Access to artificial intelligence and machine learning is rapidly changing technology and product development, leading to more advanced, efficient and personalized applications by leveraging a massive amount of data. However, the same abilities also are in the hands of bad actors, who use AI to create malware that evades detection by the algorithms widely employed by network security tools. Government agencies, banking institutions, critical infrastructure, and the world’s largest companies and their most used products are increasingly under threat from malware that can evade anti-virus systems, hijack networks, ...

A new Series published in The Lancet describes how, although commercial entities can contribute positively to health and society, the products and practices of some commercial actors are responsible for escalating rates of avoidable ill health, planetary damage, and social and health inequity. Authors make key recommendations to ensure that contemporary capitalism is compatible with good population health.   The industries that produce just four harmful products – tobacco, alcohol, unhealthy food, and fossil fuels – account for at least a third of global deaths, illustrating the scale and huge economic cost of the problem.   Professor Rob Moodie, Series Lead ...

Peer-reviewed / Observational and modelling study / People Four-fold variation in standardised COVID-19 death rates across US states between January 2020 and July 2022 – with death rates lowest in Hawaii, New Hampshire, and Maine and highest in Arizona, Washington, DC, and New Mexico. COVID-19 exploited and compounded existing local racial inequities, health disparities, and partisan politics, resulting in a disproportionate burden of COVID-19 on communities of colour and in states that voted heavily Republican in the 2020 presidential election. No link otherwise between state governors' ...

Women with mental illness, neuropsychiatric disability, or substance abuse are less likely to go for gynaecological smear tests for cervical cancer and run more than twice the risk of developing the disease. The findings are presented in The Lancet Public Health by researchers from Karolinska Institutet, who stress the importance of proactively approaching these women as a preventative measure against cervical cancer.  In May 2020, the WHO approved a global strategy for eliminating cervical cancer as a women’s health problem. Part of the strategy is a requirement that 70 percent of women are screened for the disease at least once before age 35 and twice before ...

Generation Z children born into the poorest fifth of families in the UK are 12 times more likely to experience a raft of poor health and educational outcomes by the age of 17 compared to more affluent peers, finds a new report led by UCL researchers. The study, published in The Lancet Public Health, used data from the Millennium Cohort Study, a major study of more than 15,000 children born after the new millennium (September 2000 - January 2002) who are now in their early 20s. Researchers collected data on five adverse health and social outcomes in adolescents aged 17 years, which are known to limit life chances: ...

Children with disabilities need better support to manage their online lives and potential online risks, according to new research led by the University of East Anglia (UEA). For children with disabilities, being online and part of a well-connected community can have huge benefits. However, children with disabilities will encounter more online risks, and these can escalate more quickly than for their peers. The research shows that extra support from professionals such as teachers, youth workers and speech and language therapists does not always happen when they are learning, playing, and socialising on the Internet. It also highlights how this impacts on the ability ...

Volcanic relics scattered throughout the Australian landscape are a map of the northward movement of the continent over a ‘hotspot’ inside the Earth, during the last 35 million years. University of Queensland researchers Dr Tamini Tapu, Associate Professor Teresa Ubide and Professor Paulo Vasconcelos discovered how these relics reveal the inner structure of the Australian volcanoes became increasingly complex as the hotspot’s magma output decreased. Dr Al-Tamini ...

Overview Accurate and fast calculation of heat flow (heat transport) due to fluctuations and turbulence in plasmas is an important issue in elucidatingthe physical mechanisms and in predicting and controlling the performance of fusion reactors. A research group led by Associate Professor Motoki Nakata of the National Institute for Fusion Science and Tomonari Nakayama, a Ph.D student at the Graduate University for Advanced Studies, has successfully developed a high-precision mathematical model to predict the heat transport level. This was achieved by applying a mathematical optimization method to a lot of turbulence and heat transport ...

A team led by Dr. Ha Yoon-Cheol, a Principal Researcher of Next Generation Battery Research Center at the Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute (KERI) and Dr. Cheol-Min Park, a Professor of School of Materials Science and Engineering at Kumoh National Institute of Technology (KIT), has developed a low-cost production technology for silicon disulfide (SiS2) for solid-state electrolytes (argyrodite-type) that has potential to accelerate the commercialization of all-solid-state batteries (ASSBs).   ASSBs replace the liquid-state electrolytes that transfer ions between the anode ...

Heated tobacco products—an alternative to traditional cigarettes, similar to e-cigarettes or vapes—do not burn tobacco leaves, but rather allow users to inhale the vapor produced by heating the tobacco leaves. Users choose heated tobacco products to avoid the smoke and odor of burnt tobacco as well as the expectation that they pose fewer health risks than traditional cigarettes. However, the long-term health effects of heated tobacco products, particularly the new risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection, have not been clarified. Addressing this concern, ...

Corneal transplants can be the last step to returning clear vision to many patients suffering from eye disease. Each year, approximately 80,000 corneal transplantations take place in the U.S. Worldwide, more than 184,000 corneal transplantation surgeries are performed annually.  However, rejection rates for the corneal grafts can be as high as 10%. This is largely due to poor patient compliance to the medications, which require frequent administrations of topical eyedrops over a long period of time.  This becomes especially acute when patients ...

The diet quality of fish across large parts of the world’s oceans could decline by up to 10 per cent as climate change impacts an integral part of marine food chains, a major study has found. QUT School of Mathematical Sciences researcher Dr Ryan Heneghan led the study published in Nature Climate Change that included researchers from the University of Queensland, University of Tasmania, University of NSW and CSIRO. They modelled the impact of climate change on zooplankton, an abundant and extremely diverse group of microscopic animals accounting for about 40 per cent ...

URBANA, Ill. – The U.S. dairy industry operates a comprehensive data collection program that records herd production information from farmers nationwide. The program provides crucial input for cattle breeding and genetics, and its cooperative structure ensures benefits for producers and scientists alike. A new study from the University of Illinois explores the program’s century-old history, highlighting its relevance for modern agriculture and digital data collection. “The National Cooperative Dairy Herd Improvement Program (NCDHIP) is an interesting case study because it illustrates how to translate the benefits ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — U.S. college students’ knowledge of bees focuses primarily on honey bees and pollination services, according to Penn State researchers, who said findings from their recent study could help in designing campaigns to generate support for protecting threatened pollinators. Wild and managed bee populations have been in steep decline worldwide in recent years, noted study co-author Christina Grozinger, Publius Vergilius Maro Professor of Entomology and director of the Center for Pollinator Research in ...

VANCOUVER -- Deep brain stimulation (DBS) has become an increasingly common treatment for patients with advanced Parkinson’s disease, but the procedure still carries significant risks. A new probe that performs two types of spectroscopy could make the procedure safer and improve success rates by helping doctors more accurately navigate instruments inside the brain. The research team identified white and grey matter using principal component analysis (PCA), proving that spectroscopic measurements could be suitable for neuronavigation. For DBS, surgeons place electrodes in the brain to disrupt the errant signals that cause debilitating tremors and stiffness associated ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The success of North American crops from corn to Christmas trees partly depends on a relatively invisible component of the food web — ground beetles. Nearly 2,000 species of ground beetle live in North America. New research led by Penn State shows that some of these insects could thrive while others could decline as the climate changes. The team found that the response will largely depend on the species’ traits and habitats and could have significant implications for conservation efforts. “We know that climate change influences everything from coral reefs in the ocean to trees on land, but there’s ...

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health contributed to a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that found a continued rise in the overall prevalence of autism among 8-year-olds in 2020, the year the data was collected, as well as notable sex and racial/ethnic trends. In Maryland, the autism rate among 8-year-olds also rose, but it was the lowest prevalence among 11 sites that contributed to the study. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disorder that can be characterized by social and communication challenges, along with limited interests and repetitive behaviors. The prevalence of ASD has risen steadily ...

A recent U.S. federal court ruling that removes a requirement for employers to provide insurance coverage for the HIV prevention medications known as Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis, or PrEP, could result in more than 2,000 entirely preventable HIV infections in the coming year, according to a new study led by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health. The study addresses the potential consequences of a September 2022 decision by U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor of Texas in a case known as Braidwood Management v. Becerra. O’Connor ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, a group of Christian business owners who claimed that federal mandates requiring private insurance ...

The University of Southern California (USC) is collaborating with Auransa Inc., on a phase 1 clinical trial to evaluate a new kind of treatment for cancers of the liver and solid tumors with liver dominant disease. The drug, known as AU409, was developed by Auransa, a clinical stage drug development company focused on identifying novel drug candidates for oncology, inflammatory diseases and diseases of the central nervous system. In preclinical trials, AU409, has been shown to work in a unique fashion by limiting the cancer cell’s ability to translate the message from various genes ...

March 23, 2023 – Washington, DC, New York, NY, and London, England – A group of natural history museums, organized by the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, the American Museum of Natural History Museum in New York City, and the Natural History Museum in London, has mapped the total collections from 73 of the world’s largest natural history museums in 28 countries. This is the first step of an ambitious effort to inventory global holdings that can help scientists and decisionmakers find solutions to urgent, wide-ranging issues such as climate ...

Metabolic pathways consist of a series of biochemical reactions in cells that convert a starting component into other products. There is growing evidence that metabolic pathways coupled with external stress factors influence the health of cells and tissues. Many human diseases, including retinal or neurodegenerative diseases, are associated with imbalances in metabolic pathways. Elisabeth Knust leads a team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) in Dresden, Germany, who describe an essential role for one ...

The medicinal secrets of the Chilean soapbark tree have been laid bare, unlocking a future of more potent, affordable, and sustainably sought vaccines. The evergreen species, Quillaja saponaria has, for decades, been highly prized for producing molecules called QS saponins, which are used in the food and drinks industry as foaming agents. More recently an important new function has emerged with saponins obtained from the tree’s bark used as potent adjuvants in the production of vaccines. Adjuvants play a critical role in some vaccines, working to boost the potency of a vaccine by enhancing the host immune response. Molecules extracted from soapbark tree are ...

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows the rates and demographics of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are changing in the United States.  In the latest analysis, 1 in 36 8-year-old children (2.8%) have been identified as having ASD. This figure is higher than the previous estimate published in December 2021, which found a prevalence of 1 in 44 (2.3%) children, and considerably higher than the CDC’s first autism prevalence report published in 2007 noting a prevalence of 1 in 150 (0.7%).  Prevalence estimates also differed across the 11 data collection sites, ranging from 1 in 43 children (2.3%) in Maryland, to 1 in 22 (4.5%) ...

Using artificial intelligence, researchers have discovered how to screen for genetic mutations in cancerous brain tumors in under 90 seconds — and possibly streamline the diagnosis and treatment of gliomas, a study suggests. A team of neurosurgeons and engineers at Michigan Medicine, in collaboration with investigators from New York University, University of California, San Francisco and others, developed an AI-based diagnostic screening system called DeepGlioma that uses rapid imaging to analyze tumor specimens taken during an operation and detect genetic mutations more rapidly. In a study of more than 150 patients ...

ST. LOUIS – Research published in Environmental Research Letters has shown that methane emissions from urban areas are underestimated by a factor of three to four and that untreated wastewater may be a contributing factor. The study, “Investigating high methane emissions from urban areas detected by TROPOMI and their association with untreated wastewater,” was led by Benjamin de Foy, Ph.D., professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Saint Louis University, and published online on ...