**EMBARGOED BY NATURE GENETICS UNTIL 10AM BST/ 5AM ET/ 3AM MT, APRIL 29** Some families call it a trial of faith. Others just call it a curse. The progressive neurological disease known as spinocerebellar ataxia 4 (SCA4) is a rare condition, but its effects on patients and their families can be severe. For most people, the first sign is difficulty walking and balancing, which gets worse as time progresses. The symptoms usually start in a person’s forties or fifties but can begin as early as the late teens. There is ...

Samples reveal evidence of changes experienced by the surface of asteroid Ryugu, some probably due to micrometeoroid bombardment. Analyzing samples retrieved from the asteroid Ryugu by the Japanese Space Agency’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft has revealed new insights into the magnetic and physical bombardment environment of interplanetary space. The results of the study, carried out by Professor Yuki Kimura at Hokkaido University and co-workers at 13 other institutions in Japan, are published in the journal Nature Communications. The investigations used electron waves penetrating ...

Dinosaurs were as smart as reptiles but not as intelligent as monkeys, as former research suggests. An international team of palaeontologists, behavioural scientists and neurologists have re-examined brain size and structure in dinosaurs and concluded they behaved more like crocodiles and lizards. In a study published last year, it was claimed that dinosaurs like T. rex had an exceptionally high number of neurons and were substantially more intelligent than assumed. It was claimed that these high neuron counts could directly inform on ...

Brown fat, also known as brown adipose tissue (BAT), is a type of fat in our bodies that's different from the white fat around our belly and thighs that we are more familiar with. Brown fat has a special job—it helps to burn calories from the foods that we eat into heat, which can be helpful, especially when we're exposed to cold temperatures like during winter swimming or cryotherapy. For a long time, scientists thought that only small animals like mice and newborns had brown fat. But new research shows that a certain number of adults maintain their brown fat throughout life. Because brown fat is so good at burning calories, scientists ...

Tech Extension Co., Ltd. (referred to hereinafter as TEX)[1] and Tech Extension Taiwan Co., Ltd. (referred to hereinafter as TEX-T)[2] have agreed with Innolux Corporation (referred to hereinafter as INNOLUX)[3] to build in a cleanroom of INNOLUX a manufacturing line intended for next-generation 3D integration[4] based on the Bumpless Build Cube (BBCube[5]), which is a technology achieved through the Tokyo Institute of Technology WOW Alliance[6]. TEX will transfer WOW technology[7] and COW technology[8], which are both based on the BBCube technology platform, to this manufacturing line intended for next-generation 3D integration. ...

Physicists have been hoping for this moment for a long time: for many years, scientists all around the world have been searching for a very specific state of thorium atomic nuclei that promises revolutionary technological applications. It could be used, for example, to build an nuclear clock that could measure time more precisely than the best atomic clocks available today. It could also be used to answer completely new fundamental questions in physics - for example, the question of whether the constants of nature are actually constant or whether they change in space ...

The mysteries of how memory works are explained in a new book that suggests anyone can boost their powers of recall – and that losing your keys is normal. Dr Megan Sumeracki and Dr Althea Need Kaminske say storing and retrieving information is far more complex than people think. Extremes of memory such as photographic or savant are also very rare despite their regular portrayal in films. Their new book The Psychology of Memory outlines simple recollection-boosting techniques to improve learning – or to help remember names and numbers. Forgetting is normal The authors highlight how a degree ...

Compared with people without opioid use disorder, those with opioid use disorder were less likely to receive palliative care in clinics and in their homes, and were dying at younger ages of causes other than opioid use, according to new research published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) https://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.231419. “The majority of conversations about the opioid crisis focus on the high number of opioid toxicity deaths. The unfortunate reality is that people with opioid use disorder ...

-With images- A new study led by researchers at Durham University has uncovered a novel mechanism that could solve a long-standing mystery about decaying planetary orbits around stars like our Sun. The study, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, proposes that stellar magnetic fields play a crucial role in dissipating the gravitational tides responsible for the orbital decay of ‘hot Jupiter’ exoplanets. Hot Jupiters are massive, gaseous planets similar to Jupiter that orbit extraordinarily close to their parent stars, taking only a few days to complete ...

Consistently high vaccination rates and global health surveillance programmes have helped eliminate poliomyelitis (polio) in almost all countries of the world, except Afghanistan and Pakistan. Yet non-polio enteroviruses can also lead to the same devastating symptoms of ‘acute flaccid paralysis’ (AFP), but the world is lacking formal surveillance systems to trace and control these viruses with paralytic potential. In a presentation at this year’s ESCMID Global Congress (formerly ECCMID) (Barcelona 27-30 April), Prof Thea Kølsen Fischer, Nordsjællands Hospital & University of Copenhagen, Denmark will highlight the continuous dangers that ...

With artificial intelligence (AI) poised to become a fundamental part of clinical research and decision making, many still question the accuracy of ChatGPT, a sophisticated AI language model, to support complex diagnostic and treatment processes. Now a new study, being presented at this year’s ESCMID Global Congress (formerly ECCMID) in Barcelona, Spain (27-30 April), which pitted ChatGPT against the ESCMID guideline for the management of brain abscesses, found that while ChatGPT seems able to give recommendations on key questions about diagnosis and treatment in most cases, some of the AI model’s ...

**Note: the release below is from the ESCMID Global Congress (formerly ECCMID, Barcelona, Spain, 27-30 April). Please credit the congress if you use this story** New research presented at the ESCMID Global Congress (formerly ECCMID) in Barcelona, Spain (27-30 April) has found substantial levels of resistance to critically important antibiotics in meat sold for human and animal consumption. The study is by Dr Jordan Sealey, Professor Matthew Avison and colleagues from the University of Bristol, UK. Meat sold for consumption by humans and companion animals in the UK is regulated by the UK Government Food Standards Agency (FSA) to ensure it falls within bacterial limits deemed ...

With the creation of safe and efficacious vaccines to target human papillomavirus in the first decade of this century, WHO has an ambitious target to lower cervical cancer incidence (mostly caused by HPV) and mortality by 30% by 2030, meaning each country has a target of vaccinating 90% of girls by age 15, 70% of women receiving a high precision screening test at least at age 35 and 45 years of age, and 90% of all women requiring treatment at any age to receive it. The targets are aspirational and as yet, it appears no country has been ...

It’s time to take a new approach to addressing negative messaging about vaccines, including avoiding the use of the term “anti-vaxxers”, say the researchers. **ECCMID has now changed name to ESCMID Global, please credit ESCMID Global Congress in all future stories** There was a marked increase in negativity about vaccines on Twitter after COVID-19 vaccines became available, the ESCMID Global Congress (formerly ECCMID) in Barcelona, Spain (27-30 April) will hear. The analysis also found that spikes in the number of negative tweets coincided with announcements ...

Provisional global total of 321,582 cases for 2023 is almost double (88% higher) than 2022 figure of 171,153 **ECCMID has now changed name to ESCMID Global, please credit ESCMID Global Congress in all future stories** Measles outbreaks are still occurring and in some cases increasing, among a wide variety of countries, raising concerns of an acceleration similar to just before the COVID pandemic. Dr Patrick O’Connor, of WHO Headquarters, Geneva, Switzerland will give an overview of the global measles situation at this year’s ...

WHAT:  A dose-sparing intradermal mpox vaccination regimen was safe and generated an antibody response equivalent to that induced by the standard regimen at six weeks (two weeks after the second dose), according to findings presented today at the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Global Congress in Barcelona. The results suggest that antibody responses contributed to the effectiveness of dose-sparing mpox vaccine regimens used during the 2022 U.S. outbreak.  The ...

Personalised “cocktails” of antibiotics, probiotics and prebiotics hold great promise in the treatment of a common form of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), the ESCMID Global Congress (formerly ECCMID) in Barcelona, Spain (27-30 April) will hear. Post-infection IBS (PI-IBS) is a form of irritable bowel syndrome that occurs after gastroenteritis or food poisoning.  Lead researcher Professor Maurizio Sanguinetti, of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome, Italy, says: “Estimates vary, but research ...

Some immune-enhancing therapies already exist, and their use could be investigated while other immunomodulatory drugs specific to different sub-groups of TB disease are being developed Experts are working on novel immune-enhancing therapies called host-directed therapies to use the body’s own immune system to target tuberculosis, with hopes that they could tackle even the drug-resistant forms of the disease. In a presentation at this year’s ESCMID Global Congress (formerly ECCMID) in Barcelona (27-30 April), Associate Professor Susanna Brighenti, Center for Infectious Medicine (CIM), ANA Futura at the Karolinska ...

Individuals requiring blood transfusion are a vulnerable population, often with debilitating conditions like cancer, and transfusion-transmitted malaria is often fatal. Current serological tests used to identify “at risk” donors are not sensitive enough to completely eliminate malaria transfusion risk. The current challenges are to optimise the testing strategy to minimise the loss of blood products (especially those rare blood phenotypes) and to enhance screening sensitivity for infectious immuno-tolerant donors who are difficult to identify. **ECCMID has now changed its name to ESCMID Global, please credit ...

**ECCMID has now changed its name to ESCMID Global, please credit ESCMID Global Congress (formerly ECCMID, Barcelona, Spain, 27-30 April) in all future stories** Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is continuing to increase globally, with rates of AMR in most pathogens increasing and threatening a future in which every day medical procedures may no longer be possible and infections thought long dealt with could kill regularly again. As such, new tools to battle AMR are vitally needed. In a new research review at this year’s ESCMID Global Congress (formerly ECCMID – Barcelona 27-30 April) shows ...

In the second new research review on this subject, Assistant Prof. Ibrahim Bitar, Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital in Plzen, Charles University in Prague, Plzen, Czech Republic, will give an overview of the molecular biology of CRISPR technology in explaining how it can used to tackle antimicrobial resistance. Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPRs) and CRISPR associated genes (cas) are widespread in the genome of many bacteria and are a defence mechanism against foreign ...

For sports fans, places like Fenway Park, Wembley Stadium or Wimbledon's Centre Court are practically hallowed ground. Archaeologists at the University of Cincinnati found evidence of similar reverence at ballcourts built by the ancient Maya in Mexico. Using environmental DNA analysis, researchers were able to identify a collection of plants used in ceremonial rituals in the ancient Maya city of Yaxnohcah. The plants, known for their religious associations and medicinal properties, were discovered beneath a plaza floor upon which a ballcourt was built. Researchers said the ancient Maya likely made a ceremonial offering ...

Scott Curran, group leader for Fuel Science and Engine Technologies Research at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been named a Fellow of SAE International and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, or ASME.  Curran is one of only 24 fellows selected from the more than 128,000 SAE members and one of only 3,336 fellows selected out of the 69,247 ASME members. SAE recognized Curran for his distinguished contributions to transportation science, including advancing real-world advanced combustion strategies, alternative fuels utilization, and next-generation vehicle technologies for a more sustainable mobility future. ...

Researchers have found two novel types of attacks that target the conditional branch predictor found in high-end Intel processors, which could be exploited to compromise billions of processors currently in use.  The multi-university and industry research team led by computer scientists at University of California San Diego will present their work at the 2024 ACM ASPLOS Conference that begins tomorrow. The paper, "Pathfinder: High-Resolution Control-Flow Attacks Exploiting the Conditional Branch Predictor," is based on findings from scientists from UC San ...

The American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) and the Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA) are pleased to announce that Kristine Zikmanis has been selected for the 2024 Inclusive, Diverse, Equitable, Accepting, and Accessible (IDEA2) Public Policy Fellowship. This new professional development opportunity provides young scientists with valuable first-hand experience in science policy. Kristine Zikmanis is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Biological Sciences at Florida International University. As an ecologist, Zikmanis studies animal behavior and has a strong interest in research at the intersection of ecology and ...