Resistance exercise ‘activity breaks’ at night may improve sleep length, suggest the findings of a small comparative study published in the open access journal BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine. Three-minute breaks every 30 minutes over a period of 4 hours may be all that’s needed, the findings indicate. Current recommendations discourage intense exercise before going to bed, on the grounds that it increases body temperature and heart rate, which can result in poorer sleep quality, say the researchers. While activity breaks can improve metabolism after a meal, it’s not clear if they have any impact on sleep. Poor sleep is associated with an increased ...

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)---characterised by abdominal pain, bloating, and altered bowel habit—may last 4 or more years following a bout of gastroenteritis in around half of those affected, finds a pooled data analysis of the available evidence, published online in the journal Gut. Aggressive and pro-inflammatory bacteria, such as Proteobacteria and Enterobacteriaceae, and the virus responsible for COVID-19 infection, SARS-CoV-2, are possible culprits, the findings suggest. IBS and recurrent indigestion of unknown cause (functional dyspepsia), are disorders of the gut-brain axis. ...

  The number of retractions issued for scientific research articles in 2023 exceeded 10,000 — smashing annual records. To date, publishers have struggled to clean up a slew of papers with serious integrity concerns. Now a world-first framework for assessing research integrity in clinical guidelines, has been published today in the prominent international medical journal, The Lancet’s eClinical Medicine. Monash University researchers in Australia developed the Research Integrity in Guidelines and evIDence synthesis (RIGID) framework. Clinical ...

Intensive livestock farming could raise the risk of new pandemics, researchers have warned. Industrialised farming is often thought to reduce the risk of zoonotic diseases (those transmitted from animals to humans) because of better control, biosecurity and separation of livestock. The new study, led by the University of Exeter, examines the effect of social and economic factors – which are often overlooked in traditional assessments. It finds that the effects of intensifying agriculture “are at best uncertain and at worst may contribute to EID (emerging infectious disease) risk”. Lead author Professor Steve Hinchliffe, from the University ...

Retired rugby players who have suffered multiple concussions have higher levels of certain proteins in their blood, which may make them more prone to developing diseases such as motor neurone disease (MND), according to a new study. The research, led by Durham University, shows that it may be possible to measure specific key biomarkers. These biomarkers can indicate disease or predict possible future disease in the blood of athletes who have suffered multiple traumas to the head. This is the first study to explore a range of specific ...

Rigorous exercise before bed has long been discouraged, but University of Otago researchers have found short bursts of light activity can lead to better sleep.   In a world first study, published in BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine and funded by the Health Research Council, participants completed two four-hour evening intervention sessions of prolonged sitting, and sitting interrupted with three-minute activity breaks every half hour.   The researchers found that after the participants completed the activity breaks intervention they slept for 30 minutes longer.   Lead ...

DALLAS, July 16, 2024 — Someone in the United States dies of cardiovascular disease (CVD) every 34 seconds, on average.[1] Reducing deaths from CVD requires a coordinated approach to care and a commitment to following science-based treatment guidelines. The American Heart Association, celebrating 100 years of lifesaving service as a relentless force for a world of longer, healthier lives, is recognizing 3,147 health care and emergency response organizations for their commitment to improving health outcomes for cardiovascular patients through evidence-based efficient and coordinated care. ...

Whether collaborating with the National Football League to study hamstring injuries, addressing the data gap in female musculoskeletal modeling research or simulating the effects of estrogen levels on muscle regeneration, biomedical engineering professor Silvia Salinas Blemker and her colleagues at the University of Virginia are pioneering health care advancements. In recognition of her outstanding work in translational research and entrepreneurship, Blemker received the 2024 Goel Award for Translational Research in Biomechanics from ...

A biology researcher at The University of Texas at Arlington has received a prestigious grant to continue and expand his research on how pollution affects wildlife. Jordan Brown, a postdoctoral research associate in biology, was awarded a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Directorate for Biological Sciences. The award supports researchers whose work focuses on how environmental changes affect animals. Dr. Brown works in the lab of Shane DuBay, UTA assistant professor of biology, who studies evolutionary ecology, environmental science, and natural history to better understand the consequences of environmental change ...

Concern that social media is driving the teen mental health crisis has risen to such a pitch that the majority of states in the country have filed lawsuits against Meta (which owns Instagram and Facebook) and the U.S. surgeon general called last month for warning labels on platforms, similar to those on tobacco. New research from the University of Washington finds, though, that while some teens do experience negative feelings when using Instagram, the dominant feeling they have around the platform is boredom. They open the app because they’re bored. Then they sift through largely irrelevant content, mostly feeling bored, while seeking interesting bits to ...

Irvine, Calif., July 15, 2024 — A University of California, Irvine research team has developed and implemented an intervention to enhance cancer care support services for racial and ethnic minority patients undergoing chemotherapy.   The electronic patient-reported outcome tool is a web-based application that allows individuals to enter their health data into a smartphone, tablet or computer. In this study, the ePRO was available in multiple languages and coupled with digital analytics. At each treatment visit, participants digitally ...

Researchers at the University of Arizona Health Sciences identified a new way to make opioids safer, increasing the pain-relieving properties of opioids while decreasing unwanted side effects through the spinal inhibition of a Heat shock protein 90 isoform. Opioids are the gold standard of chronic pain treatment, but they come with a host of negative side effects including constipation, addiction potential and respiratory depression that can lead to death. This study, published in Scientific Reports, offers a potential new way to treat acute and chronic pain by reducing the amount of opioid needed for ...

Imagine knowing what berry or mushroom is safe to eat during a hike or swiftly detecting pathogens in a hospital setting that would traditionally require days to identify. Identification and detection of drugs, chemicals and biological molecules invisible to the human eye can be made possible through the combined technology of a cellphone camera and a Raman spectrometer — a powerful laser chemical analysis method. Dr. Peter Rentzepis, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M ...

Bacteria have developed special defense mechanisms to protect themselves against viruses, which by no means infect only humans. As part of these so-called CRISPR-Cas systems, a CRISPR ribonucleic acid (crRNA), which serves as a “guide RNA,” recognizes regions of a foreign genome, such as viral DNA. The CRISPR-associated (Cas) nuclease, directed by a crRNA, then renders it harmless by cutting it like a pair of scissors. Humans have exploited this strategy: “CRISPR, often referred to as ‘gene scissors’, is the basis of many molecular technologies,” says ...

Biopsies are clinical tools commonly used to diagnose a variety of diseases or to monitor tissue for abnormal growth or even rejection of a transplant. During biopsies, tissue samples are removed from the body so they can be examined more closely, but depending on the type of tissue that’s needed, the procedure can be rather invasive. Researchers from the School of Medicine Basic Sciences recently developed an analytical tool that could lead to the use of “liquid biopsies” as a substitute ...

ANN ARBOR, Michigan — As cancer treatment and survivorship care relies more on understanding the genetic make-up of an individual’s tumor, a new study from the University of Michigan Health Rogel Cancer Center finds that many breast cancer survivors who meet criteria for genetic counseling and testing are not receiving it.   The good news: Among those who do get testing, nearly two-thirds who have a genetic variant are reaching out to family members to talk about their results.   “Our findings support a rapidly growing movement to simplify clinical guidelines to ...

Sleep and wake: they’re totally distinct states of being that define the boundaries of our daily lives. For years, scientists have measured the difference between these instinctual brain processes by observing brain waves, with sleep characteristically defined by slow, long-lasting waves measured in tenths of seconds that travel across the whole organ. For the first time, scientists have found that sleep can be detected by patterns of neuronal activity just milliseconds long, 1000 times shorter than a second, revealing a new way to study and understand the basic brain ...

Study shows how materials change as they are stressed and relaxed. Like people, materials evolve over time. They also behave differently when they are stressed and relaxed. Scientists looking to measure the dynamics of how materials change have developed a new technique that leverages X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy (XPCS), artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. This technique creates ​“fingerprints” of different materials that can be read and analyzed by ...

Most stars in our universe come in pairs. While our own Sun is a loner, many stars like our Sun orbit similar stars, while a host of other exotic pairings between stars and cosmic orbs pepper the universe. Black holes, for example, are often found orbiting each other. One pairing that has proved to be quite rare is that between a Sun-like star and a type of dead star called a neutron star.    Now, astronomers led by Caltech's Kareem El-Badry have uncovered what appear to be 21 neutron stars in orbit around stars like our Sun. Neutron stars are dense burned-out ...

“[...] the present results strongly suggest the potential of PEDF as a myokine linking exercise training to the suppression of senescence.” BUFFALO, NY- July 16, 2024 – A new research paper was published on the cover of Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 16, Issue 13, entitled, “Roles of pigment epithelium-derived factor in exercise-induced suppression of senescence and its impact on lung pathology in mice.” Senescent cells contribute ...

“[...] we found an independent positive prognostic effect of HER2-low compared to HER2-zero in early breast cancer.” BUFFALO, NY- July 16, 2024 – A new editorial paper was published in Oncotarget's Volume 15 on June 20, 2024, entitled, “HER2-low and HER2-zero in breast cancer between prognosis, prediction and entity.” In this new editorial, researchers Marcus Schmidt, Hans-Anton Lehr, and Katrin Almstedt from the University Medical Center of Johannes Gutenberg University discuss HER2 in breast cancer. HER2 is a well-established prognostic and predictive factor in breast ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA — Foundation models are massive deep-learning models that have been pretrained on an enormous amount of general-purpose, unlabeled data. They can be applied to a variety of tasks, like generating images or answering customer questions. But these models, which serve as the backbone for powerful artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E, can offer up incorrect or misleading information. In a safety-critical situation, such as a pedestrian approaching a self-driving car, these mistakes could have serious consequences. To help prevent such mistakes, researchers from MIT and the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab developed a technique to estimate the reliability ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announce a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to coordinate efforts to move the needle on quantum computing.   “Realizing practical quantum computers has the potential to dramatically accelerate the pace of discovery across the science and technology landscape,” said Ceren Susut, DOE Associate Director of Science for the Advanced Scientific Computing Research program. “The Office of Science is proud to bring decades of experience in fundamental science for quantum ...

Each cell in the body has its own unique delivery system that scientists are working on harnessing to move revolutionary biological drugs — molecules like proteins, RNA and combinations of the two — to specific diseased parts of the body. A new study from Northwestern University hijacked the transit system and sent tiny, virus-sized containers to effectively deliver an engineered protein to its target cell and trigger a change in the cell’s gene expression. The success came from encouraging engineered proteins to move toward a specific cell membrane structure that the researchers found increased a protein’s likelihood of latching onto the container. Published ...

SAN ANTONIO — July 16, 2024 — Researchers from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) are collaborating to evaluate a next-generation sensor designed to measure neutral gas velocities in the Earth’s upper atmosphere. The project, led by SwRI’s Dr. Joo Hwang and UTD’s Dr. Phillip Anderson, is supported by a grant from the new SwRI/UTD Seed Projects for Research, INnovation, and Technology (SPRINT) Program. Another SPRINT project is researching domestic lithium independence, looking at ...