Cigarette smoke has been studied for years, revealing a multitude of contaminants, including toxic metals. But exactly which of those metals can be traced to secondhand or thirdhand smoke? Solving this problem has been a challenge for the research community because many of the metals found in tobacco smoke could also come from industrial or naturally occurring pollutants contaminating indoor and outdoor air. Now, a recent study by scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has identified 28 trace metals in tobacco smoke. The findings reported in the journal ...

TMDU researchers have developed a technique that allows a detailed analysis of periodontitis development over time Tokyo, Japan – Periodontal disease, represented by periodontitis, is the leading cause of tooth loss and affects close to one in five adults worldwide. In most cases, this condition occurs as a result of an inflammatory response to bacterial infection of the tissue around teeth. As the condition worsens, the gums begin to pull away, exposing teeth roots and bone. Notably, the incidence of periodontitis becomes more prevalent with age and with populations worldwide living ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – In a study of nearly 5,000 screening mammograms interpreted by an FDA-approved AI algorithm, patient characteristics such as race and age influenced false positive results. The study’s results were published today in Radiology, a journal of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). “AI has become a resource for radiologists to improve their efficiency and accuracy in reading screening mammograms while mitigating reader burnout,” said Derek L. Nguyen, M.D., assistant professor at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. ...

SAN ANTONIO — May 21, 2024 —As a leader in fuels and lubricants research, Southwest Research Institute is home to a world-class tribology laboratory and expert staff that are developing advanced techniques and technology to study wear, friction and lubrication. SwRI tribologists will share their expertise at the 2024 Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers (STLE) Annual Meeting May 19-23 in Minneapolis. The STLE Annual Meeting and Exhibition invites members of the lubricant industry ...

Hope for a cure for visceral leishmaniasis, an often fatal infectious disease     A discovery by Simona Stäger’s team could help come up with a treatment to the most serious form of leishmaniasis.   Leishmaniasis is a tropical disease affecting a growing number of people worldwide. Each year, between 700,000 and 1 million new cases are reported. Caused by a protozoan parasite of the genus Leishmania, which is transmitted to humans by the simple bite of a sand fly, leishmaniasis comprises three clinical forms, of which the visceral ...

Generative models like diffusion models are one of the most important recent developments in Machine Learning (ML), with models as Stable Diffusion and Dall.e revolutionizing the field of image generation. These models are able to produce high quality images based on some text description. “Our new model for programming quantum computers does the same but, instead of generating images, it generates quantum circuits based on the text description of the quantum operation to be performed”, explains Gorka Muñoz-Gil from the Department of Theoretical Physics of ...

New MBARI research on a field of pockmarks—large, circular depressions on the seafloor—offshore of Central California has revealed that powerful sediment flows, not methane gas eruptions, maintain these prehistoric formations. A team of researchers from MBARI, the United States Geological Survey (USGS), and Stanford University published their findings today in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface. This work provides important information to guide decision-making about responsible use and management of the seafloor off California, including site assessments for the development of offshore wind farms. The Sur Pockmark Field—an area about the size ...

New York, NY [May 21, 2024]—Generative artificial intelligence (AI), such as GPT-4, can help predict whether an emergency room patient needs to be admitted to the hospital even with only minimal training on a limited number of records, according to investigators at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Details of the research were published in the May 21 online issue of the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA/DOI: 10.1093/jamia/ocae103). In the retrospective study, the researchers analyzed records from seven Mount Sinai Health System hospitals, using both structured data, such as vital signs, ...

Highlights: Periodontitis is linked to tooth loss and other health concerns. Past studies suggest that green tea products can act against P. gingivalis, which causes periodontitis. In a new study, researchers tested matcha extract, made from green tea, against the pathogen. Lab studies suggest matcha inhibits the growth of the bacteria. A clinical trial showed that matcha mouthwash inhibited P. gingivalis populations in saliva. Washington, D.C.—Periodontitis is an inflammatory gum disease driven by bacterial infection and left untreated it can lead to complications including tooth loss. ...

WARSAW, POLAND [May 21, 2024] — The National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®)—a global nonprofit responsible for leading cancer treatment guidelines—is taking part in two events in Warsaw focused on advancing cancer care and highlighting the Poland-US bilateral achievements in health care from May 21-22, 2024. The meetings will be organized by Maria Sklodowska-Curie National Research Institute of Oncology, the Polish Oncological Society, and the Alliance for Innovation. ...

LOS ANGELES — City of Hope®, one of the largest cancer research and treatment organizations in the United States, has been awarded $5.4 million from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to build and fund a stem cell research laboratory on its Duarte, California, campus that will further expand its scientific capabilities. The mission of the unique Stem Cell-Based Disease Modeling Laboratory is two-fold. First, it will advance stem cell-based disease modeling to spur innovation in regenerative medicine. The laboratory leverages City of Hope’s infrastructure ...

Thousands of top nutrition experts will gather next month for a dynamic program of research announcements, policy discussions and award lectures at NUTRITION 2024, the annual flagship meeting of the American Society for Nutrition. Reporters and bloggers are invited to apply for a complimentary press pass to attend the meeting in Chicago from June 29–July 2.   Explore the meeting schedule and register for a press pass to attend.   Hot topics to be explored at NUTRITION 2024 include:   Diet and cancer ...

A World Health Organization Essential Medicine, ketamine is widely used at varying doses for sedation, pain control, general anesthesia and as a therapy for treatment-resistant depression. While scientists know its target in brain cells and have observed how it affects brain-wide activity, they haven’t known entirely how the two are connected. A new study by a research team spanning four Boston-area institutions uses computational modeling of previously unappreciated physiological details to fill that gap and offer new insights into how ketamine works. “This modeling work has helped decipher likely mechanisms through which ...

How do migrants choose their destinations? Existing models, known as “gravity models,” use population size and travel distance as explanatory variables—and often fail, especially at the neighborhood scale. Many migrants prefer to move to a location near friends, family, or co-nationals. This pattern might be partly driven by factors that repeat (such as the cost of living) and partly driven by homophily, the tendency to interact with similar others. Early migrants tend to reduce uncertainty and provide information for later arrivals. Building on these observations, Rafael Prieto-Curiel and colleagues construct a migration model based on the power of the diaspora to ...

Extreme heat can harm human health, but so can temperature extreme swings. Large daily temperature variation (DTV) has been associated with elevated mortality in studies around the world. Trees and other vegetation can lower DTV, as trees reduce temperature through transpiration during the day and also trap long-wave radiation in the atmosphere under the canopy at night, increasing temperature. But green space is not equally distributed in most cities. Shengjie Liu and Emily Smith-Greenaway examined inequality in DTV exposure in the US, using monthly nighttime and daytime land surface temperature data from satellites. ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Online video game players believe the behavior known as “smurfing” is generally wrong and toxic to the gaming community – but most admit to doing it and say some reasons make the behavior less blameworthy, new research finds.   The new study suggests that debates about toxicity in gaming may sometimes be more complex and nuanced than is often acknowledged, according to the researchers.   Online video games use what are called “matchmaking systems” to pair players based on skill. “Smurfing” is when players cheat these systems by creating new accounts so that they can play against people lower ...

When cells become tumor cells, their metabolism changes fundamentally. Researchers at the University of Basel and the University Hospital Basel have now demonstrated that this change leaves traces that could provide targets for cancer immunotherapies. Cancer cells function in turbo mode: Their metabolism is programmed for rapid proliferation, whereby their genetic material is also constantly copied and translated into proteins. As researchers led by Professor Gennaro De Libero from the University of Basel and the University ...

A group of scientists from Nagoya University in Japan has used a specialized microscopic technique to observe the internal reproduction process of the Arabidopsis plant. Their findings, published in EMBO Reports, reveal the mechanism behind a female flower selectively attracting a single male counterpart. These findings provide insights that may help optimize seed production and improve agricultural breeding practices. Angiosperms, commonly referred to as flowering plants, have male and female reproductive organs. In the process of plant reproduction, when a pollen grain that ...

Inside a lab in Boston University’s College of Engineering, a robot arm drops small, plastic objects into a box placed perfectly on the floor to catch them as they fall. One by one, these tiny structures—feather-light, cylindrical pieces, no bigger than an inch tall—fill the box. Some are red, others blue, purple, green, or black.  Each object is the result of an experiment in robot autonomy. On its own, learning as it goes, the robot is searching for, and trying to make, an object with the most efficient ...

What is the largest ligament in the human body? It might surprise some people that it is the Achilles tendon. Even though it is also considered the toughest ligament, the Achilles tendon can rupture, with many such injuries involving sports enthusiasts in their 30s or 40s. Surgery might be required, and a prolonged period of rest, immobilization, and treatment can be difficult to endure. Seeking to shorten the recovery time, a research team led by Osaka Metropolitan University Graduate School of Medicine’s Katsumasa Nakazawa, a graduate student in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Associate Professor ...

Technology use is at an all-time high and understanding how this impacts daily life is crucial. When it comes to parent-child interactions, scientists have coined the term ‘technoference,’ meaning technology interference. It occurs when parent-child interaction and communication are disrupted by the use of digital devices. But is distraction caused by digital devices more detrimental to parent-child interaction than when parental distraction comes from different sources? Researchers in Switzerland have investigated. “In this study, we show that ...

Mobile phones have become invaluable for receiving emergency alerts such as weather warnings, evacuation notices and notifications about missing persons. In Japan, where earthquakes are frequent, they are vital for delivering earthquake warnings and advising people to take protective actions beforehand. To deal with such situations promptly, the Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) system sends out notifications to areas expected to experience strong tremors by detecting primary seismic waves (P-waves) that arrive before the secondary waves (S-waves). However, the short time between receiving the notification and the arrival of S-waves ...

Homelessness doesn’t only happen to young people but also affects older adults in growing numbers, write authors in an analysis in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) that describes this emerging crisishttps://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.231493. People experiencing homelessness are considered older adults at age 50, as visible aging is often evident at younger ages in individuals experiencing homelessness compared with individuals who have secure housing. Individuals experiencing homelessness often develop chronic ...

More than 1 in 5 adults in Canada did not have access to primary care, with large regional gaps in access, found new research in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) https://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.231372. “Translated to the population of Canada, our survey estimates that more than 6.5 million adults across the country don’t have access to a family doctor or nurse practitioner they can see regularly,” says Dr. Tara Kiran, a family physician and researcher at the MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions at St. Michael’s Hospital, Unity Health Toronto and the University ...

Washington (May 14, 2024) — Studies examining the risks of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, distinguishing alpha-gal syndrome from other GI disorders, and comparing medications to slow the progression of liver disease in patients with alcohol-use disorder will be presented this week at Digestive Disease Week (DDW) 2024. Abstracts are available to registered media. Embargos lift at 12:01 a.m. EDT on the day they are presented. Here are summaries of the new research: Re-examining the risks of gastrointestinal adverse events associated with glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists for weight loss with more stringent criteria on a comprehensive ...