Scientists' Hubble Space Telescope observations of the young star, TW Hydrae may signal new planets under construction. In 2017 astronomers reported discovering a shadow sweeping across the face of a vast pancake-shaped gas-and-dust disk surrounding the red dwarf star. The shadow isn't from a planet, but from an inner disk slightly inclined relative to the much larger outer disk – causing it to cast a shadow. One explanation is that an unseen planet's gravity is pulling dust ...

Aston Medical School has been given full approval by the General Medical Council (GMC), meaning they can award degrees to graduating students for the first time this year. The Medical School at Aston University completed the GMC’s rigorous quality assurance process, which began in 2016. The decision, ratified by the GMC’s Council, means Aston Medical School can be added to the list of UK bodies able to award a primary medical qualification. The approval means that from this summer, medical graduates from Aston University will be added to the medical register and will be able to join the UK’s healthcare workforce ...

QIC-DVP, an entity of Qatar Insurance Group, the leading insurance provider in the Qatar and MENA region, has launched E-Motion with Deep Longevity. It will enable the populace to measure their customers' psychological age, improve mental health, and increase longevity from the comfort of their home.   The assessment-based and AI-powered digital application has been developed with Deep Longevity's Psychological Age . The technology aims to reinforce mental resilience and wellbeing.   Psychological age, calculated using a proprietary ...

Researchers often use simulations when designing new algorithms, since testing ideas in the real world can be both costly and risky. But since it’s impossible to capture every detail of a complex system in a simulation, they typically collect a small amount of real data that they replay while simulating the components they want to study. Known as trace-driven simulation (the small pieces of real data are called traces), this method sometimes results in biased outcomes. This means researchers might unknowingly choose an algorithm that is not the best one they evaluated, and which will perform worse on real data than the simulation predicted that it should.  MIT researchers ...

Art can have a positive effect on our mood. But does this also work when we look at paintings on a screen? An international research team involving the University of Vienna, the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen and the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA) in Frankfurt am Main decided to investigate this question. The study was funded by the EU Horizon ART*IS Project. The results have now been published as an open access article in the journal Computers in Human Behavior. 240 study participants viewed an interactive Monet Water ...

Researchers at the Institute of Modern Physics (IMP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and their collaborators recently measured the masses of several key nuclei with high-precision by employing a state-of-the-art storage-ring mass spectrometry technique. Using the new mass data, they investigated X-ray bursts on the surface of a neutron star, thus deepening the understanding of neutron star properties. The study was published in Nature Physics.  Neutron stars are considered to be the densest objects besides black holes. Type-I X-ray bursts, among the brightest stellar ...

(WOODLAND HILLS, CA) – The Terasaki Institute for Biomedical Innovation (TIBI), a non-profit research organization devoted to developing bioengineered systems, devices, and technology for biomedical applications, held a Grand Opening celebration at their newest research facility in Woodland Hills. The event drew almost 100 guests, which included local dignitaries, members of the Terasaki family, TIBI faculty and staff, and members of the building’s design and construction teams. A special Grand Opening program, emceed by KTLA 5 Morning News anchor Frank Buckley, began with certificates of commendation presented ...

An international research team, comprising scientists from DZNE, University Hospital Bonn, the Netherlands, and the US has been awarded a US$ 1.3 million grant by the “Human Frontier Science Program” to investigate brain immune cells and manipulate them via light irradiation. This will involve using gene transcripts (mRNAs) as molecular mediators. From these laboratory studies, the scientists aim to gain new insights into how these cells change their shape in response to hazards and the role they play in neurodegenerative ...

Between approximately 450 BCE and 950 CE, millions of Amerindian people living in today’s Amazonia transformed the originally poor soil through various processes. Over many human generations, soils were enriched with charcoal from their low-intensity fires for cooking and burning refuse, animal bones, broken pottery, compost, and manure. The result is Amazonian dark earth (ADE) or terra preta, exceptionally fertile because rich in nutrients and stable organic matter derived from charcoal, which gives it its black color. Now, scientists from Brazil show that ADE could be a ‘secret weapon’ to boost reforestation – not only in the Amazon, where 18% or ...

AUSTIN, Texas — Job seekers looking to land a role with an altruistic organization may feel too guilty to ask for higher pay, according to a new study from the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. Both for-profit and nonprofit organizations increasingly employ what has been termed “social impact framing” that emphasizes that their work has welfare benefits for society. Although companies might have entirely noble intentions when using social impact framing, a recent study by Texas McCombs Assistant Professor of Management ...

URBANA, Ill. – We know that eating a healthy diet affects body weight, cholesterol levels, and heart health. A new study from the University of Illinois focuses on another component: the role of diet in supporting a healthy gastrointestinal microbiota. The researchers conclude that following the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) promotes a gut microbiota composition that may support overall health. “Currently, there is no definition of a ‘healthy’ microbiome. Understanding how diet may influence the structure of the gut microbiota is important so we can make recommendations on dietary approaches,” says ...

NEWPORT NEWS, VA – The Electron-Ion Collider Center at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (EIC Center at Jefferson Lab) has announced the winners of six new research fellowships. Over the next year, the fellows will work to advance the science program and further the research of the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC). The EIC is a unique physics research facility dedicated to answering fundamental questions about nature’s building blocks. The EIC is slated to be built at Brookhaven Lab in partnership with Jefferson Lab and scientists worldwide. The ...

The Texas Heart Institute and The University of Texas at Austin received a four-year, $2.37 million grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to develop a novel method of managing ventricular arrhythmias, which cause sudden cardiac death. The research initiative is the brainchild of Dr. Elizabeth Cosgriff-Hernandez, Professor of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, an expert in biomaterial scaffold engineering for tissue repair and regeneration and electrophysiology medical device pioneer and clinician ...

Failure to implement active bystander training could thwart NHS attempts to tackle sexual harassment, say researchers at the University of Cambridge. An analysis of data from Freedom of Information (FOI) requests found that fewer than one in five NHS Trusts in England provided active bystander training to address workplace harassment, sexual harassment and other forms of unacceptable behaviour like bullying and racism. It found of those that did – the majority of which were in London – most did not deliver content specific to sexual misconduct and ...

Only one NHS Trust offers its staff training focused on how to intervene when they witness sexual harassment at work, according to new research published in JRSM Open. Dr Sarah Steele of the University of Cambridge and Jesus College, Cambridge, and Dr Ava Robertson, received responses from 199 NHS Trusts to their Freedom of Information request. Of those, 35 Trusts offer their staff Active Bystander Training (ABT) but only one of these has a specific module on sexual harassment. While welcomed by the researchers, they note that even that one module is optional for staff and outsourced to a private provider. No staff have yet completed the module. Of the 163 Trusts ...

Sophia Antipolis, 5 May 2023:  Talking on a mobile for 30 minutes or more per week is linked with a 12% increased risk of high blood pressure compared with less than 30 minutes, according to research published today in European Heart Journal – Digital Health, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).1 “It’s the number of minutes people spend talking on a mobile that matter for heart health, with more minutes meaning greater risk,” said study author Professor Xianhui Qin of Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China. “Years of use or employing a hands-free set-up had ...

Genes make up only a small fraction of the human genome. Between them are wide sequences of DNA that direct cells when, where, and how much each gene should be used. These biological instruction manuals are known as regulatory motifs. If that sounds complex, well, it is. The instructions for gene regulation are written in a complicated code, and scientists have turned to artificial intelligence to crack it. To learn the rules of DNA regulation, they’re using deep neural networks (DNNs), which excel at finding patterns in large datasets. DNNs are at the core of popular ...

Scientists at Flinders University have used sub-surface imaging and aerial surveys to see through floodplains in the Red Lily Lagoon area of West Arnhem Land in Northern Australia. These ground-breaking methods showed how this important landscape in the Northern Territory was altered as sea levels rose about 8,000 years ago. Their discovery shows that the ocean had reached this, now inland region, which has important implications for understanding the archaeological record of Madjedbebe—the oldest archaeological site in Australia. The findings also provide a new way to understand ...

SINGAPORE, 5 May 2023 – Scientists from Singapore have demonstrated the critical role played by a special transporter protein in regulating the brain cells that ensure nerves are protected by coverings called myelin sheaths. The findings, reported by researchers at Duke-NUS Medical School and the National University of Singapore in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, could help to reduce the damaging impacts of ageing on the brain. An insulating membrane encasing nerves, myelin sheaths facilitate the quick and effective conduction of electrical signals throughout the body’s nervous system. When the myelin sheath gets damaged, nerves may lose their ability ...

Results were published on March 29 in Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Research. Researchers used data from previous publications aiming to answer the question of why the Arctic sea ice is responding much more quickly and obviously than the Antarctic sea ice, which has stayed relatively stable according to the long-term studies monitoring the Antarctic region’s sea ice patterns.   “The differences in responses are explained in terms of geographic, climatic and meteorological differences between the two regions. Arctic sea ice is located in the polar area and encircled by land, while sea ice in the Antarctic ...

A study from Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago found that parents with children who were not yet vaccinated against COVID-19 were most likely to vaccinate their child after reading the following hypothetical scenario: You hear from other parents you trust that they have vaccinated their children against COVID-19. Some of them say that they weren’t sure at first about whether the vaccine is safe for kids. But they ended up deciding that it was the best way to fight COVID-19, and the vaccination went fine. ...

Developmental biologists have learned a great deal about how the human digestive tract functions through many years of studies involving fish, frogs, and rodents along with detailed explorations of individual human cells. But nothing quite matches the learning that could be achieved from studying actual human organ systems as they form. Yet for obvious reasons, running experiments on growing human fetuses is both unethical and illegal. Now a study led by researchers at Cincinnati Children’s, published online April 18, 2023, in the journal Development, reports that lab-grown tissues called organoids accurately mimic key development stages of the human intestine. “Achieving ...

Sage has launched a free-to-read collection of research and other resources that explore the Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) region. Categories in the collection include: gender role and oppression governments, laws, and policies information and media mental health, healthcare, and medicine protests, conflicts, and war refugees, displaced, and stateless people Readers can access the Southwest Asia and North Africa microsite free for a limited time. END ...

May 4, 2023, Cleveland: Cleveland Clinic has been designated a Rare Disease Center of Excellence by the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD). The new Cleveland Clinic Center for Rare Diseases is one of 40 U.S. academic medical centers selected to join the first-of-it-kind national network dedicated to diagnosing, treating and researching all rare diseases. The NORD Rare Disease Centers of Excellence program provides a much-needed national infrastructure to help accelerate advancements for rare diseases. The network of medical institutions, led by NORD, is designed to improve rare disease patient care by connecting patients to appropriate specialists regardless of disease ...

Nearly 90 percent of patients with an aggressive subtype of non-Hodgkin lymphoma had their cancer go into remission in a small phase 2 clinical trial testing a treatment aimed at making chemotherapy more effective, according to Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian investigators. The clinical trial, whose results were published May 4 in Blood, included 17 patients with a type of blood cancer called peripheral T-cell lymphoma with T-follicular helper phenotype (PTCL-TFH), also known as angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma. Fifteen of them (88.2 percent) had complete ...