In brief Extreme weather is leading to more frequent power grid strain and electricity outages. There are a range of regional cooperation agreements among utilities to share electricity. Expanding cooperation areas in the West could cut outage risks by as much as 40%. Expanding cooperation among electricity providers could also help ensure public opinion and policy remain favorable for renewable energy growth. This summer’s Western heat waves raise the specter of recent years’ rotating power outages and record-breaking electricity demand in the region. ...

How do bad bacteria find entry points in the body to cause infection? This question is fundamental for infectious disease experts and people who study bacteria. Harmful pathogens, like Salmonella, find their way through a complex gut system where they are vastly outnumbered by good microbes and immune cells. Still, the pathogens navigate to find vulnerable entry points in the gut that would allow them to invade and infect the body. A team of UC Davis Health researchers has discovered a novel bioelectrical mechanism these pathogens use to find these openings. Their study was ...

Today, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Hokkaido University of Japan announced their plan to explore collaborative opportunities in semiconductor education and research contributing to semiconductor workforce development initiatives. The two universities recognized the new partnership with a letter of intent signing ceremony held in the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, with representatives from the Hokkaido Prefecture government, the Japanese semiconductor company Rapidus, IBM, NY CREATES, and RPI faculty and students in attendance. Before the signing ceremony, the Japanese delegation toured the IBM Quantum System One ...

Even light smoking of just 1-2 cigarettes a day either before or at any time during pregnancy is significantly associated with major health problems in the newborn, finds research published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. The findings add to the evidence indicating that women hoping to become, or who are, pregnant should stub out smoking to protect their newborn’s health, say the researchers. Deaths and serious health issues among newborns have fallen sharply, largely due to improvements in maternity care. But admission ...

Social position—defined by household income and job role—is linked to food delivery preferences in England, suggests an analysis of consumer research published in the open access journal BMJ Public Health. Affluent households are twice as likely as less well off ones to shop online for groceries while households in lower social grades are up to twice as likely to use food delivery apps for take-away meals. And users of these apps are more likely to be living with obesity, the findings indicate. Digital on-demand ...

Twenty minutes of mindful breathing, which focuses a person’s attention on their breath, can rapidly reduce the intensity and unpleasantness of cancer pain and relieve the associated anxiety, suggest the findings of a small comparative study, published online in the journal BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care. Mindful breathing complements traditional pain relief and broadens the repertoire of options available for cancer patients, say the researchers. Moderate to severe pain affects an estimated 30-40% of patients with cancer worldwide, as a result of the tumour compressing or ...

Researchers have developed a new genomic technique that can track the spread of multiple superbugs in a hospital simultaneously, which could help prevent and manage common hospital infections quicker and more effectively than ever before. The proof-of-concept study, from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, the University of Oslo, Fondazione IRCCS Policlinico San Matteo in Italy, and collaborators, details a new deep sequencing approach that captures all the common infectious bacteria in a hospital at once. Current methods culture and sequence all pathogens separately which takes longer and requires more work.   Published ...

Meat consumption, particularly consumption of processed meat and unprocessed red meat, is associated with a higher type 2 diabetes risk, an analysis of data from 1.97 million participants, published today in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, has found. Global meat production has increased rapidly in recent decades and meat consumption exceeds dietary guidelines in many countries.  Earlier research indicated that higher intakes of processed meat and unprocessed red meat are associated with an elevated risk of type 2 diabetes, but the results have been variable and not conclusive. Poultry ...

Australia’s environmental laws are failing to stop high rates of tree clearing to make way for agriculture, development and mining, according to University of Queensland research. PhD candidate Hannah Thomas from UQ’s School of the Environment led a team which used satellite mapping and land clearing data to analyse vegetation loss across northern Australia, including Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia. “We mapped clearing greater than 20 hectares and then investigated which national or state and territory laws were likely to apply,” Ms Thomas said. “Of the 1.5 million hectares ...

A study in mice has found that the bacteria Bifidobacterium breve in the mother’s gut during pregnancy supports healthy brain development in the fetus. Researchers have compared the development of the fetal brain in mice whose mothers had no bacteria in their gut, to those whose mothers were given Bifidobacterium breve orally during pregnancy, but had no other bacteria in their gut. Nutrient transport to the brain increased in fetuses of mothers given Bifidobacterium breve, and beneficial changes were also seen in other cell processes relating to growth. Bifidobacterium breve is a ‘good bacteria’ that occurs naturally in our ...

In a study published today in Royal Society Open Science, researchers at the Marine Mammal Research Program (MMRP) at UH Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) and Alaska Whale Foundation (AWF) consider a new designation of the humpback whales they study: tool wielders. Researchers have known that humpback whales create “bubble-nets” to hunt, but they have learned that the animals don’t just create the bubble-nets; they manipulate this unique tool in a variety of ways to maximize their food intake in Alaskan feeding grounds. This novel research demystifies a behavior key to the whales’ survival and offers a compelling case for including humpbacks among the rare ...

In 2023, federally sponsored research at The University of Texas at Arlington accounted for $77 million in expenditures, with about $40.7 million spent on research-related goods and services in Texas. That more than doubles the total for 2022, when federally sponsored research at UTA contributed $38 million to the economy. The $77 million is a portion of UTA’s $122 million in total research expenditures from all sources last year. This number includes federally sponsored research awards as well as those from local and state governments, private institutions, and other sources. Overall, UT Arlington and its 270,000 alumni contribute $29 billion ...

Scientists have found a new way to predict how proteins change their shape when they function, which is important for understanding how they work in living systems. While recent artificial intelligence (AI) technology has made it possible to predict what proteins look like in their resting state, figuring out how they move is still challenging because there is not enough direct data from experiments on protein motions to train the neural networks. In a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Aug.20, ...

Reston, VA (August 20, 2024) -- A new fluorescent imaging probe can for the first time objectively and non-invasively measure loss of smell, clinically known as anosmia. Targeting the olfactory nerve, the new tool has potential to eliminate biopsies used to diagnose certain anosmia conditions and to aid in the development of therapeutic interventions. This research was published in the August issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine. Research shows that an estimated 13.3 million adults in the United States have a vast range of smell disorders and that ...

New York, NY—August 20, 2024—Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in patients suffering from lupus, an autoimmune disease in which our immune system attacks our own tissues and organs, the heart, blood, lung, joints, brain, and skin. Lupus myocarditis--inflammation of the heart muscle-- can be very serious because the inflammation alters the regularity of the rhythm and strength of the heartbeat. However, the mechanisms underlying this complex disease are poorly understood and difficult to study. A long-standing question about lupus is why some patients develop myocarditis while others remain unaffected. And why the clinical manifestations of affected ...

DURHAM, N.C. – An estimated one life was saved for every 17 times an extreme risk protection order removed guns from people who presented a risk of harming themselves or others, according to a Duke Health-led analysis of the laws in four states. Extreme risk protection orders -- known as ERPOs or “red flag laws" -- are civil court orders that temporarily prevent people from accessing firearms after a judge determines that they pose an imminent risk of harming themselves or others. Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia have enacted ERPO laws, mostly in ...

More than 23 million Americans who were granted Medicaid coverage during the COVID-19 pandemic lost their coverage starting in March 2023 after the pandemic was declared no longer a public health emergency. Many likely will not successfully re-enroll on their own given Medicaid’s administrative burden—the frustrations and challenges people often encounter in seeking or complying with coverage. Now, a study of the so-called Medicaid Great Unwinding by Dr. Simon F. Haeder with the Texas A&M University School of Public Health, ...

Corporate Cup, lunchtime yoga, or even ‘walk and talks’, organisations come up with all sorts of wellness initiatives to encourage people to be more active in the workplace. But before you duck and hide, new research shows that all it takes is 15 minutes and a touch of gamification to put you on the path to success.   Assessing results from 11,575 participants, across 73 Australian, New Zealand, and UK companies, University of South Australia researchers found that a gamified workplace wellness program – the 15 Minute Challenge* - leads to substantial increases in physical activity levels, with 95% of participants meeting (36%) or exceeding (59%) ...

August 20, 2024, Mountain View, CA –The SETI Institute announced that Dr. Nadia Drake is joining the SETI Institute's Board of Directors as an observer. The SETI Institute's board guides its strategic direction, finances, and various committees. As a journalist, Drake will be an active, non-voting member, bringing her broad expertise to the team. "I am thrilled by this appointment to the SETI Institute's board, which comes at an exciting time for the SETI Institute and for the search for life beyond Earth," said Drake. "For most of my career as a science journalist, I've covered astrobiology ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A sweeping study of U.S. youth sports participation over the past 60 years found that there has been a significant increase over time in kids playing organized sports – but particularly among more privileged, educated families. A national survey found that about 70% of Americans born in the ’90s and reaching age 18 by 2015-16 said they took part in organized sports through recreational, school, or club teams. This finding showed a rather steady increase in organized sports participation across generations. Slightly more than half of those ...

Video available here.  In an effort to reduce the environmental impact of carbon dioxide emissions, a University of Central Florida researcher has developed a new technology that captures carbon dioxide and outputs useful fuels and chemicals. Yang Yang, an associate professor in UCF’s NanoScience Technology Center, created an innovative device that captures carbon dioxide with a microsurface comprised of a tin oxide film and fluorine layer. The device then extracts gaseous carbon dioxide via a bubbling electrode and selectively converts ...

Opportunistic pathogens are typically benign microbes that can sometimes cause infections in individuals with weakened immune systems or when they gain access to sterile areas of the body. Unlike obligate pathogens, opportunistic pathogens do not depend on host infection or transmission for survival, making it difficult to determine the factors driving the evolution of virulence in these microbes. Nevertheless, given their potential to cause severe infections in immunocompromised patients and the increasing prevalence ...

While the U.S. federal government has clean energy targets, they are not binding. Most economically developed countries have mandatory policies designed to bolster renewable electricity production. Because the U.S. lacks an enforceable federal mandate for renewable electricity, individual states are left to develop their own regulations.  Marilyn Brown, Regents’ and Brook Byers Professor of Sustainable Systems in Georgia Tech’s School of Public Policy; Shan Zhou, an assistant professor at Purdue University and Georgia Tech Ph.D. alumna; and Barry Solomon, a professor emeritus of environmental policy at Michigan Technological University, investigated ...

Sophia Antipolis, 20 August 2024: It’s not long before the global cardiology community converges in London for the European Society of Cardiology (ESC)’s annual gathering, unveiling the latest practice-changing science.  The ESC Press Conference Schedule is now available, detailing the nine press conferences that will take place from Thursday 29 August to Sunday 1 September, and can be accessed in person or online. Accredited journalists will also be able to access embargoed press materials in the digital press area from Thursday 22 August.  Join triallists and ESC spokespersons for eight press conferences on the Hot ...

To evade the human host’s immune response, SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, uses the machinery of defense cells to induce the expression of unproductive isoforms of key antiviral genes – variant forms of genes that result from disrupted splicing or transcription processes and do not code for functional (protective) proteins. This is a key finding of a study conducted by researchers at the Albert Einstein Jewish Brazilian Hospital (HIAE), the University of São Paulo (USP) and the ...