UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — By combining forefront X-ray observations with state-of-the-art supercomputer simulations of the buildup of galaxies over cosmic history, researchers have provided the best modeling to date of the growth of the supermassive black holes found in the centers of galaxies. Using this hybrid approach, a research team led by Penn State astronomers derived a complete picture of black-hole growth over 12 billion years, from the Universe’s infancy at around 1.8 billion years old to now at 13.8 billion years old. The research comprises two papers, ...

PLYMOUTH MEETING, PA [June 11, 2024] — New research in the June 2024 issue of JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network highlights a promising approach for alleviating distress, enhancing quality of life, improving physical function, and reducing fatigue in patients with blood cancers who undergo hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). The study used a randomized clinical trial to evaluate the feasibility of a nine-week, phone-delivered, positive psychology program called Positive Affect for the Transplantation of ...

An awkward beat doesn't help on the dance floor, but it could help people who are recovering from mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). Publishing online today (June 11, 2024) in the Journal of Neurotrauma, Virginia Tech scientists with the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC show that specifying the timing pattern of neurostimulation – impulses used to activate the brain’s own electrical signaling mechanisms – can rebalance the strength of synaptic connections between nerve cells, selectively up- or down-regulating those connections. While the timing pattern of electrical signaling is important in the normal brain, ...

UPTON, N.Y. — Efforts to achieve net-zero carbon emissions from transportation fuels are increasing demand for oil produced by nonfood crops. These plants use sunlight to power the conversion of atmospheric carbon dioxide into oil, which accumulates in seeds. Crop breeders interested in selecting plants that produce a lot of oil look for yellow seeds. In oilseed crops like canola, yellow-seeded varieties generally produce more oil than their brown-seeded counterparts. The reason: The protein responsible for brown seed color — which yellow-seeded plants lack — also plays a key role in oil production. Now, plant biochemists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven ...

URBANA, Ill. -- Following decades of decline, even fewer birds will darken North American skies by the end of the century, according to a new analysis by scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Their study is the first to examine the long-term effects of climate change on the abundance and diversity of bird groups across the continent as a whole while accounting for additional factors that put birds at risk, such as pesticides, pollution, land use change, and habitat loss.   “Many studies try to attribute causes like climate ...

As space travel becomes more frequent, a new biomarker tool was developed by an international team of researchers to help improve the growing field of aerospace medicine and the health of astronauts. Dr. Guy Trudel (Professor in the Faculty of Medicine), Odette Laneuville (Associate Professor, Faculty of Science, and Director of the Biomedical Sciences) and Dr. Martin Pelchat (Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Immunology) are among the contributors to an international ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Haiku poems have reflected humans’ experiences in nature for hundreds of years, including observations of bugs and other wildlife. Recently, Penn State researchers analyzed which insects were mentioned the most in haiku — with butterflies, fireflies and singing insects such as crickets topping the list. Haiku are three-line poems with five syllables in the first and third lines, and seven syllables in the second line. In their study of nearly 4,000 haiku, recently published in the journal PLOS ONE, the researchers also found that aquatic arthropods — such as caddisflies, stoneflies and fishflies — were mentioned the ...

“[...] it appears that the CCR4-NOT complex can influence longevity in a multitude of manners [...]” BUFFALO, NY- June 11, 2024 – A new editorial paper was published in Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 16, Issue 10, entitled, “CCR4-NOT complex in stress resistance and longevity in C. elegans.” The ability to mount an adaptive response to environmental stress is crucial in organismal survival and overall fitness. In the context of aging, many genes that mediate resistance to stressors are also important in longevity, and aging has been shown to cause ...

Subscribe to UCSF News Note to Editors: Speaker bios are available in our media kit   UCSF Health and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals celebrated the signing of a Community Workforce Agreement (CWA) on June 11, agreeing to prioritize local union workers for the construction of a proposed landmark hospital building and related site improvements on its Oakland site.     The agreement, signed by the Building and Construction Trades Council of Alameda County (BTCA) and the project’s general contractor, Rudolph and Sletten, confirms a mutual understanding to hire union workers and follow union hiring practices. An additional agreement was signed by Overaa Construction, ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – An artificial intelligence-powered virtual teammate with a female voice boosts participation and productivity among women on teams dominated by men, according to new Cornell University research. The findings suggest that the gender of an AI’s voice can positively tweak the dynamics of gender-imbalanced teams and could help inform the design of bots used for human-AI teamwork, researchers said. The findings mirror previous research that shows minority teammates are more likely to participate if the team adds members similar to them, said Angel Hsing-Chi Hwang, postdoctoral associate in information science and ...

The human visual system is a dominant part of the brain’s processes and navigation of the world. To better understand an aspect of this system, researchers from Drexel University’s College of Nursing and Health Professions examined how life experiences impact a person’s perception of imagery – specifically decorated masks. The study, published in Frontiers in Psychology, examined viewer responses to images of distressing and neutrally decorated masks and whether personal life history, particularly past ...

TAMPA, Fla. — Leptomeningeal disease is a rare but lethal complication faced by late-stage melanoma patients. It occurs when cancer cells spread to the membranes covering the brain and spinal cord, or the leptomeninges. This condition, which affects 5% to 8% of melanoma patients, often leads to rapid deterioration and is notoriously resistant to therapies. However, a new Moffitt Cancer Center study, published today in Cell Reports Medicine, uncovers the mechanisms that drive this drug resistance, offering new avenues ...

Iran’s water policy is discriminatory and an example of environmental racism, with specific regions and ethnic groups deliberately impoverished, damaged and threatened by policymakers, a new study says. Water scarcity lies at the core of Iran’s environmental crises. Approximately 28 million of Iran’s 85 million residents reside in water-stressed areas, a situation identified as ‘water bankruptcy’. This is particularly the case in the central, industrialised regions. Other “donor basin” regions – which have ...

The 2024 Warren Alpert Foundation Prize has been awarded to four scientists whose transformational discoveries led to the creation of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells, a treatment that modifies patients’ immune cells and optimizes their ability to eliminate cancer cells. CAR T-cell therapy, the first successful example of synthetic biology used in clinical medicine, has saved the lives of tens of thousands of adults and children with blood cancers, including leukemia, lymphoma, and multiple myeloma. The award recipients are: Renier Brentjens, Katherine Anne Gioia Endowed Chair of Medicine and deputy director of Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center   Zelig ...

Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is a health condition characterized by a group of risk factors: high blood pressure, high blood sugar, unhealthy cholesterol levels, and abdominal fat. These factors increase the risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and other serious health problems. Previous studies have shown that both genetics and lifestyle influence MetS. But human studies have found it challenging to pinpointing the disease’s exact genetic factors and how they interact with our environment – the differences between people’s diets and lifestyles have proven impossible to control. Now, scientists led by Johan Auwerx at EPFL have addressed ...

WhatsApp can be a highly effective tool to help older people overcome loneliness and depression, according to the findings of a study conducted in Guarulhos, the second-largest city in São Paulo state, Brazil.  An article on the study is published in the journal Nature Medicine. The co-corresponding author is Marcia Scazufca, a scientific researcher at Hospital das Clínicas (HC), the hospital complex run by the University of São Paulo’s Medical School (FM-USP), and a professor at the school. “This was a randomized controlled trial involving 603 participants aged more than 60 and registered ...

The ocean, rich in mineral resources such as oil, natural gas, polymetallic nodules, cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts, polymetallic sulfides, and rare earth ore, plays an increasingly important role in resource development and economic growth. It is also regarded as an essential strategic space for sustainable development with abundant wind, wave, tidal, and solar energy. Compared with onshore structures, however, offshore structures, being complex, bulky, and expensive, have to endure various random loads that change over time and space, including wind, waves, currents, tides, sea ice, and even coupled with ...

When college athletes are evaluated for a possible concussion, the diagnosis is based on an athletic trainer or team physician’s assessment of three things: the player’s symptoms, physical balance and cognitive skills.  Research published today suggests that almost half of athletes who are ultimately diagnosed with a concussion will test normally on the recommended cognitive-skills test.  “If you don’t do well on the cognitive exam, it suggests you have a concussion. But many people who are concussed do fine on the exam,” said Dr. Kimberly Harmon, the study’s lead author. She is a professor of family medicine ...

As long as humans have been traveling into space, astronauts have experienced significant health effects from the extreme conditions of space flight, notably the reduction of gravity. Two Buck scientists led a team that has revealed for the first time how the lack of gravity affects the cells of the immune system at single cell resolution. As co-senior authors, along with Christopher E. Mason, PhD of Weill Cornell Medical College, Associate Professor David Furman, PhD and Associate Professor Daniel Winer, MD, published in the ...

Food insecurity, low household income and not having private health insurance are associated with higher rates of prediabetes in adolescents, independent of race and ethnicity, according to a new JAMA Network Open study by University of Pittsburgh and UPMC researchers. The findings suggest that screening for social determinants of health — the non-medical factors that influence a person's health and risk of disease — may help identify youth at risk of prediabetes, which could ultimately improve early interventions that prevent progression to type 2 diabetes. “This study underscores the importance ...

The agility with which humans and animals move is an evolutionary marvel that no robot has yet been able to closely emulate. To help probe the mystery of how brains control movement, Harvard neuroscientists have created a virtual rat with an artificial brain that can move around just like a real rodent.   Bence Ölveczky, professor in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, led a group of researchers who collaborated with scientists at Google’s DeepMind AI lab to build a biomechanically realistic digital model of a rat. Using high-resolution data recorded from ...

Scientists unlock secrets of how the third form of life makes energy. An international scientific team has redefined our understanding of archaea, a microbial ancestor to humans from two billion years ago, by showing how they use hydrogen gas.  The findings, published today in Cell, explain how these tiny lifeforms make energy by consuming and producing hydrogen. This simple but dependable strategy has allowed them to thrive in some of Earth’s most hostile environments for billions of years. The paper, led by Monash University Biomedicine Discovery Institute scientists, including ...

The structure and function of the kidneys is altered by space flight, with galactic radiation causing permanent damage that would jeopardise any mission to Mars, according to a new study led by researchers from UCL. The study, published in Nature Communications, is the largest analysis of kidney health in space flight to date and includes the first health dataset for commercial astronauts. It is published as part of a Nature special collection of papers on space and health. Researchers have known that space flight causes certain health issues since the 1970s, in the ...

Depressive symptoms are linked to subsequent memory decline in older people, while poorer memory is also linked to an increase in depressive symptoms later on, according to a new study led by researchers at UCL and Brighton and Sussex Medical School. The study, published in JAMA Network Open, looked at 16 years of longitudinal data from 8,268 adults in England with an average age of 64. The researchers concluded that depression and memory were closely interrelated, with both seeming to affect each other. Senior author Dr Dorina Cadar, of the UCL Department of Behavioural Science & Health and Brighton and Sussex Medical School, said: “It is ...

Quantum computers have the potential to solve complex problems in human health, drug discovery, and artificial intelligence millions of times faster than some of the world’s fastest supercomputers. A network of quantum computers could advance these discoveries even faster. But before that can happen, the computer industry will need a reliable way to string together billions of qubits – or quantum bits – with atomic precision.  Connecting qubits, however, has been challenging for the research community. Some methods form qubits by placing ...