The North Texas Genome Center (NTGC) at UT Arlington is getting an upgrade in the form of a next-generation genetic sequencer that will allow researchers to study genetic links between health and disease at a large scale. The new $1 million instrument, the only one of its kind in North Texas, will allow faculty and students to more deeply analyze rare genetic variants, an important step in discovering new insights for the future of health care. “I’m excited to be able to expand and upgrade the technological capabilities of the North Texas Genome Center, a collaborative ...

A research group led by Joshua Neunuebel at the University of Delaware, USA, tracked the behavior of mice using machine learning to understand how they handle aggressive behavior from other mice. The researchers’ findings, published on October 15th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology, show that male mice deescalate aggressive encounters by running over to a female mouse to distract the aggressive male mouse. The researchers recorded groups of two male and two female mice interacting over five hours. Like many other animals, mice have social hierarchies, and in almost each group recorded, one male was always significantly more aggressive towards the other. Social interactions ...

In an era where mental health awareness is at the forefront of public discourse, a new historical review is shedding light on the often-overlooked French contributions to our understanding of depression. Published in Genomic Psychiatry, the study by Dr. Kenneth S. Kendler and Virginia Justis of Virginia Commonwealth University examines a seminal 1897 French monograph that helped shape modern concepts of melancholia and depression. The review focuses on "La Mélancolie" by Jacques Roubinovitch ...

New Study Key Takeaways: New model focuses on more equity and accessibility in opioid overdose treatment locations and resource allocation. Utilizing this model, the results project that within 2 years, there will be a decrease in the number of people with opioid use disorder, an increase in the number of people getting treatment and a decrease in opioid-related deaths. Policymakers should target adding treatment facilities to counties that have significantly fewer facilities than their population share and are more socially vulnerable. BALTIMORE, MD, October 15, 2024 – The opioid epidemic is a crisis that has plagued the United States for decades. ...

Key takeaways Voting eligibility for people with felony convictions has expanded since 1997, with more than two million individuals now able to vote. Several factors, like misinformation, distrust of government or lack of clarity around procedures, impede many from exercising their right to vote. Direct outreach, including through trusted, on-the-ground community organizations, as well as informational text messaging, can help eligible voters navigate the process and make sure their voices are included in elections. As get-out-the-vote efforts hit high gear nationwide, a team of sociologists, political scientists ...

Alzheimer’s disease may damage the brain in two distinct phases, based on new research funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) using sophisticated brain mapping tools. According to researchers who discovered this new view, the first, early phase happens slowly and silently — before people experience memory problems — harming just a few vulnerable cell types. In contrast, the second, late phase causes damage that is more widely destructive and coincides with the appearance of symptoms and the rapid ...

Advancements in quantum information technology are paving the way for faster and more efficient data transfer. A key challenge has been ensuring that qubits, the fundamental units of quantum information, can be transferred between different wavelengths without losing their essential properties, such as coherence and entanglement. As reported in Advanced Photonics, researchers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) recently made significant strides in this area by developing a novel method for broadband frequency conversion, a crucial step for future quantum networks. The SJTU team focused on a technique using X-cut thin film lithium niobate ...

Aston University is leading a new £5.5 million EU research project Will focus on converting fibre-optic cables into sensors to detect natural hazards Could identify earthquakes and tsunamis and assess civil infrastructure. Aston University is leading a new £5.5 million EU research project to explore converting existing telecommunication fibre-optic cables into sensors which can detect natural hazards, such as earthquakes and tsunamis, and assess the condition of civil infrastructure.  The project is called ECSTATIC (Engineering Combined Sensing and Telecommunications Architectures for Tectonic and Infrastructure Characterisation) ...

About The Study: Existing evaluations of large language models mostly focus on accuracy of question answering for medical examinations, without consideration of real patient care data. Dimensions such as fairness, bias, and toxicity and deployment considerations received limited attention. Future evaluations should adopt standardized applications and metrics, use clinical data, and broaden focus to include a wider range of tasks and specialties. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Nigam H. Shah, MBBS, PhD, email nigam@stanford.edu. To ...

About The Study: Strong oversight by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) protects the long-term success of industries by focusing on evaluation to advance regulated technologies that improve health. The FDA will continue to play a central role in ensuring safe, effective, and trustworthy AI tools to improve the lives of patients and clinicians alike. However, all involved entities will need to attend to AI with the rigor this transformative technology merits. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Haider J. Warraich, MD, email haider.warraich@fda.hhs.gov. To ...

Researchers have shown that larger insects such as woodlice and beetles play as much of a crucial role in leaf litter decomposition across different habitats and seasons as microbes and smaller invertebrates.  The research, published today as a final Version of Record after previously appearing as a Reviewed Preprint in eLife, was described by editors as a fundamental study that substantially advances our understanding of the role of different-sized soil invertebrates in shaping the rates of leaf litter decomposition. The authors provide compelling evidence that the summed effects of all decomposers on decomposition rates, with large-sized invertebrates being ...

The inaugural Art and Science of Total Synthesis of Natural and Designed Molecules for Biology and Medicine (ASTS-NDM 2024) symposium brought together some of the world’s most renowned organic chemists Oct. 2-4 at the historic Club de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris. Hosted by Rice University’s Global Paris Center , the event explored the evolving role of synthetic organic chemistry and total synthesis of natural and designed molecules in fields such as medicine, materials science and chemical biology. The three-day symposium attracted leading figures in synthetic organic chemistry, featuring 18 speakers who presented ...

In Miami—a place known for one of the most diverse tree canopies in the world—nearly half of the native trees may struggle to survive in the coming decades, a new University of Miami study indicates. Due to global warming, temperatures may simply become too hot for some of the types of trees that dominate the city’s current landscape, like live oaks, slash pines, and cabbage palms. But the research also found that strategically planting more tropical trees may help the local canopy stay resilient in the face of climate change. Through an extensive data analysis project, a team of ecologists in the Department of Biology in the College of Arts and Sciences discovered ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA – Active electronics — components that can control electrical signals — usually contain semiconductor devices that receive, store, and process information. These components, which must be made in a clean room, require advanced fabrication technology that is not widely available outside a few specialized manufacturing centers. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the lack of widespread semiconductor fabrication facilities was one cause of a worldwide electronics shortage, which drove up costs for consumers and had implications in everything from economic growth to national defense. The ability to 3D print an entire, active electronic ...

Graduates who went to medical school for three years performed equally well on tests of skill and knowledge as their peers who followed a four-year program, a new study shows. The accelerated three-year MD pathway offered by NYU Grossman School of Medicine beginning in 2013 was designed to help students earn their medical degrees sooner with reduced debt, which some experts say reaches $250,000 on average by graduation. The school was the first in the United States to offer a three-year MD program that ...

SAN ANTONIO — October 15, 2024 —Two Southwest Research Institute instruments were launched aboard NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft on Oct. 14 from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center. The spacecraft is designed to conduct a detailed reconnaissance of Jupiter’s moon Europa, investigating whether it could hold conditions suitable for life. The SwRI-developed MAss Spectrometer for Planetary EXploration (MASPEX) and Ultraviolet Spectrograph (Europa-UVS) are among nine science instruments and a gravity science investigation that were developed to explore Europa, Jupiter’s fourth-largest ...

Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024, Cleveland: Researchers at Cleveland Clinic and Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) have developed a new method that could potentially help provide better access to lung transplant for transplant candidates who are hard to match because of their blood type or height.   An analysis published in the Journal of Heart & Lung Transplantation showed significant inequity in lung transplant access based on these candidate characteristics and proposes a method for addressing it.   Lung transplant candidates require organs from donors of similar height and compatible blood type. Currently, to allow equally sick candidates equal ...

In 2019, Raymond Mailhot was visiting with a young patient and his family facing a scary diagnosis – brain cancer. Treatments were incredibly effective, and the young boy was going to survive, Mailhot shared in Spanish with the Venezuelan immigrants.  But life would be disrupted at home, at the hospital, and at school, likely for months, he said.  “His story really made me want to dig deeper into the scholastic performance of survivors,” said Mailhot, M.D., M.P.H, an associate professor of radiation oncology at the University of Florida. “We discovered that survivors had twice the odds of being held back and performed significantly worse on state testing ...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 15, 2024 – The U.S. is ramping up plans for a major increase in offshore wind production, with 30 gigawatts of new installations expected by 2030 and a total of 110 gigawatts by 2050. But to be successful, the country needs to design turbines that can withstand the challenges of tropical storms. “Extreme weather impacts on offshore wind turbines are not fully understood by the industry,” author Jiali Wang said. “Manufacturers design wind turbines based on international design standards, but better models and data are needed to study the impacts of extreme weather ...

About The Study: In this cross-sectional study, older adults hospitalized with sepsis were more likely to die or experience major morbidity as the hospital COVID-19 burden increased. These increases in adverse outcomes were greater in magnitude among members of minority populations than for white individuals.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Laurent G. Glance, MD, email laurent_glance@urmc.rochester.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.38563) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, ...

A critical transition in early human development is regulated not by our own genes, but by DNA elements called transposons that can move around the genome, Sinai Health researchers have found. This remarkable discovery challenges our previous understanding of these elusive DNA segments, shedding new light on the roles they play in human development and disease. “People tend to think of transposons as akin to viruses where they hijack our cells for the sole purpose of propagating themselves,” says study’s senior co-author Dr. Miguel Ramalho-Santos, Senior Investigator at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute (LTRI), part of Sinai Health, and Professor ...

Bonobos, endangered great apes that are among our closest relatives, might be more vulnerable than previously understood, finds a genetics study led by a UCL researcher that reveals three distinct populations. The three groups of bonobos have been living separately in different regions in Central Africa for tens of thousands of years, according to the study published in Current Biology by an international research team co-led by UCL, University of Vienna, and Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology ...

LA JOLLA, CA—Hormone-driven cancers, like those of the breast and prostate, often rely on a tricky-to-target protein called Forkhead box protein 1 (FOXA1). FOXA1 mutations can enable these types of cancers to grow and proliferate. Today, FOXA1 is notoriously difficult to block with drugs—but that may soon change. Scripps Research scientists have identified a crucial binding site on FOXA1 that could pave the way for future cancer treatments. The team’s findings, which were published in Molecular Cell on October 15, 2024, also mapped out how tiny drug-like chemical compounds—called small molecules—interact with the protein. While ...

TUCSON, AZ — October 15, 2024 — The Giant Magellan Telescope today announced the successful installation of one of its completed 8.4-meter-diameter primary mirrors into a support system prototype at the University of Arizona’s Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab. This highly sophisticated system — comparable in size to half a basketball court and containing three times the number of parts of a typical car — is vital to the telescope’s optical performance and precision control. The milestone marks the start of a six-month optical testing phase to demonstrate that the support system can control the mirror as required, validating the revolutionary capabilities ...

In a new study led by Johns Hopkins Medicine, the drug RK-33 has demonstrated promise in treating breast cancer that has spread to the bone (breast cancer bone metastasis). RK-33 was previously shown to help treat other types of cancer and viral illnesses. Patients with breast cancer and bone metastasis have limited treatment options and often rely on palliative care to ease difficult symptoms, including frailty and pain. In most cases, breast cancer with bone metastasis is incurable. Now, corresponding author Venu Raman, Ph.D., ...