A team of scientists from Montana State University has provided the first experimental evidence that two new groups of microbes thriving in thermal features in Yellowstone National Park produce methane – a discovery that could one day contribute to the development of methods to mitigate climate change and provide insight into potential life elsewhere in our solar system. The journal Nature this week published the findings from the laboratory of Roland Hatzenpichler, associate professor in MSU’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in the College ...

In humans and other animals, signals from a central circadian clock in the brain generate the seasonal and daily rhythms of life. They help the body to prepare for expected changes in the environment and also optimize when to sleep, eat and do other daily activities. Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis are working out the particulars of how our internal biological clocks keep time. Their new research, published July 24 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, helps answer longstanding questions about how circadian rhythms are generated and maintained. In all mammals, the signals for circadian rhythms come from a small part of the brain called the suprachiasmatic ...

A significant survival improvement for adults with newly diagnosed BCR::ABL1-negative B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia is published today by the New England Journal of Medicine. The practice-changing finding is from the randomized phase 3 study E1910 (NCT02003222), which evaluated blinatumomab immunotherapy in patients who were in remission and tested negative for measurable residual disease (MRD) after an initial round of chemotherapy. At 3 years of follow-up, 85% of the patients who went on to receive additional standard consolidation chemotherapy plus experimental blinatumomab were alive, compared to 68% of those who received chemotherapy only. Blinatumomab (Blincyto, ...

More than 82% of Americans age 50 to 80 take one or more kinds of prescription medication, and 80% of them say they’d be open to stopping one or more of those drugs if their health care provider gave the green light, a new University of Michigan study shows. But it’s not as simple as that, the researchers say. They call for prescribers and pharmacists to talk with older adults about their personal situation and figure out if any kind of “deprescribing” is right for them. The study, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, uses data from U-M’s National Poll on Healthy Aging, and builds on a poll report issued in April 2023.   It ...

Irvine, Calif., July 24, 2024 – Government agencies, insurance companies and disaster planners rely on national flood risk models from the private sector that aren’t reliable at smaller levels such as neighborhoods and individual properties, according to researchers at the University of California, Irvine.   In a paper published recently in the American Geophysical Union journal Earth’s Future, experts in UC Irvine’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering caution that relatively new, nation-scale flood data provides an inadequate representation of local topography and infrastructure, factors known to control the spread of floods ...

MINNEAPOLIS – People with high levels of body fat stored in their belly or arms may be more likely to develop diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s than people with low levels of fat in these areas, according to a study published in the July 24, 2024, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study also found that people with a high level of muscle strength were less likely to develop these diseases than people with low muscle strength.   “These neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s affect over 60 million people worldwide, and that number is expected ...

Polypropylene is a common type of plastic found in many essential products used today, such as food containers and medical devices. Because polypropylene is so popular, demand is surging for a chemical used to make it. That chemical, propylene, can be produced from propane. Propane is a natural gas commonly used in barbeque grills. Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and Ames National Laboratory report a faster, more energy-efficient way to manufacture propylene than the process currently used. Converting propane into propylene ...

Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) is a type of preinvasive tumor that sometimes progresses to a highly deadly form of breast cancer. It accounts for about 25 percent of all breast cancer diagnoses. Because it is difficult for clinicians to determine the type and stage of DCIS, patients with DCIS are often overtreated. To address this, an interdisciplinary team of researchers from MIT and ETH Zurich developed an AI model that can identify the different stages of DCIS from a cheap and easy-to-obtain breast tissue image. Their model shows that both the state and arrangement ...

Mice don’t get Alzheimer’s—and while that’s good news for mice, it’s a big problem for biomedical researchers seeking to understand the disease and test new treatments. Now, researchers at The Jackson Laboratory are working to create the first strain of mice that’s genetically susceptible to late-onset Alzheimer’s, with potentially transformative implications for dementia research.  In humans, two of the defining traits of Alzheimer’s disease are amyloid plaques between brain cells, and tangles of tau proteins within neurons. In mice, however, intercellular ...

From studying the human genome, to analyzing the way proteins are encoded, or monitoring RNA expression, researchers are rapidly gaining a far richer understanding of the complex genetic and cellular mechanisms that underpin dementia. But there’s a catch: While new technologies are revealing myriad avenues for Alzheimer’s research, it’s impossible to know in advance which research pathways will lead to effective treatments. “We have countless potential targets, but we don’t know which ones to aim at,” said Greg Carter, the Bernard and Lusia Milch Endowed Chair at the ...

Hens fluff their head feathers and blush to express different emotions and levels of excitement, according to a study publishing July 24, 2024, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Cécile Arnould and colleagues from INRAE and CNRS, France. Facial expressions are an important part of human communication that allow us to convey our emotions. Scientists have found similar signals of emotion in other mammals such as dogs, pigs and mice. Although birds can produce facial expressions by moving their head feathers and flushing their skin, it is unclear whether they express emotions in this way. To investigate, researchers filmed ...

An analysis of comments on Chinese social media platform Sina Weibo reveals trends in the public response to measures implemented to support China’s three-child policy, highlighting concerns about women’s rights and employment. Lijuan Peng of Zhejiang Gongshang University in Hangzhou, China, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on July 24, 2024. For decades, China’s one-child policy restricted most families to having just one child. In 2021, to combat a falling birthrate, China introduced its three-child policy, allowing couples to have up to three children. To help encourage childbirth, ...

Our ability to recognize music might not diminish with age, with older concert attendees identifying themes in music as well as younger participants ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0305969 Article Title: Age and familiarity effects on musical memory Author Countries: Canada, UK Funding: The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: this work was supported by BRZ’s Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada grant. The funders had no role ...

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly widened existing economic and health disparities between wealthy and low-income countries and slowed progress toward health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), according to a new study published July 24, 2024, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Wanessa Miranda of Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, and colleagues. The global SDGs were established in 2015 as a wide and integrated agenda with themes ranging from eradicating poverty and promoting well-being to addressing socioeconomic ...

Even people who harbor positive sentiments toward immigrants imagine immigrants' faces as less trustworthy and less competent than US citizens' faces ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0306872 Article Title: Intergroup evaluative bias in facial representations of immigrants and citizens in the United States Author Countries: USA Funding: This work was facilitated by the National Science Foundation Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences, grant #1764097 awarded to ART and grant #2215236 awarded to ...

New research led by the University of East Anglia (UEA) and Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) has found that the Southern Ocean absorbs more carbon dioxide (CO2) than previously thought. Using direct measurements of CO2 exchange, or fluxes, between the air and sea, the scientists found the ocean around Antarctica absorbs 25% more CO2 than previous indirect estimates based on shipboard data have suggested. The Southern Ocean plays a major role in absorbing CO2 emitted by human activities, a process vital for controlling the Earth's climate. However, there are big uncertainties ...

Giant plumes of Sahara Desert dust that gust across the Atlantic can suppress hurricane formation over the ocean and affect weather in North America.  But thick dust plumes can also lead to heavier rainfall – and potentially more destruction – from landfalling storms, according to a July 24 study in Science Advances. The research shows a previously unknown relationship between hurricane rainfall and Saharan dust plumes.  “Surprisingly, the leading factor controlling hurricane precipitation is not, as traditionally thought, sea surface temperature or humidity in the atmosphere. Instead, it’s Sahara dust,” said the corresponding ...

Acute myeloid leukaemia is one of the deadliest cancers. Leukaemic stem cells responsible for the disease are highly resistant to treatment. A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), University Hospital of Geneva (HUG), and Inserm has made a breakthrough by identifying some of the genetic and energetic characteristics of these stem cells, notably a specific iron utilisation process. This process could be blocked, leading to the death or weakening of these stem cells without affecting healthy cells. These results, published in Science Translational Medicine, pave the way for new therapeutic strategies. Acute ...

An international team of astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has directly imaged an exoplanet roughly 12 light-years from Earth. The planet, Epsilon Indi Ab, is one of the coldest exoplanets observed to date. The planet is several times the mass of Jupiter and orbits the K-type star Epsilon Indi A (Eps Ind A), which is around the age of our Sun, but slightly cooler. The team observed Epsilon Indi Ab using the coronagraph on Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument). Only a few tens of exoplanets have been directly imaged previously by space- and ground-based observatories. “Our prior observations of this system have been more indirect measurements ...

“This study uniquely examines the prevalence and impact of the KIT M541L variant in both adult and pediatric patients with mastocytosis further stratified by disease variant.” BUFFALO, NY- July 24, 2024 – A new research paper was published in Oncotarget's Volume 15 on July 22, 2024, entitled, “Prevalence and impact of the KIT M541L variant in patients with mastocytosis.” Activating mutations in KIT, particularly D816V, have been associated with mastocytosis. Additionally, expression of heterozygous KIT M541L has been primarily ...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools can play a key role in medical imaging if radiologists trust in their design, deploy them with adequate training and establish clear guidelines regarding clinical accountability, according to a recently published Special Report in Radiology: Artificial Intelligence, a journal of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). RSNA and the Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI) Society have led a series of joint panels and seminars focused on the present impact and future directions of AI in radiology. These conversations ...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE With renewed funding of up to $98.8 million for seven years, Johns Hopkins Medicine scientists will continue to be a worldwide resource for discovering the genes and their variations that contribute to human disease. Leaders of the Johns Hopkins Center for Inherited Disease Research, established in 1996, received the fourth consecutive renewal for up to $98,880,900 in funds from a consortium of 10 institutes at the National Institutes of Health. The seven-year award is divided between ...

SAN FRANCISCO—Mark Petersen, MD, has seen firsthand the devastating effects of brain bleeds in premature babies. It’s an exceedingly common condition that affects up to 20 percent of infants born before 28 weeks of gestation, bringing an increased risk for developmental delays and autism. “As a neonatologist and neuroscientist, it’s frustrating that we don’t have any treatments to counteract the harmful effects of bleeding in the developing brain, even though we know it often leads to lasting problems,” says Petersen, director ...

Reston, VA—The Journal of Nuclear Medicine (JNM)—the flagship publication of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging—has maintained its status as one of the top medical imaging journals worldwide, according to new data just released in Clarivate's 2023 Journal Citation Reports. With an impact factor of 9.1, JNM saw increases in its five-year impact factor, journal citation indicator, and article influence score, among other categories.   “This is an exciting time for nuclear medicine, with ground-breaking advances in molecular imaging, theranostics, artificial intelligence, and other areas,” said Johannes Czernin, MD, ...

Paper Title: Hepatitis C Virus Reinfection Among Men Who Have Sex With Men With HIV in New York City Journal: Clinical Infectious Diseases, July 2024 Authors: Daniel S. Fierer, MD, Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and other coauthors. Bottom Line: This study provides new perspectives on transmission of hepatitis C virus (HCV), a virus that infects the liver and can be transmitted during injection of drugs, among men who have sex with men (MSM). How: The researchers performed a prospective cohort study in New York City of MSM with HIV who had cleared ...