About The Study: Adoption of the proposed framework to identify when causal interpretation is appropriate in observational studies promises to facilitate better communication between authors, reviewers, editors, and readers. Practical implementation will require cooperation between editors, authors, and reviewers to operationalize the framework and evaluate its effect on the reporting of empirical research.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Issa J. Dahabreh, M.D., Sc.D., email idahabreh@hsph.harvard.edu. To ...

A recent review has unveiled revolutionary methods to recycle and transform everyday polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic into valuable materials. By harnessing cutting-edge enzymes and catalysts, the review dramatically improves how we break down and reuse PET, slashing energy use and emissions. These game-changing techniques are poised to redefine plastic waste management and boost the circular economy. Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic into valuable materials. By harnessing cutting-edge PET, a prevalent form of plastic, poses significant environmental risks due to its durability and resistance to natural degradation. Traditional recycling methods often result in inferior-quality ...

LOS ANGELES — Keck Medicine of USC has launched the USC Nursing Institute to promote education, leadership development, clinical expertise and research among nurses.  The institute will support nurses across the health system’s four hospitals and more than 100 clinic locations to ensure nurses have access to the tools, education and training to provide exceptional patient care, facilitate collaboration and encourage career growth and leadership opportunities.  “Nurses are the backbone of our health system. The USC Nursing Institute supports a culture of excellence where nurses feel empowered to expand ...

The escalating demand for wireless data traffic, driven by the proliferation of internet-of-things devices and broadband multimedia applications, has intensified the search for innovative solutions in wireless communication. A significant breakthrough has been reported in the application of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces for terahertz communications. In a research article published on Mar. 13 in Intelligent Computing, a team of researchers led by Zhen Gao of Beijing Institute of Technology has introduced a novel physical signal processing method that leverages deep learning to enhance ...

Scientists from Trinity College Dublin have made an important breakthrough that offers promise for developing new immune therapies for cancer. They have discovered that a vaccine adjuvant – or “booster” – called C100 promotes potent anti-tumour immunity when it is injected directly into tumours in an animal model.  The scientists found that C100, derived from chitin – one of the most common building materials in nature, and which gives strength to the exoskeletons of crustaceans, insects, and the cell walls of fungi – is highly effective at stimulating a key sensing and signalling molecule which regulates ...

People with limited English proficiency have a worse experience with virtual healthcare visits than those who are proficient in English, according to a new study led by a team of investigators at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system. The study highlights the importance of designing telehealth platforms and processes that better serve people who face day-to-day language barriers. The study, published in JAMA Network Open, analyzed results ...

About The Study: This cross-sectional study highlights racial and ethnic disparities in treatment declination and overall survival, suggesting the need for equity-focused interventions, such as patient education on treatment benefits and improved patient-clinician communication and shared decision-making, to reduce disparities and improve patient survival.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Dezheng Huo, M.D., Ph.D., email dhuo@bsd.uchicago.edu. To ...

About The Study: Residential measures of inequity through segregation, income inequality, or persistent poverty were associated with a greater number of residents living with vision difficulty and blindness in this cross-sectional study. It is essential to understand and address how neighborhood characteristics can impact rates of vision difficulty and blindness.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Patrice M. Hicks, Ph.D., M.P.H., email pmhicks@med.umich.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/  (doi:10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2024.1207) Editor’s ...

Researchers developed Tripath to bridge computational gaps to process 3D tissue and predict outcomes based on 3D morphological features Cancer recurrence models trained on 3D tissue volumes outperformed models trained on 2D tissue images Human tissue is intricate, complex and, of course, three dimensional. But the thin slices of tissue that pathologists most often use to diagnose disease are two dimensional, offering only a limited glimpse at the tissue’s true complexity. There is a growing push in the field of pathology toward examining tissue in its three-dimensional form. But 3D pathology datasets can contain hundreds of times more data than their 2D counterparts, ...

New research by the University of East Anglia (UEA) reveals what countries think will be their most difficult to decarbonise sectors when they reach net zero, with agriculture expected to be responsible for the largest remaining emissions. Once countries have taken the ‘easy’ steps to get to net zero - such as switching to more renewable electricity, electric cars, and heat pumps for homes - they are still left with some sources of emissions.  These ‘residual’ emissions continue to be emitted at the ...

Nitrogen is an essential component of all living organisms. It is also the key element controlling the growth of crops on land, as well as the microscopic oceanic plants that produce half the oxygen on our planet. Atmospheric nitrogen gas is by far the largest pool of nitrogen, but plants cannot transform it into a usable form. Instead, crop plants like soybeans, peas and alfalfa (collectively known as legumes) have acquired Rhizobial bacterial partners that “fix” atmospheric nitrogen into ammonium. This partnership makes legumes one of the most important ...

Liver disease, due to viral infections, alcohol abuse, obesity, or cancer, accounts for 1 in every 25 deaths worldwide. A liver transplant can be life saving for people with end-stage liver disease. However, the procedure has limitations related to donor shortage, a technically challenging and invasive surgical procedure, and the requirement for lifelong immunosuppressive medication in the transplant recipients. An alternative to whole organ transplantation is the less invasive injection of dissociated human liver cells, but donor shortage is still an issue. Utilizing ...

Understanding how fat tissue forms and functions is crucial for addressing obesity and related metabolic diseases. However, adipose tissue, or body fat, behaves differently based on its location in the body. Take, for example, the omentum: a large, apron-like fatty tissue hanging from the stomach that covers organs within the peritoneum, such as the stomach and intestines. It not only stores fat but also plays roles in immune regulation and tissue regeneration. Omental adipose tissue is associated with ...

A new study reveals a groundbreaking approach to immunotherapy, demonstrating that blocking the interaction between the CD300A receptor and phosphatidylserine (PS) significantly enhances the ability of human natural killer (NK) cells to lyse hematologic malignancies (HMs). Cancer has a profound impact on human life, and immune checkpoint therapy (ICT) has made remarkable strides in cancer treatment. However, ICT faces challenges such as low overall response rates and the emergence of immune-related adverse events. To overcome these hurdles, researchers are exploring new immune checkpoints. CD300A, a type-I transmembrane protein with immunoreceptor tyrosine-based inhibitory ...

The division between liberals and conservatives on both climate-change beliefs and related policy support is long-standing. However, the results of a newly released global experiment show that despite these differences, the two camps actually align when it comes to taking certain actions to combat climate change. The study, led by researchers at New York University, finds that when given the opportunity, liberals and conservatives take action to address climate change at roughly the same levels—and that ...

Humans have the capacity to imagine civilizations and creatures that have never existed, and our language reflects that ability. It would therefore be understandable if the stories we tell ourselves stretched beyond the bounds of local ecology. However, research has shown that many cultural artifacts and ideas are strongly affected by environmental factors. Researchers in Japan wanted to know if the biogeography of a region could constrain motifs in animal folklore. To do this, they studied the distribution of animal trickster folklore against the distribution of the animal the folklore ...

WASHINGTON — Canadian researchers have developed a new 3D printing method called blurred tomography that can rapidly produce microlenses with commercial-level optical quality. The new method may make it easier and faster to design and fabricate a variety of optical devices. “We purposely added optical blurring to the beams of light used for this 3D printing method to manufacture precision optical components,” said Daniel Webber from the National Research Council of Canada. “This enables production of optically smooth surfaces.” In Optica, Optica Publishing Group’s journal for high-impact research, these researchers demonstrate the new method by using ...

(WASHINGTON, May 9, 2024) – Standard of care treatment for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is safe and effective for adults over 80, according to a study published in Blood Neoplasia. For roughly a quarter of patients, this treatment can durably prolong survival. AML is an aggressive and often deadly form of blood cancer that can be difficult to treat. For older adults with AML, the conventional treatment consists of a medication called venetoclax combined with a hypomethylating agent (HMA), also known as VEN-HMA. AML treatment is often intensive and can significantly suppress the immune system ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- Neighborhoods of high need are where investment in social care offers the best opportunities to improve health. Screening for social determinants of health is comparatively easy, but building the infrastructure to meet needs occurring outside the formal healthcare system is quite difficult. Few health systems have achieved more than even partial integration of social care into routine patient care. In a case study of pioneering social care provided by Eskenazi Health, a safety net health system located in Indianapolis, ...

Australian researchers have discovered how changes in antibody levels over time can predict which children are likely to outgrow their peanut allergy. The research, led by Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) in Melbourne and published in Allergy, found two thirds of children with a peanut allergy remain allergic by the age of 10. But for those who did naturally outgrow their allergy, the majority achieved this by six years old. The study was the first to use antibodies as biomarkers to identify persistent or a resolved ...

By Tom Garlinghouse for the Princeton University Department of Physics Not all magnets are the same. When we think of magnetism, we often think of magnets that stick to a refrigerator’s door. For these types of magnets, the electronic interactions that give rise to magnetism have been understood for around a century, since the early days of quantum mechanics. But there are many different forms of magnetism in nature, and scientists are still discovering the mechanisms that drive them. Now, physicists ...

When two animals look the same, eat the same, behave the same way, and live in similar environments, one might expect that they belong to the same species. However, a tiny zooplankton skimming the ocean surfaces of microscopic food particles challenges this assumption. Researchers from Osaka University, University of Barcelona and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have analyzed the genome of Oikopleura dioica from the Seto Inland Sea, the Mediterranean, and the Pacific Ocean around the Okinawa Islands, and in doing so, they have raised numerous questions about speciation and the role of gene location in ...

[Highlights] - Developed a new compilation method to generate optimal sequences to be executed on quantum computers - The new method is based on a probabilistic approach and reduces the time to search for the optimal sequence by several orders of magnitude. - Expected to contribute to quantum information processing at quantum nodes that support the quantum internet [Abstract] The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT, President: TOKUDA Hideyuki, Ph.D.), RIKEN (President: GONOKAMI Makoto, Ph.D.), Tokyo University of Science (President: Dr.  ISHIKAWA Masatoshi), and the University of Tokyo (President: FUJII Teruo, Ph.D.) succeeded ...

WASHINGTON— A new analysis of the world’s largest 100 marine protected areas (MPAs) published today in Conservation Letters suggests that governments are falling short on delivering the promise of effective biodiversity protection due to slow implementation of management strategies and failure to restrict the most impactful activities. The assessment, titled “Ocean protection quality is lagging behind quantity: Applying a scientific framework to assess real marine protected area progress ...

Just a few days on a night shift schedule throws off protein rhythms related to blood glucose regulation, energy metabolism and inflammation, processes that can influence the development of chronic metabolic conditions. The finding, from a study led by scientists at Washington State University and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, provides new clues as to why night shift workers are more prone to diabetes, obesity and other metabolic disorders. “There are processes tied to the master biological clock in our brain that are saying that day ...