavo Turecki, a trailblazer in psychiatric research at McGill University. The interview delves into Turecki's pioneering work on depression, suicide prevention, and the molecular underpinnings of mental health, offering valuable insights into cutting-edge research shaping our understanding of these critical issues. Dr. Turecki, who serves as the Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at McGill ...

Researchers have achieved data rates as high as 424Gbit/s across a 53-km turbulent free-space optical link using plasmonic modulators— devices that uses special light waves called surface plasmon polaritons to control and change optical signals. The new research lays the groundwork for high-speed optical communication links that transmit data over open air or space. Free-space-optical communication networks could aid space exploration because they can provide high-speed, high-capacity data transmission with lower latency and less interference than traditional radio frequency communication systems. ...

Mill Valley, CA – September 5, 2024 – The SynGAP Research Fund 501(c)(3) is proud to announce its continued collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania’s (UPenn) Orphan Disease Center (ODC) through the Million Dollar Bike Ride (MDBR) Pilot Grant Program. ODC is accepting proposals for a grant award of $74,851 to further advance critical research in SYNGAP1-Related Disorders (SRD). Instructions for submitting a letter of interest are available here. Applications are due in two weeks by September 20, 2024. Why We Participate in This Project ​​The SynGAP Research ...

The first crystal structure of an alternative DNA shape from the insulin gene has been revealed by a UCL-led research team. DNA is widely accepted to be formed of two strands that wind around one another, known as a double helix, but it is possible for DNA to change shape and structure. The new study, published in Nature Communications, reveals the detail in the structure of a type of DNA called i-motif by crystallising it for the first time. Co-lead author Dr Zoë Waller (UCL School of Pharmacy) ...

Conservation efforts directed towards just 0.7% of the world’s land mass could help protect one third of the world’s threatened and unique tetrapod (four-limbed vertebrate) species, new research by Imperial College London, On the Edge, and ZSL has shown. The study, led by researchers at Imperial College London and published this week in Nature Communications, finds that large gains in conservation are possible by focusing on areas home to exceptional biodiversity and species with high levels of evolutionary distinctiveness and global ...