One popular strategy to motivate people to get vaccinated is the nudge—a message designed to take advantage of human tendencies to conform to social norms, seek to protect loved ones or community, and to prefer treatments with high efficacy rates. Jiseon Chang and colleagues sought to assess the efficacy of such nudges in real world contexts during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors paid for ads to appear on Facebook between October 2021 and January 2022, reaching almost 15 million users in Brazil, Russia, South Africa, Taiwan, ...

More than 1 in 4 people age 50 and older helps take care of at least one family member or friend who has a health problem or disability, a new poll finds. And among those caregivers, the new results from the University of Michigan National Poll on Healthy Aging reveal a lot about who they are and who they’re caring for. In all, 30% of all people in their 50s and early 60s provide care to at least one person with a health issue or disability, compared with 23% of people over 65. And 1 in 10 caregivers in their 50s and early 60s are juggling taking care of three or more people. In ...

To Predict Tax Revenue, Look at Corporate Earnings States can make more accurate budget forecasts and avoid midyear cuts if they include growth in corporate earnings AUSTIN, Texas -- In the complex task of building a state budget, much rides on the accuracy of its fiscal crystal ball: its forecast of how much tax revenue will come in to fund services during the year ahead. Forecasting errors have increased since 2001 due to revenue volatility, such as wider swings in personal income and consumer spending. New research from Texas ...

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (08/06/2024) — Researchers at the University of Minnesota, have developed a new visual diagnostic technique that can be used to advance early detection for neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's disease and similar diseases that affect animals, including Chronic Wasting Disease in deer.  The research is published in npj Biosensing, a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Nature.  Named Cap-QuIC (Capillary-enhanced Quaking-Induced Conversion), researchers will now be able to distinguish infected samples with the naked eye, which makes testing ...

People with higher levels of metals found in their blood and urine may be more likely to be diagnosed with — and die from — amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, a University of Michigan-led study suggests. Researchers have known that ALS, a rare but fatal neurodegenerative condition, is influenced by genetic and environmental factors, including exposure to pesticides and metals. This latest study examined the levels of metals in the blood and urine of people with and without ALS, finding that exposure to individual and mixtures of metals is associated with a greater risk for ALS and shorter survival. The ...

PULLMAN, Wash. – It may be possible to turn anxiety into a superpower in some scenarios, recent research with entrepreneurs indicates.   A Washington State University-led study found that if entrepreneurs preparing to make a funding pitch connected their pitch anxiety to their passion for their venture, judges ranked their performance higher. Perhaps even more importantly, the judges were also more likely to recommend them for funding. This emotion reframing involved the entrepreneurs recognizing that they were feeling anxious partly because the project means so much to them. Entrepreneurs who tried other strategies ...

The findings of the randomized crossover clinical trial, available online now and slated to appear in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Nutrition, reveal simply swapping in foods made from refined corn flour + corn bran can lower LDL cholesterol concentrations by anywhere from 5% - 13.3% in just four weeks. The trial compared the impact of whole-grain corn meal, refined corn meal, and a blend (refined corn meal plus corn bran) and found that 70% of the participants saw significant reductions in LDL cholesterol concentrations when consuming the blend. For the other corn flours, participants did not see a decrease in their LDL or total cholesterol ...

Markings on a stone pillar at a 12,000 year-old archaeological site in Turkey likely represent the world’s oldest solar calendar, created as a memorial to a devastating comet strike, experts suggest. The markings at Göbekli Tepe in southern Turkey – an ancient complex of temple-like enclosures adorned with intricately carved symbols – could record an astronomical event that triggered a key shift in human civilisation, researchers say.  The research suggests ancient people were able to record their observations of the sun, moon and constellations in ...

In brief: The chemical messenger orexin and the orexin neurons in the brain mediate the decision between exercise and snacking. Researchers at ETH Zurich made this discovery in mice. The results are likely to be transferable to humans. In the experiment, mice with a blocked orexin system opted more frequently for the milkshake offered them and less for exercise. These results could help in researching and developing new strategies to promote physical activity in people. Should I go and exercise, or would I rather go to the café ...

To protect the Amazon and support the wellbeing of its people, its economy needs to shift from environmentally harmful production to a model built around the diversity of indigenous and rural communities, and standing forests. A group of conservationists from Bolivia, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, the US and the UK say that current conservation and development efforts will never sustain or scale without systemic changes in how economies are designed. Despite extensive destruction of the Amazon in the name of economic development, Amazonian communities have seen little improvement in income, life expectancy, and education. The researchers have ...

Scientists at Nagoya University in Japan have made a significant breakthrough in treating lipid disorders. They have developed a new compound, ZTA-261, which selectively binds to the thyroid hormone receptor beta (THRβ). THRβ plays an important role in the regulation of lipid metabolism, which affects lipid levels in the blood. Mice administered the drug showed decreased lipid levels in the liver and blood, with fewer side effects in the liver, heart, and bones compared to existing compounds. These findings, published in Communications Medicine, suggest that ZTA-261 ...

Nicholas A. Marston, MD, MPH, of the TIMI Study Group and Carl J. and Ruth Shapiro Cardiovascular Center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, is the corresponding author of a paper published in Nature Medicine, “Clonal hematopoiesis, cardiovascular events and treatment benefit in 63,700 individuals from five TIMI randomized trials.” How would you summarize your study for a lay audience? Clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP) is a condition that promotes the multiplication of blood stem cells in the body and increases the ...

Gold does not readily lend itself to being turned into long, thin threads. But researchers at Linköping University in Sweden have now managed to create gold nanowires and develop soft electrodes that can be connected to the nervous system. The electrodes are soft as nerves, stretchable and electrically conductive, and are projected to last for a long time in the body.   Some people have a “heart of gold”, so why not “nerves of gold”? In the future, it may be possible to use this precious metal in soft interfaces to connect electronics to the nervous system for medical ...

Accelerating global change continues to threaten Earth’s vast biodiversity, including in the oceans, which remain largely unexplored. To date, only a small fraction of an estimated two million total living marine species have been named and described. A major challenge is the time it takes to scientifically describe and publish a new species, which is a crucial step in studying and protecting these species. The current scientific and publishing landscape often results in decade-long delays (20-40 years) from the discovery of a new species to its official description. As an ...

The 18th Q-Bio Conference on Quantitative Biology was held at the Guangming Yungu International Conference Center in Shenzhen from July 26 to 29, 2024. Organized by the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the Shenzhen Institute of Synthetic Biology (iSynBio), and Peking University, the conference drew over 230 global researchers from countries including the U.S., U.K., France, India, Japan, Chile, and China. Themed "Predictive Modeling and Quantitative Principles in Complex Biological Systems," the event explored future prospects in quantitative and synthetic biology. Under ...

Philadelphia, August 6, 2024 – Doctors recommend making fruits and vegetables a foundational part of the treatment of patients with hypertension. Diets high in fruits and vegetables are found to lower blood pressure, reduce cardiovascular risk, and improve kidney health due to their base-producing effects. A new study in The American Journal of Medicine, published by Elsevier, details the findings from a five-year interventional randomized control trial. Despite ongoing efforts to improve hypertension treatment and reduce its adverse outcomes with pharmacological strategies, hypertension-related chronic kidney disease and its cardiovascular mortality are increasing. Heart disease ...

The expansion of the Mexico-US border wall crossing has been accompanied by a rising toll of serious injuries, with poor discharge care and a lack of appropriate interpreting facilities adding up to a “humanitarian and health crisis,” suggest researchers in the open access journal Trauma Surgery & Acute Care Open. Thirty eight different nationalities and 21 languages other than Spanish were represented among those attempting to cross one segment of the wall in 2021 and 2022, say the researchers. The Mexico-US border wall was extended by 50 miles and raised to a height of 30 feet in Southern California, construction ...

The interplay of a quartet of sex, marital status, education, and race is linked to an 18 year lifespan gap for US citizens, and while no one factor is more influential than any of the others, the more of these influential factors a person has, the higher their risk of an earlier death, finds research published in the open access journal BMJ Open. But a simple scoring system based on these characteristics can help overcome this complexity to identify those most at risk, say the researchers. Individual risks and genetic factors explain part of the differences in health and death, but the evidence increasingly points to the role of social determinants—the ...

At the edge of the south coast of South Africa, Arizona State University professor Curtis Marean and his research teams have been teasing out the secrets of our earliest modern human ancestors in caves at Pinnacle Point for over 25 years. In late July, the site was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Olympic gold medal of heritage, which is only given to sites of “outstanding universal value” to all of humanity.  In 1999, while conducting reconnaissance on the south coast ...

“We sought to identify an association between osteoporosis and LTL shortening in an independent prospective cohort.” BUFFALO, NY- August 5, 2024 – A new research paper was published on the cover of Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 16, Issue 14, entitled, “Association between osteoporosis and the rate of telomere shortening.” A shorter leukocyte telomere length (LTL) is reported to be associated with age-related diseases, including osteoporosis. Many studies ...

Reno, Nev. (August 5, 2024) – DRI’s STEM Education Team has received a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to support environmental education in Nevada’s schools. The $100,000 grant will fund the production of additional educational kits known as Greenboxes that raise awareness and understanding of the prevalence and role of microplastics in the environment. “DRI is honored to be awarded this EPA grant, and we are eager to continue our outreach to underserved rural and urban communities across Nevada,” said DRI STEM Education Program Manager Emily McDonald-Williams. “Middle school students ...

New study reveals a significant sex bias in pain management at emergency departments, showing that female patients are consistently less likely to receive pain medication prescriptions compared to male patients with similar complaints. This bias persists across different ages, pain levels, and physician sex, indicating a systemic issue. Female patients' pain scores are less frequently recorded, and they spend more time in the emergency department than male patients. The findings highlight the need for urgent policy interventions and training for healthcare ...

New York, NY (August 5, 2024) — The Child Mind Institute has released a paper detailing their pioneering study in the journal Nature Human Behaviour titled, "Moving Beyond Processing and Analysis-Related Variation in Resting State Functional Brain Imaging." The research identifies significant challenges in the reproducibility and standardization of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) used to understand brain function and behavior — and proposes concrete solutions to move the field towards results that translate into real world impact. Along with a diverse team of international collaborators, ...

Pneumonia diagnoses are marked by pronounced uncertainty, an AI-based analysis of over 2 million hospital visits has found. More than half the time, a pneumonia diagnosis made in the hospital will change from a patient’s entrance to their discharge—either because someone who was initially diagnosed with pneumonia ended up with a different final diagnosis, or because a final diagnosis of pneumonia was missed when a patient entered the hospital (not including cases of hospital-acquired pneumonia). The study describing the new results publishes August 6th in Annals of Internal Medicine. Barbara Jones, MD, MSCI, pulmonary and critical care physician ...

Embargoed for release until 5:00 p.m. ET on Monday 5 August 2024     Annals of Internal Medicine Tip Sheet      @Annalsofim     Below please find summaries of new articles that will be published in the next issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The summaries are not intended to substitute for the full articles as a source of information. This information is under strict embargo and by taking it into possession, media representatives are committing to the terms of the embargo not only on their own behalf, but also on behalf of the organization they represent.      ----------------------------     1. ...