A new study from researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, suggests that men who regularly lift heavy objects at work have higher sperm counts. The study, published in Human Reproduction, is part of the Environment and Reproductive Health (EARTH) cohort, a clinical study which aims to explore how exposure to environmental chemicals and lifestyle choices affect reproductive health. “We already know that exercise is associated with multiple health benefits in humans, including those observed on reproductive health, but few studies have looked at how occupational factors can ...

“In this study, we compared genome-wide DNA methylation rates among metformin users and nonusers [...]” BUFFALO, NY- February 22, 2023 – A new research paper was published in Aging (listed as "Aging (Albany NY)" by MEDLINE/PubMed and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 15, Issue 3, entitled, “Metformin use history and genome-wide DNA methylation profile: potential molecular mechanism for aging and longevity.” Metformin, a commonly prescribed anti-diabetic medication, has repeatedly been shown to hinder aging in pre-clinical ...

NEWPORT, Ore. – As sea ice declines in the Arctic, bowhead whales are staying north of the Bering Strait more frequently, a shift that could affect the long-term health of the bowhead population and impact the Indigenous communities that rely on the whales, a new study by Oregon State University researchers shows. Bowhead whales found in the Pacific Arctic, sometimes called Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort bowheads based on their migratory patterns, normally winter in the northern Bering Sea and migrate north in the spring through the Bering Strait to the Canadian Beaufort Sea, where they spend summer and fall. They then migrate ...

Two courageous UBC ocean fisheries experts - marine biologist Dr. Daniel Pauly and fisheries economist Dr. Rashid Sumaila — have been awarded the 2023 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement. The award, administered by the University of Southern California, has often been described as the ‘Nobel Prize for the Environment.’ Both are University Killam Professors at the University of British Columbia, and long-time colleagues at its Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries. They said that winning this ...

HOUSTON ― The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Research Highlights showcases the latest breakthroughs in cancer care, research and prevention. These advances are made possible through seamless collaboration between MD Anderson’s world-leading clinicians and scientists, bringing discoveries from the lab to the clinic and back. Recent developments include a new understanding of how HPV drives cancer development, a combination therapy to overcome treatment resistance in mantle cell lymphoma, novel ...

Scientists continue to refine techniques for understanding present-day changes in Earth’s environmental systems, but the planet’s distant past also offers crucial information to deepen that understanding. A geological study by University of Nebraska–Lincoln scientist Matt Joeckel and colleagues provides such information. Scientific research in recent decades has confirmed that major changes in the global carbon cycle caused significant changes in the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans 135 million years ago, during the early Cretaceous Period. A range of questions remain about the ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Six massive galaxies discovered in the early universe are upending what scientists previously understood about the origins of galaxies in the universe.  “These objects are way more massive​ than anyone expected,” said Joel Leja, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State, who modeled light from these galaxies. “We expected only to find tiny, young, baby galaxies at this point in time, but we’ve discovered galaxies as mature as our own in what was previously understood to be the dawn of the universe.” Using the first dataset released from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, ...

New York, NY (February 22, 2023) – Scientists at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York have identified which parts of the immune system go awry and contribute to autoimmune diseases in individuals with Down syndrome. The findings published in the February 22 online issue of Nature [DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-05736-y]. The work adds to the research team’s findings published in the journal Immunity in October 2022, showing that people with Down syndrome have less frequent but more severe viral infections. Studying lab specimens from volunteers with Down syndrome, the investigators identified cytokines and a B cell subtype—key ...

PITTSBURGH, Feb. 22, 2023 – New research published today in JAMA Surgery shows that when frail patients are connected to resources, including conversations with a physician about possible outcomes and help preparing their body for surgery, they are less likely to die one year after surgery.   While age can be an important indicator of a patient’s likelihood of encountering adverse outcomes or complications of surgery, it does not provide a full picture of their health. Frailty considers the patient’s overall well-being, including their physical and cognitive abilities, as well as their body’s ability to recover from surgery.   “Frailty ...

About The Study: This study found an overall increase in unstable and/or unsafe living situations and intimate partner violence (IPV) between January 2019 and December 2020, with a temporary increase associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. It may be useful for emergency response plans to include IPV safeguards for future pandemics. These findings suggest the need for prenatal screening for unsafe and/or unstable living situations and IPV coupled with referral to appropriate support services and preventive ...

About The Study: The results of this study suggest that despite increased emphasis to reduce aggressive end-of-life care in the past several decades, such care remains common among older persons with metastatic cancer and is slightly more prevalent among nursing home residents than their community-dwelling counterparts. Multilevel interventions to decrease aggressive end-of-life care should target the main factors associated with its prevalence, including hospital admissions in the last 30 days of life and in-hospital death.   Authors: Siran M. Koroukian, Ph.D., of the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, is the corresponding ...

An improved global understanding of river temperature could provide an important barometer for climate change and other human activities. River temperature is the fundamental water quality measure that regulates physical, chemical and biological processes in flowing waters and, in turn, impacts ecosystems, human health, and industrial, domestic and recreational uses by people. In a comment piece in the new journal, Nature Water, researchers led by the University of Birmingham, UK, and Indiana University, USA, have called for an increased ...

The human body can predict the timing of regular meals, according to a new study from the University of Surrey. The research team also found that daily blood glucose rhythms may be driven not only by meal timing but by meal size.   In the first study of its kind, researchers from Surrey, led by Professor Jonathan Johnston, investigated if the human circadian system anticipates large meals. Circadian rhythms/systems are physiological changes, including metabolic, that follow a 24-hour cycle and are usually synchronised to environmental signals, such as light and dark cycles.   Previous ...

In a new study, an international team of astrophysicists has discovered several mysterious objects hiding in images from the James Webb Space Telescope: six potential galaxies that emerged so early in the universe’s history and are so massive they should not be possible under current cosmological theory. Each of the candidate galaxies may have existed at the dawn of the universe roughly 500 to 700 million years after the Big Bang, or more than 13 billion years ago. They’re also gigantic, containing almost as many stars as the modern-day Milky Way Galaxy. “It’s ...

The world’s forests are losing their ability to absorb carbon due to increasingly ‘unstable’ conditions caused by humans, a landmark study has found. Dramatic changes to forests, and other habitats that store carbon in plants and soils, are becoming more likely in some regions across Earth, with less carbon consistently absorbed by the ‘land carbon sink’ provided by trees, soil and plants, according to scientists writing in Nature. The short-term impacts of rising temperatures, ...

Dust is a common fact of life, and it's more than just a daily nuisance – it can get into machinery and equipment, causing loss of efficiency or breakdowns. Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin partnered with North Carolina-based company Smart Material Solutions Inc. to develop a new method to keep dust from sticking to surfaces. The result is the ability to make many types of materials dust resistant, from spacecraft to solar panels to household windows. The research is published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. "What we've ...

Key takeaways Heart transplants offered to more patients with serious disease: A study of 323 pediatric heart transplants over 36 years at the University of Florida found that in recent years, more infants with serious congenital heart disease were offered heart transplants, but they had improved outcomes compared to patients in previous decades. Improved long-term survival: Despite extending the procedure to younger patients with more serious heart problems, 5-year survival improved from 70.7% in previous years to 83% in recent ...

A new study from a University of Chicago scientist suggests there may be a layer of surprisingly fluid rock ringing the Earth, at the very bottom of the upper mantle. The finding was made by measuring the lingering movement registered by GPS sensors on islands in the wake of a deep earthquake in the Pacific Ocean near Fiji. Published Feb. 22 in Nature, the study demonstrates a new method to measure the fluidity of the Earth’s mantle. “Even though the mantle makes up the largest part of Earth, there’s ...

New research from North Carolina State University sheds light on how electric fields can be used to alter the thermal properties of ferroelectric materials, allowing engineers to manipulate the flow of heat through the materials. Ferroelectric materials are used in a wide variety of applications, from ultrasound devices to memory storage technologies. “Our work here is a significant advance because we worked with large sample sizes and provide detailed information on the relationship between the type of electric field being applied to the ferroelectric material and the thermal response in the material,” says Jun Liu, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace ...

Researchers report on the safety of a gene therapy to treat the common autosomal recessive hereditary disorder alpha 1-antitrypsin (AAT) deficiency in a new article in the peer-reviewed journal Human Gene Therapy. Click here to read the article now. In ATT deficiency, neutrophil proteases destroy the lung parenchyma, the portion of the lungs involved in gas exchange. The result is a high risk for the early onset of emphysema. Ronald Crystal, MD, from Weill Cornell Medicine, and coauthors, have developed an adeno-associated virus (AAV) serotype 8-based gene ...

(Boston)—Immigration status, immigration vulnerability and understanding of immigration-related legal options are critical components of safety, access to public benefits and wellness for many immigrants/migrants. While immigration status is increasingly recognized as an independent social determinant of health, understanding best practices for health care systems that might mitigate the health disparities that result from unequal health care access dictated by immigration status is just beginning to be studied. In an effort to better understand best practices, researchers from Boston University ...

A new report, coauthored by several major pharmaceutical companies, reviews the current state of sterile oligonucleotide drug product processing. The article, which provides recommendations to aid in the evaluation and development of terminal sterilization processes, is published in the peer-reviewed journal Nucleic Acid Therapeutics. Click here to read the article. All marketed oligonucleotide products are delivered as sterile preparations for parenteral delivery. The two most common methods for sterilizing parenteral ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Nuclear physicists have found a way to peer inside the deepest recesses of atomic nuclei, according to a new study.  The finding was made possible using the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, which is capable of colliding gold ions at near light-speed. It led to the discovery of a new kind of quantum entanglement.  The term quantum entanglement describes an invisible link that connects distant objects; no matter how far away they are in space, they affect each ...

Why is "junk DNA" not deleted from the original genome over millions of years of evolution? A new model offers an explanation for the huge variety of sizes of DNA in nature Unlike "junk email" that is immediately deleted from the email box, "junk DNA" continues to exist in living creatures in nature such as bacteria, insects, and even mammals such as humans, alongside the original genome and thus the genome grows throughout evolution. The researchers' explanation: the "junk DNA" hides in functional areas, thus deletions are likely to damage the functional ...

San Antonio – Feb. 22, 2023 – Southwest Research Institute and ITS Texas are inviting college students and young professionals to participate in the inaugural Future Leaders Program at the 2023 ITS America Conference & Expo April 24-27 in Grapevine, Texas. The new program is designed to inspire the next generation of leaders in the intelligent transportation systems (ITS) industry through a variety of activities at the ITS America Conference & Expo, which takes place this year at the Gaylord Texan Resort. Participants can attend education sessions and training and network with ITS professionals, exhibitors, sponsors and technology providers. “The ...