In late 2021, Salvatore Torquato, on sabbatical from Princeton’s Department of Chemistry, reached across the aisle as it were and invited a young astrophysicist at the Institute for Advanced Study to apply the tools of statistical mechanics to his own work on the distribution of galaxies. The astrophysicist, Oliver Philcox, now a postdoc at the Simons Foundation, was intrigued. A year-long collaboration ensued. The questions at the heart of their unusual partnership were straightforward: can the statistical descriptors Torquato has worked with throughout his career find application in unlikely places like cosmology, and can they accurately characterize the complexity in the distribution ...

Imagine you are a doctor managing the emergency room of a large hospital. You suddenly get a call reporting a mass shooting at a nearby concert. In 20 minutes, you will be responsible for triaging more than 200 patients with a range of injuries. You do not have enough staff or resources and the hospital policies are not designed for a situation this dire. “When people respond to emergencies, many decisions they face are quite predictable. They’re trained on them, and there’s policy,” said UMass Lowell’s Neil Shortland, associate professor in the School of Criminology and Justice Studies. “But every now and then, they get stuck with a really ...

When astronauts begin to build a permanent base on the moon, as NASA plans to do in the coming years, they’ll need help. Robots could potentially do the heavy lifting by laying cables, deploying solar panels, erecting communications towers, and building habitats. But if each robot is designed for a specific action or task, a moon base could become overrun by a zoo of machines, each with its own unique parts and protocols. To avoid a bottleneck of bots, a team of MIT engineers is designing a kit of universal ...

A common and widely used chemical may be fueling the rise of the world’s fastest growing brain condition – Parkinson’s disease. For the past 100 years, trichloroethylene (TCE) has been used to decaffeinate coffee, degrease metal, and dry clean clothes. It contaminates the Marine Corps base Camp Lejeune, 15 toxic Superfund sites in Silicon Valley, and up to one-third of groundwater in the U.S.  TCE causes cancer, is linked to miscarriages and congenital heart disease, and is associated ...

Brigham researchers studying how and why certain cell types proliferate in the gut found that xanthine, which is found in coffee, tea and chocolate, may play a role in Th17 differentiation   Insights may help investigators better understand gut health and the development of conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease The gut is home to a cast of microbes that influence health and disease. Some types of microorganisms are thought to contribute to the development of inflammatory conditions, such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), but the exact cascade of events that leads from microbes to immune cells to disease remains ...

NEW ORLEANS, La. – Global death rates from aortic diseases have steadily increased over the past two decades. Studies show up to 8% of individuals will develop an aortic aneurysm during their lifetime, higher than rates of colon and lung cancer combined, and over 80% of ruptured aortic aneurysms cause sudden death.  To save lives and improve outcomes for patients with aortic disease of all kinds, Ochsner Health is excited to announce the establishment of The Ochsner Aortic Center. Outfitted with cutting-edge imaging technology that allows medical staff to make faster, easier, and safer decisions, this dedicated, comprehensive aortic center is now the ...

A team of researchers from Aston University has developed a new technique that could be a game changer for the medical and drinks industries. The technology enables insoluble drug/oil to be dissolved in water. The technique is novel because it doesn’t just mix the two together to make an emulsion, it makes oil soluble in water and has the potential to revolutionise a variety of medical treatments and improve drug delivery. The technique was developed with Max Bio+ a spin out company founded by Professor Sunil Shah, a consultant ...

ATLANTA — The American College of Rheumatology (ACR) and the American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons (AAHKS) released a summary of its new guideline titled “the Optimal Timing of Elective Hip or Knee Arthroplasty for Patients with Symptomatic Moderate to Severe Osteoarthritis or Osteonecrosis Who Have Failed Nonoperative Therapy.” The ACR and AAHKS have worked together before, creating guidelines for Perioperative Management of Antirheumatic Medication in Patients with Rheumatic Diseases Undergoing Elective Total Hip or Total Knee Arthroplasty in 2017 and 2022. While those guidelines focus on which medications ...

Researchers from Drexel University have uncovered a novel regulatory mechanism in the brain that is essential for making the right kinds of proteins that promote healthy brain function, and its malfunctioning may be an early contributor of the development of Alzheimer’s disease. Brain cells are continuously undergoing changes in response to environmental stimuli and to record new memories. Such complex brain capability relies on the ability of brain cells to generate different functional variants of the same protein using a process known as alternative RNA splicing. Recent studies have reported defects ...

The Fannie and John Hertz Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering the most promising innovators in science and technology, has announced the election of Stephen D. Fantone as chair of its board of directors. Fantone is the founder and president of Optikos Corporation, which provides innovative applications of optical technology, both products and services, to commercial, government and consumer products organizations worldwide. Fantone is a recognized expert in optical engineering and optical product ...

Researchers at West Virginia University have engineered a material with the potential to dramatically cut the amount of heat power plants release into the atmosphere. A team led by Xueyan Song, professor and George B. Berry Chair of Engineering at the Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources, has created an oxide ceramic material that solves a longstanding efficiency problem plaguing thermoelectric generators. Those devices can generate electricity from heat, including power plant heat emissions, which contribute to global warming. The breakthrough ...

The Fannie and John Hertz Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering the most promising innovators in science and technology, has announced the election of William Evans to its board of directors. Evans is the physics division leader in the Physical and Life Sciences Directorate at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), which works to enable United States security and global stability and resilience by empowering multidisciplinary teams to pursue bold and innovative science and technology. “It is imperative that the Hertz Foundation’s board of directors ...

March 14, 2023-- The COVID-19 pandemic has had a long-lasting impact on adolescent mental health and substance use according to a new population-based study are based on survey responses from a nationwide sample of over 64,000 13–18-year-old North American and Icelandic adolescents assessed prior to and up to two years into the pandemic. The study was conducted by faculty at Columbia University Teachers College and Mailman School of Public Health and a team of Icelandic and other North American clinical, behavioral and social scientists. The findings are published in published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health. This same research team ...

Shinsuke Suzuki at The University of Melbourne, Australia reports distinct patterns of reward-seeking behavior between obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and problem gambling, in a study publishing in the open access journal PLOS Biology on March 14th. OCD is associated with lower-than-normal learning rates when rewards are less than expected. On the other hand, people with problem gambling exhibit boosted and blunted learning from rewards higher and lower than expected, respectively. Understanding the differences between obsessive and addictive behaviors is essential for developing treatments for conditions like problem gambling ...

A global maternal immunization program for group B Streptococcus - strep B - would save millions in healthcare costs by reducing death and disability, but without tiered pricing, equitable access would likely not be achieved. Several vaccines are currently under development, and an assessment of the impact and value of a global program is publishing March 14th in the open access journal PLOS Medicine. It finds that this could avert over 200,000 cases and more than 31,000 deaths, and reduce disability in children. Strep B can infect pregnant women and their babies, causing sepsis and meningitis in newborns, and sometimes leading to death or disability. ...

X-ray detection is widely used in medical imaging, radioactivity detection, security checking, industrial flaw inspection, and so on. In recent years, metal halide perovskites have demonstrated excellent performances in the detection of X-rays and gamma-rays. However, most studies focus on perovskite single-pixel devices. To achieve the application goal of X-ray imagers, the detectors should be integrated with pixel circuits. This means that the device dark current is an important figure of merit to be considered. The low dark current can guarantee ...

WASHINGTON, March 14, 2023 – The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases daily with no sign of stopping or slowing. Too much of civilization depends on the burning of fossil fuels, and even if we can develop a replacement energy source, much of the damage has already been done. Without removal, the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere will continue to wreak havoc for centuries. Atmospheric carbon capture is a potential remedy to this problem. It would pull carbon dioxide out of the air and store it permanently to reverse the effects of climate change. Practical carbon capture technologies are still in the early stages of development, with the most promising involving ...

WASHINGTON, March 14, 2023 – In a world experiencing growing inequality and intolerance, tools borrowed from science and mathematics could be the key to understanding and preventing prejudice. In Chaos, by AIP Publishing, Luis A. Martinez-Vaquero of the Polytechnic University of Madrid applied evolutionary game theory, which combines techniques from economics and biology, and complex system analysis to investigate the relationship between inequality and intolerance. He found that inequality boosts intolerance and that redistribution ...

About The Study: Implementation in California of its Insurance Gender Nondiscrimination Act was associated with a significant increase in utilization of gender-affirming surgery in California compared with the control states Washington and Arizona. These data might inform state legislative efforts to craft policies preventing discrimination in health coverage for state residents, including transgender and gender-diverse patients.  Authors: Anna Schoenbrunner, M.D., of Ohio State University in Columbus, is ...

About The Study: In this study of 318 mothers in Australia, the U.K., and the U.S., antenatal COVID-19–related stress was significantly associated with poor postpartum maternal mental health outcomes and increased negative affectivity among infants. Pregnant individuals should be classified as a vulnerable group during pandemics and should be considered a public health priority, not only in terms of physical health but also mental health.  Authors: Susanne Schweizer, Ph.D., of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, United Kingdom, is the corresponding author.  To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link ...

About The Study: The results of this study showed that intimate partner violence experiences at the start of the pandemic were associated with worse mental health symptoms and modifiable health factors for female participants younger than age 60. Screening and interventions for intimate partner violence and related health factors are needed to prevent severe, long-term health consequences.  Authors: Arielle A. J. Scoglio, Ph.D., of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, ...

PASADENA, Calif. — A Kaiser Permanente study of more than 800,000 young people between the ages of 3 and 17 showed that youth at the upper range of average weight had a 26% higher risk of developing hypertension than those closer to what is considered average weight. The study was published March 14, 2023, in JAMA Network Open. “Hypertension during youth tracks into adulthood and is associated with cardiac and vascular organ damage. Since the organ damage can be irreversible, preventing hypertension in our young people is critically important,” said the lead author, Corinna Koebnick, PhD, of the ...

WASHINGTON, March 14, 2023 – Burn wounds are notoriously prone to bacterial infection and typically lead to a larger amount of scar tissue than laceration wounds. In APL Bioengineering, by AIP publishing, researchers from Boston University and Harvard University created a biomimetic model to study wound healing in burn and laceration wounds. They discovered that fibroblasts – normally considered building cells that give shape and strength to tissues and organs – clear away damaged tissue before depositing new material. This ...

COVID-19 related stress had a greater impact on the mental health of those who were pregnant during the pandemic, compared to those who weren't, new UNSW Sydney research has found.   In a longitudinal study of 742 pregnant participants, Dr Susanne Schweizer from UNSW Science, together with colleagues in Europe and the US, collected data on mental health at multiple time points, both during and after pregnancy.    Their analysis found COVID-19 related stress had the greatest impact on pregnant people who had a tendency to worry, felt lonely, ...

New research emphasizes how important children’s well-being is for their sense of achievement. Pupils' sense of how good their results are at school is linked to how well they are thriving, both in the school setting and with the subject matter. “We’re finding a connection between pupils’ well-being at school and the subject matter, and with how well the pupils think they’re able to do the school work in all the subjects we examined,” says Hermundur Sigmundsson, a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's (NTNU) Department ...