An international team of 45 researchers studying meteor showers has found that not all comets crumble the same way when they approach the Sun. In a paper published in the journal Icarus this week, they ascribe the differences to the conditions in the protoplanetary disk where comets formed 4.5 billion years ago. “The meteoroids we see as meteors in the night sky are the size of small pebbles,” said lead author and SETI Institute and NASA Ames meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens. “They are, in fact, the same size as the pebbles that collapsed into comets during the formation of ...

August 22, 2024 — The groundbreaking ChatGPT chatbot shows potential as a time-saving tool for responding to patient questions sent to the urologist's office, suggests a study in the September issue of Urology Practice®, an Official Journal of the American Urological Association (AUA). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.  The artificial intelligence (AI) tool generated "acceptable" responses to nearly one-half of a sample of real-life patient questions, according to the new research ...

Research from Radboud university medical center reveals that T cells from the adaptive immune system can manipulate the memory of innate immune cells. Previously, it was believed that the memory of innate immune cells operated independently. This surprising connection opens up new possibilities for the treatment of various diseases. A mouse model shows that no immunosuppressive drugs are needed after an organ transplantation if this  interaction between T cells and the innate immunity is temporarily blocked after the transplantation. The adaptive immune ...

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (Aug. 22, 2024) — Immune cells use two different routes to produce acetyl-CoA, an essential metabolite required to fight infection and cancer, reports a study led by Van Andel Institute scientists. The findings, published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, could help improve immunotherapies by revealing how diet can boost immune cell function. “Like any good system, immune cells have a plan A and a plan B,” said Russell Jones, Ph.D., the study’s corresponding author and chair of VAI’s Department of Metabolism and Nutritional ...

Many quantum devices, from quantum sensors to quantum computers, use ions or charged atoms trapped with electric and magnetic fields as a hardware platform to process information.  However, current trapped-ion systems face important challenges. Most experiments are limited to one-dimensional chains or two-dimensional planes of ions, which constrain the scalability and functionality of quantum devices. Scientists have long dreamed of stacking these ions into three-dimensional structures, but this has been very difficult ...

Philadelphia, August 22, 2024 – There is a critical unmet need to help tighten and maintain a healthy intestinal barrier and treat a leaky gut. Researchers have now found that a unique strain of probiotic bacteria, Bifidobacterium bifidum BB1, enhances intestinal barrier function and protects against penetration of bacteria and various harmful agents in the intestine. The findings, detailed in an article in The American Journal of Pathology, published by Elsevier, can help advance the development of novel, targeted, naturally occurring probiotic therapy for patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and other inflammatory diseases, such as fatty liver disease or alcoholic liver ...

Researchers from the University of Colorado College of Nursing and CU School of Medicine on the Anschutz Medical Campus were awarded a $1.35 million grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to design and implement technologies that improve resident safety and employee wellbeing at long-term care facilities. “Long-term care facilities in the United States are in crisis, they’re facing low resources and high staff turnover,” CU Nursing Associate Professor and ...

Researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University report that they were able to successfully put tadpoles of Xenopus laevis frogs into a hibernation-like torpor state using donepezil (DNP), a drug approved by the FDA to treat Alzheimer’s. The team had previously used another drug, SNC80, to achieve similar results in tadpoles and enhance the survival of whole mammalian hearts for transplants, but SNC80 is not approved for clinical use in humans because it can cause seizures. By contrast, DNP is already being used in the clinic, meaning it potentially could be rapidly repurposed ...

Preventing the next pandemic begins before diseases emerge. This “pre-emergence” phase is the focus of a new center funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and led by the University of California, Davis.  Supported with $18 million over seven years, the U.S. National Science Foundation Center for Pandemic Insights (NSF CPI) includes partnering institutions from across the United States. It aims to harness new technologies and develop sensing to detect, investigate, and ultimately prevent ...

An estimated 462 million people around the world suffer from Type 2 diabetes, a chronic disease in which the body has problems using sugar as a fuel, leading to a buildup of sugar in the blood and chronic health issues. New research led by Ayyalusamy Ramamoorthy, a professor at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering and the Florida State University-headquartered National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, shows how zinc, pH levels and insulin work together to inhibit the buildup of protein clumps that contribute to this disease. The work, which points toward promising avenues for innovative treatments, ...

The global burden of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), primarily Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC), continues to rise. Recent data show incidence rates of up to 17.8 cases per 100,000 person-years for CD and even higher for UC, reaching 28.4 per 100,000 person-years. These diseases primarily affect older populations and vary geographically, with higher prevalence rates in highly developed countries. Currently, endoscopic assessment through ileo-colonoscopy is the gold standard for diagnosing and monitoring IBD. However, this approach is invasive and often has limited availability, leading to long ...

When exactly does the aging process start? With the aging mechanisms unclear, no consensus has been reached about aging “cliffs”, where our body functions and biological processes just change dramatically, as if overnight. In 2019, a study published in the authoritative peer-reviewed journal Nature Medicine, based on plasma proteomics data, identified 34, 60, and 78 years old as key time points of aging. In August 2024, Nature Aging, a Nature portfolio journal focusing on aging mechanisms, published the latest findings incorporating comprehensive data including transcriptomics and metabolomics, pinpointing the aging cliffs to the 40s and 60s. In the biomedical field, multi-omics ...

Non-living hydrogels can play the video game Pong and improve their gameplay with more experience, researchers report August 23 in the Cell Press journal Cell Reports Physical Science.  The researchers hooked hydrogels up to a virtual game environment and then applied a feedback loop between the hydrogel’s paddle—encoded by the distribution of charged particles within the hydrogel—and the ball’s position—encoded by electrical stimulation. With practice, the hydrogel’s accuracy improved by up to 10%, resulting in longer rallies. The researchers say that this demonstrates ...

The anti-cancer drug olaparib may be effective in treating biochemically recurrent prostate cancer without accompanying hormone therapy for men who have mutations in genes such as BRCA2, according to results of a phase II clinical trial of 51 patients conducted at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center and three other sites.  The study was done of men experiencing signs of cancer recurrence after surgical removal of the prostate, as measured by a high level of the protein prostate-specific antigen (PSA). Following treatment with olaparib, 13 participants, including all 11 who had BRCA2 mutations, had a decrease in PSA of at least 50% ...

Tens of millions of Americans are being exposed to tobacco content on streaming services, according to new research from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The researchers found that the odds of encountering tobacco products being advertised, marketed or promoted on these platforms increased based on race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status and smoking habits. The nationally representative study, published today in JAMA Network, revealed an estimated 12.4% of American adults were exposed to tobacco promotion on streaming services. Exposure was highest among those with a high school education or less (16.4%), Black/African American respondents (19.4%), ...

About The Study: In two pivotal phase 3 clinical trials, elinzanetant, a selective neurokinin-1,3 receptor antagonist, demonstrated statistically significant reductions in vasomotor symptoms (VMS) frequency and severity vs placebo in postmenopausal individuals with moderate to severe VMS. Elinzanetant also significantly improved sleep disturbances and menopause-related quality of life vs placebo; the safety profile was favorable. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, JoAnn V. Pinkerton, ...

About The Study: In this repeated cross-sectional study of children’s exposure to food-related television advertisements, exposure via children’s programming decreased substantially. However, most advertisements seen were still for unhealthy products, and exposure from all programming remained substantial. Findings of more than 90% of advertising exposure not from children’s programming and more than 1,000 food-related advertisements seen per year suggest the need for government regulations based on time of day rather than programming.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Lisa M. Powell, PhD, email powelll@uic.edu. To ...

About The Study: In this study of the prevalence of exposure to tobacco advertisements on TV or streaming platforms among U.S. adults, disparities in exposure by race or ethnicity, education level, and smoking status were identified. These findings underscore the need for targeted public health interventions and regulation to address these disparities and reduce the impact of tobacco advertisements on vulnerable populations.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Sanjay Shete, PhD, email sshete@mdanderson.org. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.27781) Editor’s ...

Thyroid hormone plays a key role in regulating a range of physiologic functions, including metabolism, temperature, heart rate, and growth. It accomplishes this impressive array of activities by interacting with almost every organ system in the body. Yet despite a long history of research on how thyroid hormone influences different organs, its effects on arguably the most crucial organ — the brain — have remained shrouded in mystery. Now, scientists at Harvard Medical School have gained ...

Higher thiazide doses are associated with greater reductions in urine calcium, which in turn correlate with fewer symptomatic kidney stone events, according to a Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) study published in JAMA Network Open.    Thiazide diuretics, commonly prescribed to prevent kidney stone recurrence, are drugs that act directly on the kidneys to promote diuresis (urine flow) by inhibiting the sodium/chloride cotransporter located in the distal convoluted tubule of a nephron ...

How old are you, really? Your chronological age is the number of years you have been alive. Your biological age is how old your cells are which scientists believe may better assess one’s age-related health and disease risk.  People biologically age at different rates, depending on genetic and environmental factors, so that a person’s chronological age does not necessarily match their biological age. In recent years, direct-to-consumer biological age tests have become increasingly accessible and popular as interest has increased ...

In a study published today (22 August) in Cell Reports Physical Science, a team led by Dr Yoshikatsu Hayashi demonstrated that a simple hydrogel - a type of soft, flexible material - can learn to play the simple 1970s computer game ‘Pong’. The hydrogel, interfaced with a computer simulation of the classic game via a custom-built multi-electrode array, showed improved performance over time.  Dr Hayashi, a biomedical engineer at the University of Reading’s School of Biological Sciences, said: "Our research shows that even very simple materials can exhibit complex, adaptive behaviours typically associated with living systems or sophisticated AI.   "This ...

Artificial intelligence (AI) can help identify molecules that could serve as new drugs for mental health disorders. AI can be used to predict the three-dimensional structures of important receptors and thereby speed up the development of potential drugs. This is the result of a new study from Uppsala University published in Science Advances. In drug development, experimental methods are often used to determine the three-dimensional structures of target proteins and to understand how molecules bind to them. This information is needed to design drug molecules efficiently. However, the process to determine structures can be demanding, meaning this ...

A research team has developed a computer vision technique that can perform dichotomous image segmentation, high-resolution salient object detection, and concealed object detection in the same framework. Their novel bilateral reference framework (BiRefNet) is able to capture tiny-pixel features and holds potential for a wide range of practical computer vision applications.   The work is published in the journal CAAI Artificial Intelligence Research on August 22.   In computer vision research, ...

In the ever-evolving field of robotics, a groundbreaking approach has emerged, revolutionizing how robots perceive, navigate, and interact with their environments. This new frontier, known as brain-inspired navigation technology, integrates insights from neuroscience into robotics, offering enhanced capabilities and efficiency. Brain-inspired navigation technologies are not just a mere improvement over traditional methods; they represent a paradigm shift. By mimicking the neural mechanisms of animals, these technologies provide robots with the ability to navigate through complex and unknown terrains with unprecedented accuracy ...