New research findings from the Texas A&M University School of Public Health indicate that exposure to even low levels of arsenic poses significant health risks, including an increased risk of kidney cancer. The incidence of kidney cancer in the United States rose by an average of 1.2 percent each year between 2011 and 2019 to become the seventh most common cancer. In the meantime, smoking — a well-established risk factor for kidney cancer — has continued to decline. This led researchers to consider other possible contributing factors, including arsenic, a known cause of various cancers that is naturally occurring ...

A group of young students became bonafide biomedical scientists before they even started high school. Through a partnership with a nearby university, the middle schoolers collected and analyzed environmental samples to find new antibiotic candidates. One unique sample, goose poop collected at a local park, had a bacterium that showed antibiotic activity and contained a novel compound that slowed the growth of human melanoma and ovarian cancer cells in lab tests. Inequities in educational resources, especially those in science, engineering, technology and math (STEM), where ...

In a first-of-its-kind breakthrough, a team of UBC Okanagan researchers has developed an artificial adhesion system that closely mimics natural biological interactions. Dr. Isaac Li and his team in the Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science study biophysics at the single-molecule and single-cell levels. Their research focuses on understanding how cells physically interact with each other and their environment, with the ultimate goal of developing innovative tools for disease diagnosis and therapy. Two of Dr. Li’s doctoral students, Micah Yang and David Bakker, have engineered a new molecule that could transform how cells adhere to and communicate with one another. Micah Yang, ...

Seaweed is once again showing promise for making cattle farming more sustainable. A new study by researchers at the University of California, Davis, found that feeding grazing beef cattle a seaweed supplement in pellet form reduced their methane emissions by almost 40% without affecting their health or weight. The study was published today (Dec. 2) in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This is the first study to test seaweed on grazing beef cattle in the world. It follows previous studies that showed seaweed cut methane emissions 82% in feedlot cattle ...

The consumption of milk products, eggs and fish has a positive effect on childhood development in Africa. This has been demonstrated in a recent study by the CABI's regional centre for Africa in Nairobi, Kenya and the University of Bonn. The researchers used representative data from five African countries with over 32,000 child observations. If the children had a diet containing animal products, they suffered less from malnutrition and related developmental deficiencies. The study has now been published in the journal PNAS.  Almost 150 million children under the age of five around the world suffer from serious growth and developmental ...

Fukuoka and Tsukuba, Japan—Researchers have uncovered key insights about how liquid crystals, materials capable of forming complex ordered structures, transform between different phases. Published in PNAS, the study provides a clearer understanding of how these materials change their structures at the microscopic level. This research could provide a means to give a deeper insight into the transformation between different structures in a wider variety of materials. Liquid crystals are materials that exhibit properties of both liquids and solids. They flow like liquids but can also ...

New research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences sheds light on the pathways that drive organ damage and death in severe COVID-19 and helps explain why survivors of the disease can experience long-term complications. “Our study resolves some of the long-standing unanswered questions about how the SARS-CoV-2 virus impacts the body,” said co-senior author Afshin Beheshti, Ph.D., professor of surgery and computational and systems biology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and associate director of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine. “The findings point ...

A new collection of published papers offers the most detailed and comprehensive breakdown yet of how water injected into the Permian Basin during oil and gas operations is changing subsurface pressures and causing earthquakes. The Permian Basin in West Texas is the country’s most prolific energy-producing region, accounting for more than 40% of the nation’s oil production and about 15% of gas production. However, energy production has caused earthquakes and other challenges in recent years as oil and gas operators now manage roughly 15 million barrels of produced wastewater each day. This briny water comes to the surface ...

Where do you see patterns in chaos? It has been proven, in the incredibly tiny quantum realm, by an international team co-led by UC Santa Cruz physicist Jairo Velasco, Jr. In a new paper published on November 27 in Nature, the researchers detail an experiment that confirms a theory first put forth 40 years ago stating that electrons confined in quantum space would move along common paths rather than producing a chaotic jumble of trajectories. Electrons exhibit both particle and wave-like properties—they ...

Brazilian scientists have determined that ancient specimens of partially domesticated maize (Zea mays, also known as corn) originally from Peruaçu Valley in Minas Gerais state (Brazil) were the farthest from Mexico, the plant’s historic center of origin, of any finds made so far. An article describing their research is published in the journal Science Advances. The study was led by researchers affiliated with the University of São Paulo (USP) and EMBRAPA, the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation. The findings reinforce the theory, based on genetic evidence from plants alive now, that domestication ...

With support from the University of Houston's Andy & Barbara Gessner College of Nursing, two universities in India - MGM Institute of Health Sciences in Mumbai and Krishna Institute of Medical Sciences - have introduced the Doctor of Nursing Practice degree, expanding advanced nursing education in the country. It is the first time any university in India has offered the degree.   The Gessner College graduated its first class of DNP professionals in May 2024.  The DNP doctorate degree ...

What can exploding stars teach us about how blood flows through an artery? Or swimming bacteria about how the ocean’s layers mix? A collaboration of researchers from universities, science philanthropies and national laboratories has reached an important milestone toward training artificial intelligence models to find and exploit transferable knowledge between seemingly disparate fields to drive scientific discovery. This initiative, called Polymathic AI, uses technology similar to that powering large language models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The more time you spend on social media, the likelier you are to have come across a viral post that seems too strange to be true. Brief scientific literacy interventions, especially those that focus on critical thinking skills, may help to undermine conspiracy beliefs and behaviors before the conspiracy theories have a chance to take root, according to a team led by Penn State researchers. The team published their findings in the Journal of Consumer Research. \“While some conspiracy beliefs may seem relatively harmless, others — about vaccines, genetically modified organisms and climate change, for example ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Teenagers use generative artificial intelligence for many purposes, including emotional support and social interactions. A study by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers found that parents have little understanding of GAI, how their children use it and its potential risks, and that GAI platforms offer insufficient protection to ensure children’s safety. The research paper by information sciences professor Yang Wang, the co-director of the Social Computing Systems Lab, and doctoral student Yaman Yu is one of the first published sources of data on the uses and risks of GAI for children. Wang ...

University of Texas at Arlington senior Ken Perry has always been interested in how the heart works. This curiosity led the Arlington High School graduate to start working in the lab of UTA kinesiology Professor R. Matthew Brothers during his second year of college. Now, two years later, Perry is the recipient of two research awards from the American Physiological Society (APS) for his research on a connection between high-fat meals and cardiovascular health. “I always wanted to learn about heart and blood flow, so when friend of mine interested in research encouraged me to apply for the SURPINT program ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – Cornell University researchers have created the smallest walking robot yet. Its mission: to be tiny enough to interact with waves of visible light and still move independently, so that it can maneuver to specific locations – in a tissue sample, for instance – to take images and measure forces at the scale of some of the body’s smallest structures. The team’s paper, “Magnetically Programmed Diffractive Robotics,” published in Science. “A walking robot that’s small enough to interact with and shape light effectively takes a microscope’s lens and puts it directly ...

Salicylic acid is vital for protecting plants from pathogens, but its synthesis remains unclear. A recent study by Shinshu University researchers has discovered that the protein HSR201 is key to its production. They found that HSR201 localizes to specific organelles called peroxisomes through a unique targeting signal. This discovery improves our understanding of how plants produce salicylic acid and could pave the way for developing engineered crops with improved disease resistance. Plant hormones, or phytohormones, are vital for plant growth, adaptation, and defense. ...

A new study from The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and Institut Curie reveals how stem cells sense and respond to their environment, with implications for inflammatory bowel disease and colorectal cancer.  Stem cells constantly adapt to their environment to maintain organ and tissue health, informed by chemical signals and physical forces. When they do not function as intended, stem cells can result in a number of health conditions including inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and colorectal (bowel) cancer, where they continue to divide until a tumour forms. Until ...

As part of the COVID-19 International Research Team, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the University of Pittsburgh and Weill Cornell Medicine discovered a novel cause of cytokine storm — the extreme inflammatory response associated with increased risk of death in COVID-19 infection. Their findings were reported Nov. 27 in the online issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  In an intensive genomic search for causes of cytokine storm, the research team used autopsy samples obtained from 40 patients who died from COVID-19. They performed genome analysis ...

"Sleep disturbances are a significant concern in individuals with dementia, affecting their overall health and quality of life, as well as that of their family members and caregivers.” BUFFALO, NY- December 2, 2024 – A new review was published on the cover of Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 16, Issue 21, titled, “Sleep deprivation in dementia comorbidities: focus on cardiovascular disease, diabetes, anxiety/depression and thyroid disorders.” The review, authored by Upasana Mukherjee, Ujala Sehar, Malcolm Brownell, and ...

For the first time, scientists have invented a liquid ink that doctors can print onto a patient’s scalp to measure brain activity. The technology, presented December 2 in the Cell Press journal Cell Biomaterials, offers a promising alternative to the cumbersome process currently used for monitoring brainwaves and diagnosing neurological conditions. It also has the potential to enhance non-invasive brain-computer interface applications. “Our innovations in sensor design, biocompatible ink, and high-speed printing pave the way for future on-body manufacturing of electronic tattoo sensors, with broad applications both within and beyond ...

Ketone bodies, produced by the body to provide fuel during fasting, have roles in regulating cellular processes and aging mechanisms beyond energy production.  Research at the Buck Institute shows that ketone bodies can best be understood as powerful signaling metabolites affecting brain function in aging and Alzheimer’s disease. A new study demonstrates that ketone bodies and similar metabolites have profound effects on the proteome and protein quality control in the brain. Publishing in Cell Chemical Biology, Buck Institute scientists, ...

About The Study: In this retrospective medical record review study, rules-based e-triggers were useful for post hoc detection of missed opportunities in diagnosis in emergency department visits. Interventions to target emergency department work system factors are urgently needed to support patient-clinician encounters and minimize harm from diagnostic errors.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Hardeep Singh, MD, MPH, email hardeeps@bcm.edu. To access the embargoed study: ...

About The Study: The findings of this study suggest the need for greater scrutiny of crisis pregnancy center practices, particularly their service provision, provider qualifications, and how these conform with regulations or best practices. A key concern is their promotion of abortion pill reversal, which lacks FDA approval or scientific support and may cause harm.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, John W. Ayers, PhD, MA, email ayers.john.w@gmail.com. To ...

La Jolla, Calif. (December 2, 2024) — A new study from scientists at the University of California San Diego introduces a powerful new approach to understanding the operation of crisis pregnancy centers, non-profit organizations dedicated to an anti-abortion agenda. The study published in JAMA Internal Medicine provides the first account of the practices of crisis pregnancy centers (CPC) operating in the United States.  "While our study shows crisis pregnancy centers provide valuable community services, like parenting classes,  there is a clear need for consumer safety measures to prevent the promotion and use of their ...