As temperatures across the globe reach record-level highs, urban areas are facing increased heat stress. Cities are generally warmer and dryer than adjacent rural land. But in the Global South, there is an additional complicating factor — urban humid heat. A new study, led by Yale School of the Environment scientists and published in Nature, investigated the combined effect of temperature and humidity on urban heat stress using observational data and an urban climate model calculation. Researchers found that the heat stress burden is dependent on local climate and a humidifying effect can erase the cooling benefits that would come from trees and vegetation. “A widely ...

Artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) technologies are constantly finding new applications across several disciplines. Medicine is no exception, with AI/ML being used for the diagnosis, prognosis, risk assessment, and treatment response assessment of various diseases. In particular, AI/ML models are finding increasing applications in the analysis of medical images. This includes X-ray, computed tomography, and magnetic resonance images. A key requirement for the successful implementation of AI/ML models in ...

As additive manufacturing becomes more commonplace, researchers are exploring new methods to ensure that products are as strong and more sustainable than their traditionally manufactured analogues. At the University of Pittsburgh, engineers have set their sights on using multiple lights and neural networks to improve the finishing process of this complex process.  Xiayun Zhao, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering, received a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for her research in photopolymer additive manufacturing (PAM). ...

Revelations and research over the last few years have shed light on how Instagram may negatively affect its youngest users. The most popular social media platform among 13- to 21-year-olds in America, Instagram was designed to connect people with shared interests. However, recent research has pointed to the use of social media as possibly contributing to a rise in mental health and eating disorders among teenage girls. Researchers at Drexel University and Vanderbilt University are trying to figure out exactly what young users are experiencing on Instagram, in hopes of curtailing the negative trend and getting them the support they need. In ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Darius Adams, professor emeritus in the Oregon State University College of Forestry, is one of three researchers sharing this year’s international Marcus Wallenberg Prize for developing a pair of groundbreaking forest economic models. The annual prize, one of the highest honors in the field of forestry, was announced last week in Sweden and is named for the late Marcus Wallenberg Jr., a banker, industrialist and member of Sweden’s long-influential Wallenberg family. Adams is the second Wallenberg awardee from the College of Forestry in the last three years. In 2020 another OSU professor emeritus, Richard ...

It’s tempting to argue with someone who is misinformed by showing them studies and articles that prove they’re wrong. But new research shows that there’s another, less confrontational, way to get someone to change their mind. A new study in Scientific Reports, led by Dolores Albarracín, a social psychologist who specializes in attitudes and persuasion, and the Alexandra Heyman Nash Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, has found that “bypassing” misinformation is just as effective as debunking it head-on. This ...

New York (April 26, 2023) — Today, the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) announced that it will be honoring Alan Lazaroff, MD, AGSF with its David H. Solomon Memorial Public Service Award, for his passionate advocacy to better align Medicare payment to meet the unique healthcare needs of older adults and to improve care coordination for patients with chronic conditions.   “Dr. Lazaroff has been involved with the work of the American Geriatrics Society for over 25 years,” said AGS President G. Michael Harper, MD, AGSF.  “When the AMA/Specialty Society Relative Value ...

Obesity is a growing epidemic in children and adults. A large national study published in the International Journal of Obesity now finds that preteens carrying excess weight have notable differences in cognitive performance, brain structures, and brain circuitry when compared to preteens with normal body-mass index (BMI). Funded by the National Science Foundation’s Harnessing the Data Revolution initiative, the study involved nearly 5,000 9- to 10-year-olds at 21 sites across the United States. While it only examines the relationship between BMI and the brain and cannot establish causation, there is a significant association between ...

A new analysis suggests that, during the COVID-19 pandemic, US dog and cat owners became closer to their pets, and a complex relationship unfolded between pet ownership, stress, and loneliness. Niwako Ogata and Hsin-Yi Weng of Purdue University, US, and their colleague present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on April 26, 2023. The COVID-19 pandemic provides a unique setting to explore pet-owner relationships and potential links between pet ownership and mental health. Several prior studies have investigated these topics in the context of the ...

The earliest inhabitants of Puerto Rico might have used common burial sites and mortuary practices across many centuries, according to a study published April 26, 2023, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by William J. Pestle of the University of Miami, Florida and colleagues. Puerto Rico was inhabited by people for several thousand years prior to the Ceramic Age, but little is known about these earliest inhabitants due to a paucity of evidence and research, with only 20 ancient individuals reported from this time period. In this study, Pestle and colleagues describe five adult individuals from burials at the ...

Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0281468 Article Title: B.Y.O. Bees: Managing wild bee biodiversity in urban greenspaces Author Countries: USA Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. END ...

Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0283861 Article Title: Characteristics and impact of physical activity interventions during substance use disorder treatment excluding tobacco: A systematic review Author Countries: Canada Funding: F.P. was supported by a Fonds de Recherche du Québec-Santé doctoral fellowship and she received funding from CICC (Centre international de criminologie comparé) for the translation of the article. The two funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. END ...

The non-invasive FLASH system, inspired by lizard skin, electronically stimulates key hunger hormone Nature is the greatest teacher. A bizarre-looking lizard with intimidating spikes covering its body helped a team of investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and New York University, develop an innovative ingestible capsule that can modify ghrelin, a hunger-regulating hormone, in pigs. Their results, published in Science Robotics, showed for the first time that the ingestible electronic fluid-wicking capsule for active stimulation and hormone modulation (FLASH) ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Hormones released by the stomach, such as ghrelin, play a key role in stimulating appetite. These hormones are produced by endocrine cells that are part of the enteric nervous system, which controls hunger, nausea, and feelings of fullness. MIT engineers have now shown that they can stimulate these endocrine cells to produce ghrelin, using an ingestible capsule that delivers an electrical current to the cells. This approach could prove useful for treating diseases that involve nausea or loss of appetite, such as cachexia (loss of body mass that can occur in patients with cancer or other chronic diseases). In ...

The world’s population is aging at an unprecedented rate. Aging can lead to various types of cognitive decline, posing a serious burden to families and society. Therefore, it is crucial to develop effective interventions to promote healthy aging. One promising approach is musical training, which is accessible to the majority of the population. Besides the musically rewarding and aesthetic experience of musical training, it also provides potential benefits to the brain, especially for the elderly. In a study published as a cover story in Science Advances, a research team led by Dr. DU Yi from the Institute ...

Why do some animals regenerate lost tissues after injury while others don’t? Researchers from the lab of Kerstin Bartscherer (Osnabrück University and formerly Hubrecht Institute) and Ashley Seifert (University of Kentucky) studied spiny mice, which have a remarkable regenerative capacity, to answer this question. They compared and modulated the injury responses of these mice and common laboratory mice, that show scarring upon injury. This revealed that ERK signalling is a crucial molecular switch between scarring and regeneration. The results of this study will be published on April 26th in the scientific journal Science Advances and imply that ...

Ikoma, Japan – Cell membranes play a critical role by serving as containment units and separating the inner cellular space from the extracellular environment. Proteins with distinct functional units play a key role in facilitating protein-membrane interactions. For instance, “Bin-Amphiphysin-Rvs” (“BAR”) domain proteins are involved in regulating cell membrane curvature. This physical bending of cell membranes helps cells carry out various biologically important processes such as endocytosis and cell motility. Although BAR proteins drive membrane curvature ...

Philadelphia, April 26, 2023 – Researchers from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and Princeton University have discovered a novel genetic disorder associated with neurodevelopmental differences. The discovery identified the disorder in 21 families from all over the world. The findings were published today in Science Advances. The as-yet unnamed disorder is the result of a series of rare variants in the MAP4K4 gene, which is involved in many signaling pathways, including the RAS pathway ...

Almost one in three adults aged 45 and older who had both TB and COVID-19 died during a pandemic cohort study in NYC between March 2020 and June 2022.  #### Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/globalpublichealth/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgph.0001758 Article Title: Cohort study of the mortality among patients in New York City with tuberculosis and COVID-19, March 2020 to June 2022 Author Countries: USA Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. END ...

Physicists at The Australian National University (ANU) are using nanoparticles to develop new sources of light that will allow us to “peel back the curtain” into the world of extremely small objects – thousands of times smaller than a human hair – with major gains for medical and other technologies.  The findings, published in Science Advances, could have major implications for medical science by offering an affordable and effective solution to analyse tiny objects that are too small for microscopes to see, let alone the human eye. The work could also be beneficial for the semiconductor industry ...

Keeping tree diversity intact in Canada’s many forests over the long term can help increase carbon capture and mitigate climate change, according to a new University of Alberta study.  The study, published in Nature, is the first of its kind to show the sustained benefits of tree diversity on a large spatial scale, in terms of storing carbon and nitrogen in the soil. It reinforces the importance of biodiversity conservation in forests, says Xinli Chen, lead author on the paper and postdoctoral fellow in the Faculty of Agricultural, ...

Andy Weir’s bestselling 2011 book, The Martian, features botanist Mark Watney’s efforts to grow food on Mars after he becomes stranded there. While Watney’s initial efforts focus on growing potatoes, new research presented at the 54th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference by a team of interdisciplinary researchers from the U of A suggests future Martian botanists like Watney may have a better option: growing rice. As outlined in the team’s abstract, Rice Can Grow and Survive in Martian ...

ITHACA, N.Y. -- New research from a multidisciplinary team helps to illuminate the mechanisms behind circadian rhythms, offering new hope for dealing with jet lag, insomnia and other sleep disorders. Using innovative cryo-electron microscopy techniques, the researchers have identified the structure of the circadian rhythm photosensor and its target in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster), one of the major organisms used to study circadian rhythms. The research, “Cryptochrome-Timeless Structure Reveals Circadian Clock Timing ...

The Buck Institute for Research on Aging announces that Ashley Webb, PhD, will join its faculty as an associate professor on August 1, 2023. Webb’s research is focused on the molecular mechanisms underlying stem cells and brain aging.  She joins the Buck from Brown University, where she is currently an associate professor in the Department of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry. Webb uses a combination of mouse models, cell culture approaches and genomics technologies to investigate the epigenetic and transcriptional mechanisms that preserve healthy ...

    Preserving the diversity of forests assures their productivity and potentially increases the accumulation of carbon and nitrogen in the soil, which helps to sustain soil fertility and mitigate global climate change.   That's the main takeaway from a new study that analyzed data from hundreds of plots in Canada's National Forest Inventory to investigate the relationship between tree diversity and changes in soil carbon and nitrogen in natural forests.   Numerous biodiversity-manipulation experiments have collectively suggested that ...