CHAMPAIGN, Ill. —  By converting their data into sounds, scientists discovered how hydrogen bonds contribute to the lightning-fast gyrations that transform a string of amino acids into a functional, folded protein. Their report, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offers an unprecedented view of the sequence of hydrogen-bonding events that occur when a protein morphs from an unfolded to a folded state. See video: Protein Sonification “A protein must fold properly to become an enzyme or signaling molecule or whatever its function may be — all the many things that proteins do in our bodies,” said University of Illinois ...

New York, NY [May 20, 2024]—Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have designed a regenerative medicine therapy to speed up diabetic wound repair. Using tiny fat particles loaded with genetic instructions to calm down inflammation, the treatment was shown to target problem-causing cells and reduce swelling and harmful molecules in mouse models of damaged skin. Details on their findings were published in the May 20 online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Diabetic wounds, often resistant to conventional treatments, ...

Irvine, Calif., May 20, 2024 — A team of glaciologists led by researchers at the University of California, Irvine used high-resolution satellite radar data to find evidence of the intrusion of warm, high-pressure seawater many kilometers beneath the grounded ice of West Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier. In a study published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the UC Irvine-led team said that widespread contact between ocean water and the glacier – a process that is replicated throughout Antarctica and in Greenland – causes “vigorous melting” and may require a reassessment of ...

EMBARGOED UNTIL 15:00 EDT MONDAY, MAY 20, 2024 For the first time, there is visible evidence showing that warm seawater is pumping underneath Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier—ominously nicknamed the Doomsday Glacier. An international team of scientists—including a researcher from the University of Waterloo—observed it using satellite imagery and warns that it could accelerate catastrophic sea level rise in 10 to 20 years.  The intrusion of seawater causes the ice to continuously lift off the land and settle back down again. Ice melts intensely when it first touches seawater, ...

Deposits of designated critical minerals needed to transition the world’s energy systems away from fossil fuels may, ironically enough, be co-located with coal deposits that have been mined to produce the fossil fuel most implicated in climate change. Now, research led by the University of Utah has documented elevated concentrations of a key subset of critical minerals, known as rare earth elements, or REEs, in active mines rimming the Uinta coal belt of Colorado and Utah. These findings open the possibility that these mines could see a secondary resource stream in the form of metals used in renewable energy and numerous other high-tech ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE: MONDAY, MAY 20, 2024, 3:00 PM ET Key points: Replacing an average diesel school bus from 2017 with an electric one may result in $84,200 in health and climate benefits—including fewer greenhouse gas emissions and reduced rates of mortality and childhood asthma—per individual bus. Those benefits may increase to $247,600 per individual electric school bus replacing a diesel bus from 2005 or earlier in a large metropolitan area. While the benefits of replacing diesel vehicles with electric ones are well known, this is the first study to specifically quantify the health and climate benefits of replacing diesel school buses with electric ...

Endoscopes are instruments that are used to look inside the body Even with new developments cleaning them sufficiently has been a challenge  The University has entered a knowledge transfer partnership (KTP) with PFE Medical to improve the process by removing bacterial biofilm inside them.  Aston University experts are teaming up with a medical products company to improve the cleaning of endoscopes. Endoscopes are long, thin instruments with a light and camera at one end that are used to look inside the body. Cleaning them sufficiently has been a challenge and even with new developments they can ...

LA JOLLA, CA — The brain is often referred to as a “black box”—one that’s difficult to peer inside and determine what’s happening at any given moment. This is part of the reason why it’s difficult to understand the complex interplay of molecules, cells and genes that underly neurological disorders. But a new CRISPR screen method developed at Scripps Research has the potential to uncover new therapeutic targets and treatments for these conditions. The method, outlined in a study published in Cell on May 20, 2024, provides a way to rapidly examine the brain cell types ...

Image   Artificial neural networks may soon be able to process time-dependent information, such as audio and video data, more efficiently. The first memristor with a 'relaxation time' that can be tuned is reported today in Nature Electronics, in a study led by the University of Michigan.    Memristors, electrical components that store information in their electrical resistance, could reduce AI's energy needs by about a factor of 90 compared to today's graphical processing units. Already, AI is projected to account for about half a percent of the world's total electricity ...

EMBARGOED UNTIL:  10:15 a.m. PT, Monday, May 20, 2024 PARC MODEL OF CARE ASSOCIATED WITH FEWER DEATHS AMONG VETERANS  POST-ICU   Session:  B18 – Bridging Gaps to Improve Long-Term Outcomes The Post-Acute Recovery Center: A Telehealth Care Model to Improve Patient-Centered Outcomes for High-Risk Survivors of Critical Illness Date and Time: Monday, May 20, 2024, 10:15 a.m. PT Location:  San Diego Convention Center, Room 32A-B (Upper Level)   ATS 2024, San Diego – Research presented at the ATS 2024 International Conference demonstrates that veterans who received ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $6 million in funding for 12 awards across eight efforts to advance research in isotope enrichment, targetry, and separations. This funding is part of a key federal program that produces critical isotopes otherwise unavailable or in short supply in the U.S. Isotopes, or variations of the same elements that have the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons, have unique properties that make them powerful in medical diagnostic and treatment applications. They are also essential for applications in quantum information science, nuclear power, national security, and more. “These ...

UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 19:00 BST / 14:00 ET MONDAY 20 MAY 2024. World leaders still need to wake up to AI risks, say leading experts ahead of AI Safety Summit More information, including a copy of the paper, can be found online at the Science press package at https://www.eurekalert.org/press/scipak/, or can be requested from scipak@aaas.org Leading AI scientists are calling for stronger action on AI risks from world leaders, warning that progress has been insufficient since the first AI Safety Summit in Bletchley Park six months ago.  Then, the world’s leaders pledged to govern AI responsibly. However, as the second AI Safety Summit in Seoul ...

Although researchers have warned of the extreme risks posed by rapidly developing artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, there is a lack of consensus about how to manage them. In a Policy Forum, Yoshua Bengio and colleagues examine the risks of advancing AI technologies – from the social and economic impacts, malicious uses, and the possible loss of human control over autonomous AI systems – and recommend directions for proactive and adaptive governance to mitigate them. They call on major technology companies and public funders to invest more – at least one-third of their budgets – into assessing and ...

The new Tandem Dual-Antenna Spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR)  Interferometry (TDA-InSAR) system, addresses the limitations of current spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems by providing a more reliable and efficient method for 3D surface mapping. The system's innovative design allows for single-pass acquisitions, significantly reducing the time required for data collection and enhancing the precision of 3D reconstructions in various terrains, including built-up areas and vegetation canopies. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) interferometry (InSAR) is a powerful tool for producing high-resolution topographic maps. However, traditional InSAR techniques face ...

The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai announced the launch of its new Center for Healthcare Readiness, bringing together a diverse team of academic and operational experts to strengthen the Mount Sinai Health System’s strategies and the U.S. health care sector’s capacity to prepare for and respond to any large-scale public health emergency. The Center will work with both Mount Sinai’s own resources, and public and private partners at the local, regional, and federal levels, to pursue strategies in research, advocacy, innovation, and collaboration to plan ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University have found that multiple species of Gardnerella, bacteria sometimes associated with bacterial vaginosis (BV) and pre-term birth, can coexist in the same vaginal microbiome. The findings add to the emerging picture of Gardnerella’s effects on human health.  Gardnerella is a group of anaerobic bacteria that are commonly found in the vaginal microbiome. Higher levels of the bacteria are a signature of BV and associated with higher risk of pre-term birth, ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Researchers have developed a new theory of how changing market conditions can lead large numbers of otherwise cautious consumers to buy risky products such as subprime mortgages, cryptocurrency or even cosmetic surgery procedures. These changes can occur in categories of products that are generally low risk when they enter the market. As demand increases, more companies may enter the market and try to attract consumers with lower priced versions of the product that carry more risk. If the negative effects of that risk are not immediately noticeable, the market can evolve to keep consumers ignorant of the risks, said Michelle Barnhart, an associate professor ...

EMBARGOED UNTIL:  9:15 a.m. PT, May 20, 2024 Session:  B20 – Lung Screening: One Size Does Not Fit All Association of Electronic Cigarette Use After Conventional Smoking Cessation with Lung Cancer Risk: A Nationwide Cohort Study Date and Time: Monday, May 20, 2024, 9:15 a.m. PT Location:  San Diego Convention Center, Room 30A-B (Upper Level)   ATS 2024, San Diego – Former cigarette smokers who use e-cigarettes or vaping devices may be at higher risk for lung cancer than those who don’t ...

A new peer-reviewed study from researchers at The University of Texas at Arlington; the University of Nevada, Reno; and Virginia Tech shows that climate change has led to decreased pollen production from plants and less pollen more diversity than previously thought, which could have a significant impact on food production. “This research is crucial as it examines the long-term impacts of climate change on plant-pollinator interactions,” said Behnaz Balmaki, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of research in biology at UTA. “This study investigates how shifts in flowering times and extreme weather events affect the availability of critical food ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – The dramatic decline in childhood mortality during the 20th century has added a full year to women’s lives, according to a new study. “The picture I was building in my mind was to think about what the population of mothers in the U.S. looked like in 1900,” said Matthew Zipple, a Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow in neurobiology and behavior at Cornell University and author of “Reducing Childhood Mortality Extends Mothers’ Lives,” which published May 9 in Scientific Reports. “It was a population made up of two approximately equal-sized ...

A new study conducted by the Wilhelm Lab at the University of Oklahoma examines a promising development in biomedical nanoengineering. Published in Advanced Materials, the study explores new findings on the transportation of cancer nanomedicines into solid tumors.  A frequent misconception about many malignant solid tumors is that they are comprised only of cancerous cells. However, solid tumors also include healthy cells, such as immune cells and blood vessels. These blood vessels are nutrient transportation ...

Jyothi Nagajyothi, Ph.D. and her laboratory at the Hackensack Meridian Center for Discovery and Innovation (CDI) have identified what may be the main mechanism for how chronic Chagas Disease, a parasitic infection affecting millions of people worldwide, can cause irreversible and potentially fatal heart damage. The culprit is in the adipose (fat tissue) which the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi destroys in the course of infection, releasing smaller particles which induce the dysfunction of heart tissue, conclude the scientists in the journal iScience, a Cell Press open-access journal. “We are attempting to understand this ...

TUCSON, Ariz, May 20, 2024 – Critical Path Institute’s (C-Path) Translational Therapeutics Accelerator (TRxA) today announced its inaugural biologics-focused Request for Proposals (RFP) in its Bridging Research and Innovation in Drug Development Grants program (BioBRIDGe). BioBRIDGe awards are designed to help academic researchers traverse the drug development valley of death by providing funding and defining optimal strategies for advancing new, cutting-edge protein-based therapeutics (PBT) from the lab to patients.   For this funding cycle, ...

Superconductors are materials that can conduct electricity with zero resistance when they are cooled below a certain critical temperature. They have applications in several fields, including magnetic resonance imaging, particle accelerators, electric power, and quantum computing. However, their widespread use is limited by the need for extremely low temperatures. Graphene-based materials are promising for superconductors due to their unique properties such as optical transparency, mechanical strength, and flexibility. Graphene is a single layer of carbon (C) atoms arranged in a two-dimensional honeycomb structure. Among these materials, ...

About The Study: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) brought about one enforcement action and three merger actions per year against pharmaceutical manufacturers from 2000-2022, pursuing a small fraction of the estimated misconduct and consolidation in the pharmaceutical marketplace. Although the FTC faces substantial legal and practical limitations, important tools remain untested, including a rule defining “unfair methods of competition,” that may allow it to more effectively prevent repetitive patterns of anticompetitive behavior.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Aaron S. Kesselheim, ...