With temperatures rising globally, the need for more sustainable cooling options is also growing. Researchers at UCLA and their colleagues have now found an affordable and scalable process to cool buildings in the summer and heat them in the winter. Led by Aaswath Raman, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, the research team recently published a study in Cell Reports Physical Science detailing a new method to manipulate the movement ...

The University of Massachusetts Amherst and Tufts Medical Center are conducting a study to provide HIV prevention, diagnosis and treatment for people with opioid use disorders who are incarcerated in the Boston area.  The study is funded with a $4.74 million CONNECT grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Elizabeth Evans, professor of community health education in the UMass Amherst School of Public Health and Health Sciences, and Dr. Alysse Wurcel, a ...

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine stretches into its third year, international trade has felt the effects as sanctions on Russian exports have expanded. Now researchers have found that the invasion may not only have significant short-term impacts on the global timber markets but may leave lasting effects on the global economy and the environment. These findings are detailed in a new study which projects the impact of sanctions on Russia and military disruption in Ukraine on the global wood product markets. Researchers compared two projected scenario outcomes based on the Global Forest Products Market model, one ...

Most people wouldn’t think twice after seeing sugar spilled on a counter. But for someone with a history of cocaine use, this visual cue could trigger powerful associations with their past drug use and a compulsive urge to seek the drug. Certain circuits within the brain help to form natural associations between one’s experiences and the context in which those experiences occur. These associations play a critical role in the orchestration of adaptive learning. When addictive substances are introduced, this coupling mechanism can be hijacked so that ...

Researchers at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) have made unexpected progress toward developing a new optical memory that can quickly and energy-efficiently store and access computational data. While studying a complex material composed of manganese, bismuth and tellurium (MnBi2Te4), the researchers realized that the material’s magnetic properties changed quickly and easily in response to light. This means that a laser could be used to encode information ...

DETROIT — Taylor Takla, a Ph.D. candidate in the translational neuroscience program in Wayne State University’s School of Medicine, recently received a two-year, $96,812 F31 grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health to study fear of falling in those with multiple sclerosis (MS). The grant, “Investigating Fear of Falling in Multiple Sclerosis: An Interplay of Neural, Motor, Cognitive, and Psychological Factors,” aims to address a major public health concern in persons with MS that results in increased falls, decreased physical activity and ...

A key question that remains in biology and biophysics is how three-dimensional tissue shapes emerge during animal development. Research teams from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) in Dresden, Germany, the Excellence Cluster Physics of Life (PoL) at the TU Dresden, and the Center for Systems Biology Dresden (CSBD) have now found a mechanism by which tissues can be “programmed” to transition from a flat state to a three-dimensional shape. To accomplish this, the researchers looked at the development of the fruit fly Drosophila and its ...

New ancient marine crocodile from time of dinosaurs provides insight into the groups lifestyle and diversity A newly discovered species of marine crocodile from 135 million years ago described from Germany An international team of scientists, including researchers from Germany and the UK, have described a new species of ancient marine crocodile, Enalioetes schroederi. Enalioetes lived in the shallow seas that covered much of Germany during the Cretaceous Period, approximately 135 million years ago. This ...

Machine learning is a powerful tool in computational biology, enabling the analysis of a wide range of biomedical data such as genomic sequences and biological imaging. But when researchers use machine learning in computational biology, understanding model behavior remains crucial for uncovering the underlying biological mechanisms in health and disease. In a recent article in Nature Methods, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science propose guidelines that outline pitfalls and opportunities for using interpretable ...

On October 22 and 23, the sixth Japan SciCom Forum Conference (JSF 2024) will be held at Kyushu University's Ito Campus. Fukuoka will become the third city, following Tokyo and Okinawa, to welcome specialists in science communication from Japan and around the world. JSF 2024 will bring together a diverse group of science communicators, writers, researchers, and journalists, along with experts from overseas. The conference is open to anyone involved in sharing research findings internationally, as well as those interested in science communication, public outreach, and engagement. This year's JSF will explore a wide range of topics, including ...

 In Brazil, a study compared two systems of organic product certification implemented in São Paulo state. One system involves conventional certification by auditors accredited by the Ministry of Agriculture and the National Institute of Metrology, Quality and Technology (INMETRO). The other is peer-to-peer certification. The study, reported in an article published in the journal Organic Agriculture, suggests that peer-to-peer certification adds the virtue of agrobiodiversity to organic farming in light of the significantly larger number of products offered by farms with this type of certification. “This ...

Republicans who believe Donald Trump won the 2020 election are anticipating a much more chaotic election cycle this year than other GOP, Democratic, and independent voters, according to new polling data from the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. Among Republican respondents who believe President Joe Biden did not lawfully win the 2020 election, about 31% think that either “a lot” or “a great deal” of political violence will occur after the 2024 election—compared to 24% of Democratic voters, 21% of independents and just 12% of GOP voters who acknowledge Biden’s victory four years ago, the poll found.  In ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Everyone has moments of forgetfulness from time to time, especially as we get older. But older adults don’t just have difficulty remembering new information. They also have a harder time modifying those memories when new details emerge. Yet, little is known about the mechanisms behind memory updating and how those mechanisms go awry with age. A team of researchers from Penn State has identified an enzyme that contributes to age-related impairments in memory updating. When blocked, older mice were better able to incorporate new information and performed similarly ...

New research shows how the chief resident position in academic internal medicine residency programs has evolved over the past 20 years, revealing how the position has changed, the types of careers these individuals pursue, and improvement in gender representation.   These findings, published this summer by the American Journal of Medicine, stem from a 20-year multicenter study that involved the University of Colorado Internal Medicine Residency Program. CU Department of Medicine faculty member William Turbyfill, MD, was among the study’s site investigators.   Turbyfill, who practices in the Veterans Affairs ...

White River Junction, VT – Recently published findings from the VA Disrupted Care National Project (DCNP) revealed the number of vascular surgeries performed across the United States continued to decline even after large drops during the COVID-19 pandemic.   A multi-institutional team of researchers, led by the White River Junction VA Medical Center, analyzed 21,031 vascular surgeries of three common procedures from 2019 to 2023 using Medicare claim data. There was a dramatic drop of 47% at the beginning of the pandemic, but while rates of care recovered partially another ...

The potato is small enough to fit inside a person’s hand yet contains enough nutrients to whittle waistlines and lower blood sugar in adults with Type 2 diabetes. Yet, despite the fact that potatoes – particularly the skins – are packed with health-boosting nutrients, they routinely get a bad rap among dieters. That may soon change, thanks to new research by Neda Akhavan, assistant professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Nutrition Sciences within UNLV’s School of Integrated Health ...

A new study has revealed important information about how a patient’s testosterone level can help protect them from severe Covid-19. Previous research involving Swansea University investigated how sex hormones are likely to be important determinants of Covid-19 severity. Now digit ratio expert Professor John Manning, of the Applied Sports, Technology, Exercise and Medicine (A-STEM) research team, has been working with colleagues in Poland and Sweden to look more closely at the subject. He says their findings, which have just been published ...

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Eating a low-fat vegan diet reduces harmful inflammatory dietary compounds called advanced glycation end-products (AGEs) by 73%, compared to no reduction on a Mediterranean diet, according to new research by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine published in Frontiers in Nutrition. The decrease in AGEs on the vegan diet was associated with an average weight loss of 13 pounds, compared with no change on the Mediterranean diet. The reduction of dietary AGEs on the low-fat vegan diet came mainly from excluding the consumption ...

August 9, 2024 — Analysis of men seen at a specialist clinic provides new insights into the classification of Peyronie's disease (PD) subtypes, according to a report in the September issue of The Journal of Urology®, an Official Journal of the American Urological Association (AUA). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.  "By analyzing real-world clinical data in a large group of patients, we identified four distinct subtypes of PD, and additional categorization of other causes of penile curvature," comments Landon Trost, MD, of Male Fertility and Peyronie's ...

A pivotal study has discovered a protein phosphorylation mechanism that plays a critical role in the negative regulation of flavonoid biosynthesis in tea plants (Camellia sinensis) during drought stress. This insight into the molecular response of tea plants to environmental stress could lead to the development of agricultural strategies to enhance crop resilience and quality preservation under water scarcity conditions. Drought stress poses a significant challenge to agriculture, causing substantial yield losses in many crops. Tea plants, known for their rich flavonoid content ...

The general health of forests can be estimated by the micro- and macronutrient content of tree leaves to help inform forest management decisions in the light of climate change, species loss and other variables. Traditional methods of assessing nutrient levels in forests are expensive and labor-intensive. Researchers recently analyzed the reflected spectra from tree foliage to accurately estimate the nutrients of leaves, offering a faster, larger-scale method of assessing forest health.   Field methods of collecting leaf samples ...

Recent research has uncovered significant genetic and epigenetic variations in blueberry cultivars, particularly between northern highbush (NHB) and southern highbush (SHB) blueberries. The study highlights gene introgression's role in SHB's adaptation to subtropical climates and identifies key genes, such as VcTBL44, associated with fruit firmness. These findings offer valuable insights and resources for future blueberry breeding. Blueberries, part of the Vaccinium genus, are renowned for their nutritional benefits and increasing global demand. However, cultivation faces challenges like ...

Enhancer of zeste homolog 2 (EZH2) is a catalytic subunit of the Polycomb-repressive complex 2 (PRC2), which plays a crucial role in transcriptional repression through the methylation of histone H3 on lysine 27 (H3K27me3). This epigenetic modification leads to chromatin compaction and gene silencing. EZH2 is frequently overexpressed in a variety of cancers, including head and neck, breast, prostate, bladder, colorectal, lung, pancreatic, melanoma, and lymphoma. Mutations in the EZH2 gene are also prevalent in several hematological malignancies, such as B-lymphomas and follicular lymphomas. The dual role of EZH2 as both a tumor suppressor and oncogene depending on the cancer type ...

Recent advancements in speech emotion recognition have highlighted the significant potential of deep learning technologies across various applications. However, these deep learning models are susceptible to adversarial attacks. A team of researchers at the University of Milan systematically evaluated the impact of white-box and black-box attacks on different languages and genders within speech emotion recognition. The research was published May 27 in Intelligent Computing, a Science Partner Journal. The ...

Whether Bach, Beethoven, or Mozart, it’s widely recognized that classical music can affect a person’s mood. In a study published August 9 in the Cell Press journal Cell Reports, scientists in China use brainwave measurements and neural imaging techniques to show how Western classical music elicits its positive effects on the brain. Their goal is to find more effective ways to use music to activate the brain in those who otherwise don’t respond, such as people with treatment-resistant depression. “Our research integrates the fields of neuroscience, psychiatry, and ...