BALTIMORE, Md. (March 13, 2023) – Scientists led by the Lieber Institute for Brain Development are studying how a mother’s SARS-CoV-2 infection during pregnancy affects the biology of the placenta and the corresponding trajectory of the child’s brain development, including the risk for neurodevelopmental disorders such as schizophrenia and autism. The work is made possible by a $3 million, five-year grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development, part ...

Communities that are constructing new multi-sport facilities for major events could run the risk of ending up with expensive under-used complexes, but a new study suggests there are several factors that can keep them productive in the long run. Researchers found that factors such as the location and design of the facility, the formal agreements between operating groups and the breadth of sport and recreation programming offered at the facility all contributed to promoting a legacy of participation post-event. “Major sporting ...

Surgeons in Germany have shown a small technical change to keyhole surgery for prostate cancer can more than halve one of the most common post-operative complications – where lymphatic fluid collects in the pelvis. The technique involves creating a small flap in the peritoneum – the lining of the abdomen – and attaching this flap down into the pelvis. This creates a route for lymphatic fluid to escape from the pelvis into the abdomen where it can be more easily absorbed. The findings ...

Vasectomies are much less likely to cause complications than expected, according to a new UK study reviewing the outcomes from over 90,000 vasectomies performed over 15 years. The study, led by researchers from Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, is being presented today at the European Association of Urology (EAU) Congress in Milan. It shows that existing leaflets explaining the potential complications to patients are based on outdated figures. Around 11,000 vasectomy operations are performed every year ...

A scientific definition to determine whether a man’s erection can be deemed a "grower " or a "shower" has been produced by researchers. The findings are presented today at the European Association of Urology (EAU) Congress in Milan. Urologists based at three hospitals and a clinic in Madrid conducted ultrasound scans on 225 men in both flaccid and then erect states. The researchers, led by Dr Manuel Alonso-Isa, a urologist at the University Hospital HM Puerta del Sur in Madrid, Spain, had hoped to find factors among the men that would predict if they fell into one of these ...

Active monitoring of prostate cancer has the same high survival rates after 15 years as radiotherapy or surgery, reports the largest study of its kind today. The latest findings from the ProtecT trial, led by the Universities of Oxford and Bristol, are presented today at the European Association of Urology (EAU) Congress in Milan and published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The trial was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). Although men on active monitoring – which involves regular tests to check on the cancer – were more likely to see it progress ...

The results of the clinical trial of a new wrist device designed to help control the symptoms of Tourette syndrome have shown it significantly reduces the severity and frequency of tics.   The prototype wrist device, which was recently tried out by Lewis Capaldi, delivers electrical pulses to reduce the amount and severity of tics experienced by individuals with Tourette’s and was trialed by 121 people across the UK. The results have been announced in MedRxive. The device has been developed by scientists at the University of Nottingham and spin-out company Neurotherapuetics Ltd who have recently secured £1m in additional funding to ...

A research paper by scientists at the Beijing Institute of Technology and University of Lancaster displayed a recent advancement of using fuel explosion as the power of source to achieve the rapid and powerful motion for the medium-size robots. The new research paper, published in the journal Cyborg and Bionic Systems, provided a new kind of actuation system for the robotic system, providing a promising patentability to largely improve the working length of the conventional medium-size robotic systems. “Achieving the rapid and fast motion of the medium-size robot has been a challenging task for many years, …” ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Most of what scientists know about viruses in animals is the list of nucleotides that compose their genomic sequence – which, while valuable, offers very few hints about a virus’s ability to infect humans. Rather than let the next outbreak take the world by surprise, two virologists say in a Science Perspective article published today (March 10, 2023) that the scientific community should invest in a four-part research framework to proactively identify animal viruses that might infect humans. “A lot of financial investment has gone into sequencing viruses in nature and thinking that from sequence alone we’ll be ...

EAST LANSING, MI – The International Research Network for Nuclear Astrophysics (IReNA), supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and headquartered at Michigan State University (MSU), brings together nuclear physicists, astronomers, and computational scientists to try to answer a long-standing question in science: Where do the elements that make up our world come from? Founded in 2019, IReNA continues to expand its global reach for cooperation to advance knowledge in nuclear astrophysics, and now welcomes a new network partner: the Ibero-American Network of Nuclear ...

“[...] there is a need to explore brain mechanisms through which psychological processes may exert their protective or deleterious effects.” BUFFALO, NY- March 10, 2023 – Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) published a new editorial paper in Volume 15, Issue 4, entitled, “Cognitive aging and dementia prevention: the time for psychology?” Modifiable risk and protective factors (e.g. engaging in active lifestyles ...

Inflammatory neurological diseases, such as multiple sclerosis (MS), can arise when cell-to-cell communication between cells in the central nervous system (CNS) goes awry. But exactly how this cellular crosstalk leads to the molecular changes that drive disease remain unknown. To address this, researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham health care system, developed a platform that allows them to perform genetic screens of cell-cell interactions to identify genes that control biologic processes. ...

A new paper in Nature Communications illuminates how a previously poorly understood enzyme works in the cell. Many diseases are tied to chronic cellular stress, and UMBC’s Aaron T. Smith and colleagues discovered that this enzyme plays an important role in the cellular stress response. Better understanding how this enzyme functions and is controlled could lead to the discovery of new therapeutic targets for these diseases. The enzyme is named ATE1, and it belongs to a family of enzymes called arginyl-tRNA transferases. These enzymes add arginine (an amino acid) to proteins, which often flags the proteins for destruction in the cell. Destroying ...

Physicists are learning more about the bizarre behavior of “strange metals,” which operate outside the normal rules of electricity. Theoretical physicist Yashar Komijani, an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati, contributed to an international experiment using a strange metal made from an alloy of ytterbium, a rare earth metal. Physicists in a lab in Hyogo, Japan, fired radioactive gamma rays at the strange metal to observe its unusual electrical behavior. Led by Hisao Kobayashi with the University of Hyogo and RIKEN, the study was published in the journal Science. The experiment revealed unusual fluctuations in the strange metal’s electrical charge. “The ...

PLYMOUTH MEETING, PA [March 10, 2023] — New research in the March 2023 issue of JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network highlights how the lack of genomic research for people with African ancestry, particularly those from the Sub-Saharan region, is hampering efforts to reduce disparities for people with cancer. In a first-of-its-kind study, the researchers evaluated molecular genetic results for 113 Black South African men diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer to find evidence for ...

Individuals with Type 1 diabetes have a smaller pancreas than people without diabetes. This is surprising because insulin-producing beta cells account for just a small fraction of the pancreas, so the loss of beta cells in Type 1 diabetes would not be expected to reduce pancreas size. Now, a study of one family from Alabama has led Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers to discover that insulin deficiency, independent of the autoimmunity associated with Type 1 diabetes, is the principal factor leading to a markedly smaller pancreas. Four ...

Urology involves some of the most intimate medical conditions, yet patients don’t necessarily always prefer to be treated by a urologist of their own gender, new research has found. In some situations, male and female patients would prefer a male urologist but in others – if they have a painful condition, for example – both men and women would choose to be treated by a female doctor. The study, by researchers from University Hospital Munich, is being presented today at the European Association of Urology (EAU) Congress ...

Testing for genetic mutations in urine can detect bladder cancer years before the disease shows clinical symptoms, new research has shown. The study, by researchers from France, Iran and the United States, identified mutations across ten genes that were able to predict the most common type of bladder cancer up to 12 years in advance of diagnosis. The findings are presented today at the European Association of Urology (EAU) annual Congress in Milan. Bladder cancer is not a rare disease – it is one of the top ten most common cancers in ...

Existing thought in the orthopedic world is that treating a bunion with the minimally invasive procedure MISB may make a person’s flatfoot worse. A new study by researchers at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) in New York City shows that this procedure does not make flatfoot worse in people with asymptomatic flatfoot and may even improve the condition. The findings were presented today at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS). “Because of the way the bunion correction is performed with MISB, there is a thought that it may not help stabilize the ...

Tokyo, Japan – Scientists from Tokyo Metropolitan University have used machine learning to automate the identification of defects in sister chromatid cohesion. They trained a convolutional neural network (CNN) with microscopy images of individual stained chromosomes, identified by researchers as having or not having cohesion defects. After training, it was able to successfully classify 73.1% of new images. Automation promises better statistics, and more insight into the wide range of disorders which cause cohesion defects.   Chromosomes consist of long DNA molecules that contain a portion of our genes. When cells divide, ...

Cambridge researchers have observed a highly unusual behaviour in the endangered freshwater mussel, Unio crassus. In spring, female mussels were seen moving to the water’s edge and anchoring into the riverbed, with their back ends raised above the waterline. Then they squirted out regular water jets, which landed in the water up to a metre away. Squirting cycles lasted 3-6 hours. This behaviour has never been seen in any other mussel species. The jets disturb the river surface and attract ...

The first images from the largest program in the James Webb Space Telescope’s first year show many types of galaxies, including dazzling examples of spiral galaxies, gravitational lensing, and evidence of galaxy mergers. Scientists from the COSMOS-Web program released mosaic images taken in early January by JWST’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). COSMOS-Web aims to map the earliest structures of the universe and will create a wide and deep survey of up to 1 million galaxies. Over the course of 255 hours of observing time, COSMOS-Web ...

Pulmonary fibrosis is a devastating disease characterized by progressive scarring in the lungs, killing up to half of patients within five years of a diagnosis. Little is known about whether there are differences in how the condition affects individuals of different ethnicities. New research at the University of Chicago Medicine has found that Black patients with pulmonary fibrosis are significantly younger than their Hispanic and white counterparts across a wide variety of disease metrics, including diagnosis, first hospitalization, lung transplant and death. “Pulmonary fibrosis is a deadly disease, and people are often diagnosed right around the time they retire,” ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – Domestic production of solar panels – most of which are now made in Asia – can speed up decarbonization in the U.S., according to new Cornell University research published in Nature Communications. The scientists found that if solar panel manufacturing can return to the U.S. by 2035, the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from panel creation would be reduced by 30% and energy consumption would be cut by 13%, compared to 2020, when the U.S. relied almost entirely on international trading partners. Manufacturing crystalline silicon photovoltaic panels in the U.S. solves logistical challenges and eases greenhouse gas problems, according ...

The research is based on new analyses of stone tools used by long-tailed macaques in the Phang Nga National Park in Thailand. These monkeys use stone tools to crack open hard-shelled nuts. In that process, the monkeys often break their hammerstones and anvils. The resulting assemblage of broken stones is substantial and widespread across the landscape. Moreover, many of these artefacts bear all of the same characteristics that are commonly used to identify intentionally made stone tools in some of the earliest archaeological sites in East Africa. “The ability to intentionally make ...