An independent study by researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) suggests the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza underreported the death toll due to violence by approximately 41%. The LSHTM study estimated 64,260 traumatic injury deaths in Gaza between 7 October 2023 and 30 June 2024 compared to the 37,877 reported by the Palestinian Ministry of Health. The findings, published in The Lancet, indicate that approximately 3% of the population of Gaza has died due to violence with an analysis showing ...

MIAMI, FLORIDA (EMBARGOED UNTIL JAN. 9, 2025 AT 6:30 P.M. EST) – Even though lung and related cancer deaths decreased in the world’s 10 most populous countries from 1990 to 2019, these positive statistics do not address trends in mortality linked to tobacco use, air pollution and asbestos exposure. Those areas need ongoing policy measures and research to further reduce deaths, according to a new study from researchers at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, and collaborating organizations. Their study, published in eClinicalMedicine, ...

A series of more than 100 small earthquakes in Surrey in 2018 and 2019 might have been triggered by oil extraction from a nearby well, suggests a new study by UCL researchers. The earthquakes, which occurred in Newdigate and surrounding areas from April 2018 until early 2019, were recorded as being between 1.34 and 3.18 magnitude, and were linked to cracks in walls and ceilings and other damage to people’s homes, with reports of houses and beds shaking. Geologists have been divided over whether these earthquakes could have been triggered by extraction at the Horse Hill well in Horley about 5km ...

Launch of world’s most significant protein study set to usher in new understanding for medicine  Strict embargo: 00.01 (GMT), Friday 10 January 2025  UK Biobank has today announced the launch of the world’s most comprehensive study of the proteins circulating in our bodies, which will transform the study of diseases and their treatments. This unparalleled project aspires to measure up to 5,400 proteins in each of 600,000 samples, including those taken from half a million UK Biobank participants and 100,000 second samples taken from these volunteers up to 15 years later.  This will ...

Orange, California - January 9, 2025: A new study led by scientists in the Schmid College of Science and Technology at Chapman University provides the first comprehensive global estimates of the amount of water stored in Earth’s plants and the amount of time it takes for that water to flow through them. The information is a missing piece of the puzzle in  understanding the global water cycle and how that cycle is being altered by changes in land use and climate.  The study, published today, January 9, in the journal ...

On December 24th, AES Andes, a subsidiary of the US power company AES Corporation, submitted a project for a massive industrial complex for environmental impact assessment. This complex threatens the pristine skies above ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile’s Atacama Desert, the darkest and clearest of any astronomical observatory in the world [1]. The industrial megaproject is planned to be located just 5 to 11 kilometres from telescopes at Paranal, which would cause irreparable damage to astronomical observations, in particular due to light pollution emitted throughout the project’s operational life. Relocating the complex would save one ...

Irvine, Calif., Jan. 9, 2025 — An international research team led by the University of California, Irvine has discovered a new type of skeletal tissue that offers great potential for advancing regenerative medicine and tissue engineering.   Most cartilage relies on an external extracellular matrix for strength, but “lipocartilage,” which is found in the ears, nose and throat of mammals, is uniquely packed with fat-filled cells called “lipochondrocytes” that provide super-stable internal support, enabling ...

Manufacturers increasingly but still infrequently follow Food and Drug Administration guidance that recommends testing pulse oximeters on participants with a range of skin pigmentations, according to a new study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The FDA made the recommendation in 2013, following reports that pulse oximeters—devices that measure blood-oxygen levels by shining light through the skin—can be less accurate when used on people with dark skin and that undetected low oxygen levels are more common ...

MINNEAPOLIS – Press registration is now open for journalists who wish to attend the 77th Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN). The 2025 AAN Annual Meeting will be held from April 5-9 in San Diego and online. The AAN Annual Meeting brings together thousands of neurologists and neuroscience professionals, offering the latest in scientific discoveries and advances in neurological research. There will be over 3,200 abstracts covering 25 neurology topics and specialties. The meeting will include late-breaking research, key lectures and more than ...

Anita Say Chan, an associate professor in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has authored a new book that identifies how the eugenics movement foreshadows the predatory data tactics used in today's tech industry. Her book, Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future, was released this month by the University of California Press. Over a century ago, the eugenics movement sought to eliminate "undesirable" traits in society through selective breeding (sterilization). It was biased against marginalized groups ...

EL PASO, Texas (Jan. 9, 2025) – If building strength and muscle mass is part of your New Year’s Resolution, you may want to add a new routine to your workout. Neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES), or electrical muscle stimulation for short, uses electrical currents to contract muscles. The stimulation devices are easy to use and widely available on the market, according to Sudip Bajpeyi, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Kinesiology at The University of Texas at El Paso, but he has often wondered, “Can these stimulators offer ...

The University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture (UTIA) has received a $210,000 grant from USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) to support ongoing integrated pest management (IPM) programs across Tennessee.   An environmentally sensitive approach to pest management that emphasizes affordability and long-term sustainability, IPM practices have been implemented statewide courtesy of UT Extension specialists in fields such as agronomy, weed management, entomology, plant pathology, soil health and pesticide education. The recently ...

Key takeaways Both intuition and past research suggest that whether people deem someone trustworthy depends on that person’s past behavior and reputation for betrayal. In a series of experiments, psychologists found that subjects regarded those who previously exhibited that behavior as less trustworthy. However, when the betrayal benefited them or had no effect on them, participants regarded the betrayer as trustworthy.  This pattern was largely consistent across the types of relationships studied: friendships, romantic relationships and professional relationships. Imagine this scenario: Two people cheat on their partners with each other ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Antibiotic-resistant Salmonella is a serious public health concern that has increased in recent years as the bacteria have developed ways to survive drugs. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people can get Salmonella from eating contaminated food products or from infected people or animals — typically via unintentional contact with feces via touching hands or stroking a pet. However, a team of Penn State researchers have found that household dogs are an overlooked transmission point for zoonotic pathogens such as nontyphoidal Salmonella, which can cause diarrhea, fever and abdominal cramps, with some ...

For decades, catalysts have been unsung heroes in daily life. These workhorses transform a starting material into a product or fuel with lower energy, like the yeast in bread making and human-made catalysts for converting raw materials into fuels more efficiently and sustainably. A promising class of these helpful substances, called single atom catalysts, has emerged, and researchers need new methods to better understand them. More specifically, they want to know how the structure of the sites where chemical reactions occur, called active sites, affects the catalyst’s ability to speed up the chemical reaction rate, known as the activity.  In an important step forward, researchers ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — While physical neglect is understudied compared to physical, sexual or emotional abuse, neglect is just as damaging to children’s social development, a new study indicates. More than 9,150 individuals, nearly 41% of whom retrospectively reported some form of maltreatment before age 12 or reaching the sixth grade, were included in the study, published in the journal Child Abuse and Neglect. The project explored the impact of abuse or neglect on three dimensions of children’s structural peer relationships — whether maltreated youth were less social/more withdrawn, less popular with or avoided by their peers and how ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Richard Alley, Evan Pugh University Professor of Geosciences at Penn State, was awarded the National Medal of Science at a White House ceremony on Jan. 3. Alley was one of 23 individuals and two organizations awarded the 2025 National Medals of Science and National Medals of Technology and Innovation, the nation’s highest honors for achievement and leadership in science and technology. “Dr. Alley is deeply deserving of this most prestigious honor, and it is heartening to know that our nation sees in him what the Penn State community has known for decades,” said Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi. “Dr. ...

Yang Zhang, PhD, and Jinjun Shi, PhD, both of the Center for Nanomedicine and Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, are co-senior authors of a paper published in ACS Nanoscience Au, “Lipid Nanoparticle Delivery of mRNA and siRNA for Concurrent Restoration of Tumor Suppressor and Inhibition of Tumorigenic Driver in Prostate Cancer.”   How would you summarize your study for a lay audience? Most cancers occur when there is an imbalance of cellular growth and inhibition, causing cells to grow rapidly and form tumors in the body. For example, ...

A research team led by the University of Oxford has carried out the most comprehensive assessment to date of how logging and conversion to oil palm plantations affect tropical forest ecosystems. The results demonstrate that logging and conversion have significantly different and cumulative environmental impacts. The results have been published today (10 January) in Science. Understanding how different aspects of tropical forests are affected by logging and conversion to oil palm plantations is important for identifying priority habitats for conservation and restoration. It can also help aid decisions on land use – for instance, whether a logged forest should be ...

Chimpanzees bear genetic adaptations that help them thrive in their different forest and savannah habitats, some of which may protect against malaria, according to a study by an international team led by UCL researchers. Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives, sharing over 98% of their DNA with humans, and the scientists say that their findings, published in Science, can not only teach us about our own evolutionary history, but also about the biology of malaria infection in humans. Chimpanzees are endangered ...

Replacing conventional building materials with materials modified to store carbon dioxide could move the planet closer to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new study by Elisabeth Van Roijen and colleagues. The researchers calculate that full replacement of conventional building materials with these CO2-sequestering alternatives could store as much as 16.6 ± 2.8 gigatons of CO2 each year – an equivalent to about 50% of the anthropogenic CO2 emissions in 2021. Removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, along with decreasing emissions, is important for slowing ...

In this Policy Forum, John Bistline and colleagues analyze the potential impacts of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s finalized power plant rules regarding greenhouse gas emissions. Using nine models of the U.S. electric sector and energy systems, the researchers found that the rules would speed up the reduction of emissions in the power sector. Under the rules, the levels of carbon dioxide emitted by the sector would be 61%-81% below 2005 levels by 2040. Under current policies, emission levels would be 51% to 83% below 2005 levels by 2040, ...

Samuel Arman and colleagues’ close examination of tooth microwear among living and extinct kangaroo species suggests that most of the species living in Australia during the Late Pleistocene had a broad, generalist diet rather than being specialized grazers. This broad diet likely allowed them to survive the glacial-interglacial cycles that drove fluctuations in vegetation on the continent. The findings add more evidence to the idea that human hunting, rather than failure to adapt to climate changes, ...

Male and female mice both prefer social interaction with female mice under normal conditions, but both switch to preferring males when their survival is threatened, according to a new study by Anqi Wei and colleagues. These preferences are mediated by different neuronal circuitry in male and female mice related to dopaminergic neurons in the brain’s ventral tegmental area, the researchers found. The findings offer a clearer picture of the underlying biology of socio-sexual preferences. These preferences are essential for successful reproduction, ...

Eight years of work. A collaboration between the Laboratory of Neuroethology of Non-Human Primates of the Department of Medicine and Surgery of the University of Parma, led by Luca Bonini, and a team from the Biorobotics Institute of the Sant'Anna School of Pisa, coordinated by Alberto Mazzoni, principal investigator at the Computational Neuroengineering Lab, with the contribution of Silvestro Micera, professor in Bioingeneering. Support from three projects funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and as many Italian national projects, including MNESYS and BRIEF. These are just some of the elements of a groundbreaking study published in ...