Exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution is linked to a heightened risk of dementia, even at levels below current US, UK and European air quality standards, finds research published by The BMJ. More limited data suggests that exposure to nitrogen dioxide and nitrogen oxide might also be a risk factor for dementia. Many uncertainties remain, so caution is needed when interpreting these findings, but the researchers say the results “strengthen the evidence that air pollutants are risk factors for dementia.” More than 57 million people worldwide are living with dementia and the global ...

Experts recommend reducing consumption of added (“free”) sugars to around six teaspoons a day and limiting sugar-sweetened drinks to less than one serving a week after a comprehensive evidence review published by The BMJ today.   They found significant harmful associations between sugar consumption and 45 outcomes, including asthma, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, depression, some cancers and death.  It’s widely known that excessive sugar intake can have negative effects on health and this has prompted the World Health Organization (WHO) and others to suggest reducing consumption of free or added sugars ...

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. – April 05, 2023) A report from the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study (CCSS) provides strong evidence of the importance of a healthy lifestyle for adults who were treated for cancer as children. The study is the first to find that the specific primary causes of death in long term survivors are many of the same leading causes of death in the U.S. population, often occurring at younger than expected ages. It also found that adult survivors of childhood cancer experience four times the risk of late mortality as the general population, even 40 years after diagnosis. However, ...

Up to two-thirds of patients with Tourette syndrome (TS), a tic disorder characterized by sudden uncontrollable physical movements, also suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), a psychiatric condition characterized by intrusive thoughts and repetitive behaviors. Unfortunately, many of these dual-diagnosis patients are resistant to conventional treatments such as medications or behavioral therapy. While deep brain stimulation (DBS) has been approved for compassionate use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for OCD, this promising procedure is under investigational use for ...

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has struck a major blow to global markets for vital commodities – particularly grains like wheat and maize. Shortages and price increases are contributing to the food insecurity crisis in certain parts of the world, according to the United Nations, and to more general economic uncertainty. A new study led by Adam Rose, research professor at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy and its Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Threats and Emergencies (CREATE), estimates that disruption to exports of grain commodities during a projected one-year period of the war will result in a $1.6 billion loss for the global economy. The study was recently ...

Intramuscular administration of tranexamic acid (TXA), a drug used to target severe bleeding after childbirth, is safe and quickly reaches therapeutic concentrations in pregnant women, according to a study involving researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). The findings, from the Woman-PharmacoTXA Phase 2 trial, highlight that intramuscular injection may be a potential alternative to current intravenous approaches, which are often unsuitable in home births or rural care settings. Oral TXA was also well-tolerated, however, on average, took around one hour to reach therapeutic ...

Scientists have developed new technology to help couples undergoing in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) due to male fertility problems to increase their chances of success in having a baby. Approximately one in six people worldwide is affected by infertility, according to the World Health Organization, and one in every 22 children in Australia is born via assisted reproduction. With a 78% failure rate, each IVF cycle can be an emotional rollercoaster that often ends in heartbreak. “Male infertility plays a role in around 30% of cases, due to problems such as low sperm count, reduced motility ...

National University of Singapore (NUS) physicists have discovered a novel form of ferroelectricity in a single-element bismuth monolayer that can produce regular and reversible dipole moments for future applications of non-volatile memories and electronic sensors. Ferroelectricity refers to the phenomenon of certain materials exhibiting a spontaneous electric polarisation that can be reversed by applying an external electric field. Ferroelectric materials are characterised by a crystal structure that lacks a centre of ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. (April 6, 2023) – Immune cells that can “smell” the metabolites of a high-fat Western diet and may produce inflammation and ultimately heart disease as a result, just what our “longer” RNAs are doing in our bodies and the role of immune cells called neutrophils in both cancer and heart disease are some areas of pursuit of the first five scientists recruited to the new Immunology Center of Georgia at the Medical College of Georgia. The new IMMCG, codirected by Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholars Catherine “Lynn” Hedrick, PhD, and Klaus Ley, MD, who joined the MCG ...

The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF) is hosting a free webinar, “Changes in Infant Emotion Regulation Following Maternal Treatment for Postpartum Depression” on Tuesday, April 11, 2023, at 2:00 pm EST. The presenter will be Ryan J. Van Lieshout, M.D., Ph.D., FRCPC.   Postpartum depression affects up to 1 in 5 mothers and is associated with elevated rates of emotional, behavioral, and cognitive problems in offspring. It may have particularly negative effects on infant emotion regulation - the ability to modify emotions ...

 Access to mobile technology is extremely common in the United States, so much so that it is hard to imagine daily life without it. More than 86% of Americans report using their smartphone as their primary source of obtaining information. Low- and middle-income countries that do not have easy access to digital media face deficits in receiving information, including knowledge related to health.   A recent study by Dongqing Wang, assistant professor in the Department of Global and Community Health, evaluated the access to digital media and devices, such as mobile phones, computers, tablets, social media, and the internet, among adolescents in sub-Saharan ...

Modeling the emergence and spread of biological threats isn’t as routine as forecasting the weather, but scientists in two of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) national laboratories were awarded funding to try to make it so. DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories were one of the three projects to receive a total of $5 million from DOE to advance computational tools to better prepare for natural and human-created biological threats. The laboratories will work together to harness Sandia’s algorithms of real-world outcomes to Argonne’s high performance models that address spread ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. – Last summer, researchers at Michigan State University reported that one in five Michigan adults, or about 1.7 million people, don’t want children and therefore are child-free. Although that number was surprisingly large to many data has now been confirmed in a follow-up study. “We found that 20.9% of adults in Michigan do not want children, which closely matches our earlier estimate of 21.6%, and means that over 1.6 million people in Michigan are child-free,” said Jennifer Watling Neal, MSU professor of psychology ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 2023 MINNEAPOLIS – People who have sleep problems may be more likely to have a stroke, according to a study published in the April 5, 2023, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Sleep problems included getting too much or too little sleep, taking long naps, having poor quality sleep, snoring, snorting and sleep apnea. In addition, those who had five or more of these symptoms had an even greater risk of stroke. The study does not show that sleeping problems cause stroke. It only shows an association. “Not only do our results suggest that individual sleep problems ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 2023 MINNEAPOLIS – Among those living with Parkinson’s disease, Black, Hispanic and Asian people were found to have a lower health-related quality of life than white people, according to a new study published in the April 5, 2023, online issue of Neurology® , the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Health-related quality of life is a measure of a person’s level of comfort, health and happiness. Parkinson’s disease is a disorder of the central nervous system that causes uncontrolled movements, stiffness and loss of balance. It can be debilitating. ...

HERSHEY, Pa. — Whether you’re afraid of dogs, needles or enclosed spaces, one of the most effective interventions for this type of anxiety disorder is exposure therapy in which you confront your fear in a safe environment. A new study led by researchers at Penn State College of Medicine finds that exposure therapy is also a promising treatment for adolescents with eating disorders. They found that exposure to feared foods — such as candy bars and pizza — helped kids who were in a partial hospitalization program for eating disorders experience decreased anxiety toward food. “As ...

AMHERST, Mass. – It’s the spines. This is the conclusion of two new papers, led by researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, showing that the spiny pollen from plants in the sunflower family (Asteraceae) both reduces infection of a common bee parasite by 81 – 94% and markedly increases the production of queen bumble bees. The research, appearing in Functional Ecology and Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, provides much-needed food for thought in one of the most ...

Seismic arrays deployed in California’s Long Beach and Seal Beach areas detected more than a thousand tiny earthquakes over eight months, many of them located at surprisingly shallow depths of less than two kilometers below the surface. The findings, reported in Seismological Research Letters, confirm that the region’s portion of the Newport-Inglewood fault splays widely at these shallow depths, showing for the first time with seismic evidence that it may spread out by more than a kilometer. The destructive 1933 magnitude 6.4 Long Beach earthquake may have ruptured in part on the Newport-Inglewood fault. ...

People misremember events within just seconds, often re-shaping their memories to fit their expectations ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0283257 Article Title: Seeing Ɔ, remembering C: Illusions in short-term memory Author Countries: The Netherlands, Canada Funding: AKS is grateful to the European Research Council (ERC-2020-ADG, grant 1010192654) for support. END ...

Hypergentrification of NYC neighborhoods is associated with better mental health for White populations, but not among Black and Latino populations ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0283191 Article Title: Can changing neighborhoods influence mental health? An ecological analysis of gentrification and neighborhood-level serious psychological distress—New York City, 2002–2015 Author Countries: USA Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. END ...

Researchers tend to co-author with individuals of the same gender, partly because of demography, norms and gender representation, but seemingly also through personal preference ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0283106 Article Title: Gender-based homophily in collaborations across a heterogeneous scholarly landscape Author Countries: USA Funding: This research was supported by the Royalty Research Fund Grant #A118374 awarded to EE (PI) and CL (co-PI), National Science Foundation Grant #1735194 awarded to JW (co-PI), and National Science Foundation SMA 19-52069 to CTB. https://www.washington.edu/research/or/royalty-research-fund-rrf/; ...

Smartphone plant identification apps may not be accurate enough to be relied on, especially in avoiding toxic plants when foraging ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0283386 Article Title: A repeatable scoring system for assessing Smartphone applications ability to identify herbaceous plants Author Countries: Ireland, UK Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. END ...

A new review of previously published studies on methods for reducing conspiracy beliefs has shown that most of these methods are ineffective, but that those focused on fostering critical thinking or an analytical mindset show some promise. Cian O’Mahony of University College Cork, Ireland, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on April 5. Evidence from prior studies suggests that belief in conspiracy theories can be associated with harmful consequences, such as—in the case of ...

DNA and associated proteins in active regions of the genome are condensed but behave like a viscous liquid at the molecular level. This finding greatly increases our understanding of the physical nature of expressed genome regions in living human cells. The human genome DNA has a remarkable capacity for compaction. When 46 sets of human chromosomes are stretched end to end, they collectively reach two meters in length but are somehow arranged in a nucleus with only about ten micrometers in diameter. To fit inside the nucleus, the strands of DNA are wrapped ...

Researchers have developed a way to create photonic time crystals and shown that these bizarre, artificial materials amplify the light that shines on them. These findings, described in a paper in Science Advances, could lead to more efficient and robust wireless communications and significantly improved lasers. Time crystals were first conceived by Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek in 2012. Mundane, familiar crystals have a structural pattern that repeats in space, but in a time crystal, the pattern repeats in time instead. While some physicists were ...