MINNEAPOLIS — Smoking, particularly heavy smoking, is linked to some unexplained strokes in younger adults, mainly in male individuals and in people ages 45 to 49, according to a study published in the February 19, 2025, online issue of Neurology® Open Access, an official journal of the American Academy of Neurology. A stroke with no known cause, called a cryptogenic stroke, is a type of ischemic stroke caused by a blockage of blood flow, but it is unclear what has caused the blockage. Symptoms include weakness, trouble speaking and vision problems. Strokes can be fatal. Most strokes occur after age 65. “While smoking has long been linked to ischemic stroke, ...

For decades, scientists have sought ways to counter our dependence on lithium-ion batteries. These traditional, rechargeable batteries energize today’s most ubiquitous consumer electronics – from laptops to cell phones to electric cars. But raw lithium is expensive and is often sourced through fragile geopolitical networks. This month, Princeton University’s Dincă Group announces an exciting alternative that relies on an organic, high-energy cathode material to make sodium-ion batteries, advancing the likelihood that this technology will find commercialization with safe, cheaper, more sustainable components. While scientists ...

DENVER -  A new research study highlights the significant health risks associated with dust storms, revealing an increase in emergency department (ED) visits for respiratory and cardiovascular conditions, as well as motor vehicle accidents, in three Southwestern U.S. states. The study, which was led at National Jewish Health was published this month in JAMA Network Open. Researchers at National Jewish Health, Emory University and the University of Colorado analyzed over 33,500 ED visits across Arizona, California and Utah from 2005 to 2018. The findings ...

LA JOLLA, CA—Current asthma treatments don't work in all patients, and they don't provide long-term relief from potentially deadly asthma attacks. Scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) are advancing a new kind of therapy. According to a recent study published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, their approach holds promise for providing long-lasting relief for people with asthma—and it may be useful for dampening immune inflammation in general. The researchers have developed two therapeutic ...

Treatment plants use a combination of tools to keep toxins and contaminants out of drinking water. Researchers with the University of Cincinnati examined two such tools in addressing a toxin produced by harmful algae blooms, which are becoming increasingly common in waters around the world. Blue green algae can reproduce en masse in waters laden with nitrogen, phosphorus or other excess nutrients. These algae “blooms” also can form when water levels drop during droughts or when bottom sediments heavy with nutrients get churned up in a storm, said Minghao Kong, a doctoral graduate of UC’s ...

Cat owners in the Denmark countryside are increasingly managing their cats in the same way as urban cat owners, resulting in fewer unwanted kittens being born, according to a study published February 19, 2025, in the open-access journal PLOS One by Peter Sandøe from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and colleagues. Populations of unowned domestic cats – whether unsocialized feral cats that have never lived with humans, or socialized cats that have strayed or been abandoned – are regarded as problematic in many countries. It is argued that they are a nuisance, that they transmit disease to humans, owned cats and ...

Young people who use multiple muscle-building supplements are more likely to report symptoms of muscle dysmorphia, per Canadian study of more than 2,500 adolescents and young adults.  #### Article URL: https://plos.io/3EyuhD6 Article Title: Muscle-building supplement use is associated with muscle dysmorphia symptomatology among Canadian adolescents and young adults Author Countries: Canada, France, U.S. Funding: This study was funded by the Connaught New Researcher Award (#512586; KTG) at the University of Toronto. The funders had no role in study design, ...

Swimming robots play a crucial role in mapping pollution, studying aquatic ecosystems, and monitoring water quality in sensitive areas such as coral reefs or lake shores. However, many devices rely on noisy propellers, which can disturb or harm wildlife. The natural clutter in these environments – including plants, animals, and debris – also poses a challenge to robotic swimmers. Now, researchers in the Soft Transducers Lab and the Unsteady flow diagnostics laboratory in EPFL’s School of Engineering, and at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, have developed ...

The successful development of sustainable georesources for the energy transition is a key challenge for humankind in the 21st century. Hydrogen gas (H2) has great potential to replace current fossil fuels while simultaneously eliminating the associated emission of CO2 and other pollutants. However, a major obstacle is that H2 must be produced first. Current synthetic hydrogen production is at best based on renewable energies but it can also be polluting if fossil energy is used. The solution may be found ...

University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and UPMC Hillman Cancer Center scientists have discovered a novel subset of cancer-fighting immune cells that reside outside of their normal neighborhood – known as the tertiary lymphoid structure – where they become frustratingly dysfunctional when in close contact with tumors. Described today in the journal Science Translational Medicine, the finding gives oncologists a new target for developing immunotherapies: double negative memory B cells, so-called because they are negative for two markers found on the surface of their more common brethren. They may also be a useful diagnostic ...

Groundbreaking research published today in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology has unveiled a landmark discovery – fossils of the world’s oldest known megaraptorid and the first evidence of carcharodontosaurs in Australia. These finds rewrite the evolutionary history of theropod dinosaurs, uncovering a predator hierarchy unique to Cretaceous Australia. The research, led by Museums Victoria Research Institute and Monash University PhD student Jake Kotevski, describes five theropod fossils discovered along Victoria’s coastline. The fossils were unearthed in the upper Strzelecki Group (Bunurong/Boonwurrung ...

Study Title: Window of opportunity trial reveals mechanisms of response and resistance to navtemadlin in patients with recurrent glioblastoma Publication: Science Translational Medicine Dana-Farber Cancer Institute authors: Veronica Rendo, PhD, Eudocia Q. Lee, MD, MPH, Veronica Rendo, PhD Patrick Y. Wen, MD, Keith L. Ligon, MD, PhD, Rameen Beroukhim, MD, PhD Summary: Clinical research by Dana-Farber scientists suggests that combining a novel agent called navtemadlin with DNA-damaging chemotherapy for the treatment of glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer, could increase efficacy. Navtemadlin ...

Boston - Kimberly Stegmaier, MD, was named Chair of Pediatric Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Associate Chief of the Division of Hematology/Oncology at Boston Children’s Hospital, in an announcement made today. Her appointment is effective April 1, 2025. Stegmaier, a Dana-Farber, Boston Children’s Hospital, and Harvard Medical School faculty member since 2002, Stegmaier is currently Vice Chair for Pediatric Oncology Research at Dana-Farber, Co-Director of the Pediatric Hematologic Malignancy Program at Dana-Farber and Boston Children’s Hospital, Co-Leader for the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center Leukemia Program, and a Professor ...

NEW YORK – The Human Immunome Project (HIP) and Michelson Medical Research Foundation (MMRF) have awarded Dr. Omar Abudayyeh (Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Harvard Medical School), Dr. Caleb Lareau (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center), and Dr. Yuzhong Liu (Scripps Research) the 2024 Michelson Prizes: Next Generation Grants.    The $150,000 research grants are awarded annually to support early-career scientists advancing human immunology, vaccine discovery, and immunotherapy research for major global diseases.  “Investing in bold, early-career scientists fuels the high-risk, high-reward ideas ...

After a year of weather extremes that brought everything from deadly floods to bitter cold, experts at East Tennessee State University have released a detailed analysis of the region’s 2024 weather patterns.   Their findings highlight both record-breaking temperatures and catastrophic storms – underscoring the growing need for preparedness as communities face unpredictable conditions.  The report, published by Tennessee’s Climate Office housed at ETSU, details how Southern Appalachia endured scorching heat and devastating floods, including the tragic September storm linked to ...

Humans have appreciated the beauty of flowers for centuries. Yet, flowers aren’t just aesthetically pleasing. They also play a crucial role in plant reproduction. In all plants, a well-studied gene with a curious name, Unusual Floral Organs (UFO), orchestrates the flowering process. UFO expression hinges on another complex process called cis-regulation. And this one has remained a “black box” of plant biology research for years. Now, using CRISPR gene editing, Cold ...

PHILADELPHIA – Cancer patients spend a lot of time on their care. Meeting with doctors and other members of their health care team, getting labs and other tests, picking up prescriptions, and undergoing treatment all takes time. So does getting to and from each appointment, sitting in the waiting room between each appointment, and so on. In recent years, cancer researchers have worked to quantify the level of “time toxicity” or time spent commuting to, waiting for, and receiving cancer treatment. Now, for the first time, a pilot study has shown it’s possible to use digital technology to safely ...

A multi-national, multi-institutional study led by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators found little natural resistance to a new HIV therapy called lenacapavir in a population of patients in Uganda. The study, published Jan. 30 in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, adds to growing evidence that lenacapavir may be a powerful new tool in the global anti-HIV drug arsenal. Approximately, 1.5 million people are living with HIV in Uganda. “Our data shows that only 1.6% of the individuals studied are living with HIV ...

There are currently around 275,000 glaciers worldwide, in which huge quantities of fresh water are stored. But this reservoir is increasingly shrinking. Since the turn of the millennium, glaciers around the world – i.e. ice masses on land excluding the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets – have lost around 273 billion tonnes of ice per year. This corresponds to about five and a half times the volume of Lake Constance. Overall, the world’s glaciers have lost around five per cent of their total volume since the year 2000. This is the conclusion reached by an international research team of which Tobias Bolch from the Institute of Geodesy ...

February 19, 2025-- Breast cancer incidence trends in U.S. women under 40 vary by geography and supports incorporating location information with established risk factors into risk prediction, improving the ability to identify groups of younger women at higher risk for early-onset breast cancer, according to a new study at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. This study comprehensively examined trends across different states, regions, metropolitan versus non-metropolitan areas and by racial and ethnic groups.  It also is one of the first to incorporate ...

A three-year effort to encourage California prosecutors to reconsider the sentences given to some people in state prison has resulted in a modest number of people being resentenced, but improvements are needed to speed review of more cases, according to a new RAND report.   During the project involving nine counties, more than 1,100 cases received an initial review. After comprehensive reviews by county district attorneys for the suitability for resentencing, 227 individuals eventually received new sentences and 174 of those offenders had been released ...

Propane dehydrogenation (PDH), as an efficient catalytic production process to obtain propylene, has developed rapidly in recent years. Previous studies have shown that zirconia exhibited excellent performance in the PDH, with the coordination-unsaturated zirconium (Zrcus) around the oxygen vacancy being the active site in the reaction. However, the critical role of oxygen vacancy is still remaining elusive, and lacked a rationale to establish a relation between structure and performance. Moreover, the strong binding of propene and hydrogen molecules shadowed ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A genetic mutation found in two human patients with schizophrenia also increased schizophrenia-related behaviors in mice with the same mutation, a rare finding of a direct genetic link to psychosis, report researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and colleagues in Massachusetts and Germany. The mutation increases levels of glycine decarboxylase, or GLDC, an enzyme responsible for regulating glycine in the brain. Glycine activates receptors for the neurotransmitter glutamate, called NDMA receptors. “The genetics of schizophrenia is very complex, and it ...

Humanity can farm more food from the seas to help feed the planet while shrinking mariculture's negative impacts on biodiversity, according to new research led by the University of Michigan.  There is a catch, though: We need to be strategic about it. "We can achieve this sustainable mariculture development," said Deqiang Ma, who led the study as a postdoctoral researcher at the U-M School for Environment and Sustainability. "With strategic planning, we can achieve the goal of conserving marine species while meeting the global demand for the ...

Harnessing solar energy to produce hydrogen from water – the photocatalytic water splitting reaction, is a promising approach for the carbon-neutrality future. This process utilizes semiconductor materials to harvest sunlight for the splitting of water into hydrogen fuel with oxygen gas generated as by-product. The solar hydrogen, as a carbon-free energy source, holds immense potential for decarbonizing industries, addressing global energy demands and mitigating environmental challenges. However, realizing practical ...