Obesity is a known risk factor for colorectal cancer. Scientists at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) have now shown that this association has probably been significantly underestimated so far. The reason: many people unintentionally lose weight in the years before a colorectal cancer diagnosis. If studies only consider body weight at the time of diagnosis, this obscures the actual relationship between obesity and colorectal cancer risk. In addition, the current study shows that unintentional weight loss may be an early indicator of colorectal ...

Worms might not be depressed, per se. But that doesn’t mean they can’t benefit from antidepressants. In a new study, Northwestern University researchers exposed roundworms (a well-established model organism in biological research) to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), a class of drugs used for treating depression and anxiety. Surprisingly, this treatment improved the quality of aging females’ egg cells. Not only did exposure to SSRIs decrease embryonic death by more than twofold, it also decreased chromosomal abnormalities in surviving offspring by more than twofold. Under the microscope, ...

Experts from Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) have published new guidance to help doctors correctly diagnose hoarding disorder. Hoarding disorder affects around 2% of the population but remains a largely misunderstood mental health condition. It was only added to the International Classification of Diseases in 2019, having previously been classified under Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Published in the British Journal of General Practice, the new guidance was written by Dr Sharon Morein and Dr Sanjiv Ahluwalia of Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) in Cambridge, England, to help health professionals spot the signs of hoarding disorder and intervene. ARU experts have also organised a free ...

As people get older, they aspire to live healthy lives as free as possible from the natural decline of cognitive abilities that occurs with aging. At Baylor College of Medicine, researchers have been studying the biological underpinnings of age-associated cognitive decline and developing nutritional strategies to promote healthy brain aging. They report today in the journal Antioxidants that supplementing GlyNAC – a combination of glycine and N-acetylcysteine as precursors of the natural antioxidant glutathione – improved or reversed age-associated cognitive decline in old mice and improved ...

Three New York University faculty have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences: Moses Chao, a professor at NYU Grossman School of Medicine; Glennys Farrar, a professor in NYU’s Department of Physics; and Subhash Khot, a professor in NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. This year’s election of 120 new members and 23 international members were chosen “in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research,” the academy announced.  Moses Chau, a professor of cell biology, psychiatry, and neuroscience and physiology and part of ...

(WASHINGTON, May 4, 2023) – Numerous studies have shown that people from racial and ethnic minority groups are underrepresented in clinical trials of new medical treatments for multiple myeloma. A study published today in Blood suggests that, for clinical trials of new treatments for multiple myeloma (a type of blood cancer), one reason for this underrepresentation may be that the parameters set to determine who can – and cannot – enroll in trials disproportionately exclude minority patients.  “Our ...

PHILADELPHIA — (MAY 4, 2023) — The p53 gene is one of the most important in the human genome: the only role of the p53 protein that this gene encodes is to sense when a tumor is forming and to kill it. While the gene was discovered more than four decades ago, researchers have so far been unsuccessful at determining exactly how it works. Now, in a recent study published in Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, researchers at The Wistar Institute have uncovered a key mechanism ...

A pilot project for energy self-sufficient schools is now starting in the County of Friesland, Northern Germany, in which school buildings will be equipped with vertical-axis wind turbines. This will be facilitated by a research group led by Professor Uygun from Constructor University. This group is studying and developing vertical wind turbines, which will be produced in its own 3D printer on the campus in Bremen and will be tested in practice within this project. This creates a fully functional test field that provides important data and experience for technology transfer. In the current energy ...

Monash University researchers have discovered a key mechanism in the body’s immune system that helps control the inflammatory response to infection. The discovery could help pave the way for more targeted therapies in a range of inflammatory conditions, such as autoimmunity and neuroinflammatory disease. The innate immune system is the body’s first line of defence against pathogens. Innate immune proteins detect foreign bodies such as bacteria and viruses and respond by mounting a protective inflammatory ...

There’s no question that watermelon is both delicious and nutritious, but new research underscores this nutrient-rich fruit’s contributions to overall diet quality and heart health. A recent study published in Nutrients suggests that watermelon can increase nutrient intake and overall diet quality in both children and adults.1 The study analyzed National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data and found that total diet quality was higher in watermelon consumers as compared to non-consumers. ...

PLYMOUTH MEETING, PA [May 4, 2023] —The National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) has announced the 2023 recipients of awards honoring individuals who made a remarkable difference in improving the lives of people with cancer over the past year. 2023 NCCN Award Recipients: Theresa J. Franco, MSN, RN, Vice President, Cancer Clinical Operations, Nebraska Medicine NCCN Board of Producers Award recipient for exemplary service of NCCN’s mission F. Marc Stewart, MD, Professor, Vice Chair, Department of Hematology and ...

DALLAS, May 4, 2023 — A recent study revealed that, in the United States, Black and Latinx entrepreneurs receive only 2.6% of venture capital investment. [1]  The American Heart Association®, the world’s leading nonprofit organization focused on longer, healthier lives for all, has opened the application window for submissions to the EmPOWERED to Serve Business Accelerator™. The Accelerator program has been established to support local communities, small businesses, social entrepreneurs and innovators who are working to increase health equity and create groundbreaking social change at the zip code level. Now in its seventh year, the Business ...

In Florida alone, thousands of acres of marine seagrass beds have died. Major seagrass die-offs also are occurring around the world. Stressors such as high temperature, hypersalinity and hypoxia or lack of oxygen affect seagrasses’ ability to resist and recover from these stressor-related mortality events or when disturbances lead to seagrass die-off events. Seagrass die-offs also are linked to exposure to sediment-derived hydrogen sulfide, a well-known phytotoxin that accumulates as seagrass ecosystems become more enriched in nutrients. While hydrogen sulfide intrusion into seagrass tissue is considered a leading cause of recurring mortality ...

In 2019, scientists in the joint School of Engineering and School of Life Sciences Laboratory of Protein Design and Immunoengineering (LPDI) led by Bruno Correia developed MaSIF: a machine learning-driven method for scanning millions of protein surfaces within minutes to analyze their structure and functional properties. The researchers’ ultimate goal was to computationally design protein interactions by finding optimal matches between molecules based on their surface chemical and geometric ‘fingerprints’. Four years later, they have achieved ...

Genome editing is used to modify the genes of living organisms to elicit certain traits, such as climate-resilient crops or treating human disease at the genetic level. It has become increasingly popular in agriculture, medicine and basic science research over the past decade, and will continue to be relevant and utilized well into the future. Given this prevalence, researchers at the University of California San Diego have started an outreach program that introduces genome-editing technologies to high school students. Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Alexis Komor, and Ph.D. candidates Mallory ...

DALLAS, May 4, 2023 — Teams of research scientists from three universities will lead an innovative $15 million project to study the biological mechanisms of chronic stress that can increase cardiovascular disease risk. The Strategically Focused Research Network (SFRN) on Biologic Pathways of Chronic Psychosocial Stressors on Cardiovascular Health of the American Heart Association, the world’s leading voluntary organization dedicated to a world of longer, healthier lives, will focus on learning more about how the body responds to chronic stress, as well as how certain interventions may help reduce health risks. Chronic stress is recognized as an independent ...

The study led by Professor Julie Henry from UQ’s School of Psychology looked at why self-directed ageism is common. Cognitive changes make it difficult for older people to challenge internalised ageist beliefs. Image: Adobe. “Older people are regularly exposed to ageism such as negative assumptions about their worth, capacity or level of understanding, as well as jokes about older age,” Professor Henry said. “At the same time, as we grow older, we rely more strongly on prior knowledge and cues from our environment to guide how we feel, think and ...

Every year 18 million people die from cardiovascular disease. Making it the deadliest disease in the world. Currently studies focus mainly on the heart, leaving the influence of vascular disease on these large numbers of deaths often out of sight. Despite vascular disorders being a trustworthy indicator for death from heart disease.  VASCUL-AID, a large European study led by Amsterdam UMC, will therefore focus on using AI to predict the worsening of vascular disease in people with an aortic aneurysm or peripheral ...

Similar to humans, chimpanzees combine vocalizations into larger communicatively meaningful structures. UZH researchers suggest that this ability might be evolutionarily more ancient than previously thought. A key feature of human language is our ability to combine words into larger compositional phrases i.e. where the meaning of the whole is related to the meaning of the parts. Where this ability came from or how it evolved, however, is less clear. Chimpanzees, our closest-living relative, are known to produce a number of different vocalizations to manage their ...

Research Highlights: Using ultrasound guidance, researchers successfully repaired a potentially deadly vascular malformation, called vein of Galen malformation, deep in the brain of a fetus before birth. The malformation, which has massively high blood flow, often leads to heart failure, severe brain injury or possibly death soon after birth. The first in-utero embolization repair was successfully performed on a fetus at 34 weeks and 2 days gestational age. Fetal ultrasound showed an immediate drop in abnormal blood flow through the ...

In a first, a team from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Boston Children’s Hospital successfully treated an aggressive vascular malformation in an infant’s brain before birth, avoiding potentially fatal symptoms after delivery. Collaborating researchers and clinicians from Boston Children’s Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital have prevented a deadly developmental condition by treating an aggressive vascular malformation in an infant’s brain before birth. The case, which is the first-ever, in-utero cerebrovascular surgery in the United States, ...

A new study, published in IOP Publishing’s journal Environmental Research: Health, reveals that Indigenous people in the Amazon Basin are twice as likely to die prematurely from smoke exposure due to wildfires than the broader South American population. Regions in Peru, Bolivia and Brazil are identified as particular hotspots for smoke exposure, with mortality rates rising to as high as 6 times that of the general population.  The results show that smoke from wildfires in South America account for approximately 12,000 premature deaths every year from 2014 to 2019, with ...

PISCATAWAY, NJ—Getting many adolescents and young adults to stop using e-cigarettes may be as simple as doing away with flavored versions of the product, according to new research in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. This study suggests that a large majority of current users may discontinue their use if the product became available in the tobacco version only.  “The restriction of the availability for certain e-cigarette e-liquid flavors has been considered by various regulatory ...

Chelsea Kross, a University of Arkansas alumna in biological sciences, earned a 2023 BioOne Ambassador award for her submission “Not all frogs can make it in the city: Using the landscape for targeted conservation,” which summarized research done while working toward her Ph.D. The award recognizes early career researchers in biological, ecological and environmental sciences who demonstrate creative approaches to science communication. “Communicating complex research is critically important to fostering public understanding and support for the sciences,” said Lauren Kane, president and CEO of BioOne. “The 2023 BioOne ...

East Hanover, NJ. May 3, 2023 – Results of a pilot study funded by Kessler Foundation showed that remote aerobic walking exercise training is a feasible and highly promising method for improving cognitive processing speed impairment in fully ambulatory persons with multiple sclerosis (MS). The findings of this single-blind randomized control trial support the design of a randomized, controlled trial in large sample of persons with MS The study, titled "Feasibility of Remotely Delivered and Supported Aerobic Walking Exercise Training for Cognitive Processing Speed Impairment in Fully Ambulatory Persons with Multiple Sclerosis," (doi: ...