The chemical industry is a cornerstone of global development, driving innovation, and providing essential products that support our modern way of life.   However, its reliance on unsustainable fossil resources has posed significant threats to global ecosystems through climate change and chemical pollution.   A new commentary published in Cell Press’ OneEarth co-authored by Griffith University researchers puts forth a transformative solution: catalysis to leverage sustainable waste resources, ushering the industry from a linear to a circular economy.  “If ...

Rutgers researchers, aided by international collaborators, have tracked the devastation war has made on Ukraine’s hospital system. Hundreds of hospitals in Ukraine have been forced to close or operate at a reduced capacity since Russia’s invasion of the Eastern European country in February 2022. Damage, destruction and supply shortages caused by the war have impaired the nation’s hospital system and taken a serious toll on human health. In a study published in JAMA, Rutgers researchers and collaborators from the United States, Pakistan and Ukraine collected and compared data on hospital services provided both during ...

Recognising and respecting the different ways nature is valued can enable better environmental decision-making, according to new research led by the University of East Anglia (UEA). International agreements such as the Sustainable Development Goals represent wide support for a sustainable future, living within planetary boundaries and ensuring a safer future for current and next generations. However, there remain huge disagreements about how to advance such goals, often resulting in marginalisation, conflict and inaction. The paper, published in the journal One Earth, ...

About The Study: The findings of this study suggest that high ultraprocessed food (UPF) consumption in young children is associated with adiposity and other cardiometabolic risk factors, highlighting the need for public health initiatives to promote the replacement of UPFs with unprocessed or minimally processed foods.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Nancy Babio, Ph.D., email nancy.babio@urv.cat. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/  (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.11852) Editor’s ...

A significant link between the use of electronic cigarettes and earlier age of asthma onset in U.S. adults was reported by UTHealth Houston researchers May 17, 2024 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Network Open. Led by first author Adriana Pérez, PhD, MS, professor of biostatistics and data science at UTHealth Houston School of Public Health, the research found that adults who were asthma-free at the beginning of the study and reported e-cigarette use in the past 30 days increased their risk of developing earlier age of asthma onset by 252%. “While previous studies have reported that e-cigarette use increases ...

UNC Greensboro researcher Hemali Rathnayake, Ph.D., has been approved for grant funding from NCInnovation to continue her work in developing a cost-effective and efficient lithium refining process for converting lithium into battery-grade lithium carbonate. The grant approval is conditioned on standard next steps, including executed grant agreements and formal notification to government partners. This funding is part of NCInnovation’s larger mission to unlock the innovative potential of North Carolina’s world-class universities. “From ...

Plants have special corrective molecules at their disposal that can make retrospective modifications to copies of genes. However, it would appear that these “Tipp-Ex proteins” do not have permission to work in all areas of the cell, only being used in chloroplasts and mitochondria. A study by the University of Bonn has now explained why this is the case. It suggests that the correction mechanism would otherwise modify copies that have nothing wrong with them, with fatal consequences for the cell. The findings have now been ...

A new AI tool to more quickly and accurately classify brain tumours has been developed by researchers at The Australian National University (ANU).  According to Dr Danh-Tai Hoang, precision in diagnosing and categorising tumours is crucial for effective patient treatment.  “The current gold standard for identifying different kinds of brain tumours is DNA methylation-based profiling,” Dr Hoang said.    “DNA methylation acts like a switch to control gene activity, and ...

Autoimmune diseases occur when the body’s immune system attacks healthy cells instead of protecting them. Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is one such autoimmune condition characterized by faulty circulatory and immune systems, leading to the occurrence of fibrosis (hardening and scarring of healthy tissue) of the skin and internal organs. SSc is known to affect patients throughout their lives, thereby, impairing their quality of life. Although precise mechanisms underlying SSc development and progression are not clearly understood, a complex interplay of immune, hormonal, environmental, and genetic factors is often implicated.   Moreover, ...

Microwave dielectric ceramics are the cornerstone of wireless communication devices, widely utilized in mobile communications, satellite radar, GPS, Bluetooth, and WLAN applications. Components made from these ceramic materials, such as filters, resonators, and dielectric antennas, are extensively used in wireless communication networks. As wireless communication frequencies extend into higher bands, signal delay issues become increasingly prominent. Low dielectric constants (εr) can reduce electromagnetic coupling effects, effectively minimizing signal delays. Consequently, developing new ceramic materials with ...

University of Virginia researchers are developing a flexible online tool for navigating information used in the fight to save children from deadly diarrheal diseases by identifying transmission hotspots and accelerating the deployment of treatments and new vaccines. Diarrhea not only kills hundreds of thousands of children around the world every year, it contributes to malnutrition that can prevent kids from growing and developing to their full potential both physically and mentally, trapping them in poverty. While significant progress has been made against ...

(WASHINGTON, May 17, 2024) – People who use metformin are less likely to develop a myeloproliferative neoplasm (MPN) over time, indicating that the treatment may help prevent the development of certain types of cancers, according to a study published in Blood Advances. Metformin is a therapy used to treat high blood sugar in people with type 2 diabetes that increases the effect of insulin, reduces how much glucose is released from the liver and helps the body absorb glucose. A meta-analysis of previous studies connected the therapy with ...

OTTAWA, Ontario, May 17, 2024 – Pickleball Legal Consultant is a job title that likely did not exist a decade ago, but as pickleball courts infiltrate neighborhoods to satiate an appetite for a sport whose namesake is a snack, communities take issue with the resulting influx of noise. Now homeowners’ associations and city councils face litigation by those whose lives are disrupted by pickleball’s din. Charles Leahy, an attorney, retired mechanical engineer, and former HOA board member became ...

LAWRENCE — More than 300 million years ago, all sorts of arachnids crawled around the Carboniferous coal forests of North America and Europe. These included familiar ones we’d recognize, such as spiders, harvestmen and scorpions — as well exotic animals that now occur in warmer regions like whip spiders and whip scorpions. But there were also quite bizarre arachnids in these habitats belonging to now extinct groups. Even among these stranger species now lost to time, one might have stood out for its up-armored legs. The ancient critter recently was described in a new paper published ...

By Ian Scheffler By now, the challenges posed by generative AI are no secret. Models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude and Meta’s Llama have been known to “hallucinate,” inventing potentially misleading responses, as well as divulge sensitive information, like copyrighted materials.  One potential solution to some of these issues is “model disgorgement,” a set of techniques that force models to purge themselves of content that leads to copyright infringement or biased responses.  In ...

Stroke is the leading cause of disability worldwide and the second leading cause of death, but the right early intervention can prevent severe consequences. A new study led by investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, and collaborators developed a new test by combining blood-based biomarkers with a clinical score to identify patients experiencing large vessel occlusion (LVO) stroke with high accuracy. Their results are published in the journal Stroke: Vascular and Interventional Neurology. “We have developed a game-changing, accessible tool that could help ensure that more people suffering from ...

Bethesda, MD (May 17, 2024) — The American Gastroenterological Association’s (AGA) new evidence-based Clinical Practice Guideline on Endoscopic Eradication Therapy of Barrett's Esophagus and Related Neoplasia, published today in Gastroenterology, establishes updated guidance for Barrett’s esophagus patients.  A precursor to esophageal cancer, Barrett’s esophagus is a condition in which the cells in the esophagus have been replaced with non-cancerous abnormal cells. These cells can progress to a condition called dysplasia, which may in turn become cancer. Dysplasia is considered low-grade or ...

A team of researchers from the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC) in Portugal, together with Åbo Akademi University in Finland, the AI4Life consortium, and other collaborators, have developed an innovative open-source platform called DL4MicEverywhere published today in the journal Nature Methods*. This platform provides life scientists with easy access to advanced artificial intelligence (AI) for the analysis of microscopy images. Itenables other researchers, ...

A ruined building in the middle of the Pyrenees records a tragedy for the people who lived there — a devastating fire which burned a settlement to the ground, destroying everything down to a hidden gold earring. Now archaeologists’ excavation of Building G, in the strategically placed Iron Age site of Tossal de Baltarga, reveals a way of life derailed by violence: potentially, a forgotten episode of the war between Carthage and Rome. “The destruction was dated around the end of the third century BCE, the moment where the Pyrenees were involved in the Second Punic War and the passage of Hannibal’s troops,” ...

This study investigates the cononsolvency mechanism of poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM), which is soluble in pure methanol (MeOH) and water but insoluble in aqueous MeOH solutions. Combining oxygen K-edge X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) with theoretical calculations executed in molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and inner-shell calculations, it was found that hydrophobic interactions between PNIPAM and MeOH clusters play a key role in PNIPAM aggregation and cononsolvency emergence. PNIPAM is ...

Genome editing is making inroads into biomedical research and medicine. By employing biomolecule modeling tools, a Japanese research team is accelerating the pace and cutting the cost of zinc finger nuclease (ZFN) technology, a primary gene editing tool. In a recently published study, researchers from Hiroshima University and the Japanese National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology demonstrated how machine learning-driven modular assembly systems can improve gene editing. The study was published on April 10 in the journal Advanced Science. “Genome editing is ...

It has long been understood that pregnant women with diabetes are more likely to have children with obesity than women who do not have diabetes during pregnancy. But scientists have not fully understood the cause or why babies born to mothers with diabetes are also more likely to develop obesity and associated metabolic disorders later in life. To help find answers, Keck School of Medicine of USC researcher Shan Luo, PhD, has been awarded $3.1 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Diabetes ...

Men are at greater risk than women of the major health effects of diabetes (types 1 and 2), suggests a long term study published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.   Rates of cardiovascular disease, leg, foot, and kidney complications, and the sight-threatening eye disease diabetic retinopathy are all higher in men, regardless of whether they had diabetes for more or less than 10 years, the findings show. The global prevalence of diabetes is similar in men and women, and is projected to rise to 783 million by 2045, note the researchers. But ...

The more time spent on social media, the greater the likelihood that children and young people will both smoke and/or vape, suggests research published online in the respiratory  journal Thorax.   Clocking up a weekday tally of 7 or more hours was associated with a more than a doubling in risk among 10 to 25 year olds, the findings indicate, reinforcing concerns about the marketing clout of these platforms, say the researchers. The existing body of research on social media use and smoking and ...

**Embargo: 23.30 [UK time], 6:30 p.m. [EDT] May 16, 2024** Global Burden of Disease  The latest findings from the Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) 2021, published today in The Lancet, forecast that global life expectancy will increase by 4.9 years in males and 4.2 years in females between 2022 and 2050. Increases are expected to be largest in countries where life expectancy is lower, contributing to a convergence of increased life expectancy across geographies. The trend is largely driven by public health measures that ...