School closures during COVID-19 have decreased access to school meals, which is likely to increase the risk for food insecurity among children in Maryland, according to a new report issued by researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM). The number of meals served to school-age children during the first three months of the pandemic dropped by 58 percent, compared to the number of free or reduced-price meals served the previous spring. As a result, thousands of children across the state were placed at increased risk of food insecurity, with many likely experiencing the health ramifications ...

Boulder, Colo., USA: GSA's dynamic online journal, Geosphere, posts articles online regularly. Topics for articles posted for Geosphere this month include feldspar recycling in Yosemite National Park; the Ragged Mountain Fault, Alaska; the Khao Khwang Fold and Thrust Belt, Thailand; the northern Sierra Nevada; and the Queen Charlotte Fault. Feldspar recycling across magma mush bodies during the voluminous Half Dome and Cathedral Peak stages of the Tuolumne intrusive complex, Yosemite National Park, California, USA Louis F. Oppenheim; Valbone Memeti; Calvin G. Barnes; Melissa Chambers; Joachim Krause ... Abstract: Incremental pluton growth can produce sheeted complexes with no magma-magma interaction or large, dynamic magma bodies communicating via crystal and melt exchanges, depending ...

Washington, DC — Blood pressure that remains elevated over of time — known as chronic hypertension — has been linked to heart disease, which is the leading cause of death in the United States. Recent research has shown that persistent high blood pressure may also increase the risk for stroke and overall mortality. Yet, only about 1 in 4 adults with chronic hypertension have their condition under control, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In a new study to be presented today at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine's (SMFM) annual meeting, The Pregnancy Meeting™, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh will unveil findings that suggest that women who develop high blood pressure during pregnancy and who continue ...

News reports indicate COVID-19 vaccines are not getting out soon enough nor in adequate supplies to most regions, but there may be a larger underlying problem than shortages. A University of California, Davis, study found that more than a third of people nationwide are either unlikely or at least hesitant to get a COVID-19 vaccine when it becomes available to them. The results are from public polling of more than 800 English-speaking adults nationwide in a study published online earlier this month in the journal Vaccine. "Our research indicates that vaccine uptake will be suboptimal ... with 14.8 percent of respondents being unlikely to get vaccinated ...

WOODS HOLE, Mass. -- The most powerful substance in the human brain for neuronal communication is glutamate. It is by far the most abundant, and it's implicated in all kinds of operations. Among the most amazing is the slow restructuring of neural networks due to learning and memory acquisition, a process called synaptic plasticity. Glutamate is also of deep clinical interest: After stroke or brain injury and in neurodegenerative disease, glutamate can accumulate to toxic levels outside of neurons and damage or kill them. Shigeki Watanabe of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, a familiar face at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) as a faculty member and researcher, is hot on the ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- When we step on the car brake upon seeing a red traffic light ahead, a sequence of events unfolds in the brain at lightning speed. The image of the traffic light is transferred from our eyes to the visual cortex, which, in turn, communicates to the premotor cortex -- a section of the brain involved in preparing and executing limb movements. A signal is then sent to our foot to step on the brake. However, brain region that helps the body go from "seeing" to "stepping" is still a mystery, frustrating neuroscientists and psychologists. To unpack this "black box," a team of neuroscientists at the University of California, Riverside, has ...

A new report combining forecasting and expert prediction data, predicts that 125,000 lives could be saved by the end of 2021 if 50% or more of the U.S. population initiated COVID vaccination by March 1, 2021. "Meta and consensus forecast of COVID-19 targets," developed by Thomas McAndrew, a computational scientist and faculty member at Lehigh University's College of Health, and colleagues, incorporates data from experts and trained forecasters, combining their predictions into a single consensus forecast. In addition McAndrew and his team produce a metaforecast, which is a combination of an ensemble of computational models and their consensus forecast. In addition to predictions related to the impact of vaccinations, ...

Researchers at Linköping University, Sweden, have developed a proton trap that makes organic electronic ion pumps more precise when delivering drugs. The new technique may reduce drug side effects, and in the long term, ion pumps may help patients with symptoms of neurological diseases for which effective treatments are not available. The results have been published in Science Advances. Approximately 6% of the world's population suffer from neurological diseases such as epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, and chronic pain. However, currently available drug delivery methods - mainly tablets and injections - place the drug in locations where it is not required. This can lead to side effects ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- In many ways, our brain and our digestive tract are deeply connected. Feeling nervous may lead to physical pain in the stomach, while hunger signals from the gut make us feel irritable. Recent studies have even suggested that the bacteria living in our gut can influence some neurological diseases. Modeling these complex interactions in animals such as mice is difficult to do, because their physiology is very different from humans'. To help researchers better understa nd the gut-brain axis, MIT researchers have developed an "organs-on-a-chip" system that replicates interactions between the brain, liver, and colon. Using that system, the researchers were able to model the influence that microbes living in the gut have on both healthy brain tissue and tissue samples derived ...

An international team of researchers produced islands of amorphous, non-crystalline material inside a class of new metal alloys known as high-entropy alloys. This discovery opens the door to applications in everything from landing gears, to pipelines, to automobiles. The new materials could make these lighter, safer, and more energy efficient. The team, which includes researchers from the University of California San Diego and Berkeley, as well as Carnegie Mellon University and University of Oxford, details their findings in the Jan. 29 issue of Science Advances. "These present ...

In 2017, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to three scientists who uncovered the molecular mechanisms that control the circadian rhythm, otherwise known as the "wake-sleep" cycle. To carry out their work, the scientists used the common fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, making this the sixth Nobel to be awarded to research involving it. Fruitful fruit flies Life scientists have been using Drosophila for over a century now. First proposed by entomologist Charles W. Woodworth as a model organism, its use in research was pioneered by geneticist Thomas H. Morgan who ran his famous ...

As any cook knows, some liquids mix well with each other, but others do not. For example, when a tablespoon of vinegar is poured into water, a brief stir suffices to thoroughly combine the two liquids. However, a tablespoon of oil poured into water will coalesce into droplets that no amount of stirring can dissolve. The physics that governs the mixing of liquids is not limited to mixing bowls; it also affects the behavior of things inside cells. It's been known for several years that some proteins behave like liquids, and that some liquid-like proteins don't mix together. However, very little is known about how these liquid-like proteins behave on cellular surfaces. "The separation between two liquids that won't mix, like oil and water, is known as ...

January 29, 2021 -- A study at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Columbia University Irving Medical Center has found that Medicaid expansion in 2014 in New York State was associated with a statistically significant reduction in severe maternal morbidity in low-income women during delivery hospitalizations compared with high-income women. The decrease was even more pronounced in racial and ethnic minority women than in White women. Until now there was little research on the link between ACA Medicaid expansion and maternal health outcomes. The findings are published online in the journal of the International Anesthesia Research Society, Anesthesia & Analgesia. "Our findings indicate that the 2014 ...

LA JOLLA--(January 29, 2021) As scientists learn more about the microorganisms that colonize the body--collectively called the microbiota--one area of intense interest is the effect that these microbes can have on the brain. A new study led by Salk Institute scientists has identified a strain of E. coli bacteria that, when living in the guts of female mice, causes them to neglect their offspring. The findings, published January 29, 2021, in the journal Science Advances, show a direct link between a particular microbe and maternal behavior. Although the research was done in mice, it adds to the growing body of science demonstrating that microbes in the gut are important for brain health and can affect development and behavior. "To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration ...

Boulder, Colo., USA: Sixteen articles were published online ahead of print for GSA Bulletin in January. Topics include insights from the Sawtooth metamorphic complex in Idaho, fingerprinting sand from ancient rivers, eroding Cascadia, and the Troodos ophiolite. Three-dimensional geometry and growth of a basement-involved fault network developed during multiphase extension, Enderby Terrace, North West Shelf of Australia Hongdan Deng; Ken McClay Abstract: Basement fault reactivation, and the growth, interaction, and linkage with new fault segments are fundamentally three-dimensional and critical for understanding the evolution of fault network development in sedimentary basins. This paper analyzes the evolution of a complex, basement-involved ...

CHICAGO (January 29, 2021) -- Structural racism thwarts a large proportion of black patients from receiving appropriate lung cancer care, resulting in worse outcomes and shorter lifespans than white patients with the disease, according to research presented at the 57th Annual Meeting of The Society of Thoracic Surgeons. "Many studies have shown that there are disparities between the outcomes of black and white patients, but have done little to elucidate why these disparities are occurring," said Chandler Annesi, a medical student from Boston University ...

Languages differ in the sounds they use. The Japanese language, for example, does not distinguish between "r" and "l" sounds as in "rock" versus "lock." Remarkably, infants become attuned to the sounds of their native language before they learn to speak. One-year-old babies, for example, less readily distinguish between "rock" and "lock" when living in an environment where Japanese, rather than English, is spoken. Influential scientific accounts of this early phonetic learning phenomenon initially proposed that infants group sounds into native vowel- and consonant-like phonetic categories ...

Scientists have given a fascinating new insight into the next steps to develop fast, energy-efficient, future computing systems that use light instead of electrons to process and store information - incorporating hardware inspired directly by the functioning of the human brain. A team of scientists, including Professor C. David Wright from the University of Exeter, has explored the future potential for computer systems by using photonics in place of conventional electronics. The article is published today (January 29th 2021) in the prestigious journal Nature Photonics. The ...

East Hanover, NJ. January 29, 2021. A team of New Jersey researchers has demonstrated that high-dose therapy gait training using robotic exoskeletons may aid early rehabilitation for acute stroke. The article, "Robotic exoskeleton gait training during acute stroke inpatient rehabilitation" (doi: 10.339/fnbot.2020.581815), was published October 30, 2020 in Frontiers in Neurorobotics is available open access at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnbot.2020.581815/full The authors are Karen Nolan, PhD, Kiran Karunakaran, PhD, and Kathleen Chervin, of Kessler Foundation, Michael Monfett, MD, of Children's Specialized Hospital, Radhika Bapineedu, MD, and Neil N. Jasey Jr, MD, of Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation, and Mooyeon Oh-Park, MD, ...

Coronary artery calcification -- the buildup of calcified plaque in the walls of the heart's arteries -- is an important predictor of adverse cardiovascular events like heart attacks. Coronary calcium can be detected by computed tomography (CT) scans, but quantifying the amount of plaque requires radiological expertise, time and specialized equipment. In practice, even though chest CT scans are fairly common, calcium score CTs are not. Investigators from Brigham and Women's Hospital's Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (AIM) Program and the Massachusetts General Hospital's Cardiovascular Imaging Research Center (CIRC) teamed up to develop and evaluate a deep learning system ...

In the treatment of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, antiviral drug remdesivir has emerged as a promising candidate. Remdesivir works by disrupting the virus's ability to replicate, but its exact mechanism has remained a mystery. Using advanced computational simulations, researchers at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) at the University of Chicago have revealed just how the drug works at the molecular level. They also found that two drugs that work in a similar manner, ribavirin and favilavir, do not bind as effectively to the virus. "It's important to understand ...

Researchers at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) have made strides in automated legal document analytics (ALDA) by creating a way to machine-process the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). The CFR is a complex document containing policies related to doing business with the federal government. All business affiliates of the federal government must comply with the CFR. For government contracts to be equitably open to a broad range of businesses, policies within the CFR must be accessible. This document automation is just one part of a broader project to help contractors and other entities manage and monitor ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Nearly nine out of 10 Americans say they enjoy sports at least a little, but heterosexual men more commonly identify as passionate sports fans, a new study suggests. A survey of nearly 4,000 American adults found that only 11% said they did not identify as sports fans at all. Over 40% were passionate fans, identifying themselves as being "quite a bit" or "very much so" sports fans. About 60% of heterosexual men in the survey identified as passionate sports fans, compared to about 40% of both heterosexual women and lesbians. About 30% of gay men reported being passionate sports fans. "We found that U.S. adults respond overwhelmingly that they are sports fans," said Chris Knoester, co-author of the ...

Trees are often heralded as the heroes of environmental mitigation. They remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which slows the pace of climate change, and sequester nutrients such as nitrogen, which improves water and air quality. Not all tree species, however, perform these services similarly, and some of the strongest impacts that trees have on ecosystems occur below the surface, away from the eyes of observers. This complicates efforts to predict what will happen as tree species shift owing to pests, pathogens, and climate change as well as to predict which species are most beneficial in reforestation ...

Parents know the scenario all too well: their child misbehaves and it comes time for discipline. Research conducted globally shows that spanking is not the best option. But verbal reasoning, which explains why the behavior is wrong, may not always have the intended positive effect if the parent is loud and abrupt, according to a new University of Michigan study. The findings indicate both positive and negative outcomes that could have lasting consequences on children's emotional development. Verbal reasoning was associated with higher levels of getting along with others, but also with increased aggression and higher levels of distraction. "Positive discipline doesn't always seem to have all that many positive benefits," ...