Worcester, Mass. – April 4, 2023 – WPI Researcher Kristen Billiar has been awarded $429,456 from the National Institutes of Health to investigate how stretching and blood flow can inhibit or encourage cardiovascular cells to populate and grow in tissue-engineered heart valves. The three-year project focuses on experimental valves that are not yet used in humans, and the work will expand understanding about how mechanical forces propel cells in the body. “Existing heart valves have drawbacks, ...

Articles Disclosing Conflicts of Interest to Potential Research Participants: Good for Nothing? Inmaculada de Melo-Martín The growing commercialization of science has raised concerns about financial conflicts of interest. Evidence suggests that such conflicts threaten the integrity of research and the well-being of research participants. Trying to minimize these negative effects, federal agencies, academic institutions, and publishers have developed conflict-of-interest policies. Among such policies, recommendations or requirements to disclose financial COIs to potential research participants ...

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has recognized physicist and humanitarian Sekazi Mtingwa for his invaluable work in the field of intrabeam scattering and particle accelerator research as well as his tireless efforts to promote accessibility, diversity, and equity in STEM. Mtingwa’s career and achievements exemplified the theme of this year’s meeting? “Science for Humanity.” Mtingwa has worked for many years in close collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory and other science organizations around the world. According ...

In criminal justice, public belief in redeemability reduces punitiveness and increases support for policy measures like rehabilitation, expungement, and housing and employment opportunities. In a new study, researchers examined the effects of racial attitudes on redeemability—the belief that offenders can change and go on to lead law-abiding lives. Belief in redeemability was high for offenders in general as well as for Black offenders, but White nationalism reduced White people’s beliefs in the redeemability of Black offenders. The study was conducted by Leah C. Butler, incoming assistant professor of criminal justice at the University ...

New research in the field of plant sciences has made significant advances towards understanding the underlying reasons behind why certain crops are better at generating more yield than others.    The study, published in the journal Science Advances, paves the way for how smart plants could be engineered in the future to improve their productivity and yield.   The research - conducted at the Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge, and led by Dr Pallavi Singh, currently at the University of Essex’s School of Life Sciences - focused on photosynthesis, which is one of the most complicated and important processes that plants use to turn light, ...

Strength training practiced with moderate to vigorous intensity two or three times a week is an effective way to mitigate arterial hypertension (high blood pressure), according to a Brazilian study described in an article published in the journal Scientific Reports. The mechanisms behind the lowering of blood pressure by aerobic exercise are well studied, but little research has been done on the effects of strength exercise on hypertension along similar lines to this review conducted by researchers at São Paulo State University (UNESP). Led by Giovana Rampazzo Teixeira, a professor in UNESP’s ...

The University of Chicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center has been named the newest member institution of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN), the not-for-profit alliance of leading cancer centers announced today. With the addition, there are now 33 academic centers across the United States contributing multidisciplinary subject matter experts to 61 different panels determining the latest evidence-based expert consensus recommendations for risk assessment, prevention, evaluation and ...

DARIEN, IL – The Count on Sleep partnership, a collaboration between several professional and patient-focused organizations, has released a national indicator report for obstructive sleep apnea through a grant awarded to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. The report provides an in-depth analysis of the symptoms, risk factors, prevalence, and burden of obstructive sleep apnea and serves as a resource for both the public and the health care communities on the importance of diagnosis and long-term treatment. “Through ...

An innovative app from Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago aims to increase earlier recognition of abuse in babies and children under 4 years of age who have bruises, with the hope of decreasing the incidence of severe injury and death from child abuse in this age group. The hospital launched the app in April, which coincides with National Child Abuse Prevention month. Bruising caused by physical abuse is the most common injury to be overlooked or misdiagnosed as accidental before an abuse-related fatality or ...

Memphis, Tennessee, April 4, 2023 – St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital has named Greg Armstrong, M.D., MSCE, the new chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Cancer Control, the department that has established the institution as a world leader in the study of childhood cancer survivorship.    A physician-scientist, Armstrong is the principal investigator of the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study (CCSS), a multi-institutional cohort and multidisciplinary ...

About The Study: This study demonstrated that same-sex lesbian couples undergoing assisted reproductive technology (ART) had more favorable or similar birth outcomes to heterosexual couples who conceived naturally or underwent ART to conceive, suggesting that infertility-related factors rather than reproductive treatments contribute to higher rates of adverse birth outcomes in ART pregnancies.  Authors: Alice Goisis, Ph.D., of University College London, 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/jama.2023.1345) Editor’s ...

About The Study: Prenatal telehealth visits increased substantially during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. The highest percentage of pregnancies with telehealth was observed in April 2020. Deliveries in November 2020 had the highest telehealth visit rates during the 40-week pregnancy. Authors: Hari Eswaran, Ph.D., of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, 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/jamanetworkopen.2023.6630) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional ...

About The Study: The findings of this study of 12,000 older adults suggest that more social, cultural, and community engagement (SCCE) was associated with more dental and outpatient care utilization and reduced inpatient and community health care utilization. SCCE might be associated with shaping beneficial early and preventive health-seeking behaviors, facilitating health care decentralization and alleviating financial burden by optimizing health care utilization. Authors: Daisy Fancourt, Ph.D., of University College London in London, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our ...

WASHINGTON — Submissions are now being accepted for the 2023 Eric and Wendy Schmidt Awards for Excellence in Science Communications, given by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in partnership with Schmidt Futures. This application cycle marks the second year of the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Awards for Excellence in Science Communications which honor top science communicators, journalists, and research scientists who have developed creative, original work to communicate issues and advances in science, engineering, and/or medicine ...

Lifestyle behaviors such as eating well and exercising can be significant factors in one’s overall health. But the risk of developing cancer is predominantly at the whim of an individual’s genetics.  Our bodies are constantly making copies of our genes to produce new cells. However, there are occasional mistakes in those copies, a phenomenon geneticists call mutation. In some cases, these mistakes can alter proteins, fuse genes and change how much a gene gets copied, ultimately impacting a person’s risk of developing cancer. Scientists can better understand the impact of mutations by developing predictive models for tumor activity. Christopher Plaisier, ...

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have been gaining attention as promising carbon-neutral porous materials, thanks to their high performance in gas storage, separation, and conversion. The geometric building blocks of MOFs, metal clusters and organic linkers, allow chemists to predict and synthesize new structures like assembling LEGO®. However, finding new metal building blocks is still a daunting challenge due to the complex nature of metal ions in synthesis. A research team, led by Professor Wonyoung Choe at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), South Korea, was inspired by the molecular metal clusters previously synthesized before ...

Chicago, April 4, 2023 — JAMA today announces the appointment of Atul Butte, M.D., Ph.D., to its editorial board. An international leader in biomedical informatics, artificial intelligence, and data analytics for health care, Dr. Butte is the Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg Distinguished Professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and inaugural Director of the Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute at UCSF. He is also the Chief Data Scientist for the University of California Health System. “I look forward to being an active contributor to the JAMA Editorial Board. I am excited by the new data and computational directions ...

The number of insects has been declining for years. This has already been well documented for agricultural areas. In forests, however, temporal trends are mostly studied for insect species that are considered pests. Now, a research team led by the Technical University Darmstadt have studied the trends of very many insect species in German forests. Contrary to what the researchers had suspected, the results showed: The majority of the studied species are declining. The results have been published in the scientific journal Communications ...

Results from a clinical trial conducted by researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) show that people with low-grade lymphomatoid granulomatosis who are treated with interferon alfa-2b, a type of immunotherapy, can live for decades after diagnosis. Lymphomatoid granulomatosis is a rare precancerous condition triggered by Epstein-Barr virus infection. Left untreated, the disease can progress to a high-grade form, which has a poorer prognosis and can quickly turn into an aggressive and fatal B-cell lymphoma. In the phase 2 trial, led by researchers in the Center ...

A team led by engineers at the University of California San Diego has developed a biodegradable polymer system to treat rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune and inflammatory disease, by working in concert with the power of the human immune system. The research builds on increasing clinical interest in modulating the immune system to treat cancers and autoimmune disease, as well as previous work with all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) which is produced naturally in the body and helps cells grow and develop. By approaching these challenges from the perspective of a biomaterials ...

PLYMOUTH MEETING, PA and CHICAGO, IL [April 4, 2023] — The National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) today announced the addition of the University of Chicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center as the newest Member Institution to join the not-for-profit alliance of leading cancer centers. There are now 33 academic centers across the United States contributing multidisciplinary subject matter experts to 61 different panels determining the latest evidence-based expert consensus recommendations for risk assessment, prevention, evaluation and treatment, surveillance, supportive care, and survivorship throughout the ...

Fossil fuel consumption contributes to significant greenhouse gas emissions and severe climate issues. It is imperative to explore sustainable alternatives to the current industrial production of chemicals and fuels. The efficient utilization of lignocellulosic biomass as a substitute for fossil resources is a promising approach to promote the sustainable development of modern society. Although numerous valorization routes for lignocellulose have been explored, large-scale lignocellulose valorizations are still limited. In this regard, a group of researchers ...

The saliva of mosquitoes infected with dengue viruses contains a substance that thwarts the human immune system and makes it easier for people to become infected with these potentially deadly viruses, new research reveals. Dengue has spread in recent years to Europe and the Southern United States in addition to longstanding hotspots in tropical and subtropical areas such as Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America. The new discovery, from a University of Virginia School of Medicine scientist and his collaborators, helps explain why the disease is so easily transmitted and could eventually lead to ...

Humans have complex social behavior, diverse communication skills, and a capacity for highly developed tool use. Researchers argue that human evolution may resemble the process of animal domestication, where less aggressive animals are favoured. In the same way, human evolution may be the result of natural selection for more prosocial and cooperative individuals. Such individuals are more likely to interact with others and form complex communities, in which they can learn from each other. “The theory of self-domestication is hard to test”, says first author Limor Raviv. “This is because only one other species besides humans has been argued ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – Researchers who surveyed women attending breast cancer screening appointments found that one in five is likely to skip additional testing after an abnormal finding on their mammogram if there is a deductible or co-payment, according to an editorial published in Radiology, a journal of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). Health care costs and insurance premiums have increased in recent years. With the advent of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), high-deductible health plans (HDHPs) have grown ...