MEMPHIS, Tennessee – November 21, 2024 St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital today announced the addition of Georgios Skiniotis, PhD, as a faculty member in the Department of Structural Biology. Skiniotis will also develop and lead the newly created Center of Excellence for Structural Cell Biology. In his role as director of the Center of Excellence, Skiniotis will develop a world-class technology center that will advance our understanding of cell biology from the atomic scale to the micron scale, including ...

MELVILLE, N.Y., Nov. 21, 2024 – Speech-to-text programs are becoming more popular for everyday tasks like hands-free dictation, helping people who are visually impaired, and transcribing speech for those who are hard of hearing. These tools have many uses, and researcher Bożena Kostek from Gdańsk University of Technology is exploring how STT can be better used in the medical field. By studying how clear speech affects STT accuracy, she hopes to improve its usefulness for health care professionals. “Automating note-taking for patient data ...

MELVILLE, N.Y., Nov. 21, 2024 – In the winter of 2022-2023, nearly a dozen whales died off the coast of New Jersey, near the sites of several proposed wind farms. Their deaths prompted concern that related survey work being conducted in the area somehow contributed to their deaths. Michael Stocker of Ocean Conservation Research will present his work Thursday, Nov. 21, at 3:29 p.m. ET in a session dedicated to examining the circumstances surrounding these whale deaths, as part of the virtual 187th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, running Nov. 18-22, 2024. In pursuit of clean energy goals and to ...

Nature is pretty good at designing proteins. Scientists are even better. But artificial intelligence holds the promise of improving proteins many times over. Medical applications for such “designer proteins” range from creating more precise antibodies for treating autoimmune conditions or cancers to more effective vaccines against viruses. Applications may extend beyond medicine to, for example, growing better crops that could be more nutritious or absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Investigators from Mass General Brigham and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) tool known as EVOLVEpro that may represent a ...

BATON ROUGE – A team of researchers led by Pennington Biomedical Research Center’s Dr. Florina Corpodean confirmed through a data analysis that metabolic and bariatric surgery is largely safe and effective for patients who are experiencing severe obesity. In the recent study “BMI ≥ 70: A Multi-Center Institutional Experience of the Safety and Efficacy of Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery Intervention,” published in Obesity Surgery: The Journal of Metabolic Surgery and Allied Care, researchers affirmed ...

Highlights: Researchers from Michigan State University are the first to measure the brain activity of people who had never been to a specific city and then use this brain activity to predict other people’s actual visits to places around that city. This offers potential applications for urban planning and design that addresses the well-being of residents and visitors. For this study, researchers used principles from the budding field of neurourbanism, which involves measuring the human brain to predict and understand the influence of urban environments on behavior. The study’s findings suggest that the neural activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex — a key region ...

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, named an eight-member team drawn from Australian and American institutions as the winner of the 2024 ACM Gordon Bell Prize for the project, “Breaking the Million-Electron and 1 EFLOP/s Barriers: Biomolecular-Scale Ab Initio Molecular Dynamics Using MP2 Potentials.” The members of the team are Ryan Stocks, Jorge L. Galvez Vallejo, Fiona C.Y. Yu, Calum Snowdon, Elise Palethorpe (all of Australian National University); Jakub Kurzak (Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.); Dmytro Bykov (Oakridge National ...

Marking a bold step in its transformation into a global research powerhouse, NYU Tandon School of Engineering welcomes Jeffrey Hubbell, a world-renowned chemical engineer and member of four National Academies, to spearhead an ambitious agenda integrating engineering, the sciences, and medicine, to advance healthcare innovation. As part of this vision, Hubbell will lead a new cross-institutional initiative to translate scientific discoveries into pioneering treatments. A collaboration led out of NYU Tandon and Langone Health, the initiative will include unprecedented investments in new faculty, state-of-the-art new facilities, ...

Link to Google Drive folder containing images (caption and credit information below): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1r5eJr78OdIYV0la1pBvRx-ksu9hsNqcw?usp=sharing   Post-embargo link to release: https://www.washington.edu/news/2024/11/21/whale-ship-collisions/   FROM: James Urton University of Washington 206-543-2580 jurton@uw.edu   (Note: researcher contact information at the end)   Embargoed by Science For public release at 2 p.m. U.S. Eastern Standard Time (11 a.m. Pacific Standard Time) ...

A new study on ageing in the animal kingdom has highlighted how urgently Earth’s oldest and wises creatures must be protected, with knowledge and environmental stability lost due to human intervention. The new study, led by Charles Darwin University’s (CDU) Research Institute for the Environment and Livelihoods (RIEL), explores the consequences of the loss of old, often large and wise animals in the wild and the value these individuals have to scientific knowledge, biodiversity and more. Humans are responsible ...

Nationally, men in colleges and universities currently outpace women in earning physics, engineering, and computer science (PECS) degrees by an approximate ratio of 4 to 1. To better understand the factors driving these gaps, NYU researchers analyzed bachelor’s degrees awarded in the US from 2002-2022, and found that the most selective universities by math SAT scores have nearly closed the PECS gender gap, while less selective universities have seen it widen dramatically. “These findings challenge our understanding of gender inequality in STEM education,” says Joseph Cimpian, the study’s lead author and professor of economics and education ...

A team of researchers from the United States and Switzerland have reported the discovery of a previously unknown compound in chloraminated drinking water. Inorganic chloramines are commonly used to disinfect drinking water to safeguard public health from diseases like cholera and typhoid fever. It’s estimated that more than 113 million people in the United States alone drink chloraminated water.  The researchers have now identified chloronitramide anion, chemically expressed as Cl–N–NO2−, as an end product of inorganic chloramine decomposition. While its toxicity is not presently known, its prevalence and similarity to other ...

Many public water systems in the United States use inorganic chloramines to disinfect drinking water, but their decomposition products have long been a mystery. In a new study, researchers report the discovery of chloronitramide anion – a compound whose existence, though not identity, has been known for 30 years. Detected in the tap water of millions of Americans, this compound’s toxicity remains untested, prompting calls for immediate toxicological evaluation and raising questions about the safety of chloramine in public water supplies. For over a century, chemical disinfection of public water ...

Cultural complexity in chimpanzees depends on migration and interaction between groups, echoing early human patterns of cultural evolution, researchers report in a new study. The findings offer insight into the development of cumulative culture in early hominins. Culture, defined as a set of socially learned behaviors, has been increasingly documented across various animal species. However, human culture stands out for its complexity and cumulative nature, where cultural knowledge builds upon previous innovations. While chimpanzees – humans’ closest relatives – demonstrate a variety of cultural ...

For the first time, scientists have directly measured the hearing range of minke whales, discovering that the species can detect high-frequency sounds as high as 90 kilohertz (kHz), according to a new study, demonstrating hearing sensitivity far greater than previously believed. The findings suggest that baleen whales – the planet’s largest mammals – may be even more impacted by anthropogenic ocean noise than currently recognized but have been excluded from regulatory consideration due to underestimated hearing ranges. ...

By mapping global ship traffic and whale habitats, researchers found that 92% of whale habitats overlap with shipping routes, illuminating hotspots for whale-ship collision risk, according to a new study. Although only 7% of high-risk areas currently contain management strategies to reduce ship strikes, the findings show that expanding efforts to just 2.6% of the ocean’s surface could significantly reduce these fatal collisions, aiding whale conservation amid booming global shipping. “Mitigating the negative environmental impacts of marine shipping is essential ...

Researchers led by Takuzo Aida at the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS) have developed a new durable plastic that won’t pollute our oceans. The new material is as strong as conventional plastics and biodegradable, but what makes it special is that it breaks down in seawater. The new plastic is therefore expected to help reduce harmful microplastic pollution that accumulates in oceans and soil and eventually enters the food chain. The experimental findings were published Nov 22 in Science. Scientists have been trying to develop safe and sustainable materials that can replace traditional plastics, which are non-sustainable and harm the environment. While ...

How can Artificial Intelligence (AI) help accelerate scientific discovery based on vast amounts of experimental data? A new study by Prof. LI Weixue's team from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences shows how this can be achieved in heterogonous catalysis. The results were recently published in Science. By integrating‎ interpretable AI with experimental data, domain knowledge, and first-principles simulations, the researchers established a general theory of metal-support interaction (MSI), which is one of the most important pillars in catalysis. Supported metal catalysts ...

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital have developed a groundbreaking microscopy method that enables detailed three-dimensional (3D) RNA analysis at cellular resolution in whole intact mouse brains. The new method, called TRISCO, has the potential to transform our understanding of brain function, both in normal conditions and in disease, according to the new study published in Science. Despite great advances in RNA analysis, linking RNA data to its spatial context has long been a challenge, especially in intact 3D tissue volumes. The TRISCO method now makes it possible to perform three-dimensional RNA imaging of whole ...

Northwestern University scientists have developed a new protective coating that significantly extends the life of perovskite solar cells, making them more practical for applications outside the lab. Although perovskite solar cells are more efficient and less expensive than traditional silicon solar cells, perovskite has, until now, been limited by its lack of long-term stability. Typically, perovskite solar cells uses an ammonium-based coating layer to enhance efficiency. While effective, ammonium-based layers degrade under environmental stress, such as heat and moisure. Northwestern ...

The world’s thinnest spaghetti, about 200 times thinner than a human hair, has been created by a UCL-led research team. The spaghetti is not intended to be a new food but was created because of the wide-ranging uses that extremely thin strands of material, called nanofibers, have in medicine and industry. Nanofibers made of starch – produced by most green plants to store excess glucose – are especially promising and could be used in bandages to aid wound healing (as the nanofiber mats are highly porous, allowing water and moisture in but keeping ...

The hippocampus is one of the most fascinating brain regions. Associated with the formation of memories, it also helps us to navigate through the world without getting lost. Sensory cortices on the other hand play an important role in how we perceive our environment and make appropriate movements, and how our brains determine what to focus on and what to ignore. While both regions have been extensively studied and many of their secrets revealed, there is still a lot we do not understand about them due to the high complexity of ...

MELVILLE, N.Y., Nov. 21, 2024 – Fresco painting, a technique that dates back to antiquity, involves applying dry pigments to wet plaster, creating stunning artwork that can last for centuries. Over time, however, these masterpieces often face degradation due to delamination, where decorative plaster layers separate from the underlying masonry or structural plaster. This deterioration can compromise the structural integrity of the artwork, necessitating restoration efforts. Historically, conservators have gently knocked on the plaster with their knuckles or small mallets to assess the condition of the fresco. By listening to the emitted sound, they could identify the delaminated areas ...

In Nature Partner Journals, ten researchers advocate the use of imagination in tackling the climate crisis. They focus specifically on urbanising river deltas, which are of great social and economic importance and highly vulnerable to climate change. "We scientists should not merely outline doomsday scenarios," says Professor Chris Zevenbergen. "Create a vision for people to believe in and work towards.” From doomscenarios to desired outcomes Due to the climate crisis, urban river deltas ...

Archaeologists from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) are revolutionising the excavation and documentation of ancient sites with cutting-edge 3D immersive technologies.  Archaeology studies the human past through the excavation of things people made and used thousands of years ago – from architecture to objects like pottery bowls and animal bones from meals.  Although many excavation projects create digital 3D models of what they uncover, archaeologists need new ways to meaningfully use those data.  Some projects share 3D models with the public as tourism and teaching tools – ...