Researchers at Simon Fraser University are studying the genes of superbugs to aid the development of new and effective treatments for drug-resistant bacterial infections. Superbugs are characterized as infection-causing bacteria resistant to treatment with antibiotics. “Antimicrobial resistance occurs when the disease-causing bacteria has ways to overcome the antibiotics that we use in treatment for infections,” says assistant professor Amy Lee, of SFU's Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry. The initiative is a collaboration between the Lee Lab and Brinkman Lab, which are working together as ...

About 12% of the total global energy demand comes from heating and cooling homes and businesses. A new study suggests that using underground water to maintain comfortable temperatures could reduce consumption of natural gas and electricity in this sector by 40% in the U.S. The approach, called aquifer thermal energy storage (ATES), could also help prevent blackouts caused by high power demand during extreme weather events. “We need storage to absorb the fluctuating energy from solar and wind, and most people are interested in batteries ...

West Virginia University researchers will continue to develop and advance their pioneering method to extract and separate rare earth elements and critical minerals from acid mine drainage and coal waste, courtesy of $8 million in new funding from the U.S. Department of Energy. The grant, part of President Joe Biden’s Investing in America agenda, will lead to the design, construction and operation of a pre-commercial demonstration facility for separating and refining rare earth elements and critical minerals, according to Paul Ziemkiewicz, project lead and director of the West Virginia Water ...

Deep within our brain’s temporal lobes, two almond-shaped cell masses help keep us alive. This tiny region, called the amygdala, assists with a variety of brain activities. It helps us learn and remember. It triggers our fight-or-flight response. It even promotes the release of a feel-good chemical called dopamine. Scientists have learned all this by studying the amygdala over hundreds of years. But we still haven’t reached a full understanding of how these processes work. Now, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory neuroscientist Bo Li has brought us several important steps closer. His lab recently made a series of discoveries ...

Ice sheets can retreat up to 600 metres a day during periods of climate warming, 20 times faster than the highest rate of retreat previously measured. An international team of researchers, led by Dr Christine Batchelor of Newcastle University, UK, used high-resolution imagery of the seafloor to reveal just how quickly a former ice sheet that extended from Norway retreated at the end of the last Ice Age, about 20,000 years ago.  The team, which also included researchers from the universities of Cambridge and Loughborough in the UK and the Geological Survey of Norway, mapped more than 7,600 small-scale landforms called ‘corrugation ridges’ across the seafloor. The ridges ...

Materials that can conduct negatively charged hydrogen atoms in ambient conditions would pave the way for advanced clean energy storage and electrochemical conversion technologies. A research team from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) demonstrated a technique that enables a room-temperature all-solid-state hydride cell by introducing and exploiting defects in the lattice structure of rare earth hydrides. Their study was published in Nature on April 5. Solid materials ...

New research evaluating the potential cost savings of a therapy for babies displaying early autism signs has predicted a three dollar return to Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) for every dollar invested in therapy.   Published in the prestigious JAMA Network Open, the health economic study drew on the results of a landmark multi-centre randomised clinical trial which reported the world’s first evidence that a therapy commenced in infancy (iBASIS-VIPP)* could reduce early developmental disability to the point where a childhood clinical autism diagnosis was two-thirds ...

Philadelphia, April 5, 2023—In a twist on the question, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”, scientists have long faced a similar question about how human adenovirus replicates: “Which comes first, assembly of the viral particle, or packaging of the viral genome?” Now, in a new study published today in Nature, researchers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have answered that question, showing that viral proteins use a process called phase separation to coordinate production ...

About The Study: The prevalence of suicidal thoughts and behaviors has not increased for most U.S. veterans during the first three years of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, veterans with pre-existing loneliness, psychiatric distress, and lower purpose in life were at heightened risk of developing new-onset suicidal ideation and suicide planning during the pandemic. Evidence-based prevention and intervention efforts that target these factors may help mitigate suicide risk in this population. Authors: Ian C. Fischer, Ph.D., of the ...

About The Study: This study found that historical redlining was associated with modern-day stroke prevalence in New York City independently of contemporary social determinants of health and community prevalence of some relevant cardiovascular risk factors.  Authors: Benjamin M. Jadow, B.A., of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, New York, 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.2023.5875) Editor’s Note: Please see the article ...

By observing the night sky, medieval monks unwittingly recorded some of history’s largest volcanic eruptions. An international team of researchers, led by the University of Geneva (UNIGE), drew on readings of 12th and 13th century European and Middle Eastern chronicles, along with ice core and tree ring data, to accurately date some of the biggest volcanic eruptions the world has ever seen. Their results, reported in the journal Nature, uncover new information about one of the most volcanically active periods in Earth’s ...

Who can assess and diagnose cardiac function best after reading an echocardiogram: artificial intelligence (AI) or a sonographer?  According to Cedars-Sinai investigators and their research published today in the peer-reviewed journal Nature, AI proved superior in assessing and diagnosing cardiac function when compared with echocardiogram assessments made by sonographers.   The findings are based on a first-of-its-kind, blinded, randomized clinical trial of AI in cardiology led by investigators in the Smidt Heart Institute and the Division of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine at Cedars-Sinai.  “The results have immediate implications for ...

Pictures of melting glaciers and stranded polar bears on shrinking sea ice in the Arctic are perhaps the most striking images that have been used to highlights the effects of global warming. However, they do not convey the full extent of the consequences of warmer Arctic. In recent years, there has been growing recognition of the Arctic’s role in driving extreme weather events in other parts of the world. While the Arctic has been warming at a rate twice as fast as the global average, winters in the midlatitude regions have experienced colder and more severe weather events. For instance, the winter of 2022-2023 saw record-breaking cold temperatures and snowfall ...

A new study has identified potential neurological biomarkers of long COVID-19 in nonhuman primates that may help physicians diagnose, monitor and treat this condition. Over 65 million people worldwide have developed long COVID after being infected with SARS-CoV-2, and cases are only becoming more common. Long COVID symptoms can last weeks, months or years. Even more perplexing is the fact that symptoms can vary widely between individuals and consist of any combination of fatigue, fever, chest pain, trouble breathing, neurological symptoms such as ...

Gravitational waves (GWs) are “ripples in space-time”. The detection of gravitational waves (GWs) is critical to the understanding of the origin and evolution of stars, galaxies, and the Universe. At present, the laser interferometry is the most commonly use technology to detect GWs by measuring the phase change between two beams of coherent light. Due to the limitations of arm length, the ground-based GWs measurement is hard to detect the low-frequency GWs. While the space-based GWs observation is capable of longer arm length of the interferometer, the detection of GWs in space is expected to cover a greater number and variety of ...

Lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI), which includes conditions such as pneumonia, has long been the leading cause of death from communicable agents and a leading cause of death in children worldwide. But despite its prevalence, LRTI is tricky for doctors to treat effectively because the current diagnostic approach often fails to conclusively determine whether an infection is present at all, and if so, what pathogen is causing it.  Now, in a study published April 3, 2023 in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, a team led by researchers at the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub San Francisco (CZ Biohub SF), UC San Francisco (UCSF), the University ...

Being the most abundant and persistent greenhouse gas emitted, carbon dioxide (CO2) is the key driver of climate change. To address the pressing problems associated with climate change and fossil fuel depletion, scientists are looking for viable solutions that can minimize the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere. One attractive solution to this problem is to convert atmospheric CO2 into more useful compounds. Towards this end, methanol ­- a raw material, fuel additive, and energy carrier, is widely being explored as a promising conversion option for CO2. Now, while various catalysts ...

SAN ANTONIO — April 5, 2023 —Southwest Research Institute and Tecnológico de Monterrey (Tec de Monterrey) will jointly fund three research and development initiatives to advance sustainable manufacturing and technology in the United States and Mexico. The trio of projects are the first selected to receive support through the Sustainable Manufacturing Program, a transnational research and development collaboration established between SwRI and Tec de Monterrey — a private, nonprofit, independent university based in Monterrey, Mexico — in August 2022. The program provides grant opportunities funded ...

Our solar system formed from a molecular cloud, which was composed of gas and dust that was emitted into the interstellar medium (ISM), a vast space between stars. On collapse of the molecular cloud, the early sun was formed, with a large disk of gas and dust orbiting it. The dusty material collided to produce rocky material that would eventually grow in size to give large bodies called planetesimals. The planetesimals that formed far enough from the sun, also contained large quantities of ice. The ice consisted of water and other volatile compounds, such as carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2), methanol (CH3OH) and ammonia (NH3), as well as ...

People exposed to higher levels of air pollution before the pandemic had lower antibody responses to COVID-19 vaccines, according to a study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), an institution supported by “la Caixa” Foundation, in collaboration with the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute (IGTP). In particular, exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and blank carbon (BC) was associated with about a 10% decrease in IgM and IgG antibody responses in people without prior infection. The findings, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, ...

WILMINGTON, Del. (April 5, 2023) – More than one in three children ages 9 to 13 (37%) worry at least once a week, primarily about school (64%) and friendships (41%), with their tendency to worry progressing with age. Older children (age 13) are more likely than their younger counterparts to report feeling as though they will never stop worrying (48% vs. 22% for 9-year-olds). This is according to the results of What’s Worrying America’s Kids, a national survey conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of Nemours KidsHealth. The survey results ...

ROCKVILLE, Md.—The Obesity Society (TOS) has joined several European, US and Canadian obesity organizations in an editorial statement published in the journal Pediatric Obesity championing the use of people-first language for pediatric overweight and obesity to address weight stigma and bias. Professor David Thivel, president of the European Childhood Obesity Group and coordinator of the joint statement, said, "This paper emphasizes the importance of considering the use of people-first language when it comes to pediatric obesity, by all who work with, care for or support children and adolescents, in order to avoid stigmatization and to create an appropriate and optimal ...

For patients with high blood pressure in their pulmonary arteries caused by chronic blood clots, complications after a minimally invasive balloon angioplasty have decreased substantially over the last decade, a Michigan Medicine-led study finds.  Researchers examined over 7,500 cases of balloon pulmonary angioplasty for patients with chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension, an elevated blood pressure in the pulmonary arteries due to persistent blockages known as CTEPH, between 2013 and 2022. The procedure, which is offered ...

New research reveals the progress scientists at The University of Toledo are making in their ongoing efforts to capture and remove invasive grass carp from the Great Lakes. Researchers based at the UToledo Lake Erie Center created a new way to estimate the abundance of invasive “sleeper” species in freshwater ecosystems and help guide management strategies. Using data collected during their efforts to remove invasive grass carp from Lake Erie and its tributaries, the aquatic ecologists and environmental ...

Space is the great unknown — very few of us will ever experience what it’s like to visit another planet or moon, and so much is yet to be discovered. Below are some recent papers published in ACS journals that report advances toward understanding whether certain minerals, compounds or even life itself could form on other worlds. Reporters can request free access to these papers by emailing newsroom@acs.org. “Immunoanalytical Approach for Detecting and Identifying Ancestral Peptide Biomarkers in Early Earth Analogue Environments” Analytical Chemistry March 16, 2023 These authors reasoned that if they could analyze “resurrected” ...