**EMBARGOED UNTIL THURSDAY, AUG. 15, AT 9 A.M. ET** In what they labeled a “surprising” finding, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers studying bacteria from freshwater lakes and soil say they have determined a protein’s essential role in maintaining the germ’s shape. Because the integrity of a bacterial cell’s “envelope” or enclosure is key to its survival, the finding could advance the search for new and better antibiotics. The research, described August 15 in the journal mBio, suggests that loss of a protein ...

A genetic analysis of Lyme disease bacteria may pave the way for improved diagnosis, treatment and prevention of the tick-borne ailment. By mapping the complete genetic makeup of 47 strains of Lyme disease-causing bacteria from around the world, the international team has created a powerful resource for identifying the specific bacterial strains that infect patients. Researchers said this could enable more accurate diagnostic tests and treatments tailored to the exact type or types of bacteria causing each patient’s illness. "This comprehensive, high-quality sequencing investigation of Lyme disease and related bacteria provides the foundation to propel the field forward,” ...

A team led by CUNY Graduate Center biologists has produced a genetic analysis of Lyme disease bacteria that may pave the way for improved diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of the tick-borne ailment. Weigang Qiu, a professor of Biology at the CUNY Graduate Center and Hunter College, and an international team including lead author Saymon Akther, a former CUNY Graduate Center Biology Ph.D. student, mapped the complete genetic makeup of 47 strains of Lyme disease-related bacteria from around the world, creating a powerful tool for identifying the bacterial strains that ...

CLEVELAND—More than 3,400 Sudden Unexpected Infant Deaths are reported annually in the United States, making it the country’s biggest cause of death of infants from 1 month to 1 year old, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Most of these deaths are classified as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), a disorder with numerous, unexplained causes that have plagued researchers for decades. Now, with a new five-year, $2.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, researchers from Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals Rainbow Babies ...

Noise exposure is a known occupational hazard in some jobs, particularly for hearing loss, physical and psychological stress, and reduced concentration. A new study presented at the ACC Asia 2024 conference found in adult power loom weavers, chronic noise exposure not only increased their blood pressure overall, but also each year of exposure increased their odds of having high blood pressure by 10%. “While the mechanism is still not well-explored, it is thought that the stress response by the body to chronic sound exposure causes hormonal imbalances that gradually leads to a permanent elevation of blood pressure,” said Golam Dastageer Prince, MBBS, MPH, medical officer ...

From coffee to tea, caffeinated beverages are an integral part of morning routines across the globe, but these popular drinks can be harmful when enjoyed in excess. According to a new study being presented at ACC Asia 2024 in Delhi, India, drinking over 400 mg of caffeine per day on most days of the week could increase the susceptibility of otherwise healthy individuals to cardiovascular disease. “Regular caffeine consumption could disturb the parasympathetic system, leading to elevated blood pressure ...

A first-of-its-kind study led by Lawson Health Research Institute is receiving $1.2 million in funding from the federal government, delivered through the Veteran Homelessness Program, to better understand homelessness amongst women in Canada who are military Veterans. “This is an important and yet often invisible problem,” says Dr. Cheryl Forchuk, Lawson Assistant Scientific Director based at St. Joseph’s Health Care London’s Parkwood Institute and the study lead. “This is the first Canadian study to focus exclusively on women Veterans’ experience of homelessness. Gender matters, especially when we’re talking ...

PULLMAN, Wash. -- A new algorithm may make robots safer by making them more aware of human inattentiveness. In computerized simulations of packaging and assembly lines where humans and robots work together, the algorithm developed to account for human carelessness improved safety by about a maximum of 80% and efficiency by about a maximum of 38% compared to existing methods. The work is reported in IEEE Transactions on Systems Man and Cybernetics Systems. “There are a large number of accidents that are happening every day due to carelessness – most of them, unfortunately, from human errors,” said lead ...

Scientists at deCODE genetics, a subsidiary of AMGEN, have discovered rare sequence variants, predicted to cause a loss of function of ITSN1, that are associated with a high risk of Parkinson‘s Disease. The findings also support less studied pathways involved in the pathogenesis of the disease. The study, published today in npj Parkinson‘s Disease, used whole-genome sequence data from Iceland (deCODE genetics), the UK (UK Biobank), and the US (Accelerating Medicines Partnership Parkinson‘s ...

Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other neurological disorders can be seen as “dirty brain” diseases, where the brain struggles to clear out harmful waste. Aging is a key risk factor because, as we grow older, our brain's ability to remove toxic buildup slows down. However, new research in mice demonstrates that it’s possible to reverse age-related effects and restore the brain’s waste-clearing process. “This research shows that restoring cervical lymph vessel function can substantially rescue the slower removal of waste from the brain associated with age,” said Douglas Kelley, PhD, a professor of Mechanical ...

Zebrafish are members of a rarefied group of vertebrates capable of fully healing a severed spinal cord. A clear understanding of how this regeneration takes place could provide clues toward strategies for healing spinal cord injuries in people. Such injuries can be devastating, causing permanent loss of sensation and movement. A new study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis maps out a detailed atlas of all the cells involved — and how they work together — in regenerating the zebrafish spinal cord. In an unexpected finding, the researchers showed that survival and adaptability of the severed neurons themselves is required for full spinal cord regeneration. ...

A new paper in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, published by Oxford University Press, finds that bone fracture rates in older women differ by race, quite significantly. While researchers have known for years that the risk of bone fracture is highest for White women, this is the first study to show the real fracture rate for Asian and Hispanic women. Until recently researchers have had limited data on fracture rates by specific race and ethnicity beyond White people, and even less fracture data within race and ethnic groups. Hispanic and Asian populations are the ...

For the second consecutive year, three Israeli universities are ranked among the top 100 institutions globally. Alongside the Hebrew University, ranked 81st, are the Technion (85th) and the Weizmann Institute (69th). This is an outstanding achievement for Israeli academia and especially for the Hebrew University. Professor Asher Cohen, President of the Hebrew University, stated: "The presence of three Israeli universities in the list of the top 100 universities globally is an exceptional achievement in such a challenging and complex year. The Hebrew University's rise to 81st place ...

Bottom Line: Patients with liver cancer who received immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) before surgery—including those who would not have been eligible for surgery by conventional criteria—had similar outcomes to patients who received surgery upfront, according to results from a retrospective study. Journal in Which the Study was Published: Cancer Research Communications, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Author: Mari Nakazawa, MD, first author of the study and a clinical research fellow ...

PORTLAND, Ore. – Patients with a prescription for an opioid use disorder medication may have a tough time getting it filled if their pharmacy is in a community that’s racially and economically segregated, according to a new study led by scientists at Oregon State University and Johns Hopkins University. The findings shed additional light on inequities in health care as the U.S.’s overdose crisis continues to accelerate, with fatality rates rising fastest in Black and Hispanic/Latinx communities. “While there have been notable policy changes over the past decade that ...

An analysis of 12 years of data collected from over 500 hospitals in 25 different U.S. states shows that weather, geographic location, and urban or rural location all appear to influence hospitalizations for waterborne infectious diseases, according to a new study by researchers at Columbia University in the open-access journal PLOS Water. Waterborne infectious diseases caused by bacteria, parasites, and viruses still affect over 7,000,000 people annually in the United States despite drinking and recreational water regulations, and sanitation ...

August 14, 2024 – In a report published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases (Safety and efficacy of PfSPZ Vaccine against malaria in healthy adults and women anticipating pregnancy in Mali: two randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, phase 1 and 2 trials) a team led by investigators at the Malaria Research and Training Center (MRTC), Bamako, Mali; the Laboratory of Malaria Immunology and Vaccinology (LMIV), National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health; and Sanaria Inc. describes ...

WHAT: Two National Institutes of Health (NIH)-supported trials of an experimental malaria vaccine in healthy Malian adults found that all three tested regimens were safe. One of the trials enrolled 300 healthy women ages 18 to 38 years who anticipated becoming pregnant soon after immunization. That trial began with drug treatment to remove malaria parasites, followed by three injections spaced over a month of either saline placebo or the investigational vaccine at one of two dosages. Both dosages of the vaccine candidate conferred a significant degree of protection from parasite infection and clinical malaria that was sustained ...

Babies recognise pretence and around half of children can pretend themselves by 12 months, new research has found. The study, led by the University of Bristol, shows for the first time how children’s awareness and grasp of pretence in its various forms develops from birth to three years. Lead author Prof Elena Hoicka, Professor of Psychology in Education at the University’s School of Education, said: “Our findings highlight how pretending is a complex, evolving process which begins very early on in life, helping their cognitive and social skills to advance. Pretence ...

A new paper from the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford concludes that current climate standards are not sufficiently incentivising the big picture innovations necessary to deliver net zero, and must be expanded to include a company’s broader influence on climate action. The peer-reviewed research, published in Carbon Management, comes after a period of fierce public debate about climate standards and offers possible solutions for those seeking to improve both integrity and impact of corporate climate action. Incentivising climate action and innovation in the corporate world is essential says co-author Dr Matilda Becker: “Of the 2000 largest ...

Anahita Khojandi and Xiaopeng Zhao have been selected by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to participate in the 2024-25 Science & Technology Policy Fellowship (STPF).  Khojandi, a Heath Endowed Faculty Fellow in Business & Engineering and Associate Professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, and Zhao, a professor in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering and founding director of the Applied AI Program ...

New research from UC Santa Cruz is finally giving you the go-ahead to sing in the shower as loud as you want. Because, as it turns out, you probably sound pretty darn good. Psychologists wanted to study “earworms,” the types of songs that get stuck in your head and play automatically on a loop. So they asked people to sing out any earworms they were experiencing and record them on their phones when prompted at random times throughout the day. When researchers analyzed the recordings, they found that a remarkable proportion of them perfectly matched the pitch of the original songs they were based upon.  More specifically, 44.7% of recordings had a pitch error of 0 semitones, ...

Providing cancer care for someone who also has a chronic illness, such as diabetes or high blood pressure, requires a systematic, co-management approach to produce better cancer and overall health outcomes, said UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Samuel Cykert, MD. Cancer patients with a chronic illness often experience poorer outcomes. This is especially true for Black patients. Contributing to this disparity, studies show, is the increased likelihood that people with chronic illnesses may not be offered standard cancer treatments like surgery, chemotherapy or radiation. If they do start standard treatment, they might not complete it due to complications from ...

CHICAGO—August 14, 2024—Each year, the American Ornithological Society (AOS) confers awards on individuals and groups for their ornithological research and notable contributions to the science and practice of ornithology, and for their service to the society. Our 2024 awardees represent outstanding contributions to the scientific study and conservation of birds and to the AOS. The 2024 recipients will accept their awards at the AOS annual meeting (AOS 2024) in Estes Park, Colorado, in October. “Our award winners this year epitomize the excellence in research, publications, service, and conservation in ornithology towards which we all strive in our profession,” ...

Researchers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital (St. Jude) and the Children’s Oncology Group (COG) today announced a significant paradigm shift in the understanding of T-lineage acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL), an aggressive and high-risk form of cancer, to one frequently driven by genetic changes in non-coding portions of our DNA. The collaborative study, supported by the Gabriella Miller Kids First Pediatric Research Program (Kids First) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) Common Fund, was published ...