In August 2022, Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Signed by President Joe Biden, the legislation attempted to curb inflation, lower the deficit, and invest heavily into domestic clean energy. One aspect of the bill was setting a market value-based target for battery-critical mineral content in electric vehicles (EVs). By 2027, for an EV to be tax-credit eligible, 80 percent of the market value of critical minerals in its battery must be extracted or processed domestically or by US free-trade partners (FTPs).  While this goal is well-intended, there are reasons to believe the mandate is unreachable and could create new problems. In a commentary published ...

LA JOLLA (March 6, 2023)—The artificial intelligence (AI) language model ChatGPT has captured the world’s attention in recent months. This trained computer chatbot can generate text, answer questions, provide translations, and learn based on the user’s feedback. Large language models like ChatGPT may have many applications in science and business, but how much do these tools understand what we say to them and how do they decide what to say back?   In new paper published in Neural Computation on February 17, 2023, Salk Professor Terrence Sejnowski, ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — UC Santa Barbara professors Thuc-Quyen Nguyen and Carlos G. Levi are among 106 new members of the National Academy of Engineering. Academy membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to “engineering research, practice or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to the engineering literature” and to “the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education.” “Our campus ...

A Rutgers-led team of scientists studying virus-host interactions of a globally abundant, armor-plated marine algae, Emiliania huxleyi, has found that the circular, chalk plates the algae produce can act as catalysts for viral infection, which has vast consequences for trillions of microscopic oceanic creatures and the global carbon cycle. “In a drop of seawater, there will be about 1,000 to 10,000 E. huxleyi cells, and about 10 million viruses,” said Kay Bidle, a professor in the Department of ...

A model for predicting the levels of oxygen in water, developed by West Virginia Universityresearcher Omar Abdul-Aziz, gives citizen scientists nationwide a tool for taking action on stream pollution.  “I have been looking at water quality data for 20 years,” said Abdul-Aziz, an associate professor at the Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources. “I can tell you that a big percentage of streams in the United States are polluted. Urban streams are getting dumpster runoff, stormwater ...

The cells that make up the human brain begin developing long before the physical shape of the brain has formed. This early organizing of a network of cells plays a major role in brain health throughout the course of a lifetime. Numerous studies have found that mothers with low iron levels during pregnancy have a higher risk of giving birth to a child that develops cognitive impairments like autism, attention deficit syndrome, and learning disabilities. However, iron deficiency is still prevalent in ...

Intermittent fasting, especially when done over the course of decades, can have positive effects on metabolic and cardiovascular health. Now, a new study by researchers at Intermountain Health in Salt Lake City finds that it may also add an extra layer of protection from heart-related COVID-19 complications in people who had already sought cardiac care. “We already know that regular fasting over long periods of time can lead to overall health improvements. Here we found that it may also lead to better outcomes in COVID-19 patients who required a cardiac catheterization,” said Benjamin Horne, PhD, director of cardiovascular and genetic epidemiology ...

New evidence released today from a study of 31,245 patients already taking statin therapy indicates that inflammation may be a more powerful predictor of risk of future cardiovascular events—such as heart attack and stroke — than “bad” cholesterol. Treatments that aggressively lower vascular inflammation need to be incorporated into daily practice if doctors are to maximize patient outcomes, according to the study’s corresponding author, Paul Ridker, MD, a preventive cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General ...

The emergence of new COVID-19 variants has led to reduced accuracy across current rapid testing methods, but a recent University of Michigan study suggests that a patient’s breath might hold the key to a more precise diagnosis. Investigators from the University of Michigan’s Max Harry Weil Institute for Critical Care Research and Innovation, including faculty and students from the College of Engineering and Michigan Medicine, used portable gas chromatography to examine breath samples collected during the pandemic’s Delta ...

In a survey of 545,531 people, 8.5% of those who said they were ‘fully accepting’ of gay people did not want gay neighbors. First study to explore stigmatizing behaviors expressed by avid supporters of sexual minorities ‘Simple legal inclusion can help mobilize the accepting population to their fullest potential’ CHICAGO --- When legal systems choose to offer no protections to sexual minorities, even avid LGBTQ supporters would reject their gay neighbors, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study.  The study examined ...

Scientists find that a tubular nanomaterial of carbon makes for ideal host to keep quantum bits spinning in place for use in quantum information technologies. Scientists are vigorously competing to transform the counterintuitive discoveries about the quantum realm from a century past into technologies of the future. The building block in these technologies is the quantum bit, or qubit. Several different kinds are under development, including ones that use defects within the symmetrical structures of diamond and silicon. They may one day transform computing, accelerate drug discovery, generate unhackable networks and more. Working with researchers from several universities, scientists ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- LOINC® from Regenstrief Institute is issuing its semi-annual release, which contains 608 new concepts to help health systems, laboratories and other health organizations accurately exchange medical data. Some of the new information has been released in coordination with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Association of Public Health Laboratories. “Aligning the release of LOINC with emerging healthcare trends is an important component of our mission and critical in promoting effective health information exchange among providers, patients and health systems,” said Marjorie Rallins, ...

New research pinpoints a key cause of metastasis from an aggressive form of brain cancer in children and provides a potential new therapy for treating these tumors in the future.    In a paper, published in Nature Cell Biology, physician-scientists from the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh discovered that medulloblastomas hijack a skill that normal brain cells use during their early development and then manipulate it to help tumors spread. “Children with medulloblastomas that have not yet metastasized may have a high likelihood of long-term survival, but if ...

March 6, 2023, Mountain View, CA – Wouldn’t finding life on other worlds be easier if we knew exactly where to look? Researchers have limited opportunities to collect samples on Mars or elsewhere or access remote sensing instruments when hunting for life beyond Earth. In a paper published in Nature Astronomy, an interdisciplinary study led by SETI Institute Senior Research Scientist Kim Warren-Rhodes, mapped the sparse life hidden away in salt domes, rocks and crystals at Salar de Pajonales at the boundary of the Chilean Atacama Desert and Altiplano. Then they trained a machine learning model to recognize the patterns and rules associated with their distributions ...

Boulder, Colo., USA: Oklahoma State University is hosting the 57th annual meeting of the Geological Society of America’s South-Central Section on 13–14 March. The meeting will have a diverse program of workshops, technical sessions, short courses, and field trips that covers a spectrum of geologic disciplines. The list below highlights a selection of environmental-related session topics you might like: · Tar Creek Superfund Site Field Trip (Field Trip) Managed Aquifer Recharge in the Arbuckle Simpson Aquifer (Field Trip) Geoscience Career Workshop: Career Planning and Networking · Hydrogeologic Challenges and Roles ...

Pancreatic cancer is an incurable form of cancer, and gene therapies are currently in clinical testing to treat this deadly disease. A comprehensive review of the gene and cell biotherapies in development to combat pancreatic cancer is published in the peer-reviewed journal Human Gene Therapy. Click here to read the article now The article titled “Pancreatic Cancer Cell and Gene Biotherapies: Past, Present and Future,” contributed by corresponding author Pierre Cordelier, from the University of Toulouse, and coauthors, ...

“In the last several years, the Hemoglobin, Albumin, Lymphocyte, Platelet Score (HALP) has emerged in the literature as a new prognostic biomarker [...]”  BUFFALO, NY- March 6, 2023 – A new review paper was published in Oncotarget's Volume 14 on February 25, 2023, entitled, “What is hemoglobin, albumin, lymphocyte, platelet (HALP) score? A comprehensive literature review of HALP’s prognostic ability in different cancer types.” Since its inception, the Hemoglobin, Albumin, Lymphocyte, Platelet (HALP) Score has gained attention as a new prognostic biomarker to predict several clinical outcomes in a multitude ...

Compared with men, women continue to have a roughly 30-40 percent higher risk of dying following coronary artery bypass surgery, according to a large study led by investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. The analysis showed that, without adjusting for differences in age and other health factors that influence risk, the female bypass patients had a 2.8 percent rate of death during or soon after surgery, compared with 1.7 percent for male patients, a nearly 50 percent difference that only dropped 10-20 percent after accounting for these factors. The study, which appears Mar. 1 in JAMA Surgery, was based on ...

It is well established that folic acid supplementation can significantly reduce the risk of birth defects, including neural tube defects like spina bifida, the most common birth defect of the central nervous system and the second most common of all structural birth defects. More than 80 nations, including the U.S. 25 years ago, have established mandated folic acid food fortification programs, which have been successful. “However, there is a lack of research on whether excessive folic acid intake has the potential ...

DANVILLE, Pa. – A Geisinger meta-analysis of recent research on the genetics of cerebral palsy (CP) provides evidence that genetic testing should be offered as the standard of care for people with the disorder, similar to current recommendations for individuals with other neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD). The findings were published Tuesday in JAMA Pediatrics. Individual cases of CP—a condition that affects movement, balance and posture—have often been attributed to birth asphyxia, although recent studies show that asphyxia accounts for less than 10% of cases. A growing body of evidence suggests that a significant proportion of CP is caused by genetic changes, ...

Boulder, Colo., USA: Article topics and locations include the Red Lake greenstone belt, Canada; Anak Krakatau volcano, Indonesia; martian soil; Glacial Lake Missoula, Montana, USA; and findings from IODP Expedition 385. These Geology articles are online at https://geology.geoscienceworld.org/content/early/recent . Crustal conductivity footprint of the orogenic gold district in the Red Lake greenstone belt, western Superior craton, Canada Ademola Q. Adetunji; Gaetan Launay; Ian J. Ferguson; Jack M. Simmons; Chong Ma ... A magnetotelluric (MT) study across the Red Lake greenstone belt of the ...

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Research from scientists at Indiana University and Louisiana State University reveals new information about the role humans have played in large-scale land loss in the Mississippi River Delta — crucial information in determining solutions to the crisis. Published in Nature Sustainability, the study compares the impacts of different human actions on land loss and explains historical trends. Until now, scientists have been unsure about which human-related factors are the most consequential, and why ...

High-dose anticoagulation can reduce deaths by 30 percent and intubations by 25 percent in hospitalized COVID-19 patients who are not critically ill when compared to the standard treatment, which is low-dose anticoagulation. These are the significant findings from the large-scale international “FREEDOM” trial, led by Valentin Fuster, MD, PhD, President of Mount Sinai Heart and Physician-in-Chief of The Mount Sinai Hospital, and General Director of the Spanish National Center for Cardiovascular Research (CNIC). The study results were announced Monday, March 6, ...

After soliciting feedback from its members, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology sent nine recommendations to the National Institutes of Health last week related to proposed changes to the research grant application peer-review process. The society’s March 1 letter suggested: Validating the proposed framework with a pilot study Revamping the study section grant triage process Conducting outreach before and during implementation Using alternative criteria for certain types of projects Moving forward with simplifying scored criteria and administrative document review The NIH Office of Extramural Research ...

When it comes to chronic infections and cancer, a particular type of immune cell plays a central role in our defenses. Researchers at the University of Basel have uncovered the key to the tenacity of these immune cells in coping with the marathon that is fighting a chronic infection. Their results lay the foundations for more effective therapies and vaccination strategies. Infected and abnormal cells have to go. And as quickly as possible, before any more damage is done. This is the task of what are known as cytotoxic T cells. ...