Highlights: Flu vaccine efficacy varies year to year. A universal flu vaccine would protect people against all influenza strains that infect humans and last more than a season. A new vaccine candidate incorporates proteins from 8 strains of influenza. Recent tests of the candidate show efficacy in animal models, and the researchers hope to move to clinical trials soon.   Washington, D.C.—Annual flu vaccines protect against severe infection, but they vary in efficacy and may not match the most virulent strains ...

DALLAS, August 22, 2024 — A new $20 million research initiative will engage the people most impacted by health disparities in developing solutions that may help improve their overall health and well-being. The American Heart Association, celebrating 100 years of lifesaving service as the world’s leading nonprofit organization focused on heart and brain health for all, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), a leading national philanthropy dedicated to taking bold leaps to transform health, are ...

The Korea Institute of Energy Research (KIER) has developed a redox-active metal-organic hybrid electrode material (SKIER-5) for Li batteries that remains stable in cold conditions as low as minus 20 degrees Celsius. By addressing the limitations of graphite as an anode material of conventional Li batteries under freezing conditions, SKIER-5 has the potential to be a superior alternative. This novel material can be used in Li batteries for a variety of applications, including electric vehicles, drones, and ultra-small electronic devices, even in low temperatures. Currently, ...

Heart attack, stroke, nerve damage. These are just some of the complications for which millions of Americans with diabetes are at greater risk. When a person has any of these chronic diabetes complications, they are more likely to have a mental health disorder, and vice versa, according to a University of Michigan-led study.  That is, the relationship goes both ways: having a mental health condition also increases the risk of developing chronic complications of diabetes.  “We wanted to see if chronic diabetes complications ...

Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), comprising Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC), are chronic inflammatory conditions affecting the gastrointestinal tract. These diseases can lead to various complications, including strictures, fistulas, and abscesses, significantly impacting patients' quality of life. Endoscopy plays a crucial role in diagnosing IBD, assessing disease activity, and monitoring treatment response. In recent years, advances in operative endoscopy have introduced ...

Parental bed-sharing is unlikely to impact children’s psychological development, new research has found. The study from the University of Essex looked at nearly 17,000 British babies and tracked them for 11 years – finding kids who shared beds were happy and healthy. Dr Ayten Bilgin, from the Department of Psychology, found no association between bed-sharing at 9 months and childhood emotional or behavioural problems. The practice is mired in controversy as some experts previously thought it negatively affected children’s development. However, others say it helps both parents and children as they are nearby for feeding and if they wake in the night. Dr Bilgin, said: ...

PULLMAN, Wash. – An artificial intelligence algorithm can allow researchers to more efficiently use 3D printing to manufacture intricate structures. The Washington State University study, published in the journal Advanced Materials Technologies, could allow for more seamless use of 3D printing for complex designs in everything from artificial organs to flexible electronics and wearable biosensors. As part of the study, the algorithm learned to identify, and then print, the best versions of kidney and prostate organ models, printing out 60 continually improving versions. “You can optimize the results, saving time, cost and labor,” said Kaiyan Qiu, co-corresponding ...

New research from Northwestern University has systematically proven that a mild zap of electricity can strengthen a marine coastline for generations — greatly reducing the threat of erosion in the face of climate change and rising sea levels. In the new study, researchers took inspiration from clams, mussels and other shell-dwelling sea life, which use dissolved minerals in seawater to build their shells. Similarly, the researchers leveraged the same naturally occurring, dissolved minerals to form a natural cement between sea-soaked grains of sand. But, instead of using metabolic energy like mollusks ...

A computational model built by researchers at the Institute of Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) and the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) can predict which drugs will be most effective in treating diseases caused by mutations that can bring protein synthesis to a halt, resulting in unfinished proteins.  The findings, published today in Nature Genetics, mark an important step in helping personalise treatment by matching patients with specific mutations with the most promising drug candidate. The predictive model, a publicly ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University and Johns Hopkins University have demonstrated a technology capable of a suite of data storage and computing functions – repeatedly storing, retrieving, computing, erasing or rewriting data – that uses DNA rather than conventional electronics. Previous DNA data storage and computing technologies could complete some but not all of these tasks. “In conventional computing technologies, we take for granted that the ways data are stored and the way data are processed are compatible with each other,” ...

One hundred years after the human brain’s electrical activity was first recorded, experts are celebrating the legacy of its discovery and sharing their predictions and priorities for its future.  Since the first recording in July 1924, human electroencephalography (EEG) has been integral to our understanding of brain function and dysfunction: most significantly in the clinical diagnosis of epilepsy, where the analysis of the EEG signal meant that a condition previously seen as a personality disorder was quickly redefined as a disorder of brain activity.  Now, a century on, more than 500 experts from around the globe, ...

Stroke and spinal cord injuries can severely impair motor functions, and understanding how to promote recovery is a critical challenge. While damaged neurons in the brain and spinal cord have limited ability to regenerate, the brain can form or strengthen alternative neural pathways involving uninjured parts of the brain, enabling functional recovery. Such reorganization of pathways in the brain is called neural plasticity, and identifying the involved pathways and understanding their functions can ...

A study carried out in St Vincent’s University Hospital (SVUH) Dublin challenges the belief that weight loss medications such as Ozempic, Wegovy or Monjaro work just by promoting satiety and making you eat less. The randomized controlled trial with 30 patients was led by Professor Donal O’Shea, SVUH and UCD School of Medicine, and examined the family of medications based on the hormone Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1). The findings published today in the Journal of the Obesity Society shows that there is a strong relationship between the increase in metabolic ...

Inflammation of the abdominal cavity in human fetuses resulting from a perforation of their intestine is likely to be caused by proteins contained in the fetal stool. This is the result of a Kobe University study that establishes a new mouse model allowing research and drug development for a condition that is otherwise difficult to approach. The fetus’s stool, called the “meconium,” is sterile but nevertheless causes inflammation of the abdominal cavity when it leaks out of the intestine after a perforation. Called “meconium peritonitis,” this is a life-threatening condition for the baby with a mortality rate of 10%-15% in humans, and neither a cause ...

In radiology, diagnostic imaging requires specialized knowledge to interpret the findings associated with a wide variety of diseases. Fortunately, in recent years, generative AI models, such as Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer (ChatGPT), have shown potential as diagnostic tools in the medical field, but their accuracy must be evaluated for optimal use in the future. Therefore, Dr. Daisuke Horiuchi and Associate Professor Daiju Ueda of Osaka Metropolitan University’s Graduate School of Medicine led a research team that compared the diagnostic accuracy of ChatGPT and radiologists. They used 106 musculoskeletal radiology cases with patient medical history, images, ...

My new article, ‘Quantum Entanglement of Optical Photons: The First Experiment, 1964-67’, is intended to convey the spirit of a small research project that reaches into uncharted territory. The article breaks with tradition, as it offers a first-person account of the strategy and challenges for the experiment, as well as an interpretation of the final result and its significance. In this guest editorial, I will introduce the subject and also attempt to illuminate the question ‘What is a paradox?’ Let’s begin with the gyroscope that I bought when I was eight, from a store ...

Kumamoto University researchers have made a groundbreaking discovery that sheds light on how the HMGA2 gene—an essential transcriptional activator involved in chromatin modification—regulates stress responses in hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), thereby enhancing blood cell production recovery.   Exposure to infections or treatments such as chemotherapy often leads to a rapid decline in blood cells, including red blood cells and platelets. HSCs, which reside in the bone marrow that can develop into various types of blood cells, are crucial for recovering from these stress-induced blood disorders. Under stressd ...

Physicians at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University are working with Polaris Dawn, the first of the Polaris Program’s three human spaceflight missions, to better understand the eye changes many astronauts experience during spaceflight that can leave them with a wide range of symptoms once they return to Earth — from a new need for glasses to significant loss of vision. The Polaris Program is a first-of-its-kind effort to rapidly advance human spaceflight capabilities while continuing to raise funds and awareness for important causes on Earth. More than 70% of astronauts experience a phenomenon ...

Training deep learning models on large datasets is essential for their success; however, these datasets often contain label noise, which can significantly decrease the classification performance on test datasets. To address this issue, a research team consisting of Enes Dedeoglu, H. Toprak Kesgin, and Prof. Dr. M. Fatih Amasyali from Yildiz Technical University developed a groundbreaking method called Adaptive-k, which improves the optimization process and yields better results in the presence of label noise. Their research was published on 15 August 2024 in ...

□ A team led by Professor Ji-woong Yang of DGIST’s (President Kun-woo Lee) Department of Energy Science and Engineering, in collaboration with Professor Moon-kee Choi of UNIST's Department of New Materials and Dr. Taeg-hwan Hyun of the IBS Nanoparticle Research Center, has developed a double-layer dry transfer printing technology that simultaneously transfers light-emitting and electron-transferring layers onto a substrate. This technology is expected to provide a more life-like view in augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), greatly enhancing the immersive experience.   □ ...

Shawna Hollen, associate professor of physics, has been named to The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation’s 2024 cohort of Experimental Physics Investigators. The prestigious honor, which is accompanied by $1.25 million in funding over the next five years, will advance understanding of the link between charge density waves and quantum dots, two physical phenomena that could lead to improvements in quantum computing. “The ideas that I put forward [in my proposal] haven’t been demonstrated. It’s not something that anyone else ...

In 2011, UNESCO issued The UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape (“The Recommendation” hereafter), introducing the concept of “historic urban landscape” (HUL). HUL is defined as “the urban context and its geographical setting taking into consideration the historical layering of cultural and natural values and attributes”. It is noteworthy that ancient towns or historic cities, as an important subclass of HUL, have garnered increasing attention. In recent years, public perception and emotional experience of physical environments have become ...

Metasurfaces are two-dimensional counterparts of metamaterials, which are the artificial materials that possess unusual characteristics. With a variety of fascinatingly innovative and diverse uses, these specially-prepared surfaces with engineered patterns can modify the propagation of electromagnetic waves across the entire spectrum of wavelengths. Though the journey of metamaterials began with metal-dielectric systems, the metasurfaces have gone all-dielectric, and are crucial in applications relating to optoelectronic devices such as solar cells and light emitting diodes (LED) to improve their efficiency through a mere surface effect. Student researchers led ...

This year, New Zealand became among the first countries in the world to force their largest companies and financial institutions (about 200 in all) to disclose their climate-related risks and opportunities in their annual reports, and make regulatory filings. Over the last month, these reports have been filed under the disclosure regime led by the Financial Markets Authority. But do these kinds of initiatives improve environmental outcomes? A new study, co-authored by Professor Charl de Villiers (University of Auckland, Business ...

Solution-processed semiconductor nanocrystals are also called colloidal quantum dots (QDs). While the concept of size-dependent quantum effects had been long known to physicists, a sculpture of the theory into real nanodimensional objects remained impossible till the discovery of QDs. The size-dependent colors of QDs are essentially naked-eye, ambient-condition visualization of the quantum size effect. In recent years, researchers across the world have been searching for fascinating quantum effects or phenomena using the material platform of QDs, such as single-photon emission and quantum coherence manipulation. Floquet states (i.e., ...