June 4, 2024   UMass Amherst to Join $90M US National Science Foundation large-scale research infrastructure for education Platform brings together institutions, digital learning and a world-class team to enable research studies to inform efficacy, improvement and innovation in teaching and learning AMHERST, Mass. – The Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has joined the newly announced U.S. National Science Foundation’s (NSF) SafeInsights, a five-year, $90 million research and development infrastructure for inclusive education ...

For the first time, researchers have identified a group of neurons deep in the brain that are associated directly with compulsive eating and food craving. The discovery is reported in an article published in Nature Communications by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in the United States and the Federal University of the ABC (UFABC) in São Bernardo do Campo, São Paulo state (Brazil).  The neurons are located in the periaqueductal gray, a region of the midbrain at the top of the brainstem, and are known as vesicular ...

College Park, Md. — Engineers at the University of Maryland (UMD) have developed a model that combines machine learning and collaborative robotics to overcome challenges in the design of materials used in wearable green tech. Led by Po-Yen Chen, assistant professor in UMD's Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, the accelerated method to create aerogel materials used in wearable heating applications – published June 1 in the journal Nature Communications – could automate design processes for new materials. Similar to water-based ...

A group of researchers at University of California San Diego has identified the cause of a “short-circuit” in cellular pathways, a discovery that sheds new light on the genesis of a number of human diseases. The recent study, published in the journal Science Signaling, explores the biochemical mechanism that can interrupt the cellular communication chain — a disruptive interaction that Pradipta Ghosh, M.D., likens to a game-ending “buzzer.” Ghosh, a professor in the Departments of Medicine and Cellular and Molecular Medicine ...

URBANA, Ill. – Talking to their parents about daily stressors can help adolescents deal with their problems. This is particularly important during the transition to middle school, when youth often are faced with new peer and academic challenges. But does it matter where these conversations take place? That’s the topic of a new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “We were interested in the environmental settings for mother-youth conversations. Where do they typically happen, and what are the preferred locations? We wanted to get the perspectives of both the youth and their ...

Immunotherapy is based on harnessing a person’s own immune system to attack cancer cells. However, patients with certain tumors do not respond to these therapies and it remains unclear why. “The full impact of anti-cancer immunotherapy has not been realized, especially for some solid tumors,” says Kevin Tharp, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Cancer Metabolism and Microenvironment Program at Sanford Burnham Prebys. Researchers presume that part of the reason why these therapies fail is due to tumor-associated fibrosis, the creation of a thick layer of fibrous collagen (like scar tissue) that acts as a barrier ...

The linear consumption model of raw material extraction, production, use, and disposal dominates the global economy, but it’s led to serious unintended global consequences: from resource use to pollution including negative impacts on environmental and human health that disproportionately affect the Global South.  In contrast, circular economy – a model where products and materials are by design kept in continual use – aims to decouple economic growth from resource consumption. While approaches ...

DETROIT — The Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA) has partnered with Wayne State University to develop its Workforce Development and Pipe Management Program, which will help recruit, teach and graduate the next generation of water pipeline managers. The two-year program will begin July 1, 2024, and will be supported by a contract totaling more than $480,000. The GLWA says that water utilities are experiencing significant employee recruitment, training and retention challenges. An additional concern is the availability of specialized technical training that addresses recent technological advances in the water sector. In response to these challenges, the Workforce Development and ...

NRG Oncology recently reported the results  from the radiotherapy randomization, which was the second step of their NRG-RTOG 0848 clinical study comparing adjuvant chemotherapy with or without chemoradiation for patients with resected periampullary pancreatic adenocarcinoma. The trial data did not show that the addition of radiation and chemotherapy to adjuvant systemic therapy improved overall survival (OS) for all patients on the study, however, OS was improved among node-negative patients. OS was essentially the same between treatment arms for node positive patients. The trial data also showed that disease-free survival (DFS) was improved with ...

Emma Guttman-Yassky, MD, PhD, Receives High Honor at European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology The Paul Ehrlich Award for Experimental Research recognizes scientists who have revolutionized the understanding of allergic diseases and immunological mechanisms. New York, NY (June 4, 2024) – The 2024 European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (EAACI) Annual Congress selected Emma Guttman-Yassky, MD, PhD, Waldman Chair of the Kimberly and  Eric J. Waldman Department of Dermatology, and Professor of Dermatology and Immunology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, as the recipient of the ...

A team of UC Davis Health researchers discovered that a common anti-inflammatory drug, mesalamine, can replace the work of good bacteria in fighting the nasty fungus Candida albicans in the gut. C. albicans, or candida, is known to cause yeast infections. In some cases, it develops into invasive candidiasis, a potentially fatal infection occurring mostly in patients with compromised immunity. The researchers found that this fungus can’t grow without an oxygen supply. Their study in mice showed that the drug can ...

INDIANAPOLIS – Patients with an intracerebral hemorrhage have better medical outcomes when surgeons perform an early minimally invasive removal of a hematoma compared to those receiving the standard of care, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Indiana University School of Medicine faculty clinicians Mitesh Shah, MD, Bradley Bohnstedt, MD, Regg Singh, MD and Jason Allen, MD, PhD are co-authors ...

UC San Diego Health is the first hospital system in the region to offer a new immunotherapy treatment for metastatic melanoma. The personalized cellular therapy derived from tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL), is the first solid tumor therapy on the market approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).  “This one-time cellular immunotherapy is a powerful and robust tool to treat patients with advanced melanoma resistant to other approved therapies and who have limited treatment options,” said Gregory Daniels, MD, PhD, professor of ...

By Jake Siegel SEATTLE, WASH.—June 4, 2024—New research by scientists at the Allen Institute’s Brain and Consciousness group and Cedars-Sinai offers an unprecedented look at how neurons respond to ES. Far from being uniform, different types of neurons showed distinct patterns of ‘syncing up’ with electrical fields. These patterns varied depending on the rate at which the ES was delivered. The findings, published today in Neuron, could help doctors fine tune where, when, and how ...

Researchers from Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, University of Chicago, and Management Development Institute, Gurgaon published a new Journal of Marketing study that examines the unintended consequences of an Indian government healthcare policy. The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled “Do No Harm? Unintended Consequences of Pharmaceutical Price Regulation in India” and is authored by Saravana Jaikumar, Pradeep K. Chintagunta, and Arvind Sahay. In countries without universal health insurance or developed health care systems, governments try to make drugs affordable and accessible. For instance, ...

Maternal obesity impacts the eating behaviors of offspring via long-term overexpression of the microRNA miR-505-5p, according to a study publishing June 4th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Laura Dearden and Susan Ozanne from the MRC Metabolic Diseases Unit, Institute of Metabolic Science, University of Cambridge, UK, and colleagues. Previous studies in both humans and animal models have shown that the offspring of obese mothers have a higher risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes. While this relationship is likely the result of a complex relationship between genetics and environment, emerging ...

Clinicians often default to treating mental health conditions with a variety of medication. This approach, however, largely ignores the role of environment, lifestyle, and social factors. Mental Health professionals must work toward a more holistic management picture, Sidarta Ribeiro, Ana Paula Pimentel, Paulo Amarante and colleagues at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and FIOCRUZ in Brazil argue in the new open-access journal PLOS Mental Health on June 4. More people than ever are being diagnosed with mental health conditions—particularly children and young adults. The World Health Organization estimates that mental health ...

Max Chang and Irene Lee of University College London review neuroimaging studies of the effects of internet addiction on adolescent brains. Published June 4 in PLOS Mental Health, the study indicates that internet addiction is associated with disrupted signaling in the regions of the brain that are involved in multiple neural networks. These networks play an important role in controlling our attention, in association with intellectual ability, working memory, physical coordination, and emotional processing—all of which ...

A new survey of nearly 340,000 texts spanning 79 years shows that generic terms in mental health have shifted away from words like “disease” and “disturbance” and toward “psychiatric” and “mental health,” with “mental illness” becoming the most-used term. Nick Haslam and Naomi Baes at the University of Melbourne in Australia present these findings in the new open-access journal PLOS Mental Health on June 4. The authors state that while words such as “crazy” and “lunatic” ...

Sarah Jackson and colleagues from University College London and King’s College London branches of the SPECTRUM Consortium conducted a survey to study how mental health relates to methods people use to quit smoking, also known as smoking cessation aids. While the number of adults who smoke cigarettes has declined globally, people with mental health conditions are more likely to smoke and to do so more heavily. Because of these differences in tobacco use, the researchers theorized that the effectiveness of smoking cessation aids may be altered in individuals with a mental health condition. However, in their ...

Lived experience should be centered in future mental health research, say people with mental health conditions and their families and carers in nationwide Australian survey. #### Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/mentalhealth/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmen.0000010 Article Title: Experience is central and connections matter: A Leximancer analysis of the research priorities of people with lived experience of mental health issues in Australia Author Countries: Australia Funding: The ALIVE National Centre for Mental Health Research Translation is supported by a grant from the National Health and Medical Research Council (GNT2002047) ...

Adolescents with an internet addiction undergo changes in the brain that could lead to additional addictive behaviour and tendencies, finds a new study by UCL researchers. The findings, published in PLOS Mental Health, reviewed 12 articles involving 237 young people aged 10-19 with a formal diagnosis of internet addiction between 2013 and 2023. Internet addiction has been defined as a person’s inability to resist the urge to use the internet, negatively impacting their psychological wellbeing, as well as their social, academic and professional lives. The studies used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to inspect the functional connectivity (how regions of ...

Every spring when the sun rises in the Arctic after months of darkness, life returns. The polar bears pop up from their winter lairs, the arctic tern soar back from their long journey south and the musk oxen wade north.  But the animals are not the only life being reawakened by the spring sun. Algae lying dormant on the ice starts blooming in spring blackening large areas of the ice. When the ice blackens it’s ability to reflect the sun diminishes and this accelerates the melting of the ice. Increased melting exacerbates global ...

WHAT:         The Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging 2024 Annual Meeting The field of nuclear medicine is undergoing rapid and widespread growth—offering patients increasingly precise, tailored, painless diagnosis and treatment with minimal side effects and exceptional results. This year’s program will focus on new radiopharmaceuticals, instrumentation, and techniques for managing a wide range of diseases, from cancer, brain, and heart disease to infection and inflammation. The meeting will convene more than 6,500 attendees from around the globe. With more than 100 ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The end of the Second World War ushered in a new age, one dominated by novel technologies, the Cold War, the threat of nuclear destruction — and the first reported UFO sightings. Humans have witnessed strange aerial events since ancient times, but what makes UFOs unique is that the term “unidentified flying object” represents both a concept and a theory, according to Greg Eghigian, professor of history and bioethics at Penn State. In his new book, “After the Flying Saucers Came: A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon,” Eghigian explores how individuals, scientists, governments ...