Reston, VA—The protein galectin-1 (Gal-1) has been identified as a new PET imaging biomarker for immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy, allowing physicians to predict the tumor responses before beginning treatment. Information garnered from Gal-1 PET imaging could also be used to facilitate patient stratification and optimize immunotherapy, enabling targeted interventions and improving patient outcomes. This research was published in the May issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine. Immunotherapies, such as ICB, have produced promising clinical ...

“In this study, we first obtained evidence that, in mouse, aging primarily reduced the number of active sweat glands.” BUFFALO, NY- May 14, 2024 – A new research paper was published in Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 16, Issue 8, entitled, “Characterization of age-associated gene expression changes in mouse sweat glands.” Evaporation of sweat on the skin surface is the major mechanism for dissipating heat in humans. The secretory capacity of sweat glands (SWGs) ...

DALLAS, May 13, 2024 — Fewer than half of all women are aware that heart disease is their leading cause of death. That is why the American Heart Association, celebrating one hundred years of lifesaving service, created its community-based Woman of Impact™ initiative as an outgrowth of its year-round Go Red for Women® activist movement. The movement spotlights the lack of awareness and the clinical care gaps in women’s heart health. This year’s National Winner of the Go Red for Women 2024 Woman of Impart initiative is a 26-year-old heart transplant recipient, stroke survivor and American Heart Association local volunteer, Hana Hooper from Puget ...

The blood-retinal barrier is designed to protect our vision from infections by preventing microbial pathogens from reaching the retina where they could trigger an inflammatory response with potential vision loss. But researchers at the University of Missouri School of Medicine have discovered the virus that causes COVID-19 can breach this protective retinal barrier with potential long-term consequences in the eye.  Pawan Kumar Singh, PhD, an assistant professor of ophthalmology, leads a team researching new ways to prevent and treat ocular infectious diseases. Using a humanized ...

Scientists have discovered a new insight into the genetic pathway of childhood cancer, offering new hope for tailored treatments. Researchers from the University of Sheffield have created a stem cell model designed to investigate the origins of neuroblastoma, a cancer primarily affecting babies and young children.  Neuroblastoma is the most common childhood tumour occurring outside the brain, affecting the lives of approximately 600 children in the European Union and the United Kingdom each year.  Until now, studying genetic changes and their role in neuroblastoma initiation has been challenging due to the lack of suitable laboratory ...

As people age, they become more prone to blood clotting diseases, when blood cells called platelets clump together when they don’t need to and can cause major issues such as strokes and cardiovascular disease. For decades, scientists have studied why older people’s blood cells behave in this way, using their insights to develop the myriad of blood-thinning drugs now on the market for treating the leading cause of death in the United States. Now, UC Santa Cruz Professor of Biomolecular Engineering Camilla Forsberg and her research group have ...

Researchers have found that 2023 was the hottest summer in the Northern Hemisphere in the past two thousand years, almost four degrees warmer than the coldest summer during the same period. Although 2023 has been reported as the hottest year on record, the instrumental evidence only reaches back as far as 1850 at best, and most records are limited to certain regions. Now, by using past climate information from annually resolved tree rings over two millennia, scientists from the University of Cambridge and the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz have shown how exceptional the summer of 2023 was. Even allowing for natural climate variations over hundreds of years, 2023 was still ...

UNDER STRICT EMBARGO UNTIL 4PM GMT  (11AM ET) on 14 May 2024.   Peer reviewed | Observational | People  Ribosomal DNA (rDNA) is present in hundreds of copies in the genome, but has not previously been part of genetic analyses. A new study of 500,000 individuals indicates that people who have more copies of rDNA are more likely to develop inflammation and diseases during their lifetimes.  Standard genetic analysis techniques have not studied areas of the human genome that are repetitive, such as ribosomal ...

Three out of four U.S. adults support the use of emerging technologies that estimate a future child’s likelihood of developing health conditions influenced by multiple genes — such as diabetes, heart disease, and depression — before an embryo is implanted during in vitro fertilization (IVF), according to a new public opinion survey led by researchers at Harvard Medical School. Results of the survey, to be published May 14 in JAMA Network Open, underscore the need for public education and conversation about the positive ...

Children with neurodevelopmental disorders report congenital abnormalities, such as defects of the heart and/or urinary tract, at least ten times more frequent compared to other children. This is one of the findings from an analysis from Radboud university medical center of data from over 50,000 children. Thanks to this new database, it's now much clearer which health problems are associated with a particular neurodevelopmental disorder and which are not. The study has been published in Nature Medicine. Two to three percent of the population have a neurodevelopmental disorder, such as autism or intellectual ...

May 14  2024 – A study in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP), published by Elsevier, found that pharmacological treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) reduced violence- and public-order related crimes. However, it did not reduce  other types of crimes, among patients with ADHD in early to late adolescence considered to be in the grey zone (or on the margin) for such treatment. This study uses variation in healthcare providers treatment preference as the basis for a quasi-experimental design that examines the effect of pharmacological ...

A team led by Dr. Eddie Imada, assistant professor of research in pathology and laboratory medicine, has been awarded a three-year, $1.5 million United States Department of Defense grant for research on a cellular process called alternative polyadenylation and its role in prostate cancer. The grant was awarded under DoD’s long-running Prostate Cancer Research Program, a Congressionally-directed medical research funding project aimed at improving prostate cancer prevention, detection and patient care. Thousands of current and former servicemen ...

UVA Health researchers have developed a powerful new risk assessment tool for predicting outcomes in heart failure patients. The researchers have made the tool publicly available for free to clinicians. The new tool improves on existing risk assessment tools for heart failure by harnessing the power of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) to determine patient-specific risks of developing unfavorable outcomes with heart failure.  “Heart failure is a progressive condition that affects not only quality of life but quantity as well. All heart failure patients are not the same. Each patient ...

Previously, it was commonly assumed that having an inner voice had to be a human universal. But in recent years, researchers have become aware that not all people share this experience.  According to postdoc and linguist Johanne Nedergård from the University of Copenhagen, people describe the condition of living without an inner voice as time-consuming and difficult because they must spend time and effort translating their thoughts into words: “Some say that they think in pictures and then translate the pictures into words when they need to say ...

OTTAWA, Ontario, May 14, 2024 – Every love story is unique, and in traditional Indigenous Southern Plains culture, it begins with an original ballad performed on the flute. In order to win a lover’s affection, and respect among the tribe, each pursuer must compose one good flute serenade. Paula Conlon, a former music professor at the University of Oklahoma, has researched the history and cultural significance of the Indigenous flute since the 1980s. Conlon will present her work Tuesday, May 14, at 9:45 a.m. EDT as part of a joint meeting of the Acoustical Society of America and the Canadian Acoustical ...

SAN ANTONIO — May 14, 2024 —Southwest Research Institute is investigating an unusual event in the Earth’s magnetotail, the elongated portion of the planet’s magnetosphere trailing away from the Sun. Using data from NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission, SwRI scientists are examining the nature of substorms, fleeting disturbances in the magnetotail that release energy and often cause aurorae. Since their launch in 2015, the MMS spacecraft have been surveying the magnetopause, the boundary between the magnetosphere ...

Researchers at Macquarie University have found a significant portion of shark meat sold in Australian fish markets and takeaway shops is mislabelled, including several samples from threatened species. The findings, published in the journal Marine and Freshwater Research this month, highlight the ineffectiveness of seafood labelling and the grave implications for both consumer choice and shark conservation. Researchers collected 91 samples of shark meat from 28 retailers across six Australian states and territories and used DNA ...

The latest edition of Florida Atlantic University’s “Florida Climate Resilience Survey,” found that 90% of Floridians believe that climate change is happening. In comparison, a recent Yale University survey showed 72% of all Americans believe climate change is happening. The FAU survey includes questions on beliefs about climate change, experience with extreme weather events and support for climate-related policies. The Florida Climate Resilience Survey also shows belief in human-caused climate change has surged among Florida Independents while slipping among Republicans in the state since last fall.   But despite these changes, the latest edition of the survey ...

The intricate dance of atoms fusing and releasing energy has fascinated scientists for decades. Now, human ingenuity and artificial intelligence are coming together at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) to solve one of humankind’s most pressing issues: generating clean, reliable energy from fusing plasma. Unlike traditional computer code, machine learning — a type of artificially intelligent software — isn’t simply a list of instructions. Machine learning is software that can analyze data, infer relationships between features, learn from this new knowledge and adapt. PPPL researchers ...

A new food systems perspective study1 published in Advances in Nutrition from the University of Washington is the first to explore the place of fresh pork in in the global food sustainability framework. Merging data on food composition, food trends, prices and incomes, the study concluded that pork meat is an affordable high-quality protein and may have a lower environmental (GHGE) impact than previously believed. The perspective also makes clear pork is well positioned to meet the rising global demand for animal protein. Pork is one of the most consumed meats globally,2 providing high quality protein and several priority ...

High temperatures affect the decision-making of police officers and judges. Previous research has shown that heat can increase criminal activity, with the leading theory proposing that heat reduces emotional control and increases aggression. A. Patrick Behrer and Valentin Bolotnyy investigate the effects of heat on the behavior of those who respond to criminal activity. The authors analyzed records of 10 million arrests across the state of Texas from 2010 through 2017, along with the legal outcomes that followed each arrest. These data were merged with daily temperature data. Police made fewer arrests per reported crime on the hottest days in the sample, and these arrests were ...

In a new study published in PeerJ Life & Environment, scientists have revealed the intricate vocal patterns of Bornean orangutans, shedding new light on the complexities of their communication. Titled "Vocal Complexity in the Long Calls of Bornean Orangutans," the research, led by Dr. Wendy Erb from the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, unveils the remarkable diversity and variability within orangutan long call vocalizations. Orangutans, the charismatic great apes of Southeast Asia, are known for their complex social behaviors and vocal communication. However, understanding the nuances of their vocal repertoire ...

Using human cells in laboratory rats, Michigan Medicine researchers have developed a functional model of thoracic aortic aneurysm, creating opportunities for more effective understanding of disease development and treatments for the potentially fatal condition, a study suggests.    There are currently no medical treatments for thoracic aortic aneurysm, which is a weakening and bulging at the body’s largest blood vessel in the chest.    The aneurysm often does not cause any symptoms and must ...

More than 20,000 volunteers have been recruited to a resource aimed at speeding up the development of much-needed dementia drugs. The cohort will enable scientists in universities and industry to involve healthy individuals who may be at increased risk of dementia in clinical trials to test whether new drugs can slow the decline in various brain functions including memory and delay the onset of dementia. Using the resource, scientists have already been able to show for the first time that two important bodily mechanisms – inflammation and metabolism – play a role in the decline in brain function as we age. By ...

Artificial intelligence (AI) computer programs that process MRI results show differences in how the brains of men and women are organized at a cellular level, a new study shows. These variations were spotted in white matter, tissue primarily located in the human brain’s innermost layer, which fosters communication between regions. Men and women are known to experience multiple sclerosis, autism spectrum disorder, migraines, and other brain issues at different rates and with varying symptoms. A detailed understanding of how ...