New research into ancient populations that resided on the Tibetan Plateau has found that dairy pastoralism was being practiced far earlier than previously thought and may have been key to long-term settlement of the region’s extreme environment.  Professor Michael Petraglia, Director of Griffith’s Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, was part of the international research team that set out to understand how prehistoric populations adapted to the vast, agriculturally poor highlands of the Tibetan Plateau.  The research, ...

Diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) is a lethal pediatric brain cancer that often kills within a year of diagnosis. Surgery is almost impossible because of the tumors’ location. Chemotherapy has debilitating side effects. New treatment options are desperately needed. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Professor Adrian Krainer is best known for his groundbreaking research on antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs)—molecules that can control protein levels in cells. His efforts led to Spinraza®, ...

The Tibetan Plateau, known as the “third pole”, or “roof of the world”, is one of the most inhospitable environments on Earth. While positive natural selection at several genomic loci enabled early Tibetans to better adapt to high elevations, obtaining sufficient food from the resource-poor highlands would have remained a challenge.  Now, a new study in the journal Science Advances reveals that dairy was a key component of early human diets on the Tibetan Plateau. The study reports ancient ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed an electronic patch that can be applied to the leaves of plants to monitor crops for different pathogens – such as viral and fungal infections – and stresses such as drought or salinity. In testing, the researchers found the patch was able to detect a viral infection in tomatoes more than a week before growers would be able to detect any visible symptoms of disease. “This is important because the earlier growers can identify plant diseases or fungal infections, the ...

Simulated volcanic eruptions may be blowing up our ability to predict near-term climate, according to a new study published in Science Advances.  The research, led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), finds that the way volcanic eruptions are represented in climate models may be masking the models’ ability to accurately predict variations in sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific that unfold over multiple years to a decade.  These decadal variations in sea surface ...

In coordination with the El Centro Regional Medical Center (ECRMC) Board of Trustees, UC San Diego Health today announced that Pablo Velez, RN, PhD, has been appointed by UC San Diego Health as ECRMC’s chief executive officer effective April 17. Reporting to UC San Diego Health CEO Patty Maysent, Velez will oversee day-to-day operational, clinical and financial management of ECRMC, leading UC San Diego Health’s overall efforts to support the strategic and operational plan that was announced ...

In a large joint project, a total of six research groups from the University of Cologne Cluster of Excellence on Cellular Stress Responses in Age-Associated Diseases (CECAD), the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Aging (MPI) in Cologne and the University of Göttingen have demonstrated the following findings which apply across the animal kingdom: with increasing age, the transcriptional elongation speed of genes increases, whereby the quality of the gene products suffers. With dietary restrictions, ...

Key Points Many federal and local government agencies send out a United States Department of Agriculture survey once a year or less to determine whether households experienced food insecurity in the last 12 months. In a new study, USC researchers found that households are more likely to accurately report food insecurity when surveyed more often and asked about their recent experiences. They also found that the USDA measure may be underreporting the true rate by as much as one-third.  Without ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – Can humans endure long-term living in deep space? The answer is a lukewarm maybe, according to a new theory describing the complexity of maintaining gravity and oxygen, obtaining water, developing agriculture and handling waste far from Earth. Dubbed the Pancosmorio theory – a word coined to mean “all world limit” – it was described in a paper published in Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences. “For humans to sustain themselves and all of their technology, infrastructure and society in space, they need a ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – James P. Allison, PhD, is the recipient of the 25th Herbert and Maxine Block Memorial Lectureship Award for Distinguished Achievement in Cancer. A 2018 Nobel Prize co-recipient in physiology/medicine, Allison serves as the chair of immunology and executive director of the Immunotherapy Platform at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. He is a renowned immunologist whose research led to the discovery of the immune system’s T-cell receptor structure and later a molecule ...

Permanent magnets, the kind found on refrigerators everywhere, exist because their constituent atoms behave as miniature magnets. They align and combine to form the larger magnet in a phenomenon called ferromagnetism. There are some materials where the atomic magnets instead form an alternating pattern, so the material has no net magnetization. Such antiferromagnets have attracted attention for their potential to create faster and more compact magnetic memory devices for computing. Realizing the full potential of antiferromagnetic devices will require sensing their atom-to-atom magnetic patterns, ...

DETROIT (April 12, 2023) – Henry Ford Hospital structural heart interventional cardiologists Pedro Villablanca, M.D., and Brian O’Neill, M.D., are the first in the U.S. to successfully implant the new transcatheter tricuspid valve replacement device LuX-Valve Plus™ for the treatment of patients with symptomatic tricuspid valve disease for whom traditional open-heart surgery is too high of a risk. “These are patients with severe tricuspid regurgitation who have no other options available to them in the U.S., based on the anatomy of their native valve and medical complexities,” ...

Dynamic control of terahertz (THz) waves at-will with an ultracompact device is important for THz technologies in biomedical imaging, telecommunications, detection, and beyond. However, tunable THz devices made of conventional materials are usually bulky, and they tend to have limited modulation depths and functionalities, due to weak interactions between naturally existing materials and THz waves. Metasurfaces – functional materials endowed with unparalleled flexibility to manipulate light at the deep-subwavelength scale – provide ...

Dopamine, a brain chemical long associated with pleasure, motivation and reward-seeking, also appears to play an important role in why exercise and other physical efforts feel “easy” to some people and exhausting to others, according to results of a study of people with Parkinson’s disease led by Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers. Parkinson’s disease is marked by a loss of dopamine-producing cells in the brain over time. The findings, published online April 1 in NPG Parkinson’s Disease, could, the researchers say, eventually lead to more effective ways to help people establish and stick with exercise ...

BOSTON – There were more than 100,000 reported deaths from opioid overdoses in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Methadone treatment remains one of the most reliable means of treating opioid use disorder, with success rates reportedly ranging from 60 to 90 percent for patients who stick with the long-term regimen. Adherence, though, remains a challenge. In a novel randomized clinical trial published in JAMA Network Open, senior author Ted J. Kaptchuk at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center ...

ORLANDO, April 12, 2023 – A University of Central Florida researcher will be using the newly constructed Two-meter Twin Telescope (TTT) in the Canary Islands, Spain, to study metal-rich M-type asteroids. The work can inform the study of asteroids like 16 Psyche, an M-type, or metal, asteroid NASA is launching a mission in October 2023 to visit. The M-type asteroids offer both high concentrations of metals that could be harnessed to make structures in space as well as clues to the formation of ...

As the number of children in need of access to timely evaluation and intervention for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) continues to rise, new research is showing how barriers to diagnoses and treatment can be reduced through an innovative training program first developed at the University of Missouri. ASD can be identified and diagnosed in young children by a well-trained clinician, and early diagnosis is vital to quickly establishing access to evidence-based therapies and interventions. However, long specialty center waitlists, distance, and ...

HOUSTON ― The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Research Highlights showcases the latest breakthroughs in cancer care, research and prevention. These advances are made possible through seamless collaboration between MD Anderson’s world-leading clinicians and scientists, bringing discoveries from the lab to the clinic and back. This special edition features presentations by MD Anderson researchers at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2023. In addition to these studies, forthcoming press releases will feature groundbreaking research on perioperative immunotherapy for operable lung cancer (Abstract CT005), ...

Rutgers geneticists, working with an international team of scientists, have conducted the most comprehensive sequencing yet of the complete DNA sequence of the little skate – which, like its better-known cousin, the stingray, has long been viewed as enigmatic because of its shape. The scientists, writing in Nature, reported that by studying the intricacies of Leucoraja erinacea’s genome, they have gained a far better understanding of how the fish evolved from its ancestor – which possessed a much narrower body – over a period of 300 million years to become a flat, winged bottom-dweller. “We ...

A type of cell usually characterized as the brain’s support system appears to play an important role in obsessive-compulsive disorder-related behaviors, according to new UCLA Health research published April 12 in Nature.  The new clue about the brain mechanisms behind OCD, a disorder that is incompletely understood, came as a surprise to researchers. They originally sought to study how neurons interact with star-shaped “helper” cells known as astrocytes, which are known to provide support and protection to neurons. However, ...

The National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has helped launch a phase 3 randomized clinical trial (NCT05633602) of a two-drug combination to treat patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Called the Pragmatica-Lung Study (or S2302), this is one of the first NCI-supported clinical trials to use a trial design that removes many of the barriers that prevent people from joining clinical trials. This “pragmatic” approach aims to increase accessibility ...

Acylceramides and protein-bound ceramides are vital for the formation of the oral barrier in mice, similar to their role in skin, protecting from infection. The skin is the body’s first line of defense against the environment, particularly against pathogens, chemicals, and allergens. It is now known that a class of biological molecules called acylceramides and their metabolites, protein-bound ceramides, are essential to the formation of this barrier. The outermost tissues of the mouth are closely related to the skin and have similar functions—an oral barrier. However, little ...

Washington, DC—Our planet’s water could have originated from interactions between the hydrogen-rich atmospheres and magma oceans of the planetary embryos that comprised Earth’s formative years, according to new work from Carnegie Science’s Anat Shahar and UCLA’s Edward Young and Hilke Schlichting. Their findings, which could explain the origins of Earth’s signature features, are published in Nature. For decades, what researchers knew about planet formation was based ...

About The Study: In this randomized clinical trial, postoperative follow-up for patients undergoing breast reconstruction and gynecologic oncology surgery using smartphone app–assisted monitoring led to improved quality of recovery and equal satisfaction with care compared with conventional in-person follow-up. Authors: Claire Temple-Oberle, M.D., M.Sc., of the University of Calgary in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamasurg.2023.0616) Editor’s ...

Substance use disorder affects 20 million Americans, and more than 100,000 people died from a drug overdose in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While the medication methadone has the strongest evidence-based effectiveness to prevent relapse, about half of patients drop out of their treatment within one year of initiation. The solution could lie in taking a simple “sugar pill” or placebo along with the methadone, according to a randomized clinical trial led by researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. In a randomized ...