The American Journal of Gastroenterology has published a new guideline on the treatment of Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection. The corresponding author on the guideline is William D. Chey, M.D., chief of the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at Michigan. H. pylori is a bacterium that infects over half the people in the world, though most are asymptomatic. It can cause dyspepsia, peptic ulcer disease and gastric cancer.  This latest clinical practice guideline notes that its prevalence in North America is decreasing, but it still infects 30-40% of the population. A previous guideline ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — With freshwater becoming an ever scarcer resource, desalination of ocean water is increasingly employed to bridge the gap between supply and demand. However, desalination is energy-intensive, often powered by fossil fuels, so meeting the need for freshwater can exacerbate the challenge of reducing atmospheric CO2, the main driver of climate change. Yangying Zhu, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UC Santa Barbara, wants to address that conundrum. Now, a two-year, $500,000 seed grant from the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) ...

One of the most critical safety concerns for electric vehicles is keeping their batteries cool, as temperature spikes can lead to dangerous consequences. New research led by a University of Arizona doctoral student proposes a way to predict and prevent temperature spikes in the lithium-ion batteries commonly used to power such vehicles.  The paper "Advancing Battery Safety," led by College of Engineering doctoral student Basab Goswami, is published in the Journal of Power Sources.  With the support of $599,808 from the Department of Defense's Defense Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, Goswami and his adviser, aerospace ...

MINNEAPOLIS – The heavy metal cadmium, which is found in the air, water, food and soil, is known to cause health problems. A new study published in the September 4, 2024, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, examined if thinking and memory skills were associated with cadmium exposure. They found no association when they looked at the group as a whole. However, when looking at Black and white people separately, it found cadmium may be tied to problems with thinking and memory skills in white people. ...

View a breakdown of the abortion restrictions by state below States with early abortion bans are less likely to offer paid time off after childbearing, to give poor children nutritional support or to expand access to reproductive health care Marginalized people and those with low socioeconomic status are overrepresented in ban states and least likely to overcome the barriers that bans impose CHICAGO --- States with the most severe post-Dobbs abortion restrictions also have the fewest policies in place to support raising families, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study.  “We found that in the states that most severely ...

In simulated life-or-death decisions, about two-thirds of people in a UC Merced study allowed a robot to change their minds when it disagreed with them -- an alarming display of excessive trust in artificial intelligence, researchers said. Human subjects allowed robots to sway their judgment despite being told the AI machines had limited capabilities and were giving advice that could be wrong. In reality, the advice was random. “As a society, with AI accelerating so quickly, we need to be concerned about the potential for overtrust,” said Professor Colin ...

City leaders who are working to accommodate more electric vehicles (EVs) were recognized in a ceremony o Aug. 23 at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory. Utility ComEd and the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus spotlighted 12 communities in northern Illinois that recently completed the EV Readiness Program. The EV Readiness Program trains and assists local government officials in taking concrete steps to support EV adoption. As a national leader in EV research, ...

WASHINGTON, D.C.—A new survey by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine published in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine reveals that 69.2% of U.S. hospitals affiliated with a medical school host at least one fast-food restaurant. The five most common fast-food restaurants located in hospitals were Starbucks, Subway, Chick-fil-A, Au Bon Pain, and McDonald’s. “Making fast food like cheeseburgers and fried chicken available in hospitals is hazardous to the health of patients, visitors, and staff,” says Zeeshan Ali, PhD, the lead author of the paper and a nutrition program specialist with the Physicians Committee. “Hospitals ...

DURHAM, N.C. – A treatment paradox has recently come to light in prostate cancer: Blocking testosterone production halts tumor growth in early disease, while elevating the hormone can delay disease progression in patients whose disease has advanced.   The inability to understand how different levels of the same hormone can drive different effects in prostate tumors has been an impediment to the development of new therapeutics that exploit this biology.   Now, a Duke Cancer Institute-led study, performed ...

New research published in the Journal of Sport and Health Science led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst shows that super spikes, scientifically described as advanced footwear technology (AFT) spikes, can give runners about a 2% edge in middle-distance track races, like the 800- and 1,500-meters. “Track athletes started wearing super spikes about five years ago and they are now commonplace in elite track races,” says Wouter Hoogkamer, assistant professor of kinesiology at UMass Amherst and senior author ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -Ten Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) designed to bring together world-class teams of scientists for groundbreaking fundamental research have been funded in nine states by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).  Since 2009, EFRCs  have brought together diverse, world-class teams of scientists to perform basic research that accelerates ground-breaking scientific advances underlying energy technologies. The centers develop powerful new tools for characterizing, understanding, modeling, and manipulating matter, while training the next-generation scientific workforce by attracting talented students passionate about energy science. “Fundamental ...

The American College of Cardiology (ACC) Quality Summit 2024 will take place on September 17-19 in San Antonio, bringing together cardiovascular leaders from across the nation to discuss the value of NCDR services and quality programs. “ACC’s Quality Summit puts the spotlight on the value of ACC Accreditation and NCDR services for improving health care quality across all health systems,” said ACC Quality Summit Chair Olivia N. Gilbert, MD, MSc, FACC, and Director of Quality and Value for Cardiovascular Medicine at Atrium Health Wake Forest ...

Flexcon Global has exclusively licensed two patented inventions to manufacture a self-healing barrier film from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory for research and development purposes. The film can be incorporated into vacuum insulation panels to increase the efficiency of buildings during retrofits.  Flexcon, based in Spencer, Massachusetts, provides coatings, film laminations and functional technologies to a range of markets including healthcare, sustainable packaging, transportation, consumer durables, electronics, industrial, retail and advertising. Under ...

Poroid fungi, commonly known as "polypores," are among the most frequently encountered fungi throughout the year because of their large size and longevity. Despite the common presence of poroid fungi in North America, most guides include only a limited selection of these fungi. Poroid Fungi of North America, by Leif Ryvarden, offers a necessary, updated account of these fungi, building on the foundational work of the original two-volume North American Polypores, by Ryvarden and R. L. Gilbertson, published in 1987. This comprehensive update incorporates more than three decades of new research, featuring detailed keys, descriptions, and vibrant color ...

Four faculty members from three departments in the College of Natural Resources and Environment have received $1.7 million from the National Science Foundation to fund research into the dynamics of socio-environmental factors impacting coastal fisheries. Holly Kindsvater and Willandia Chaves of the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation, Craig Ramseyer of the Department of Geography, and Michael Sorice of the Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation will collaborate with Jonathan van Senten and Fernando Gonçalves of the Virginia Seafood Agricultural Research ...

Wildfires leave potent climate heaters behind in their wake, particles that enhance the absorption of sunlight and warm the atmosphere. Dropped on snow like a wool poncho, these aerosols darken and decrease the surface reflectance of snowy places. But it was not yet understood just how different types of smoke particles contribute to these effects. In a study recently published in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis model how dark-brown carbon (d-BrC) – light absorbing, water insoluble organic carbon – from wildfires plays a much larger role as a snow-warming agent than previously recorded. ...

Young male northern elephant seals are captured on camera returning to a deep sea cabled observatory off Canada's British Columbia coast, demonstrating new insight into fish foraging behavior ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0308461 Article Title: Deep-sea cabled video-observatory provides insights into the behavior at depth of sub-adult male northern elephant seals, Mirounga angustirostris Author Countries: Canada, USA, Spain Funding: Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) is funded through the Canada Foundation for Innovation-Major Science Initiative ...

This release has been removed per request of the submitting organization due to a duplicate submission. You can find the embargoed release here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1055807  For more information, please contact: Charlotte Bhaskar, cbhaskar@plos.org END ...

A diverse and abundant flower planting that provides flowers in bloom all season may be more important to bees and other pollinators than whatever is surrounding the flower garden, according to a study published September 4, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Devon Eldridge from the University of Tennessee, US, and colleagues. As we learn more about how critical pollinators (native and non-native bees, butterflies, and other insects) are to our food supply and ecosystem, many people are planting pollinator-attractive ...

A study of more than 200,000 tweets from 2019 and 2020 finds that anti-immigration content spreads faster than pro-immigration tweets and that a few users disproportionally generated most of the UK-based anti-immigration content. Andrea Nasuto and Francisco Rowe of the Geographic Data Science Lab at the University of Liverpool, UK, present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on September 4, 2024. Online social media platforms are widely considered to contribute significantly to rising tensions in debates about immigration. Increased online polarization, the clout of key influencers, ...

Samples from bottled water, tap water and household-treated tap water in San Francisco Bay Area indicate that all sources may have potential health risks, largely from trihalomethanes. #### Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/water/article?id=10.1371/journal.pwat.0000272 Article Title: Bottled water, tap water and household-treated tap water–insight into potential health risks and aesthetic concerns in drinking water Author Countries: United States Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. END ...

Imagine your DNA as a set of instructions or a recipe book that tells your body how to make everything it needs to function, from proteins to cells. Every time the body needs to build something, it reads these instructions. But sometimes, the body can make small edits to these instructions—this is where RNA editing comes in. RNA editing is like a proofreading process that happens after your DNA’s instructions are copied. Instead of just following the recipe exactly, your cells can make tiny changes to the instructions. These changes can help the body adapt to different situations by creating new versions ...

LOS ANGELES — Oncology specialists at City of Hope®, one of the largest and most advanced cancer research and treatment organizations in the United States, can now provide leading-edge clinical guidance to patients living in Southeast Asia through a second opinion collaboration agreement with the Healthway Cancer Care Hospital, the first comprehensive cancer hospital in the Philippines. This strategic integration of services will enhance Southeast Asia’s access to world-class cancer care by leveraging the strengths of both institutions.   “With ...

Charging stations for electric vehicles are essential for cleaning up the transportation sector. A new study by MIT researchers suggests they’re good for business, too. The study found that, in California, opening a charging station boosted annual spending at each nearby business by an average of about $1,500 in 2019 and about $400 between January 2021 and June 2023. The spending bump amounts to thousands of extra dollars annually for nearby businesses, with the increase particularly pronounced for businesses in underresourced areas. The study’s authors hope the research paints a more holistic picture of the benefits ...

LAWRENCE — A new book of natural history essays co-written by a University of Kansas paleontologist has been published by Columbia University Press. Bruce Lieberman, Dean’s Professor of Evolutionary Biology and senior curator of invertebrate paleontology at KU, co-wrote “Macroevolutionaries” with fellow paleontologist Niles Eldredge in the tradition of their late Harvard mentor and famed science popularizer, Stephen Jay Gould. “Gould inspired me and my collaborator on the book, Niles Eldredge,” Lieberman said. “He’s a well-known evolutionary ...