Putting on your workout clothes and getting to the gym can feel like a slog at first. Eventually, you might get in the habit of going to the gym and readily pop over to your Zumba class or for a run on the treadmill. A new study from social scientists at Caltech now shows how long it takes to form the gym habit: an average of about six months.    The same study also looked at how long it takes health care workers to get in the habit of washing their hands: an average of a few weeks.    “There is no magic number for habit formation,” says Anastasia Buyalskaya (PhD ’21), now an assistant professor of marketing at HEC Paris. Other authors ...

Cai from Argonne’s X-ray Science division recognized for his commitment and advances in beamline science, most notably X-ray diffraction. Physicist Zhonghou Cai is the 2023 recipient of the Gopal K. Shenoy Excellence in Beamline Science Award. He is a beamline scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory. The annual award recognizes active beamline scientists at the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a DOE Office of Science user facility, for significant contributions to research or instrumentation and support of the beamline user community. The APS Users Office, which grants the award, renamed it ...

ABSTRACT: 3431  ORLANDO, Fla. ― A new study led by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center discovered that co-occurring mutations in three tumor suppressor genes – KEAP1, SMARCA4 and CDKN2A – are linked with poor clinical outcomes in patients with KRAS G12C-mutant non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treated with the KRAS G12C inhibitors adagrasib or sotorasib.   The findings were presented today at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2023 and published in Cancer Discovery, a journal of the AACR. This study, which encompasses the largest cohort to date of patients with KRAS G12C-mutant NSCLC treated with ...

New York, NY (April 17, 2023) — Tisch Cancer Center scientists have developed unique models of the deadliest blood cancer, acute myeloid leukemia (AML), creating a transformative resource to study this cancer and eventually its drug response and drug resistance. The models were described in a late-breaking abstract at the annual meeting of the American Association of Cancer Research and simultaneously published in Blood Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. These are the first powerful models that are ...

When a person reads a sentence, two distinct networks in the brain are activated, working together to integrate the meanings of the individual words to obtain more complex, higher-order meaning, according to a study at UTHealth Houston. The study, led by Oscar Woolnough, PhD, postdoctoral research fellow in the Vivian L. Smith Department of Neurosurgery with McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston, and Nitin Tandon, MD, professor and chair ad interim of the department in the medical school, was published ...

AMHERST, Mass. – A team of scientists led by researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has recently made a surprising discovery, with the help of a wind tunnel and a flock of birds. Songbirds, many of which make twice-yearly, non-stop flights of more than 1,000 miles to get from breeding range to wintering range, fuel themselves by burning lots of fat and a surprising amount of the protein making up lean body mass, including muscle, early in the flight. This flips the conventional wisdom ...

New fossils in amber have revealed that beetles fed on the feathers of dinosaurs about 105 million years ago, showing a symbiotic relationship of one-sided or mutual benefit, according to an article published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America today*.  The main amber fragments studied, from the Spanish locality of San Just (Teruel), contain larval moults of small beetle larvae tightly surrounded by portions of downy feathers. The feathers belonged to an unknown theropod dinosaur, either avian (a term referring ...

Vikings occupied Greenland from roughly 985 to 1450, farming and building communities before abandoning their settlements and mysteriously vanishing. Why they disappeared has long been a puzzle, but a new paper from the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences (EPS) determines that one factor – rising sea level – likely played a major role.   “There are many theories as to what exactly happened” to drive the Vikings from their settlements in Greenland, said Marisa J. Borreggine, lead author of the “Sea-Level ...

Results from the S1609 DART clinical trial, which tested an immunotherapy combination of ipilimumab plus nivolumab in 53 cohorts of patients with rare cancers, are being reported for five cohorts of patients who had rare gynecologic cancers.  In three of those five cohorts – the cohorts for clear cell ovarian cancer; small cell ovarian carcinoma, hypercalcemic type; and non-epithelial ovarian cancer – some patients have shown durable responses to the immunotherapy, including several patients whose complete remissions have now lasted more than three years. The findings will be presented in three abstracts at the 2023 ...

Blind or colorblind people can describe colors and use expressions like “green with envy” or “feeling blue.” A hearing-impaired person can also say those same vibrant hues are “loud.” But many linguists and cognitive neuroscientists have assumed that somatosensation—touch, pain, pressure, temperature, and proprioception, or the sense of where your body is oriented in space—is fundamental for understanding metaphors that have to do with tactile sensations. Understanding expressions like “she is having a tough time” or “that class was hard,” it was believed, requires previous experience with those sensations to extend ...

“Our results implicate p21 as a critical regulator of chronic bronchitis and a driver of chronic airway inflammation and lung destruction.” BUFFALO, NY- April 17, 2023 – A new research paper was published on the cover of Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 15, Issue 7, entitled, “p21 facilitates chronic lung inflammation via epithelial and endothelial cells.” Cellular senescence is a stable state of cell cycle arrest that regulates tissue ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Gynecologic surgeons with The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James) are leading an international clinical trial to determine whether minimally invasive surgery robotic surgery is better or worse than open surgery when performing a radical hysterectomy to treat cervical cancer. Although minimally invasive and robotic-assisted surgery techniques have become the standard approach for many surgeries, in gynecologic cancer open surgery – which involves one ...

LA JOLLA, CA—La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) Instructor Estefania Quesada Masachs, M.D., Ph.D., has won the 2023 Young Investigator of the Year Award from the Network for Pancreatic Organ donors with Diabetes (nPOD). This prestigious award recognizes Quesada Masachs' groundbreaking research in type 1 diabetes. Quesada Masachs says she was "happily surprised" to receive the award from nPOD at their 2023 conference. The organization provides pancreatic tissue samples to researchers, opening the door for in-depth research into type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disease where the body's own immune ...

“[...] long-term treatment with rapamycin slows down aging, a major risk factor for cancer [...]” BUFFALO, NY- April 17, 2023 – A new research perspective was published in Oncotarget's Volume 14 on April 14, 2023, entitled, “Cancer prevention with rapamycin.” The mTOR (Target of Rapamycin) pathway is involved in both cancer and aging. Furthermore, common cancers are age-related diseases, and their incidence increases exponentially with age. In his new research perspective, Mikhail V. Blagosklonny, M.D., Ph.D., from Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center discusses rapamycin and other rapalogs and their ...

It epitomizes the Great Plains in spirit and in form: a 2,000-pound tank on hooves, cloaked in shaggy winter-tested coat, capped by horns acting as warning and weapon. Even its scientific name, Bison bison bison, seems to conjure an echo worthy of its majesty. Still, the implacable profile of the Plains bison — the national mammal of the United States and largest on the continent — belies the vulnerability in its history, which saw its legions decimated from tens of millions to just a few hundred in the span of a few colonial centuries. Conservation efforts have pushed its number back to roughly 20,000, and its status from endangered ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Oregon State University researchers have discovered a new class of compounds that contributes to the ashy or smokey flavors in wine made with grapes exposed to wildfire smoke. This development is significant for winemakers who have struggled to combat the impact of smoke on grapes at a time when climate change is leading to an increase in the number and severity of wildfires, the researchers said. “These findings provide new avenues for research to understand and prevent smoke taint in grapes,” said Elizabeth Tomasino, an associate professor of enology ...

The high seas have been colonized by a surprising number of coastal marine invertebrate species, which can now survive and reproduce in the open ocean, contributing strongly to the floating community composition. This finding was published today in Nature Ecology and Evolution by a team of researchers led by the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) and the University of Hawai‘i (UH) at Mānoa.  The researchers found coastal species, representing diverse taxonomic groups and life history traits, in the eastern North Pacific Subtropical Gyre on over 70 percent of the plastic debris ...

UCF Researchers Create Digital Map of Sympathetic Nervous System A team of UCF College of Medicine researchers has created a digital topographical map of the cardiac sympathetic neural network, the region that controls the body’s heart rate and its “fight-or-flight” response. They hope this map will eventually serve as a guide to treat cardiovascular conditions using bioelectronic devices.   The study, led by Dr. Zixi Jack Cheng, a neuro-cardiovascular scientist, was published in the Scientific Reports journal ...

Climate change may be linked to an increase in the emergence of new pandemics, according to a new book published by an internationally recognized College of Medicine microbiologist.  Dr. Salvador Almagro-Moreno has teamed with fellow molecular biologist Dr. Stefan Pukatzki of City University New York – CUNY, to author the book titled Vibro spp. Infections, recently published by Springer Nature and includes the latest scientific research articles in this field from experts worldwide. The book examines the factors associated with ...

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. – April 17, 2023) Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a serious blood disorder affecting millions of people, primarily those of African descent. A mutation in the gene that encodes a subunit of the oxygen-carrying molecule, hemoglobin, causes the disease. Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard showed a precise genome editing approach, prime editing, can change mutated hemoglobin genes back to their normal form in SCD patient cells, which restores ...

Reston, VA—The Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) and 10 other professional societies have issued new appropriate use criteria (AUC) for lymphoscintigraphy in sentinel node mapping and lymphedema/lipedema. The criteria, summarized in the April issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine (JNM), include a list of relevant clinical scenarios, a systematic review of evidence in the literature, and a systematic analysis of available evidence, followed by grading each of the clinical scenarios. Sentinel lymph nodes ...

Renowned physicist, engineer and entrepreneur Eli Yablonovitch will visit Utah State University on April 25 for two lectures about his work in the electrical and computer engineering field. Yablonovitch, who is currently a professor emeritus at the University of California Berkeley, will present lectures on controlling carbon intake as a solution to climate change and on physics and optimization in the engineering world. The lectures will take place on April 25, at 1 pm and 3 pm respectively. An RSVP form can be found on this webpage. All are encouraged to attend. “Having Dr. Yablonovitch travel to speak to us is a great honor and a great opportunity for us ...

17 April 2023 - Galápagos, Ecuador – Scientists have discovered extensive, ancient deep-sea coral reefs within the Galápagos Marine Reserve (GMR) – the first of their kind ever to be documented inside the marine protected area (MPA) since it was established in 1998. The first reef observed was found at 400-600m (1,310-1,970 feet) depth at the summit of a previously unmapped seamount in the central part of the archipelago and supports a breathtaking mix of deep marine life. Cresting the ridge of a submerged volcano, and stretching over several kilometers, the impressive reef structure was first recorded by Dr. Michelle ...

A new discovery by researchers at the University of Warwick could help stop bacteria being contaminated with viruses, reducing disruption and decreasing costs in industry and research. Bacteria are routinely used in biological and biomedical research. They are crucial in food production and emerging industrial biotechnologies, where bacterial ‘factories’ can be used to produce new materials, medicines and chemicals. Industrial biotechnology uses microorganisms as alternatives to traditional ...

A new study evaluated the effect of hybrid-closed loop Control-IQ technology in the pooled data from three randomized controlled trials, comparing Control-IQ to a control group using continuous glucose monitoring in people with type 1 diabetes. The study, which examined subgroup based on baseline characteristics such as race/ethnicity, socio-economic status, pre-study insulin delivery modality, and baseline glycemic control, is published in the peer-reviewed journal Diabetes Technology & Therapeutics (DTT). Click here to read the article now. Roy W. Beck, MD, PhD, from the JAEB ...