Statistical and Engineering Approaches to Federated Learning: Comprehensive Benchmarking for Healthcare Applications   A groundbreaking study conducted by Duke-NUS Medical School evaluates federated learning (FL) methods to guide healthcare researchers in choosing privacy-preserving algorithms tailored to their clinical goals. This comprehensive benchmark compared statistical and engineering FL frameworks, offering actionable insights to balance predictive accuracy and interpretability in medical research.   Federated learning (FL) has emerged as a powerful tool in healthcare, enabling collaboration across institutions without compromising patient ...

Drug addiction has been one of America’s growing public health concerns for decades. Despite the development of effective treatments and support resources, few people who are suffering from a substance use disorder seek help. Reluctance to seek help has been attributed to the stigma often attached to the condition. So, in an effort to address this problem, researchers at Drexel University are raising awareness of the stigmatizing language present in online forums and they have created an artificial intelligence tool to help educate users and offer alternative language. Presented at the recent ...

Religious believers are no more generous than atheists – at least as long as they don’t know what the recipient believes in. Finding this out increases generosity significantly, mainly because people give more to those who share their religion. This is the conclusion of a study carried out at Linköping University, Sweden.  Nathalie Hallin is an atheist. Her colleague Hajdi Moche is a Christian. They both have a postdoc position at the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning at Linköping. Together they wanted to find out if a religious belief makes a person more generous, which research has so far disagreed on and they themselves have ...

SAN ANTONIO – Patients with high-risk, BRCA-positive breast cancer who received olaparib (Lynparza) after standard treatment continued to have better survival outcomes than those who received placebo after a median follow-up of 6.1 years, according to the latest results from the phase III OlympiA clinical trial presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS), held December 10-13, 2024. “The OlympiA trial examines adding one year of the oral PARP inhibitor olaparib after completion of standard treatment ...

SAN ANTONIO – Patients with germline BRCA mutations who were diagnosed with breast cancer at or before age 40 and who underwent a bilateral risk-reducing mastectomy (RRM) and/or a risk-reducing salpingo-oophorectomy (RRSO) had lower rates of recurrence, secondary breast and/or ovarian malignancies, and death than those who did not undergo these surgeries, according to results presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS), held December 10-13, 2024. “The benefits of RRM and RRSO have been shown for BRCA-mutation carriers without a prior history of cancer, but their impact for BRCA-mutation carriers with a history of early-onset breast cancer is less clear,” ...

SAN ANTONIO – Imlunestrant, an investigational next-generation selective estrogen receptor degrader (SERD), improved progression-free survival in patients with endocrine therapy-pretreated, ER-positive, HER2-negative advanced breast cancer—as monotherapy in patients with ESR1 mutations and as combination therapy with abemaciclib (Verzenio) in all patients, regardless of ESR1 mutation status—according to results from the phase III EMBER-3 clinical trial presented at the San Antonio ...

Carnegie Mellon University Africa and Challenger Center Collaborate to Deliver STEM Programs Partnership Will Promote STEM Education and Careers to Secondary School Students in Africa Carnegie Mellon University Africa, CMU’s College of Engineering location in Kigali, Rwanda, and Challenger Center, will partner to deliver Challenger Center’s Virtual Missions to hundreds of secondary school students on the continent. This project will help grow the population of African students who are motivated to pursue higher education and careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. Challenger Center’s Virtual Missions are space-themed experiences for students ...

Identifying novel therapeutic strategies and making fundamental discoveries related to small cell lung cancer. Creating environmental and sustainable solutions for lithium-ion battery technology. Improving the safety and efficacy of gene editing and understanding the mechanisms of DNA repair to potentially cure diseases. Discovering the most distant and massive galaxies that have reshaped our understanding of early Universe star formation and supermassive black holes. Pioneering geochemical fingerprinting technology to optimize energy production processes. These are the breakthroughs ...

DNA stores the instructions for life and, along with enzymes and other molecules, computes everything from hair color to risk of developing diseases. Harnessing that prowess and immense storage capacity could lead to DNA-based computers that are faster and smaller than today’s silicon-based versions. As a step toward that goal, researchers report in ACS Central Science a fast, sequential DNA computing method that is also rewritable — just like current computers. “DNA computing as a liquid computing paradigm has unique application ...

Street art takes many forms, and the vibrant murals on the Berlin Wall both before and after its fall are expressions of people’s opinions. But there was often secrecy around the processes for creating the paintings, which makes them hard to preserve. Now, researchers reporting in the Journal of the American Chemical Society have uncovered information about this historic site from paint chips by combining a handheld detector and artificial intelligence (AI) data analysis. “The research highlights the powerful impact of the synergy between chemistry and deep learning in quantifying matter, exemplified in this case by pigments that make street ...

HOUSTON ― Lauren Averett Byers, M.D., professor of Thoracic/Head & Neck Medical Oncology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, has received the 2025 Edith and Peter O’Donnell Award in Medicine from the Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering, Science and Technology (TAMEST). The award recognizes her fundamental discoveries and contributions to identifying novel therapeutic strategies for small cell lung cancer (SCLC), which have paved the way for personalized treatments, even in the ...

To fill this knowledge gap, a group of researchers led by Professor Kangseok Lee, from the Department of Life Science, Chung-Ang University set out to explore the biogenesis and function of specific tRFs like tRHs. Their study published in Volume 15 of Nature Communications on 28 October 2024, opens exciting avenues for the future of cancer therapies and introduces potential biomarkers for improved clinical outcomes.  This study was inspired by a serendipitous discovery in 2010, when the researchers found high levels of small RNA fragments derived from specific tRNAs, rather than the anticipated ...

The secret of the female orgasm may have been revealed by scientists in a pioneering study. Researchers led by the University of Essex found that women climax more frequently if they have high levels of an inward-looking sense known as interoception. Dr Megan Klabunde, from the Department of Psychology, discovered women who noticed and attend to internal bodily signals– like heartbeats, breathing, and sensual touch sensations - have more frequent orgasms. Dr Klabunde says this is one of the first times healthy female orgasms have been studied and they are important for women’s well-being and boost relationship satisfaction. Improving lives   It is hoped the ...

CLEVELAND—Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries power everything from electric vehicles to wearable devices. But new research from Case Western Reserve University suggests that a more sustainable and cost-effective alternative may lie in zinc-based batteries. In a study published recently in Angewandte Chemie, researchers announced a significant step toward creating high-performance, low-cost zinc-sulfur batteries. “This research marks a major step forward in the development of safer and more ...

Trillions of bacteria work in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, helping produce everything from beer and facial creams to biodiesel and fertilizer. The pharmaceutical industry, in particular, relies heavily on bacteria for producing substances like insulin and penicillin. Harnessing bacteria's industrial contributions have revolutionized global health, but their work comes at a high energy cost. Additionally, solvents and continuous production of new bacteria are often necessary, as they don't last long in their jobs. Changzhu ...

Large-scale protein and gene profiling have massively expanded the landscape of cancer-associated proteins and gene mutations, but it has been difficult to discern whether they play an active role in the disease or are innocent bystanders. In a study published in Nature Cancer, researchers at Baylor College of Medicine revealed a powerful and unbiased machine learning-based approach called FunMap for assessing the role of cancer-associated mutations and understudied proteins, with broad implications for advancing cancer biology and informing therapeutic strategies. “Gaining functional information on the genes and proteins associated with cancer is an important ...

Cleveland Clinic researchers have found definitive proof of a kidney microbiome that influences renal health and kidney stone formation, demonstrating that the urinary tract is not sterile and low levels of bacteria are normal. The Nature Communications publication describes the rigorous multi-pronged approach a team led by Aaron Miller, PhD, and José Agudelo, MD, used to identify and characterize the small bacterial community by combining preclinical, human and dish studies.  They also identified certain bacteria within the microbiome ...

IMDEA Software Institute researchers Diego Castejón Molina, Dimitris Vasilopoulos and Pedro Moreno-Sanchez present a system that represents a step forward in digital purchases. Their research is reflected in the study: “MixBuy: Contingent Payment in the Presence of Coin Mixers” which has been accepted at the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS). Context Today, many products can be purchased with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin: video games, books or cell phone plans. In some countries, such as El Salvador, you can even buy ...

Having a quality breakfast that provides the right amount of energy to face the day, around a quarter of daily intake, reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease. This is highlighted by a study conducted by the Hospital del Mar Research Institute and published in the Journal of Nutrition, Health and Aging. The study followed the progress of 383 participants in the PREDIMED-Plus project, a randomized clinical trial comparing the effects of a Mediterranean diet combined with physical activity versus dietary recommendations alone on cardiovascular disease. No previous study had analyzed the impact of energy intake and the nutritional ...

A new study assessing provincial and territorial variations in reimbursement criteria of drug coverage for patients covered by Canada's public pharmacare programs for two common cardiovascular conditions revealed significant inequities and deficiencies in access to medications and treatment. The article appearing in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology, published by Elsevier, exposes the complexities of the Canadian drug review process and makes a case for a unified framework to improve the present infrastructure, moving towards ensuring the best care for patients with cardiovascular disease.   Canada has been praised for its universal healthcare system and low ...

To commercialize a completely new way of creating colors, a coalition between Kobe University and the venture capital firm ANRI received startup development funding of ¥300 million from the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST). With their lightweight, unfading and environmentally friendly way of producing color, they want to first enter the security ink and cosmetics markets before moving om to paints for cars, airplanes and other mobility applications. We color our world, and ourselves, to display information, to protect the underlying surface, to uniquely identify an object, ...

A groundbreaking University of Bristol study has shed light on how lizards and snakes -the most diverse group of land vertebrates with nearly 12,000 species - have evolved remarkably varied jaw shapes, driving their extraordinary ecological success. This research, led by a team of evolutionary biologists and published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B today, offers a new understanding of the intricate factors influencing the evolution of lower jaw morphology in these animals, known collectively as lepidosaurs. The researchers discovered that jaw shape evolution in lepidosaurs is influenced by a complex interplay of factors beyond ecology, ...

Higher cardiorespiratory fitness in older age is linked to the preservation of several core aspects of cognitive ability that are vulnerable to age-related decline, finds research published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. And this association holds true irrespective of key risk factors for cognitive decline: age and carriage of the high risk APOE4 gene, the findings show.  Cardiorespiratory fitness is a physiological measure of aerobic capacity that can be modified by regular ...

Around 1 in 5 of the world’s under 50s—846 million people—are living with genital herpes infection, suggest the latest global estimates, published online in the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections.   And more than 200 million 15-49 year olds probably had at least one symptomatic outbreak of the infection in 2020, the latest year for which figures are available, the data analysis suggests. The findings prompt the researchers to call for the development of new treatments and vaccines ...

Cutting early life exposure to parental smoking may lower the risk of developing MS (multiple sclerosis) in those who are genetically predisposed to the disease, finds research published online in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry. The interplay of genes and environmental factors, including smoking, alter key aspects of brain structure in early childhood, likely facilitating development of the disease and suggesting that there may be a window of opportunity to stave this off, conclude the researchers. MS is an autoimmune disease that is typically diagnosed between the ages of 20 and 40. But ...