Chicago (July 1, 2024) — What does whole wheat have that refined flour lacks? A new study reveals key differences in nutrient content along with exactly where nutrients are lost — and sometimes gained — along the journey from farm to table.    While previous studies have assessed the nutrients contained in various crops or in food products, the new study is among the first to bridge the two by tracing how processing and baking influence nutrient composition at each step. Researchers report that levels of major minerals were cut by nearly three-quarters ...

A new technology developed by the "Bioengineering in Reproductive Health" team at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) is able to visualise the metabolism of embryos obtained through in vitro fertilisation in order to decide which are most likely to implant correctly in the uterus and reaching full-term. It is a more accurate and reliable technique than traditional methods. The revolutionary method, called METAPHOR", generates 3D images that reveal the colours present in the embryo in a completely non-invasive way. Certain naturally fluorescent compounds in the embryo's metabolism are also key to processes such as cellular respiration ...

Melting Arctic glaciers are in rapid recession, and microscopic organisms colonise the newly exposed landscapes. Dr. James Bradley, Honorary Reader in Arctic Biogeochemistry in the School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences at Queen Mary University of London, and his team, have revealed that yeasts play an important role in soil formation in the Arctic after glaciers have melted away.  Roughly 10% of Earth’s land surface is covered by glacial ice. However, glaciers are retreating ever further and ever faster because of global warming. As they do, ...

EMBARGOED UNTIL JULY 1, 2024 AT 3:00 PM U.S. EASTERN TIME According to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, extensive land areas have been left sitting idle after tropical forests were cleared in Indonesia, a country renowned for its biodiverse rainforests and carbon-rich peatlands. Since 1990, the country has lost 25% of its old-growth forest, and while over one-quarter (7.8 million hectares) of Indonesia’s deforested lands have been converted to palm oil plantations since ...

University of Cincinnati researchers have pioneered an animal model that sheds light on the role an understudied organ in the brain has in repairing damage caused by stroke. The research, published July 5 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, sought to learn more about how the adult brain generates new neurons to repair damaged tissue. The research team focused on the choroid plexus, a small organ within brain ventricles that produces the brain’s cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). CSF circulates throughout the brain, carrying signaling molecules and other factors thought to be important for maintaining brain function. However, prior to this study, little ...

Smoking continues to rank as the foremost preventable cause of premature death. In a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), Harvard researchers report findings that evoking feelings of gratitude in people who smoke helps reduce their urge to smoke, and increases their likelihood of enrollment in a smoking cessation program. They note that these findings could inform newer approaches to public health messaging campaigns that aim to reduce so-called “appetitive” risk behaviors like smoking, drinking, and drug use. The research team built on the Appraisal Tendency Framework, a theoretical model of emotiona and decision making, ...

The COVID-19 pandemic had an unprecedented effect on college students’ mental health: symptoms like anxiety and major depression in young adults ages 18-25 increased significantly compared to before the pandemic.  A new study from researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill looks at a possible contributing factor to the worsening trends in mental health: social media.  We know that college students and adolescents are using social media more. Last May, the US Surgeon General issued an advisory on social media and youth mental ...

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 1, 2024 — The latest issues of four American Psychiatric Association journals, The American Journal of Psychiatry, Psychiatric Services, American Journal of Psychotherapy and Psychiatric Research and Clinical Practice are now available online. The July issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry brings together research on affective disorders, pharmacogenomics, and psychiatric illness-related cardiometabolic problems. Highlights include:   •     Genome-Wide Association Study of Treatment-Resistant Depression: Shared Biology With Metabolic Traits. •     Pharmacogenomic Clinical ...

The most climate-vulnerable countries with the highest hunger rates are significantly under-represented in agrifood research – sparking a need for urgent action and increased investments to redress this imbalance, a major new study has found. The ‘State of the Field for Research on Agrifood Systems’ report, published by The Juno Evidence Alliance – a partnership of CABI, Havos.Ai and the University of Notre Dame, USA – found that only one out of eight research papers is led by scientists from ...

A team led by University of Maryland computer scientists invented a camera mechanism that improves how robots see and react to the world around them. Inspired by how the human eye works, their innovative camera system mimics the tiny involuntary movements used by the eye to maintain clear and stable vision over time. The team’s prototyping and testing of the camera—called the Artificial Microsaccade-Enhanced Event Camera (AMI-EV)—was detailed in a paper published in the journal Science Robotics in May 2024. “Event cameras are a relatively new technology better at tracking ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — To advance soft robotics, skin-integrated electronics and biomedical devices, researchers at Penn State have developed a 3D-printed material that is soft and stretchable — traits needed for matching the properties of tissues and organs — and that self-assembles. Their approach employs a process that eliminates many drawbacks of previous fabrication methods, such as less conductivity or device failure, the team said.   They published their results in Advanced Materials.    “People have been developing soft and stretchable conductors for almost a decade, but the conductivity ...

Waltham — July 1, 2024 — For patients with severe obesity undergoing knee or hip replacement, commonly obtained laboratory values – including markers of anemia and inflammation – are independent predictors of the risk of periprosthetic joint infection (PJI), reports a study in The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.  Hemoglobin level, platelet count, and several markers of systemic inflammation may be relevant to the elevated ...

Chicago (July 1, 2024) — According to new research looking at every U.S. state, programs that deliver medically tailored meals (MTMs) to people with diet-sensitive conditions such as diabetes and heart disease along with limitations in the ability to perform daily activities could lead to substantial savings in healthcare costs. Using computer models to estimate the benefits of such programs minus the expense of implementing them, researchers found significant variation between U.S. states but an overall net cost savings in almost every state. “By ...

When power plants burn fossil fuels at high temperatures, nitrogen and oxygen molecules break apart and then recombine to form a class of compounds called nitrogen oxides, or NOx. These gasses are major pollutants and contribute to—among other things—acid rain and global warming. One way to curb such emissions is with a catalytic converter, similar to what’s used in a vehicle. “The catalytic converter injects ammonia into the plant’s emissions stream, and the hydrogen in the ammonia reacts with the oxygen in the NOx, and the products ...

About The Study: In this phase 2 prospective validating paired cohort study, fluorine-18 PSMA-1007 PET/computed tomography was superior to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for the locoregional staging of prostate cancer. These findings support PSMA PET in the preoperative workflow of intermediate-risk and high-risk tumors.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Adam Kinnaird, M.D., Ph.D., email ask@ualberta.ca. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at ...

Hong Xue, Associate Professor, Health Administration and Policy, received funding for the project: “Innovating and Implementing Youth Tobacco Prevention in Virginia.” Xue will leverage the forefront of technological innovation, utilizing generative artificial intelligence (AI) and state-of-the-art immersive technologies, integrating them with novel just-in-time adaptive intervention strategies, to tackle the pressing public health issue of electronic cigarette/tobacco use among the youth in Virginia. Xue will receive $450,000 from Virginia ...

Emanuel Petricoin, Co-Director, Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine (CAPMM), received funding for the project: “Protein Pathway Activation Based Signaling Mapping of Head And Neck Cancers.” CAPMM researchers will receive laser microdissected tumor samples from banked Formalin-Fixed Paraffin-Embedded (FFPE) clinical biopsy samples from patients with HPV‐positive head and neck cancers who were treated for newly diagnosed disease. The researchers will utilize comprehensive reverse‐phase ...

Emanuela Marasco, Assistant Professor, Center for Secure Information Systems, received funding for the project: “Identity Verification in Smartphones as Social Intersectionality: Inclusive Design of Contactless Fingerprints to Mitigate Skin Tone and Gender Bias.” She is developing a contactless biometric mobile security application that can mitigate the vulnerabilities of deep artificial intelligence and optical sensors and allow marginalized identities the same access to data security.  As part of their work, members of the project team will identify the impact of physical vulnerabilities; their ...

Cancer treatments often cause nerve damage that can lead to long-lasting symptoms. Medication has proven ineffective in these cases. A sports scientist at the University of Basel, together with an interdisciplinary team from Germany, has now shown that simple exercises can prevent nerve damage. Cancer therapies have improved over the years. It is no longer just about sheer survival: quality of life after recovery is gaining more importance. Unfortunately, many cancer medications, from chemotherapy to modern immunotherapies, attack the nerves as well as the tumor cells. Some therapies, such as oxaliplatin or vinca alkaloids, leave 70 to 90 percent of patients complaining of pain, balance ...

New UCSF study shows that suppressing a protein turns ordinary fat into a calorie burner and may explain why drug trials attempting the feat haven’t been successful. Researchers at UC San Francisco have figured out how to turn ordinary white fat cells, which store calories, into beige fat cells that burn calories to maintain body temperature.     The discovery could open the door to developing a new class of weight-loss drugs and may explain why clinical trials of related therapies have ...

Politicians around the world are increasingly mobilizing anti-immigrant sentiment to garner support and votes—a trend that is especially evident as the US presidential election approaches. While political rhetoric that stereotypes and scapegoats immigrants is well-documented, less attention has been given to the impact of these sentiments on immigrants themselves. In an article published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and in a recently published book, Migration Stigma (MIT Press), scholars identify “migration ...

About The Study: The mortality gap between the U.S. and comparison countries widened in the last decade. Each year, nearly 20,000 deaths among youths ages 0 to 19 years would not have occurred had U.S. youths experienced the median mortality rates of 16 comparison countries. More than half of these deaths involved infants, reflecting disproportionately high U.S. infant mortality rates. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Steven H. Woolf, M.D., M.P.H., email steven.woolf@vcuhealth.org. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2024.1869) Editor’s ...

About The Study: Among live-born infants, first-trimester mRNA COVID-19 vaccine exposure was not associated with an increased risk for selected major structural birth defects in this multisite cohort study. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Elyse O. Kharbanda, M.D., M.P.H., email elyse.o.kharbanda@healthpartners.com. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2024.1917) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional ...

With Donald Trump and other right-wing politicians increasingly using dehumanizing rhetoric to stigmatize immigrants coming to our nation's borders, doctors and other health officials should prepare for the resulting health consequences. Such is the message of a “Viewpoint” article co-authored by UC Riverside professor Bruce Link and published Monday, July 1, in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Link and his co-authors quote Trump as saying, “No, they’re not humans. They’re not humans. They’re ...

State-of-the-art prosthetic limbs can help people with amputations achieve a natural walking gait, but they don’t give the user full neural control over the limb. Instead, they rely on robotic sensors and controllers that move the limb using predefined gait algorithms. Using a new type of surgical intervention and neuroprosthetic interface, MIT researchers, in collaboration with colleagues from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, have shown that a natural walking gait is achievable using a prosthetic leg fully driven by the body’s own nervous system. ...