The yellow crazy ant, or Anoplolepis gracilipes, has the infamous distinction of being among the worst invasive species in the world. However, this is not the reason for which this particular ant is studied by a team of international researchers. What interests them is how the insects reproduce, because males of this ant have long perplexed scientists. "The results of previous genetic analyses of the yellow crazy ant have shown that the males of this species have two copies of each chromosome. This was highly unexpected, as males usually develop from unfertilized eggs in ants, bees, and wasps – and thus should only have one maternal copy of each chromosome," explained Dr. ...

Controversy surrounds the effects of policies to reduce opioid prescriptions on suicide rates. There are concerns that rapid reductions in prescription opioids might provoke increased suicide risk among people who become desparate after they are taken off opioids. According to a new study at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Columbia University Irving Medical Center, however, changes in regional opioid prescribing and regional suicide rates tend to move in the same direction.  This relationship held for rates of opioid prescribing, rates of high-dose prescribing and long-term prescribing, and having multiple opioid prescribers. Until ...

Testing the material used to build models of arteries reveals their suitability for use in medical education and surgical planning. Hokkaido University researchers have analyzed the suitability of a smooth, flexible and transparent material used to make model arteries for use in medical teaching and to plan for surgery on individual patients. Their work is described in the Journal of Vascular and Interventional Radiology. Ever-improving 3D printing technology can create models of blood vessels that are significantly more realistic than those made with more conventional methods, and also much more suitable for surgical ...

Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital developed a novel combination therapy approach for a leukemia subtype harboring rearrangements in the KMT2A gene. The approach overcomes the cancer’s drug resistance, without adding toxicity. The study was published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Bromodomain and extra-terminal domain (BET) inhibitors have been shown to provide therapeutic benefits against many different cancers. However, the mechanisms governing response and resistance to this class of therapies are poorly understood. Scientists at St. Jude conducted CRISPR ...

Alexandria, VA – The American Association for Dental, Oral, and Craniofacial Research (AADOCR) has announced Maryam Baldawi as the 2023 AADOCR Gert Quigley Government Affairs Fellow.  The Gert Quigley Fellowship is designed to familiarize graduate-level students with the federal legislative process in the context of dental, oral, and craniofacial research and the oral health care delivery system. As part of the Fellowship, Baldawi will complete a short work stay at AADOCR headquarters in Alexandria, VA. She will serve a one-year term as a voting member of AADOCR’s Government Affairs Committee and as the government affairs liaison to the AADOCR National Student ...

1. Parathyroidectomy shows no effect on kidney function in older adults with hyperparathyroidism Subanalysis suggests the procedure may preserve kidney function in younger patients if done early Abstract: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M22-2222 URL goes live when the embargo lifts An emulated randomized trial performed using observational data from more than 43,000 adults with primary hyperparathyroidism found that parathyroidectomy had no estimated effect on long-term kidney function in older adults when compared to observation. However, ...

HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), a daily regimen of two medications in a single pill, could prevent many new HIV infections, especially in at-risk populations. For example, research shows PrEP could prevent around 70 percent of new HIV infections in adolescent cisgender sexual minority males (ASMM) and transgender and gender diverse adolescents (TGDA), populations that are disproportionately affected by the disease. However, despite growing awareness of PrEP among ASMM/TGDA, uptake of the treatment is still less than 5 percent. A new study published in the journal Sexuality Research and Social Policy looks ...

Dr. H. Rusty Harris, associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University, has identified a new circuit element known as a meminductor. A circuit element is an electrical component used to help direct and control the flow of electricity through an electrical circuit. The classical three are known as the resistor, capacitor and inductor. Two additional circuit elements, the memristor and the memcapacitor, were only discovered in the past 15 years. These newer circuit elements are known as the mem- versions of their classical counterparts, and their current and voltage properties are dependent ...

WASHINGTON—The Endocrine Society is deeply concerned about a Texas ruling that reverses the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of mifepristone, a drug used to treat Cushing’s syndrome and to end pregnancy safely and effectively. Last week, two conflicting federal court decisions in Texas and Washington state left access to mifepristone unclear for both the treatment of Cushing’s syndrome and for medical abortions. The Texas court ruled to ban mifepristone, taking away the FDA's authority to regulate the safety of medications. The judge paused ...

PITTSBURGH, April 10, 2023 – Adding mint flavor to e-cigarette liquids produces more vapor particles and is associated with worse lung function in those who smoke, report researchers from the University of Pittsburgh in Respiratory Research today. Using a specially designed robotic system that mimics the mechanics of human breathing and vaping behavior, researchers showed that commercially available e-cigarette liquids containing menthol generate a greater number of toxic microparticles compared to menthol-free juice. An accompanying analysis of patient records from a cohort of e-cigarette smokers revealed that menthol vapers took shallower breaths and ...

With the spread of Internet shopping nowadays, purchasing products online has become possible and common. However, in many cases, because users are presented with few photographs of products and cannot actually hold the products, they may be unable to perceive the material of the products. In this study, we proposed view interpolation networks for reproducing material appearances. We implemented U-Net, an existing image transformation network, and a network that used additional information in the middle layer of U-Net. The networks were trained to generate images from the intermediate ...

Rain streaks of different shapes, sizes, and directions obscure image background scenes, resulting in image degradation, including intensity fluctuation, color distortion, or even content alteration. Such degradation impairs the visual quality of an image and leads to undesirable performance of many outdoor computer vision systems that require high-quality images. Therefore, image deraining must be performed, and effective deraining methods should be developed. In this study, we addressed the problem of single-image rain removal. We propose a novel unrolling rain-guided detail recovery network ...

Experts have found that at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020, Americans chose not to become pregnant as they grappled with stay-at-home restrictions, anxiety, and economic hardship. Now, a new study led by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine shows that some states actually experienced steeper decreases in fertility than others. The findings revealed that nine months after the pandemic began, there were 18 fewer births a month per 100,000 women of reproductive age across the U.S. compared with the year ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Over the past few years, the Department of Family Medicine and the Department of Psychiatry in UNC’s School of Medicine have been working together to spearhead the development of a new “enhanced primary care” model to provide better primary care for patients who have severe mental illnesses. A new analysis led by Alex K. Gertner, MD, PhD, psychiatry resident at UNC Hospitals, has added further evidence that the new model is effective. Gertner found that the enhanced primary care model resulted in lower hemoglobin A1c and blood pressure for patients with severe mental illness when compared to other primary care clinics throughout ...

Adoptive cell therapy (ACT) has become a promising immunotherapy tool to help treat advanced melanoma. The therapy, which harnesses immune cells collected from the patient’s own tumors, could provide a new treatment option to cancer patients, potentially bypassing radiation therapies and harsh chemotherapy drugs. For the first time, Northwestern University scientists have discovered it is possible to isolate a tumor’s attack cells non-invasively from blood, rather than from tumors. The finding opens the door for ACT to treat harder-to-reach cancer types and makes it a more viable option ...

Research led by scientists at UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center found that responses to a type of immunotherapy called PD-1 checkpoint blockade in patients with advanced melanoma depended on whether or not they had previously received another immunotherapy – CTLA-4 blockade – as well as other factors. Their findings, based on analysis of seven data sets generated over the past decade, which included results of tumor biopsies from more than 500 patients, are published in Cancer Cell. “In our large set of data, features that have been used to predict response ...

As their plane flew low on its approach to land at the airport on the island of Dominica, researchers from Clemson and Harvard universities looked out the window to see miles of forests with trees that looked like matchsticks. It was nine months after the island in the West Indies had taken a direct hit from Category 5 Hurricane Maria. But when the researchers actually got into the forests and examined the trees more closely, they discovered that while 89% of the trees sustained damage — 76% of which had major damage —only 10% were immediately killed. Many of the trees had resprouted. “These ...

A Roundtable Discussion was recently held to discuss the importance of community voice in developing 21st century public health systems. Expert panelists emphasized the need to redefine measures, foster new ideas, and work to ensure that historically excluded populations are represented in the data collection process. The Roundtable transcript is now published in the peer-reviewed journal Big Data. Click here to read the transcript. The discussion was moderated by Michael Crawford, Associate Dean for Strategy, ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The amount of dissolved oxygen in a river is a matter of life or death for the plants and animals living within it, but this oxygen concentration varies drastically from one river to another, depending on their unique temperature, light and flow. To better understand which factor has the greatest impact on the concentration of dissolved oxygen, researchers at Penn State used a deep learning model to analyze data from hundreds of rivers across the United States.  Oxygen concentration is an important measure of water quality because fish and other aquatic organisms require dissolved oxygen to breathe, according to Wei Zhi, assistant ...

“[...] the study of immunotherapy for treating triple negative breast cancer might still be at its early stages of development but is full of future promise.”  BUFFALO, NY- April 10, 2023 – A new review paper was published in Oncotarget's Volume 14 on March 31, 2023, entitled, “Crosstalk between triple negative breast cancer and microenvironment.” Although many advances have been made in the treatment of breast cancer, for triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) these therapies have not significantly increased overall survival. Tumor microenvironment (TME) plays an essential role to develop and control TNBC progression. ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A research lab at Penn State will equally share a three-year, $2.55 million grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) with three other teams at Carnegie Mellon University and the Adolphe Merkle Institute of the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. The multidisciplinary research collaboration aims to develop a framework for the design and production of soft, self-charging, bio-inspired power sources for applications in space.   Joseph Najem, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Penn State, will lead ...

HOUSTON – (April 10, 2023) – Improving lighting in the operating room could cut the duration of some surgeries by as much as 25%, according to Dr. Munish Gupta, an orthopedic spine surgeon at Washington University in St. Louis. With that in mind, he tasked Rice University engineering students on the OR Lights team — Ellice Gao, Bryn Gerwin, Justin Guilak, Rosemary Lach, Renly Liu and Hemish Thakkar — with building a tunable lighting system that allows surgeons to better illuminate their working ...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – An ideal nanovesicle to fight cancer would have three functionalities: 1) a precision-targeting molecule to preferentially bind it to surface markers on cancer cells, 2) a strongly bound radionuclide signal that would allow a PET scan to locate the vesicles in the body, and 3) the ability to carry and release a drug treatment, such as a chemotherapy, at the cancer tumor. It would also meet two other requirements — having a simple and facile method of manufacture, and being biocompatible and biodegradable in the body. A University of Alabama at Birmingham team has now described a tiny polymersome that — in initial preclinical ...

DALLAS, April 10, 2023 — The American Heart Association sends fans of the two-time Emmy Award winning best drama series “Succession” our heartfelt condolences following the sudden cardiac death that killed off main character, Logan Roy, played by Brian Cox. (SPOILER ALERT) Those who watched last night’s episode on HBO in stunned silence, saw patriarch businessman Logan suffer a cardiac arrest while on a plane as his eldest son, Connor, celebrated his wedding. Logan’s other three children ...

Purdue receives $1 million USDA grants for sustainable agriculture projects WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University has received two grants of $1 million each from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture for five-year projects to enhance sustainable agricultural systems. One grant is part of a $10 million project led by Michigan State University’s Brent Ross to develop more resilient food systems for coping with multiple ...