As more and more people drive electric cars, congestion and queues can occur when many people need to charge at the same time. A new study from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden shows how AI-controlled charging stations, through smart algorithms, can offer electric vehicle users personalised prices, and thus minimise both price and waiting time for customers. But the researchers point to the importance of taking the ethical issues seriously, as there is a risk that the artificial intelligence exploits information from motorists. Today's commercial ...

Scientists have discovered that the most widely-used class of antifungals in the world cause pathogens to self-destruct. The University of Exeter-led research could help improve ways to protect food security and human lives. Fungal diseases account for the loss of up to a quarter of the world’s crops. They also pose a risk to humans and can be fatal for those with weakened immune systems. Our strongest "weapon" against fungal plant diseases are azole fungicides. These chemical products account for to a quarter of the world agricultural ...

The world-famous Roman Baths are home to a diverse range of microorganisms which could be critical in the global fight against antimicrobial resistance, a new study suggests. The research, published in the journal The Microbe, is the first to provide a detailed examination of the bacterial and archaeal communities found within the waters of the popular tourist attraction in the city of Bath (UK). Scientists collected samples of water, sediment and biofilm from locations within the Roman Baths complex including the King’s Spring (where the waters reach around 45°C) and the Great Bath, where the temperatures ...

A research team led by Dr. Choi Jeong Hee at the Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute (KERI) Battery Materials and Process Research Center, in cooperation with a Hanyang University team mentored by Professor Lee Jong-Won and a Kyunghee University team mentored by Professor Park Min-Sik, developed a core technology to ensure the charging/discharging stability and long-life of lithium-ion batteries under fast-charging conditions. A crucial prerequisite for the widespread adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) is the enhancement of lithium-ion battery performance in terms of driving ...

Ikoma, Japan – Pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) are a type of stem cells capable of developing into various cell types. Over the past few decades, scientists have been working towards the development of therapies using PSCs. Thanks to their unique ability to self-renew and differentiate (mature) into virtually any given type of tissue, PSCs could be used to repair organs that have been irreversibly damaged by age, trauma, or disease. However, despite extensive efforts, regenerative therapies involving PSCs still have many hurdles to overcome. One being the formation of tumors (via ...

Materials that can maintain a magnetized state by themselves without an external magnetic field (i.e., permanent magnets) are called ferromagnets. Ferroelectrics can be thought of as the electric counterpart to ferromagnets, as they maintain a polarized state without an external electric field. It is well-known that ferromagnets lose their magnetic properties when reduced to nano sizes below a certain threshold. What happens when ferroelectrics are similarly made extremely small in all directions (i.e., into a zero-dimensional structure such as nanoparticles) has been a topic of controversy for a long time. The research team led by Dr. Yongsoo ...

Little is known about the genetics and biology of chordoma, a rare and aggressive bone tumor. Chordomas occur in approximately one in a million people in the U.S. a year and only five percent of these are in children. These tumors can arise anywhere along the spine in adults. However, in children these tumors occur mostly at the base of the skull, making complete surgical removal challenging or impossible. Any tumor remnants are treated with high doses of radiation—which can cause significant damage to the developing brain. A team of researchers led by Xiaowu Gai, PhD and Jaclyn Biegel, PhD, FACMG, at the Center for Personalized Medicine ...

According to research led by Prof. Varut Lohsiriwat, Professor of Surgery, Division of General Surgery (Section of Colorectal Surgery) of Siriraj Hospital, at Mahidol University, CRC is the third most common cancer in Thailand, accounting for 11% of the cancer burden. It is the only malignancy with an increased incidence in both genders in the country.   By 2040, the burden of CRC is projected to increase to 3.2 million new cases and 1.6 million deaths per year representing a 66% and 71% rise in new cases and deaths respectively relative ...

Speech and music are the dominant elements of an infant’s auditory environment. While past research has shown that speech plays a critical role in children’s language development, less is known about the music that infants hear. A new University of Washington study, published May 21 in Developmental Science, is the first to compare the amount of music and speech that children hear in infancy. Results showed that infants hear more spoken language than music, with the gap widening as the babies get older. “We wanted to get a snapshot of what’s happening in infants’ home environments,” said corresponding author ...

Research led by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) has led to a new tool for forecasting coral disease that could help conservationists step in at the right times with key interventions. Ecological forecasts are critical tools for conserving and managing marine ecosystems, but few forecasting systems can account for the wide range of ecological complexities in near-real-time. Using ecological and marine environmental conditions, the Multi-Factor Coral Disease Risk product predicts the risk of two diseases across reefs in the central and western Pacific and along the east coast of Australia. An article ...

Tobacco-funded research is still appearing in highly-cited medical journals - despite attempts by some to cut ties altogether, finds an investigation by The Investigative Desk and The BMJ today. Although the tobacco industry has a long history of subverting science, most leading medical journals don’t have policies which ban research wholly or partly funded by the industry.  And even when publishers, authors and universities are willing to restrict tobacco industry ties, they struggle ...

Trout living in rivers polluted by metal from old mines across the British Isles are genetically “isolated” from other trout, new research shows. Researchers analysed brown trout at 71 sites in Britain and Ireland, where many rivers contain metal washed out from disused mines. While trout in metal-polluted rivers appear healthy, they are genetically distinct – and a lack of diversity in these populations makes them vulnerable to future threats. By comparing the DNA of trout in rivers with and without metal pollution, the researchers found that metal-tolerant trout ...

Trust is vital to the widespread acceptance of AI across industries, especially when safety is a concern. For example, people may be hesitant to ride in a self-driving car knowing that the AI running it can be hacked. One barrier to increasing trust is that the algorithms powering AI are vulnerable to such attacks.  Dr. Samson Zhou, assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University, and Dr. David P. Woodruff, professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University, hope to strengthen algorithms used by big data AI models against attacks. Big data AI models are ...

Researchers of CIDIS at ESPOL Polytechnic University have developed a new method to enhance thermal image super-resolution by employing synthetic imagery. This novel approach utilizes high-resolution images  from the visible spectrum to guide the super-resolution of low-resolution thermal images, significantly  improving the detail and utility of thermal imaging across various applications. When visualizing thermal images, one typically imagines the blurry, less-detailed outputs common with  standard thermal ...

Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC scientists studying ultra-processed foods have created a new tool for assessing the rewarding and reinforcing properties of foods that make up 58 percent of calories consumed in the United States. The foods have been linked to a wide range of negative health outcomes. The research, which was published in April in the journal Appetite, provides a collection of carefully curated images of minimally processed and ultra-processed foods matched on 26 characteristics, including macronutrients, sodium, dietary fiber, calories, price, and visual characteristics such as a color and portion size. The work was based on the NOVA classification system ...

New images of Jupiter's volcano-studded moon Io, taken by the Large Binocular Telescope on Mount Graham in Arizona, offer the highest resolution of Io ever achieved with an Earth-based instrument. The observations were made possible by a new high-contrast optical imaging instrument, dubbed SHARK-VIS, and the telescope's adaptive optics system, which compensates for the blurring induced by atmospheric turbulence.  The images, to be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, reveal surface features as small as 50 miles across, ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – May 30, 2024 – Researchers at Wake Forest University of School of Medicine have received a five-year, $1.5 million grant from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to study bone microarchitecture in patients following bariatric surgery. With the funding support, researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine will partner with Virginia Tech to add a virtual biopsy that uses an innovative technique called high-resolution peripheral quantitative ...

Urinary catheters are required for nearly every surgical procedure. However, a major challenge for the health care industry is predicting who may develop catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs) and when these infections may lead to death. Now, a study from the University of Notre Dame has identified a population that is more susceptible to developing a CAUTI. Researchers showed that models with fibrinolytic deficiencies, or conditions that cause overactivation of the protein fibrin, had increased risk for developing severe and persistent CAUTIs. ...

URBANA, Illinois – Residential segregation is an example of the long history of structural racism in the United States. Black Americans are more likely to live in low-quality neighborhoods, which contributes to disparities in health outcomes. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign looks at how community stress affects the mental and emotional health of Black men and women in the U.S. “Community stress refers to the effects of living in disadvantaged areas. This includes objective aspects, such as buildings ...

Summer can be an extra challenging time for Texas’ 189 major water supply reservoirs. With temperatures consistently reaching 100 degrees or higher, reservoir evaporation rates see high increases. Accurate evaporation rate estimates are crucial for water resource managers, as reservoirs play an essential role in our social and economic systems by supplying water for agricultural, municipal, and industrial consumption. Reservoirs are also critical for mitigating impacts from droughts and floods. A recent study published ...

MIAMI, FLORIDA (May 30, 2024) – Many countries with national healthcare systems or payers such as insurance companies use cost-effectiveness analyses to decide whether to cover new medicines, balancing treatment costs with potential health benefits. That strategy often limits access to new, targeted therapies, even when these drugs prove highly effective and become part of standard-of-care therapy for many patients. A new study from Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine examined the cost-effectiveness of durvalumab, a targeted immunotherapy for lung cancer that ...

Alex Aliper, PhD, president of global clinical stage artificial intelligence (AI)-powered drug discovery company Insilico Medicine (“Insilico”) will present at the Systems Aging Gordon Research Conference, a leading international scientific conference focused on advancing the frontiers of science through the presentation of cutting-edge and unpublished research. On Wed., June 5, 10:40 am, Dr. Aliper will give a talk titled "Generative Artificial Intelligence and Next-Generation Robotics for Drug Discovery and Longevity Research."  The conference ...

The Ecological Society of America is pleased to announce the winners of its 2024 awards, which recognize outstanding contributions to ecology in new discoveries, teaching, sustainability, diversity and lifelong commitment to the profession. These awards are designed to not only reward past achievements, but also to inspire a broad audience of scientists, educators and students, opening the door to new insights and collaborations that will further the impact of ecological research. “The Ecological Society of America is immensely proud to honor this year’s distinguished awardees,” said ESA President ...

A team including researchers from the Texas A&M University School of Public Health and School of Medicine has found that high resolution mass spectrometry could be a valuable tool for identifying and assessing air-borne contaminants produced by natural and man-made disasters. Their findings were published in the Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology. The scientists used high resolution mass spectrometry—a highly accurate means of identifying molecular compounds in a sample—in fall 2023 to identify volatile organic ...

Human cervix modeled in microfluidic organ chip fills key women's health gap Engineered cervix with in vivo-like mucus production, hormone sensitivity, and associated microbiome creates novel testbed for bacterial vaginosis therapeutics and other treatments By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — Bacterial Vaginosis (BV) has been identified as one of the many unmet needs in women's health and affects more than 25% of reproductive-aged women. It is caused by pathogenic bacteria that push the healthy microbiomes in the female vagina and cervix – the small gatekeeper canal that connects the uteruns and vagina – into a state of imbalance known as dysbiosis. ...