IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON PRESS RELEASE Under STRICT EMBARGO until: Monday 20 March 2023 19:00 GMT / 15:00 ET Peer-reviewed / Observational study / People Advanced brain imaging study hints at how DMT psychedelic alters perception of reality Scientists have gleaned new insights into how psychedelics alter conscious experience via their action on brain activity. In a study at Imperial College London, detailed brain imaging data from 20 healthy volunteers revealed how the potent psychedelic compound, DMT (dimethyltryptamine), alters brain function. During the immersive DMT experience there was increased connectivity across the brain, with more communication ...

California, USA - Mountain lions are protected from hunting in California by a law passed by popular vote in 1990. However, a team of researchers working across the state found that human-caused mortality, primarily involving conflict with humans over livestock and collisions with vehicles, was more common than natural mortality for this protected large carnivore. Their findings were published March 20 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Most research on mountain lions is conducted at relatively small scales, which has limited understanding ...

BUFFALO, NY- March 20, 2023 – A new editorial paper was published in Oncotarget's Volume 14 on February 11, 2023, entitled, “Unlocking the potential of molecular-driven stratification for osteosarcoma treatment and prognosis.” Over the last 40 years, the complex genetic landscape, the heterogeneity of the microenvironment and the cell plasticity of Osteosarcoma (OSA) tumors have delayed the therapeutic and prognostic stratification of patients and the introduction of new efficient treatments.  As a direct consequence, the vast majority ...

Managers spend much of their time managing conflict and struggle to know how to respond when a ‘he-said-she-said’ workplace dispute occurs. However, a new study shows how employees’ intuitive moral values might give rise to feelings of sympathy toward alleged perpetrators and anger toward their accusing victims. The research, published in this month’s edition of Organization Science, also offers novel insights into what enables perpetrators to go unpunished and why their victims experience backlash for coming forward. ...

University of Wyoming researchers’ study of how microscopic creatures called tardigrades survive extreme conditions has led to a major breakthrough that could eventually make life-saving treatments available to people where refrigeration isn’t possible. Thomas Boothby, an assistant professor of molecular biology, and colleagues have shown that natural and engineered versions of tardigrade proteins can be used to stabilize an important pharmaceutical used to treat people with hemophilia ...

In a new study, North Carolina State University researchers found they could separate blended cotton and polyester fabric using enzymes – nature’s tools for speeding chemical reactions. Ultimately, they hope their findings will lead to a more efficient way to recycle the fabric’s component materials, thereby reducing textile waste. However, they also found the process need more steps if the blended fabric was dyed or treated with chemicals that increase wrinkle resistance. “We can separate all of the cotton out of a cotton-polyester blend, meaning now we have clean polyester ...

New University of Limerick, Ireland research has revealed that most treatments being offered to teenagers with persistent back pain are ‘outdated’ and ignore ‘big picture’ issues. The study, carried out by researchers at University of Limerick along with colleagues in the UK and Australia, has shown that new approaches to tackling back pain are not being tested among teenagers. The research, published in the European Journal of Pain, reveals that there is a lack of treatments addressing ...

AAV is a multi-organ disease, which can be complex and may vary from person to person. Types of AAV include granulomatosis with polyangiitis (GPA), microscopic polyangiitis (MPA), and eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis (EGPA). This variety can make management challenging. Comorbidities, an individual’s history, toxicities, medication availability and cost, and patient preferences should all be considered in the process of informed decision making. EULAR first wrote recommendations ...

Amsterdam, March 20, 2023 – In 2020, bulevirtide (BLV) was conditionally approved for treating chronic hepatitis delta (CHD), an inflammation of the liver caused by hepatitis D virus (HDV). Now real-world studies of patients treated outside of clinical trials confirm that long-term suppressive therapy with BLV monotherapy has the potential to reduce viral replication and improve liver tests of these difficult-to-treat patients for the first time in 45 years, report investigators in the Journal of Hepatology and its companion journal JHEP Reports. Two of the studies, led by Pietro Lampertico, MD, PhD, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Foundation IRCCS Ca’ ...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — In a major breakthrough in the fields of nanophotonics and ultrafast optics, a Sandia National Laboratories research team has demonstrated the ability to dynamically steer light pulses from conventional, so-called incoherent light sources. This ability to control light using a semiconductor device could allow low-power, relatively inexpensive sources like LEDs or flashlight bulbs to replace more powerful laser beams in new technologies such as holograms, remote sensing, self-driving cars and high-speed ...

How fresh are your data? For drones searching a disaster zone or robots inspecting a building, working with the freshest data is key to locating a survivor or reporting a potential hazard. But when multiple robots simultaneously relay time-sensitive information over a wireless network, a traffic jam of data can ensue. Any information that gets through is too stale to consider as a useful, real-time report. Now, MIT engineers may have a solution. They’ve developed a method to tailor any wireless network to handle a high load of time-sensitive data coming from multiple sources. Their new approach, ...

The human body is made up of thousands of tiny lymphatic vessels that ferry white blood cells and proteins around the body, like a superhighway of the immune system. It’s remarkably efficient, but if damaged from injury or cancer treatment, the whole system starts to fail. The resulting fluid retention and swelling, called lymphedema, isn’t just uncomfortable — it’s also irreversible. When lymphatic vessels fail, typically their ability to pump out the fluid is compromised. Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have developed a new treatment using nanoparticles that can repair lymphatic vessel pumping. Traditionally, ...

The Chicago Quantum Exchange (CQE) continued to expand its diverse community of quantum researchers, leaders, and institutions in 2022—launching a quantum research fellowship for undergraduates, welcoming 11 new corporate partners, and extending a regional quantum communication network to a total length of 124 miles.   These are among the successes highlighted in the CQE’s newly published annual report, which chronicles the many contributions of the consortium’s members and partners and offers a window into the region’s ...

Drifting along in ocean currents, jellyfish can be both predator and prey. They eat almost anything they can capture, and follow the typical oceanic pattern of large eats small. Now a recent University of British Columbia study on these gelatinous globs suggests jellyfish may get more nutritious as they get bigger. As jellyfish grow, their size changes largely due to the chances of prey encounter, the length and number of tentacles, and their bells (the umbrella-like part of them). As a result, smaller jellyfish eat phytoplankton, microzooplankton, and eggs, while larger jellyfish can eat all of that plus shrimp and even fish. However, ...

An international research team led by the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) is to search for invisible life in the Galápagos Islands. The diversity of bacteria and other microscopic organisms may not be evident to the naked eye, but it is essential to nature. To the islands' giant daisies, for instance: unique endemic plants that are currently under threat. How unique and diverse is the invisible microbial life of the iconic Galápagos Islands? That's what the Galápagos Microbiome Project - a group of scientists from the Netherlands, ...

Future ocean warming and marine heatwaves could impact the growth and development of clownfish during their earliest life stages, suggests a new study recently published in the journal, Science of The Total Environment.  A team of marine biologists from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) reared the iconic coral reef fish in captivity at water temperatures of either 28°C or 31°C. Temperatures of 28°C represent current summer seawater temperatures in Okinawa, whilst temperatures of 31°C are reached during ...

Cancer, in all of its forms, is a public health concern responsible for more than 8 million deaths each year in the United States. In addition to its effect on patients and the health care system in general, cancer also places a burden on non-professional caregivers such as family members and friends. This can be especially true for the Hispanic population, where communication barriers, financial difficulties and sociocultural issues can be significant. In a recently published review article, Jasbir ...

In recent years, teleworking – spurred by the implementation of information and communication technologies and the recent pandemic, particularly – has become a feature of many jobs. Many companies have now made this form of working available to their employees, but it is still far from common practice in today's labour market. Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) researchers have analysed the different perspectives and perceptions on teleworking, looking  at the wide range of ...

A team including physicists of the University of Bern has for the first time detected subatomic particles called neutrinos created by a particle collider, namely at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The discovery promises to deepen scientists’ understanding of the nature of neutrinos, which are among the most abundant particles in the universe and key to the solution of the question why there is more matter than antimatter. Neutrinos are fundamental particles that played an important role in the early phase of the universe. They are key to learn more about the fundamental ...

Cast your mind back to the spring of 2020, when grocery store shelves sat bare of essential items and ingredients. For birds who live in the forests of Central America, replacement of forest land with coffee plantations essentially “clears out the shelves” of their preferred foods, causing them to shift their diets and habitats to survive. A new study led by researchers at the University of Utah explores a record of birds’ diets preserved in their feathers and radio tracking of their movements to find that birds eat far fewer invertebrates ...

Custom-made to attack cancer cells, CAR T-cell therapies have opened a new era in the treatment of human cancers, particularly, in hematologic malignancies. All too often, however, they display a frustrating trait inherited from the body's own immune system cells: a drastic loss of cancer-fighting fervor known as "exhaustion”. Exhaustion is not only seen in cancer-fighting T cells but is also frequent in the setting of viral infections, such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis B/C viruses (HBV, HCV) and COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2). The lapse into listlessness has diminished the effectiveness of CAR T-cell therapies in some patients and prompted scientists to try ...

When a family of five-ton elephants stomps and chomps its way through your crops, there’s only one winner. And in the central African nation of Gabon, farmers are getting fed up with the giant animals trampling their fields—and their livelihoods. In conservation terms, Gabon is a success story—protected areas and tough anti-poaching measures have allowed the numbers of critically endangered African forest elephants to stabilize. But with food prices rising, anti-elephant protests have been spiking too. “Some people cannot farm anymore—the elephants are eating so much of their crops,” Gabon’s environment minister ...

SEATTLE – Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) researchers have constructed biological body mass index (BMI) measures that offer a more accurate representation of metabolic health and are more varied, informative and actionable than the traditional, long-used BMI equation. The work was published in the journal Nature Medicine.  For decades, clinicians have relied on BMI as a crude tool to classify individuals as underweight, normal weight, overweight or obese. BMI scores are calculated by dividing a person’s weight in kilograms by height in meters squared. About 30 percent of the population is misclassified by this approach. Despite its limitations, ...

PHILADELPHIA (March 20, 2023) – The sense of taste is among the first to come into contact with food before we ingest it, but whether animals can taste basic or alkaline food and how they do it remained unclear until now. A research group led by Yali Zhang, PhD, Principal Investigator at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, recently addressed this significant question, as they similarly did for sour taste in 2021 on the lower end of the pH scale. Their work, published today in Nature Metabolism and highlighted in Nature, identified a previously unknown chloride ...

For the first time, scientists at the University of Sydney and the University of Basel in Switzerland have demonstrated the ability to manipulate and identify small numbers of interacting photons – packets of light energy – with high correlation. This unprecedented achievement represents an important landmark in the development of quantum technologies. It is published today in Nature Physics. Stimulated light emission, postulated by Einstein in 1916, is widely observed for large numbers of photons and laid the basis for the invention of the laser. With this research, stimulated emission has now been observed for single photons. Specifically, ...