Research spotlight: Study identifies a surprising new treatment target for chronic limb threatening ischemia
2025-09-12
Mark W. Feinberg, MD, cardiologist with the Mass General Brigham Heart and Vascular Institute and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, is the senior author of a paper published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, “A smooth muscle cell lncRNA controls angiogenesis in chronic limb-threatening ischemia through miR-143-3p/HHIP signaling.”
Q: What question were you investigating?
What causes poor outcomes in patients with advanced peripheral artery disease who develop a complication called chronic limb threatening ischemia (CLTI), which has a high risk of limb amputation due to the restriction ...
Childhood loneliness and cognitive decline and dementia risk in middle-aged and older adults
2025-09-12
About The Study: In this cohort study, childhood loneliness was associated with cognitive decline and dementia risk in middle and later adulthood, even in the absence of adult loneliness. Early interventions aimed at reducing childhood loneliness may help promote lifelong cognitive health and reducing dementia risk.
Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Xiuhua Guo, PhD, email statguo@ccmu.edu.cn.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.31493)
Editor’s ...
Parental diseases of despair and suicidal events in their children
2025-09-12
About The Study: This cohort study found an association of parental diseases of despair (defined as a suicide attempt, alcohol-related disease, or substance use disorder) with youth suicidal events; this finding may be underlying the increase in adolescent suicidal behavior observed in the U.S. over the past 2 decades. Improved access to care for parents with diseases of despair and systematic screening and referral of their offspring could help to reduce the adolescent suicide rate.
Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, David ...
Acupuncture for chronic low back pain in older adults
2025-09-12
About The Study: The findings of this randomized clinical trial of older adults with chronic low back pain suggest that acupuncture needling provided greater improvements in back pain–related disability at 6 months and at 12 months compared with usual medical care alone. These findings support acupuncture needling as an effective and safe treatment option for older adults with chronic low back pain.
Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Lynn L. DeBar, PhD, MPH, email lynn.debar@kpchr.org.
To ...
Acupuncture treatment improves disabling effects of chronic low back pain in older adults
2025-09-12
According to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), older Americans with chronic low back pain who received acupuncture had greater improvement in physical function and reduced pain than those who received usual medical care only, generally prescribed medications or physical therapy. Chronic low back pain is the leading cause of disability worldwide and affects over one-third of older adults in the United States. Treatment options range from pain-relieving drugs to complementary therapies, including acupuncture. There ...
How interstellar objects similar to 3I/ATLAS could jump-start planet formation around infant stars
2025-09-12
Interstellar objects like 3I/ATLAS that have been captured in planet-forming discs around young stars could become the seeds of giant planets, bypassing a hurdle that theoretical models have previously been unable to explain.
Interstellar objects are asteroid- and comet-like bodies that have been ejected from their home system and now wander through interstellar space, occasionally encountering other star systems. Since 2017 astronomers have detected three interstellar objects passing through our Solar System: 1I/’Oumuamua, 2I/Borisov and most recently 3I/ATLAS, discovered ...
Rented e-bicycles more dangerous than e-scooters in cities
2025-09-12
E-scooters have often been identified as more dangerous than e-bikes, but that picture changes when they are compared on equal terms. A recently published study from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, shows in fact that the crash risk is eight times higher for e-bikes than for e-scooters, calculated based on the trip distance with rental vehicles in cities. This surprising result provides a better basis for cities to make decisions on how much to facilitate different types of micromobility.
E-scooters have ...
Ditches as waterways: Managing ‘ditch-scapes’ to strengthen communities and the environment
2025-09-12
Ditches are all around: along roads, through neighborhoods, across fields and marshes. These human-made waterways are so common that they can be easy to miss. A new literature review published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment calls on the public to pay more attention to this often neglected resource, one that could advance sustainability goals and benefit local communities with modern ditch management strategies.
In the English language, “ditch” has a bad rap. It evokes images of trash or something that ought to be discarded. That negative connotation ...
In-situ molecular passivation enables pure-blue perovskite LEDs via vacuum thermal evaporation
2025-09-12
Researchers report an in-situ passivation strategy for pure-blue perovskite light-emitting diodes (PeLEDs), promising for next-generation displays, fabricated by vacuum thermal evaporation. Co-evaporating a phenanthroline ligand (BUPH1) with perovskite precursors coordinates Pb(II) and suppresses halide-vacancy defects, reducing non-radiative losses and spectral drift. Their work is published in the journal Industrial Chemistry & Materials on August 25.
Metal halide perovskites are rapidly emerging as candidates for the next generation of displays thanks to their narrow emission linewidths, ...
Microscopes can now watch materials go quantum with liquid helium
2025-09-12
Photos
Scientists can now reliably chill specimens near absolute zero for over 10 hours while taking images resolved to the level of individual atoms with an electron microscope.
The new capability comes from a liquid-helium-cooled sample holder designed by a team of scientists and engineers at the University of Michigan and Harvard University, whose work was federally funded by the Department of Energy and National Science Foundation.
Conventional instruments can usually maintain such an extreme temperature, about -423 degrees ...
Who shows up in times of need? High school extracurriculars offer clues
2025-09-12
Are nerds the caring ones?
High school stereotypes suggest that athletes score more popularity points than marching band members, debaters or leaders in the student council, but research from Rutgers finds that so-called “geeky” activities may do more to cultivate compassion in the long run.
“By their very nature, sports encourage competition and division, pitting people against each other,” said Chien-Chung Huang, a professor at the Rutgers School of Social Work and lead author of the study published in Youth & Society.
“There are other afterschool activities that do a far better job nurturing altruism.”
Extracurriculars have long been linked to higher ...
Synthetic magnetic fields steer light on a chip for faster communications
2025-09-12
Electrons in a magnetic field can display striking behaviors, from the formation of discrete energy levels to the quantum Hall effect. These discoveries have shaped our understanding of quantum materials and topological phases of matter. Light, however, is made of neutral particles and does not naturally respond to magnetic fields in the same way. This has limited the ability of researchers to reproduce such effects in optical systems, particularly at the high frequencies used in modern communications.
To address this challenge, researchers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University ...
Hear that? Mizzou researchers are ‘listening’ to molecules in supersonic conditions
2025-09-12
What happens when you hurl molecules faster than sound through a vacuum chamber nearly as cold as space itself? At the University of Missouri, researchers are finding out — and discovering new ways to detect molecules under extreme conditions.
The discovery could one day help chemists unravel the mysteries of astrochemistry, offering new clues about what the universe is made of, how stars and planets form and even where life originated.
In a recent study, Mizzou faculty member Arthur Suits and doctoral student Yanan Liu fired a laser at methane gas molecules moving faster than the speed of sound in a vacuum chamber roughly negative 430 degrees Fahrenheit, close to ...
Mount Sinai researchers find electrical stimulation may help predict recovery path for acute nerve injuries
2025-09-12
Journal: Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research
Title: Is a Response to Intraoperative Electrical Nerve Stimulation Associated with Recovery After Stretch Injury in the Rat Median Nerve?
Authors: Paul J. Cagle, MD, Associate Professor of Orthopedics (Shoulder and Elbow Surgery), Associate Residency Program Director, and Chief of Quality Assurance at Mount Sinai West in the Leni and Peter W. May Department of Orthopedic Surgery
Michael R. Hausman, MD, Dr. Robert K. Lippmann Professor of Orthopaedics, Vice Chair of Orthopedics, and Chief of Hand and Upper Extremity Surgery for the Mount Sinai Health ...
Developmental biologist Maria Jasin wins the 2025 Pearl Meister Greengard Prize
2025-09-12
Maria Jasin, whose fundamental research on repair of damaged DNA in cells has transformed our understanding of cancers linked to inherited gene mutations, has been selected as the 2025 recipient of the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize. Awarded annually by Rockefeller University, the prize is the preeminent international award recognizing outstanding women scientists.
Jasin, an investigator at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences, will be honored at a ceremony on campus on September 16. She will be presented with the award by architect Wendy Evans Joseph, the founder of Studio Joseph who is known ...
Training doctors for the digital age: Canadian study charts new course for health education
2025-09-12
(Toronto, September 12, 2025) As Canada’s health care system rapidly adopts digital technologies, a group of Canadian researchers is calling for a major overhaul of health professional education to ensure consistent, outcomes-based training in digital health and informatics competencies. A new article published in JMIR Medical Education by researchers at the British Columbia Institute of Technology and University of Calgary proposes using the Quintuple Aim as a national guiding framework to prioritize the digital health skills health care workers need now and in the future.
The paper, titled “Shaping the Future of Digital Health Education in Canada: Prioritizing ...
New College of AI, Cyber and Computing launched at UT San Antonio
2025-09-12
(SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS) -- The University of Texas at San Antonio launched the College of AI, Cyber and Computing on Sept. 1 bringing together academic programs in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, computing and data science.
The new college positions UT San Antonio at the forefront of technological education and research and brings the number of academic colleges at UT San Antonio to nine.
Formation of the college began during a multi-phase process in January 2024 with the announcement of a university-wide initiative to elevate the university’s leadership in emerging technologies. Shaped by input across campus and community partners, the effort included a dedicated ...
Collaborative team earns five-year renewal grant from NINDS to continue stroke research
2025-09-12
Stroke research aims to understand the brain’s self-protective and repair mechanisms. Gaining detailed insight into these mechanisms is crucial as such knowledge could lead to newly developed medications and interventions which mimic or engage the brain’s self-protective/repair mechanisms, leading to innovative stroke therapies.
In 2018 the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded a five-year, $2.9 million R01 grant (“Development ...
Vitamin K analogues may help transform the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases
2025-09-12
Neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s disease are characterized by the progressive loss of neurons. The resulting debilitating symptoms, such as loss of memory and cognition, and motor impairment, can significantly degrade patients’ quality of life, confining them to round-the-clock care. While currently used drugs help alleviate symptoms, curative treatments are lacking, thus underscoring the need for novel therapeutic strategies. One such strategy involves the induction of neuronal differentiation, which can replenish lost neurons and ...
Cyclic triaxial tests: Evaluation of liquefaction resistance in chemically treated soils
2025-09-12
Soil liquefaction can be a major threat to the infrastructure and built environments in an earthquake-prone area. This happens due to substantial loss of soil stiffness and strength due to applied stress. Loose, moderately granulated, sandy soil is more prone to soil liquefaction. Recognizing the urgent need to enhance urban resilience in seismic-prone regions, particularly in rapidly urbanizing areas vulnerable to such hazards, scientists are focusing on different mitigation techniques. Soil compaction technique ...
Uniting the light spectrum on a chip
2025-09-12
Focused laser-like light that covers a wide range of frequencies is highly desirable for many scientific studies and for many applications, for instance quality control of manufacturing semiconductor electronic chips. But creating such broadband and coherent light has been difficult to achieve with anything but bulky energy-hungry tabletop devices.
Now, a Caltech team led by Alireza Marandi, a professor of electrical engineering and applied physics at Caltech, has created a tiny device capable of producing an unusually wide range of laser-light ...
Hundreds of new bacteria, and two potential antibiotics, found in soil
2025-09-12
Most bacteria cannot be cultured in the lab—and that’s been bad news for medicine. Many of our frontline antibiotics originated from microbes, yet as antibiotic resistance spreads and drug pipelines run dry, the soil beneath our feet has a vast hidden reservoir of untapped lifesaving compounds.
Now, researchers have developed a way to access this microbial goldmine. Their approach, published in Nature Biotechnology, circumvents the need to grow bacteria in the lab by extracting very large DNA fragments directly from soil to piece together the genomes of previously hidden microbes, and then mines resulting genomes for ...
Smells deceive the brain – are interpreted as taste
2025-09-12
Flavoured drinks without sugar can be perceived as sweet – and now researchers know why. A new study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, published in the journal Nature Communications, reveals that the brain interprets certain aromas as taste.
When we eat or drink, we don’t just experience taste, but rather a ‘flavour’. This taste experience arises from a combination of taste and smell, where aromas from food reach the nose via the oral cavity, known as retronasal odour. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have now shown that the brain integrates these signals earlier than previously thought – already in the insula, ...
New species survival commission fills critical gap in conservation
2025-09-12
A newly-formed group of scientists will be fighting for the survival of species — the smallest ones on the planet.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has launched a species survival commission for microbiology and microbes to serve as a global safeguard for microbial biodiversity and to pursue coordinated conservation action. The new Microbial Conservation Specialist Group marks a first in the history of international conservation and filling a critical gap in ...
New conservation committee led by Applied Microbiology International calls on science community to get on board with microbial conservation
2025-09-12
The team behind a new world-leading conservation committee headed by Applied Microbiology International (AMI) is calling on global scientific and conservation communities to get on board to protect microbial life.
Members of the new IUCN Microbial Conservation Specialist Group (MCSG) have outlined its priorities for its first year and beyond in a paper published in Nature Microbiology.
Earlier this year, global conservation leader, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) officially approved ...
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