BOSTON (MA), June 18, 2024 – Jim Free, associate administrator for NASA, will deliver a keynote address on Wednesday, July 31, at the International Space Station Research and Development Conference (ISSRDC) in Boston. Free, the senior advisor to Administrator Bill Nelson and Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy, is NASA’s third highest-ranking executive and its highest-ranking civil servant. In addition to leading the agency’s 10 center directors and the mission directorate associate administrators at NASA Headquarters ...

When people get a prescription for the opioid addiction medication called buprenorphine, they almost always fill it — even if they have to pay more out of their own pocket, a new study shows. Whether it’s their first prescription for the medication, or they’ve been taking it for months, nearly all patients pick up the order from the pharmacy, according to the new findings from a University of Michigan team. Even among those just starting on buprenorphine, higher costs aren’t a deterrent. The researchers say this suggests that removing barriers ...

SEATTLE — June 18, 2024 — Fred Hutch Cancer Center announced the recipients of the 2024 Dr. Eddie Méndez Scholar Award, which recognizes outstanding early-career scientists from underrepresented backgrounds who are studying cancer, infectious diseases and basic sciences.   The eight postdoctoral awardees come from research institutions across the U.S. and are experts in a range of subjects including cancer immunology, fungal model systems and craniofacial development. “We enthusiastically congratulate this year’s recipients who were chosen from a very competitive pool of candidates,” said Christina Termini, PhD, MM, co-director ...

NASA, on behalf of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has selected Lockheed Martin Corp. of Littleton, Colorado, to build the spacecraft for NOAA’s Geostationary Extended Observations (GeoXO) satellite program. This cost-plus-award-fee contract is valued at approximately $2.27 billion. It includes the development of three spacecraft as well as four options for additional spacecraft. The anticipated period of performance for this contract includes support for 10 years of on-orbit operations and five years of on-orbit storage, for a total of 15 years for each spacecraft. ...

TUCSON, Ariz., June 18, 2024 — Critical Path Institute (C-Path), a leader in accelerating drug development for rare diseases, today announced the targeted integration of additional Friedreich’s ataxia (FA) datasets into C-Path’s Rare Disease Cures Accelerator-Data and Analytics Platform (RDCA-DAP®) as part of a partnership with Friedreich’s Ataxia Research Alliance (FARA).   This update includes data from two natural history studies; the FA-CHILD study, which focuses on pediatric ...

In low- and middle-income countries, anemia reduction efforts are often touted as a way to improve educational outcomes and reduce poverty. A new study, co-authored by a global health economics expert from the University of Notre Dame, evaluates the relationship between anemia and school attendance in India, debunking earlier research that could have misguided policy interventions. Santosh Kumar, associate professor of development and global health economics at Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs, is co-author of the study, published in Communications ...

A class of drugs already on the market to lower blood pressure appears to reduce adults’ risk of developing epilepsy, Stanford Medicine researchers and their colleagues have discovered. The finding comes out of an analysis of the medical records of more than 2 million Americans taking blood pressure medications. The study, published June 17 in JAMA Neurology, suggests that the drugs, called angiotensin receptor blockers, could prevent epilepsy in people at highest risk of the disease, ...

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, today announced the recipients of four prestigious technical awards. These four awards in diverse categories celebrate the hard work and creativity which underpin many of today’s most important technologies.   Prateek Mittal, Princeton University, is the recipient of the 2023 ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award for foundational contributions to safeguarding Internet privacy and security using a cross-layer approach.  The unifying theme in Mittal’s ...

Viruses, including the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, can get passed from person to person via contaminated surfaces. But can some surfaces reduce the risk of this type of transmission without the help of household disinfectants? As reported in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, wood has natural antiviral properties that can reduce the time viruses persist on its surface — and some species of wood are more effective than others at reducing infectivity. Enveloped viruses, like the coronavirus, can live up to five days on surfaces; nonenveloped viruses, including enteroviruses linked to the common cold, can live for weeks, in some cases even if the ...

When trees and livestock compete for land, the trees usually lose. It doesn’t have to be this way. But centrally designed plans to implement tree-livestock coexistence in deforested areas don’t always work on faraway farmland. The ineffectiveness can be due to trying to accomplish too much too quickly. Transforming hundreds of thousands of hectares of treeless or degraded pastures into sustainable landscapes for livestock, nature and people should be a gradual, low-disruption process. And it should start ...

AERA President Janelle T. Scott and Executive Director Felice J. Levine issued the following joint letter on June 18, 2024. Dear AERA Members, Colleagues in the Field, and Leaders in Research and Education: We are writing this joint letter to announce that Felice has decided to step down as Executive Director (ED) effective June 15, 2025. As she entered her fifth consecutive term, she signaled that she wished to move to an Emerita status next June and would not seek a further term of office. We both want to communicate this news now to provide sufficient lead time to conduct a search and ensure a smooth transition. As ...

Autoimmune diseases cannot currently be cured, only treated, and this is also true for neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder, which affects the central nervous system. A Kobe University study of how the treatment acts on the immune system shows that it shifts the balance of types of immune cells. This finding may represent a step toward the development of personalized medicine for autoimmune diseases. An autoimmune disease is the body’s immune system turning against parts of the body itself. Neuromyelitis optica disorder spectrum, or NMOSD, is one of them and it causes inflammation of the central nervous system, leading to vision and sensory loss, weakness ...

Boston – An analysis of data from a randomized clinical trial for patients with stage 3 colon cancer found that those with PIK3CA mutations who took celecoxib, an anti-inflammatory drug, after surgery lived significantly longer and had longer disease-free survival compared to those without the mutation. The study, highlighting a potential breakthrough in personalized cancer treatment, was led by clinical investigators at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. These findings are ...

When it comes to health, inequalities can be seen at every level for women with breast cancer: prevention, screening, diagnosis, treatment, and survival. But what about their quality of life? A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), the University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG), Inserm, and Gustave Roussy has tracked nearly 6,000 women diagnosed with breast cancer over a 2-year period, showing that socioeconomic status has a major and lasting impact on their quality of life, despite identical medical treatment. These results from the UNICANCER-sponsored CANTO study, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, call ...

“[...] immunotherapy is more likely to be effective at eliminating metastatic disease if the tumor burden is low, making it more logical to treat patients with high-risk melanomas at the earliest possible time [...]” BUFFALO, NY- June 18, 2024 – A new research perspective was published in Oncotarget's Volume 15 on June 13, 2024, entitled, “When does a melanoma metastasize? Implications for management.” In this new perspective, researchers John F. Thompson and Gabrielle J. Williams from The University of Sydney, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, and the University ...

Allison Lopatkin ’13, an assistant professor of chemical engineering, biomedical engineering, and microbiology and immunology at the University of Rochester, is one of 22 scientists selected to join the Pew Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences this year. The program provides early-career scientists four years of funding to explore some of the most pressing questions in human health and medicine. The funding will help Lopatkin’s lab explore how changes in bacterial metabolism contribute to the development of antibiotic resistance. She says that decades of antibiotic overuse—in both clinical and agricultural ...

American Geophysical Union  Press release 24-26  18 June 2024  For Immediate Release  This press release is available online at: https://news.agu.org/press-release/millions-households-exceed-soil-lead-epa/   At least one in four US residential yards exceed new EPA lead soil level guideline  Nearly 40% of households will exceed safety recommendations where multiple lead sources may exist. Remediation with standard techniques at this scale could cost more than $1 trillion nationally  AGU press contact:  Rebecca Dzombak, news@agu.org (UTC-4 hours)  Contact information ...

Studies have shown how inward foreign direct investment (FDI) increases the productivity or innovation of local firms in emerging markets, but little research has explored how local firms have to strategically cope with this competition. Upon exploring these connections, a new article in the Global Strategy Journal recommends that local firms adopt a balanced approach to contend with these competition challenges: Companies should adopt both market and nonmarket strategies to maximize benefits, as relying solely on political connections may not be the most effective option. FDI refers to when a company purchases a business or sets up new operations in a country different from the one of ...

Alpha oscillations are electrophysiological features of the human brain linked to fundamental processes including memory and perception. This study introduces a closed-loop auditory stimulation approach to selectively modulate alpha oscillations in the human brain in a phase-dependent and spatially-specific manner. ##### In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Biology:   http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002651 Article Title: A closed-loop auditory stimulation approach selectively modulates alpha oscillations and sleep onset dynamics in humans Author Countries: United Kingdom Funding: ...

Modern therapies have extended the lives of many cancer patients; however, survivors often live with chronic health conditions, including cardiovascular disease. New research published in JACC: CardioOncology shows that air pollution plays a significant role in increasing cardiovascular disease and mortality in cancer patients and contributes to health disparities related to these conditions. “The review underscores the critical need to consider environmental factors, especially air pollution, in cardio-oncology risk assessment and patient management,” said Xiaoquan Rao, MD, PhD, senior author of the study and a cardiologist ...

Using sound to stimulate certain brain waves has the potential to help those with dementia or cognitive decline sleep better, reveals a new study. Sleep disturbances are a common feature in dementia and may affect up to half of people living with the condition. During the study, the research team from the University of Surrey and the UK Dementia Research Institute Centre for Care Research & Technology at Imperial College London, used sound stimulation to target alpha rhythms, a type of brainwave, at precise timings of the wave to investigate how the brain responds. Alpha rhythms have been associated ...

Black patients who leave hospice care and patients with short stays in hospice care are at increased risks for being admitted to a hospital after being discharged from hospice, according to Rutgers Health researchers.   Their study, published in JAMA Network Open, examined patient outcomes after hospice care discharges to determine what factors contribute to transitions that lead to negative health implications.   “Hospice care teams may want to pay particular attention to the discharge planning needs of patients of racial and ethnic minority groups and patients with more complicated needs,” said Elizabeth Luth, the lead author of the study and ...

Cyclodextrins (CDs) are complicated carbohydrates, a term that describes the natural, sugar-based, starchy material that makes up much of fruits, vegetables and grains. Their unique chemical properties make them ideal for all sorts of uses, including air fresheners, medications and cosmetics. Scientists also are exploring their potential to treat cardiovascular diseases caused by atherosclerotic plaques. Now, more than 130 years after CDs were first discovered and reported, a University of Texas at Arlington team of scientists has created chemical mirror images of these complex ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — When stars collapse, they can leave behind incredibly dense but relatively small and cold remnants called neutron stars. If two stars collapse in close proximity, the leftover binary neutron stars spiral in and eventually collide, and the interface where the two stars begin merging becomes incredibly hot. New simulations of these events show hot neutrinos — tiny, essentially massless particles that rarely interact with other matter — that are created during the collision can be briefly trapped at these interfaces and remain out of equilibrium with the cold cores of the merging stars for 2 to 3 milliseconds. ...

Imagine driving through a tunnel in an autonomous vehicle, but unbeknownst to you, a crash has stopped traffic up ahead. Normally, you’d need to rely on the car in front of you to know you should start braking. But what if your vehicle could see around the car ahead and apply the brakes even sooner? Researchers from MIT and Meta have developed a computer vision technique that could someday enable an autonomous vehicle to do just that. They have introduced a method that creates physically accurate, 3D models of an entire scene, including areas blocked from view, ...