PITTSBURGH, June 13, 2024 – New University of Pittsburgh research points to a potential approach to reducing the risk of diabetes associated with widely prescribed antipsychotic medications. The study presents early evidence in support of co-administering antipsychotic medications that block dopamine receptors in the brain alongside drugs that stop antipsychotics from blocking those same receptors in the pancreas. This approach, published today in Diabetes, could limit metabolic side effects, including impaired control over blood sugar, or dysglycemia. This research may also explain why weight control medications, including new neuropeptide drugs Wegovy and Ozempic, may not ...

FORT COLLINS, Colo., June 13, 2024 — We may go to the woods seeking peace and quiet, but are we taking our noise with us? A recent study published in the journal, Current Biology, led by scientists from the USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station indicates that the answer is yes—and that this noise can trigger a fear response, as if escaping from predators. This new science calls into question whether otherwise high-quality habitat truly provides refugia for wildlife when recreationists are present and underscores the challenges land managers face in balancing ...

A new study led by UCLA Health and the U.S. Veterans Affairs Office found chronic pain among older adults could be significantly reduced through a newly developed psychotherapy that works by confronting past trauma and stress-related emotions that can exacerbate pain symptoms.  Published in JAMA Network Open on June 13, the study compared the newer therapy, known as emotional awareness and expression therapy, or EAET, to traditional cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, in treating chronic pain as well as mental health symptoms such as depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms among older veterans.  The ...

About The Study: This cross-sectional study identified a post-pandemic pediatric respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) surge that resulted in markedly increased hospital volumes and advanced respiratory support needs in older children with fewer comorbidities than pre-pandemic seasons. These clinical trends may inform novel vaccine allocation to reduce the overall burden during future RSV seasons. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding authors, email Zachary A. Winthrop, M.D. (zachary.winthrop@childrens.harvard.edu), and Melody G. Duvall, M.D., Ph.D. (melody.duvall@childrens.harvard.edu). To ...

About The Study: The elimination of cost sharing might be associated with increased naloxone dispensing to commercially insured and Medicare patients. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Kao-Ping Chua, M.D., Ph.D., email chuak@med.umich.edu.  To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2024.8378) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support. Embed this link ...

PASADENA, CA – June 13, 2024 – The Giant Magellan Telescope and IDOM today announced that the telescope’s enclosure, set to be one of the world’s largest astronomical facilities, passed its final design review and is now ready for construction in Chile. The review marks a major milestone for the telescope, which is now 40% under construction and on track to be operational by the early 2030s. “A team of ten international subject matter experts validated two years of design work by IDOM and the Giant Magellan Telescope. The final design of the enclosure is unique and an important feat of technical management, design, and engineering. We are very grateful ...

In just a few months, hospitals and health systems nationwide will start working to vaccinate as many staff as possible against the flu.  And a new study suggests that more of those hospitals than ever before will require employees to get vaccinated, or seek an exemption. That means more patients could avoid catching the flu while receiving health care -- a key goal for improving patient safety. In all, the new study shows that 96% of the hospitals that serve America’s veterans, and ...

Analysis of more than 1,500 natural conversations suggests that humans may have evolved more complex facial muscle movements to help us bond with each other. In the first part of the study, researchers posed as participants in semi-structured video calls with 52 people to record natural reactions and expressions during various everyday scenarios. The conversations were designed to involve a range of behaviours, including listening, humour, embarrassment, and conflict. To test ability to inhibit facial expression, participants were also asked to keep a still face while their partner tried to make them move. The same individuals ...

Of all the polar regions, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is the most sensitive to a warming ocean due to climate change. This is already causing a long-term ice sheet melt, and the question is how fast that melting process will take place. It may be that this enormous mass of ice already passed the tipping point, with irreversibly fast melting. This has the potential to sharply accelerate sea level rise in the near future, but the processes causing this are not yet well understood. That is why paleoclimatologists from the Faculty ...

(Toronto, June 13, 2024) JMIR Publications invites submissions to a new theme issue titled “Addressing Digital Ageism in the Modern Era” in its premier open access journal JMIR Aging, indexed in PubMed, SCOPUS, Web of Science, and DOAJ. The theme for this call was selected by the journal’s diverse audiences through a social media poll.  While digital technologies offer immense opportunities for societal progress and individual empowerment, they also bring forth new challenges, such as digital ageism. Digital ageism is discrimination against individuals based on their age within the context ...

WASHINGTON — Researchers have demonstrated a new intelligent photonic sensing-computing chip that can process, transmit and reconstruct images of a scene within nanoseconds. This advance opens the door to extremely high-speed image processing that could benefit edge intelligence for machine vision applications such as autonomous driving, industrial inspection and robotic vision. Edge computing, which performs intensive computing tasks like image processing and analysis on local devices, is evolving into edge intelligence by adding artificial intelligence (AI) driven analysis and decision-making. “Capturing, processing and analyzing images ...

ABSTRACTS: LB3439, LB3442, S131, S132, S136, S164, S222 MADRID – The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Research Highlights showcases the latest breakthroughs in cancer care, research, and prevention. These advances are made possible through seamless collaboration between MD Anderson’s world-leading clinicians and scientists, bringing discoveries from the lab to the clinic and back. This special edition features presentations by MD Anderson researchers at the 2024 European Hematology Association (EHA) Congress. Triplet therapy significantly improves response rates ...

Australian researchers are developing solutions to recycle solar panels and recover strategic metals including silver and copper. In Australia alone, it’s estimated more than 100,000 tonnes of solar panels will enter the waste stream by 2035, along with billions of dollars’ worth of materials that could be recaptured. RMIT University is leading an international network of researchers working to advance the reuse and recycling of solar panels, which can contain valuable materials like lead and tin. Thursday 13 June was the opening of a work and exhibition space at engineering company EDIPAE’s ...

Ravinder Bhatia, a leader and engineer with three decades of experience managing collaborative science initiatives, is the new head of ITER projects at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL).  In this role, Bhatia oversees the design and fabrication of six diagnostic systems, or sensor systems, that PPPL is building for ITER, the multinational facility under assembly in France to study plasma that can heat itself and sustain its own fusion reactions. The diagnostics will observe the plasma within ITER to measure properties that include temperature, ...

The Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative (DAC), the global organization seeking to cure Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, today announced a new initiative in health systems in five countries to deploy blood biomarkers (BBMs) and confirmatory diagnostic testing to increase timely and accurate diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD). Led by the DAC Healthcare System Preparedness (DAC-SP) team, the Accurate Diagnosis project is the first-ever global implementation research program to study the use of blood biomarkers as part of the ADRD diagnostic ...

Researchers have engineered nanosized cubes that spontaneously form a two-dimensional checkerboard pattern when dropped on the surface of water. The work, published in Nature Communications, presents a simple approach to create complex nanostructures through a technique called self-assembly. “It’s a cool way to get materials to build themselves,” said study co-senior author Andrea Tao, a professor in the Aiiso Yufeng Li Family Department of Chemical and Nano Engineering at the University of California San Diego. “You ...

In current clinical care, most critically ill adults undergoing emergency tracheal intubation receive preoxygenation through an oxygen mask. Administering supplemental oxygen to patients prior to the start of an intubation procedure increases the oxygen content in the patient’s lungs and decreases the risk of hypoxemia, low levels of oxygen in the blood. However, hypoxemia occurs during 10% to 20% of tracheal intubations in the emergency department or intensive care unit and may lead to cardiac arrest and death.  The University of Colorado co-led a trial with Vanderbilt University that compared the two most ...

Data assimilation is a mathematical discipline that integrates observed data and numerical models to improve the interpretation and prediction of dynamical systems. It is a crucial component of earth sciences, particularly in numerical weather prediction (NWP). Data assimilation techniques have been widely investigated in NWP in the last two decades to refine the initial conditions of weather models by combining model forecasts and observational data. Most NWP centers around the world employ variational and ensemble-variational data assimilation methods, which iteratively reduce cost functions via gradient-based optimization. However, these methods require significant computational resources.   Recently, ...

When it comes to the ocean’s response to global warming, we’re not in entirely uncharted waters. A UC Riverside study shows that episodes of extreme heat in Earth’s past caused the exchange of waters from the surface to the deep ocean to decline. This system has been described as the "global conveyer belt," because it redistributes heat around the globe through the movement of the ocean waters, making large portions of the planet habitable.  Using tiny, fossilized shells recovered from ancient deep-sea sediments, the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences demonstrates how the conveyor belt responded around 50 ...

SAN DIEGO – June 13, 2024 – A combination of GLP-1 agonists taken before metabolic and bariatric surgery may help patients with extreme obesity lower the risk of post-operative complications, according to a new study* presented today at the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS) 2024 Annual Scientific Meeting Patients with extreme obesity, a body mass index (BMI) of 70 or more, face a higher risk of complications from surgery compared to patients with lower BMIs. Studies have shown weight loss before surgery can mitigate risk but lifestyle intervention ...

The reason why targeted treatment for non-small cell lung cancer fails to work for some patients, particularly those who have never smoked, has been discovered by researchers from UCL, the Francis Crick Institute and AstraZeneca. The study, published in Nature Communications, shows that lung cancer cells with two particular genetic mutations are more likely to double their genome, which helps them to withstand treatment and develop resistance to it. In the UK, lung cancer is the third most common type of cancer and the leading cause of cancer death.  Around 85% of patients with lung cancer have non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), and this is the most common type found in patients ...

Younger workers are struggling with feelings of loneliness and a lack of appreciation at work and tend to feel more comfortable working with people their own age, according to a survey by the American Psychological Association. The 2024 Work in America survey, conducted online by The Harris Poll of more than 2,000 working U.S. adults, found that three in 10 U.S. workers reported that people in their organization who are not close to their age do not see the value in their ideas (32%). That number was significantly higher for workers aged ...

Early detection and treatment of hereditary transthyretin-related amyloidosis via genetic counseling are crucial. Yet, not all at-risk individuals seek genetic counseling, and management for presymptomatic carriers remains unclear. To tackle these knowledge gaps, a research team from Japan conducted a retrospective study on over 200 people who sought genetic counseling at a medical center, shedding light on the current advantages and limitations of current practices.    Hereditary transthyretin-related amyloidosis (AATRv amyloidosis) is a rare inherited ...

Bottom Line: The MEK inhibitor trametinib (Mekinist) was an effective treatment for pediatric patients with relapsed or refractory juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia (JMML) enrolled in a phase II clinical trial, with seven of 10 patients alive after a median of two years. Journal in Which the Study was Published: Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Authors: The senior author is Mignon Loh, MD, who is the director of the Ben Towne Center for Childhood Cancer Research and the head of the Division of Pediatric Hematology, Oncology, Bone ...

A new machine-learning system developed at the University of Alaska Fairbanks can automatically produce detailed maps from satellite data to show locations of likely beetle-killed spruce trees in Alaska, even in forests of low and moderate infestation where identification is otherwise difficult. The automated process can help forestry and wildfire managers in their decisions. That’s critical as the beetle infestation spreads. The Alaska Division of Forestry and Fire Protection calls the spruce beetle “the most damaging ...