New research has found that 4,642 species of vertebrate are threatened by mineral extraction around the world through mining and quarrying, and drilling for oil and gas. Mining activity coincides with the world's most valuable biodiversity hotspots, which contain a hyper-diversity of species and unique habitats found nowhere else on Earth. The biggest risk to species comes from mining for materials fundamental to our transition to clean energy, such as lithium and cobalt – both essential components of solar ...

About The Study: U.S. health care workers are more likely than other workers to carry medical and educational debt, collectively owing more than $150 billion. This study found that medical debt was more prevalent among women, home health and nursing home personnel, uninsured individuals, and those with recent hospitalization. Educational debts disproportionately burdened Black workers and younger workers and those with higher education. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Kathryn E.W. Himmelstein, M.D., M.S.Ed., email khimmelstein@mgb.org. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this ...

About The Study: This cross-sectional study indicates that stringent COVID-19 restrictions, as a group, were associated with substantial decreases in pandemic mortality, with behavior changes plausibly serving as an important explanatory mechanism. These findings do not support the views that COVID-19 restrictions were ineffective. However, not all restrictions were equally effective; some, such as school closings, likely provided minimal benefit while imposing substantial cost.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Christopher J. Ruhm, Ph.D., email ruhm@virginia.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website ...

About The Study: In this survey study of 5,991 participants, presumptive posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was quite prevalent long after the mass violence incident (MVI) among adults in communities that have experienced an MVI, suggesting that MVIs have persistent and pervasive public health impacts on communities, particularly among those with prior exposure to physical or sexual assault and other potentially traumatic events. Focusing exclusively on direct exposure to MVIs is not sufficient. Incorporating these findings into ...

RENO, Nevada — Why do flies buzz around in circles when the air is still? And why does it matter? In a paper published online July 26, 2024 by the scientific journal Current Biology, University of Nevada, Reno Assistant Professor Floris van Breugel and Postdoctoral Researcher S. David Stupski respond to this up-until-now unanswered question. And that answer could hold a key to public safety — specifically, how to better train robotic systems to track chemical leaks. “We don’t currently have robotic systems to track odor or chemical plumes,” van Breugel said. “We don’t know how to efficiently find the ...

Researchers from Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) explore the safety and effectiveness of alemtuzumab in an Asian cohort Tokyo, Japan – Allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) is a commonly used curative therapy for individuals with inborn errors of immunity (IEI). HCT involves introducing stem cells from a compatible donor with the aim of replacing the affected cells in the recipient’s body. Reduced-toxicity conditioning (RTC) is an approach for reducing drug-related toxicities post HCT in patients with IEIs. Alemtuzumab is a humanized anti-CD52 monoclonal antibody that strongly ...

The central principle of the proposed MAC determination method is to connect the batteries within an RBS in parallel to the maximum possible extent, thereby maximizing the output current. To achieve this universally and automatically, the overall process is divided into the 4 steps shown in Fig. 1. First, a directed graph model is established for the subsequent computations. The nodes in the directed graph correspond to the connection points of components in the actual RBS. The edges in the directed graph correspond to the batteries, switches, and external electrical loads in the actual ...

Highlights -Developed a 21-language, fast and high-fidelity neural text-to-speech technology -The developed model can synthesize one second of speech at high speed in only 0.1 seconds using a single CPU core, which is about eight times faster than the conventional methods -The developed model can realize fast synthesis with a latency of 0.5 seconds on a smartphone without network connection -The technology is expected to be introduced into speech applications, such as multilingual speech translation and car navigation Abstract The Universal Communication Research Institute of the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT, President: TOKUDA Hideyuki, ...

East Hanover, NJ – July 26, 2024 – Children with special health care needs (CSHCN) often face significant disruptions in their education due to extended hospitalizations. A recent study published online in Disability and Rehabilitation on July 1, 2024, by a multidisciplinary team of Kessler Foundation and Children Specialized Hospital researchers, highlights critical areas needing attention to ensure smoother school re-entries for CSHCN, ensuring they receive the necessary educational support post-hospitalization. Involving parents, former patients, and rehabilitation ...

Doctors and others who take care of hospitalized patients may want to sit down for this piece of news. A new study suggests that getting at a patient’s eye level when talking with them about their diagnosis or care can really make a difference. Sitting or crouching at a hospitalized patient’s bedside was associated with more trust, satisfaction and even better clinical outcomes than standing, according to the new review of evidence. The study’s authors, from the University of Michigan and VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System, note that most of the studies on this topic varied with their interventions and outcomes, and were found to have high risk of bias. Their ...

More and more studies show that men face risks of cancer from BRCA1 and BRCA2 genetic mutations that are most often associated with breast and ovarian cancers in women.   According to a July 25 JAMA Oncology review article by experts at Fred Hutch Cancer Center and University of Washington, newly developed national screening guidelines offer hope for identifying the cancer risk of BRCA mutations in men through genetic testing and tailored cancer screening. “Not enough men are getting genetic testing to see if they carry a BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene ...

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (07/25/2024) — Engineering researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have demonstrated a state-of-the-art hardware device that could reduce energy consumption for artificial intelligent (AI) computing applications by a factor of at least 1,000. The research is published in npj Unconventional Computing, a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Nature. The researchers have multiple patents on the technology used in the device.  With the growing demand of AI applications, researchers have been looking ...

Houston, Texas, July 26, 2024 – The Texas Heart Institute (THI), a globally renowned cardiovascular health center, and BiVACOR®, a leading clinical-stage medical device company, are pleased to provide an update on the condition of the first patient to receive the BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart (TAH) implant on July 9, as part of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Early Feasibility Study (EFS). On July 17, eight days following the BiVACOR TAH implant, a donor heart became available and was transplanted into the ...

The color palette of the birds you see out your window depend on where you live. If you’re far from the Equator, most birds tend to have drab colors, but the closer you are to the tropics, you’ll probably see more and more colorful feathers. Scientists have long been puzzled about why there are more brilliantly-colored birds in the tropics than in other places, and they’ve also wondered how those brightly-colored birds got there in the first place: that is, if those colorful feathers evolved in the tropics, or if tropical birds have colorful ancestors that came to the region from somewhere else. In a new study published ...

Tokyo, Japan – Ice is far more complicated than most of us realize, with over 20 different varieties known to science, forming under various combinations of pressure and temperature. The kind we use to chill our drinks is known as ice I, and it’s one of the few forms of ice that  exist naturally on Earth. Researchers from Japan have recently discovered another type of ice: ice 0, an unusual form of ice that can seed the formation of ice crystals in supercooled water. The formation of ice near the surface ...

Lack of persistence of CAR T cells is major limiting step in CAR T-cell therapy Made by fusing an immune-stimulatory molecule to a protein from cancer cells, the therapy selectively targets CAR T cells and enhances their functionality and persistence in the body, extending their attack on cancer. The therapy, called CAR-Enhancer (CAR-E), also causes CAR T cells to retain a memory of the cancer, allowing them to mount another attack if cancer recurs BOSTON – Even as they have revolutionized the treatment of certain forms of cancer, CAR T-cell therapies ...

EVANSTON, Ill. --- One of just two vertebrates without a jaw, sea lampreys that are wreaking havoc in Midwestern fisheries are simultaneously helping scientists understand the origins of two important stem cells that drove the evolution of vertebrates. Northwestern University biologists have pinpointed when the gene network that regulates these stem cells may have evolved and gained insights into what might be responsible for lampreys’ missing mandibles. The two cell types — pluripotent blastula cells (or embryonic stem cells) and neural crest cells — are both “pluripotent,” ...

A new study published in Nature Genetics by the Lymphoid Development Group at the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences has reveals that the contribution of cells expressing maternal or paternal X chromosomes can be selectively skewed in different parts of the body. The study leverages human data from the 1000 Genomes Project combined with mouse models of human X chromosome-linked DNA sequence variation to advance our fundamental understanding of development in biologically female individuals who have two X chromosomes.    Until now, it was thought that the usage of maternal and paternal X-chromosomes was similar throughout the body. The ...

Distrust of health experts and credulity towards misinformation can kill. For example, during the Covid-19 crisis, high-profile health experts received death threats while misinformation went viral on social media. And already long before the pandemic, easily preventable but potentially serious diseases had been making a comeback around the world due to vaccine hesitancy – often powered by conspiracy theories. But what feeds this lack in trust in reliable sources of health information? Can it perhaps be mitigated? Those are the subjects of a new study in Frontiers in Medicine by researchers from the US. “Here we show that individuals who ...

It is no mystery that light is essential to human life. Since the discovery of fire, humans have developed various artificial light sources, such as incandescent lamps, gaslights, discharge lamps, and light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The distribution and intensity of artificial lights indoors are important factors that affect our ability to study and work effectively and influence our physical and mental health. Consequently, modern artificial light sources are designed with these psychological elements to achieve the best aesthetics. ...

A recent study from China has reported that Cordyceps sinensis (CS), a traditional Chinese medicinal fungus, can ameliorate idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) in mice by inhibiting mitochondrion-mediated oxidative stress. The research, conducted by a team led by Huan Tang and Jigang Wang from the Institute of Chinese Materia Medica at the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, was published in Wiley's MedComm-Future Medicine. Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is a chronic and progressive lung disease characterized by a decline in lung function, ultimately leading to respiratory failure and a significantly reduced quality of life for patients. With a median ...

A rose by any other name is a rose, but what of a crystal? Osaka Metropolitan University-led researchers have found that single crystals of four anthracene derivatives with different substituents react differently when irradiated with light, perhaps holding clues to how we can use such materials in functional ways. Graduate student Sogo Kataoka, Dr. Daichi Kitagawa, a lecturer, and Professor Seiya Kobatake of the Graduate School of Engineering and colleagues compared the photoreactions of the single crystals when the entire anthracene crystal was irradiated with light. For two ...

Over the past few decades, many parts of the world have experienced record-breaking wildfire events—a trend that is, unfortunately, expected to rise. These extreme events not only result in mass evacuations, but also release greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, pose risks to life, devastate buildings and essential infrastructure, and fundamentally disrupt and detrimentally transform native ecosystems. In response to the increased risk of catastrophic wildfires, many planning and site design practices have sought to protect the trends and status quo of land development. These measures strive to resist and, ...

Using modern techniques, researchers have re-examined Johannes Kepler's half-forgotten sunspot drawings and revealed previously hidden information about the solar cycles before the grand solar minimum. By recreating the conditions of the great astronomer’s observations and applying Spörer's law in the light of modern statistics, an international collaborative group led by Nagoya University in Japan has measured the position of Kepler’s sunspot group, placing it at the tail-end of the solar cycle before the cycle that Thomas Harriot, Galileo Galilei, and other ...

Fukuoka, Japan – Researchers from Kyushu University have identified a potential therapeutic target for the treatment of advanced multiple sclerosis (MS), a potentially disabling condition associated with the central nervous system. In their latest study, conducted using an experimental mouse model of MS, they explored the role of connexin 43 (Cx43), a protein involved in cellular communication and cardiac function, and examined whether targeting this protein with specific blockers could improve ...