Feelings of loneliness and social isolation during the pandemic left many people confused about the order of events and struggling to remember what day of the week it was, a new study reveals.   The research, from the University of York, looked at the psychological impact of the pandemic, which spread to the UK in March 2020, through the lens of disorientation.     The researchers asked more than 3,300 French participants nearly 60 questions analysing the psychological effects of lockdowns. The survey took place during an acute phase of restrictions when there was a lockdown followed by a strict curfew.    The findings ...

WHAT: Two clinical trials have launched to examine a novel long-acting form of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in cisgender women and people who inject drugs. The mid-stage studies will assess the safety, acceptability, and pharmacokinetic (how a drug moves through the body) of lenacapavir, an antiretroviral drug administered by injection every six months. The studies are sponsored and funded by Gilead Sciences, Inc., and implemented through the HIV Prevention Trails Network (HPTN). The HPTN is supported by grants from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Winters can be tough on managed honey bee colonies, with beekeepers in the United States reporting that one-third of their colonies die each winter. A new study by Penn State researchers has found that using not one but multiple pest treatments may help bees make it to spring. The researchers found that beekeepers who used a combination of treatments for Varroa mites — tiny parasites that can weaken and spread diseases to honey bees — had higher winter colony survival than those who used only one type of treatment. The findings were published in the Journal of Insect Science. Additionally, ...

Getting into graduate school to become a doctor or a dentist is difficult. By some estimates, only about 37% to 42% of students who apply to medical or dental school are accepted. To help pre-medical and -dental students achieve their dreams, UT Arlington created a program called the Health Professions Advisory Committee (HPAC). The odds of graduate school admission for students participating in HPAC is significantly higher than average, with an estimated 85% succeeding. This is just one of several UT Arlington initiatives helping alleviate ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A 15-year period ending in 2020 that included a marine heat wave and a sea star wasting disease epidemic saw major changes in the groups of organisms that live along the rocky shores of the Pacific Northwest. The study by Oregon State University scientists, involving four capes in Oregon and California, suggests these communities of species may have low resilience to climate change. Findings were published Monday in Nature Ecology & Evolution and. Researchers learned that ...

Imagine pulling on the long ends of a rectangular piece of rubber. It should become narrower and thinner.  But what if, instead, it got wider and fatter? Now, push in on those same ends. What if the rubber became narrower and thinner? Such common-sense-defying materials do exist. They’re called auxetics, and they have a raft of unique properties that make them well-suited for sneaker insoles, bomb-resilient buildings, car bumpers and clothing. Despite this great potential, auxetic products have been slow to market. Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Chicago hope to change this. In a new study published ...

The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF) is hosting a free webinar, “Neurocognitively-Defined Subtypes in Bipolar Disorder: A Path to More Personalized Treatments” on Tuesday, June 11, 2024, at 2:00 pm ET. The presenter, Katherine E. Burdick, PhD, is the Jonathan F. Borus, MD Distinguished Chair in Psychiatry and the Vice Chair for Research in Psychiatry at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She is the Director of the Mood and Psychosis Research Program at BWH and a Professor at Harvard Medical ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Polarized light waves spin clockwise or counterclockwise as they travel, with one direction behaving differently than the other as it interacts with molecules. This directionality, called chirality or handedness, could provide a way to identify and sort specific molecules for use in biomedicine applications, but researchers have had limited control over the direction of the waves — until now.    Using metamaterials, a team of electrical engineering researchers from Penn State and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln ...

PHILADELPHIA — (June 04, 2024) — Advanced clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is a deadly form of kidney cancer with few treatment options; even with new immunotherapies, only around one in 10 patients ultimately survive.  Antibody therapies called bispecific T cell engagers (BTEs) have emerged as effective treatments for some blood cancers but have been more difficult to develop for solid tumors. While clinically successful, first-generation BTEs suffer a short half-life. Now, Wistar scientists have built upon BTE technology to develop new and improved recombinant and synthetic ...

Researchers at the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil have shown for the first time that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, can remain in the sperm of patients for up to 90 days after hospital discharge and up to 110 days after the initial infection, reducing semen quality. The study is reported in an article published in the journal Andrology. The authors suggest that people who plan to have children should observe a period of “quarantine” after recovering ...

Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have developed a new method for detecting defects in additively manufactured components. One of the most important tasks in any factory is to determine whether a manufactured component is free of defects. In additive manufacturing (3D printing), it can be particularly challenging to find defects, because additive manufacturing can make components that have complex three-dimensional shapes and important internal features that are not easily observed. The novel technology uses deep machine ...

TREX1 is a gene that is supposed to direct the maintenance of the entire body’s DNA, but new research shows that when people are born with mutated TREX1, it causes catastrophic damage to the DNA over time, resulting in a deadly rare disease called retinal vasculopathy with cerebral leukoencephalopathy (RVCL). Published in Nature Communications, the research was led by teams at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the Brain Research Institute at Niigata University in Japan. While it was already known that a mutation in TREX1 was behind RVCL, the mechanism by which ...

A new study offers first-time insights into three emerging climate innovations to safeguard or increase the carbon naturally captured by ocean and coastal ecosystems: rapid interventions to save the Great Barrier Reef, satellite-tracked kelp beds in the deep ocean, and seagrass nurseries in the United Kingdom. The research, published in Environmental Science & Policy and co-authored by leading climate scholars at Boston University, Aarhus University, and the University of Sussex Business School, advances knowledge of understudied interventions in marine ...

The brain’s ability to learn comes from “plasticity,” in which neurons constantly edit and remodel the tiny connections called synapses that they make with other neurons to form circuits. To study plasticity, neuroscientists seek to track it at high resolution across whole cells, but plasticity doesn’t wait for slow microscopes to keep pace and brain tissue is notorious for scattering light and making images fuzzy. In a paper in Scientific Reports, a collaboration of MIT engineers and neuroscientists describes a new microscopy system designed for fast, clear, and frequent imaging of the living brain. The system, ...

  The liquid biopsy technique applied in this work is based on the sequencing of the entire tumor genome from 138 patients and the monitoring of mutations in the blood. This approach achieves high sensitivity in detecting the tumor signal in the blood (1/1,000,000 DNA molecules), and the patterns found reflect how patients respond to immunotherapy.   This study is part of the Comprehensive Program of Cancer Immunotherapy and Immunology (CAIMI) at VHIO, funded by the BBVA Foundation, and is co-led by Dr Rodrigo Toledo, head of the Biomarkers and Clonal Dynamics Group at the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO), ...

A recent study has found that the SMCHD1 protein plays a key role in controlling how genes are processed, which affects the progression of Facioscapulohumeral Muscular Dystrophy (FSHD). This discovery about SMCHD1's function in gene regulation is important because it opens new possibilities for developing targeted therapeutic strategies to combat the disease. By understanding more about how SMCHD1 works, scientists can explore new ways to fight the disease. A recent study by MD-PhD student Eden Engal under the guidance of Dr. Yotam Drier and ...

Researchers uncover how the halogen bond can be exploited to direct sequential dynamics in the multi-functional crystals, offering crucial insights for developing ultrafast-response times for multilevel optical storage. Halogen bonds are intermolecular interactions that arise from the attraction between a halogen atom (group 17 elements in the periodic table) and another atom with lone pairs, more generally a molecular entity with high electron density. Understanding the distinctive and highly directional nature of halogen bonds is crucial for crystal engineering and studying ...

Bottom Line: The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommends exercise interventions to prevent falls in community-dwelling adults 65 years or older who are at increased risk for falls. The USPSTF recommends that clinicians individualize the decision to offer multifactorial interventions to prevent falls to community-dwelling adults 65 years or older who are at increased risk for falls. Existing evidence indicates that the overall net benefit of routinely offering multifactorial interventions to prevent falls is small. When determining ...

ABSTRACT 6006   CHICAGO ― According to preliminary data from a multi-institution Phase III trial led by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, intensity modulated proton therapy (IMPT) achieved similar clinical outcomes and offered significant patient benefits when compared to traditional intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) as part of chemoradiation treatment for patients with oropharyngeal (head and neck) cancer.   The results were presented today at the 2024 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting by Steven Frank, M.D., professor of Radiation Oncology and executive director of the Particle ...

WASHINGTON, June 4, 2024 – Millions of people live near active volcanoes that are constantly monitored for signs of an impending eruption. When one occurs, scientists and governments rely on data to estimate the extent of the possible damage, informing evacuation plans and disaster response efforts. The nature of eruptions, unfortunately, means collecting data about them can sometimes be as challenging as organizing a response. In Review of Scientific Instruments, by AIP Publishing, researchers from the University at Buffalo developed a tool for measuring the viscosity of lava that could increase our understanding of molten rock as well as better improve ...

About The Study: This population-based cohort study of men with prostate cancer suggests that higher county-level prevalence of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening was associated with lower odds of advanced disease, all-cause mortality, and prostate cancer–specific mortality. Associations varied by age, race and ethnicity, and U.S. Census region.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Hari S. Iyer, Sc.D., M.P.H., email hari.iyer@rutgers.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit ...

About The Study: This nonrandomized controlled trial found that compared with usual care alone, partnership with a trained psychiatric service dog was associated with lower posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom severity and higher psychosocial functioning in veterans. Psychiatric service dogs may be an effective complementary intervention for military service–related PTSD.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Marguerite E. O’Haire, Ph.D., email maggieohaire@arizona.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.14686) Editor’s ...

In response to the escalating demand for sustainable transportation solutions, researchers from the National Institute of Technology Silchar have developed a groundbreaking scheduling system for electric vehicles (EVs) that enhances power grid efficiency and accommodates the growing influx of solar energy. This advanced system, outlined in a recent study by Pritam Das and Partha Kayal, focuses on optimizing the charging and discharging times of EVs to better integrate with photovoltaic (PV) energy ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – Using artificial intelligence (AI), breast radiologists in Denmark have improved breast cancer screening performance and reduced the rate of false-positive findings. Results of the study were published today in Radiology, a journal of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). Mammography successfully reduces breast cancer mortality, but also carries the risk of false-positive findings. In recent years, researchers have studied the use of AI systems in screening. “We believe AI has the potential to improve screening performance,” said Andreas D. Lauritzen, Ph.D., a post-doctoral student at the University of Copenhagen and researcher ...

A new study by Carnegie Mellon University researchers found that when roboticists and people with disabilities collaborate on robot designs, interesting ideas emerge that could make existing robots more accessible and inspire new uses. In their research, School of Computer Science faculty members Sarah Fox and Nikolas Martelaro highlight potential issues sidewalk robots encounter during deployment and propose solutions to mitigate them before the robots hit the streets. Their new study, led by Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) Ph.D. student Howard Han, was presented last month at the ACM Conference on ...