Cyanobacteria are one of the oldest and most important life forms in the world – for example as they took an essential part in producing the oxygen in our atmosphere. Some types form long filaments composed of a few to more than 1,000 individual cells. In this form, the filamentous bacteria can move around. The principles of this locomotion have now been investigated by a research team led by Stefan Karpitschka, group leader at the MPI-DS and professor at the University of Konstanz, in collaboration with the University of Bayreuth and the University of Göttingen.  "We measured the force during locomotion on individual ...

Omics analysis is the process of analyzing large data sets to extract meaningful information about biological molecules—genes, DNA, RNA, proteins, metabolites or more—with the goal of illuminating typical molecular pathways and deciphering where things go awry in disease. In a study led by Bruno A. Benitez, MD, a human geneticist and director of the Neurobiorepository in the department of Neurology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), investigators used machine learning approaches to integrate high-throughput transcriptomic, proteomic, metabolomic, and lipidomic profiles to provide novel ...

In a new paper, researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and Stevens Institute of Technology show a new way of thinking about the fair impacts of AI decisions. They draw on a well-established tradition known as social welfare optimization, which aims to make decisions fairer by focusing on the overall benefits and harms to individuals. This method can be used to evaluate the industry standard assessment tools for AI fairness, which look at approval rates across protected groups. "In assessing fairness, the AI community tries to ensure equitable treatment for groups that differ in economic level, ...

WASHINGTON  –  U.S. Naval Research Laboratory scientists and engineers received the prestigious Department of Navy Dr. Delores M. Etter Top Scientists and Engineers of the Year Award, June 12, during an awards ceremony hosted at the Pentagon. “The Top Scientists and Engineers of the Year award program recognizes and acknowledges the excellence of our highest performing scientists and engineers in support of the Department of the Navy," said Frederick J. Stefany, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, ...

Waltham — June 14, 2024 — When implemented in Nebraska, the WISEWOMAN program supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which offers services for women ages 40–64 who are low-income and uninsured/underinsured, improved hypertension, blood pressure self-management, diet, physical activity, and body weight. Jianping Daniels, PhD and colleagues, of the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, detail these findings in a supplement to the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.  In an introduction ...

Researchers have presented the latest findings from a clinical trial aimed at discovering a cure for sickle cell disease, a painful genetic blood disorder with limited treatment options. Conducted as part of the multicenter RUBY Trial, researchers shared data on the safety and effectiveness of renizgamglogene autogedtemcel (reni-cel, formerly known as EDIT-301), an experimental one-time gene editing cell therapy, among its 18 patients at the European Hematology Association 2024 Hybrid Congress (EHA) in Madrid, Spain. This innovative treatment modifies a patient’s own blood-forming stem cells ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA - Large language models like those that power ChatGPT have shown impressive performance on tasks like drafting legal briefs, analyzing the sentiment of customer reviews, or translating documents into different languages. These machine-learning models typically use only natural language to process information and answer queries, which can make it difficult for them to perform tasks that require numerical or symbolic reasoning. For instance, a large language model might be able to memorize and recite a list of recent U.S. presidents and their birthdays, but that same model could fail if asked the question “Which U.S. presidents elected after 1950 ...

Residential treatment is among the most effective tools for treating substance use disorder, with people in these settings showing improvement not only in their substance use but also in their mental health, social functioning and quality of life. However, when people leave residential substance use facilities, they face immense challenges as they attempt to reintegrate into their communities and return to their normal lives. As many as 40 to 70 percent of people who complete residential treatment return ...

CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing has made possible a multitude of biomedical experiments including studies that systematically turn off genes in cancer cells to look for ones that the cancer cells heavily depend on to survive and grow. These genes, or “cancer dependencies,” are often promising drug targets. But new research shows that many of these CRISPR screening experiments rely on components, called CRISPR/Cas9 guides, that do not perform equally well in cells from people of all ancestries, which can cause CRISPR screens to miss cancer dependencies. These CRISPR guides are short sequences of RNA that ...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Memory immune cells reside in many tissues, poised to react to a second infection or continuing antigen. Yet little is known about these tissue-resident memory cells — how they get there, how they evolve and how they compete in tissues. A five-year, $18.5 million grant will allow University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers to investigate T and B tissue-resident memory cells, known as TRM and BRM cells, in three unique sites — transplanted lungs, transplanted kidneys and the transplanted ...

In the U.S., as farmers wrestle with extreme heat and drought, heavy rainfall and flooding, and erosion—all factors of climate change which can take a toll on crops—there's been a lot of buzz over regenerative agriculture over the past few years, as big agriculture companies promise opportunities to make money from "carbon farming" while also improving soil health.   Regenerative farming strives to improve soil health through various methods, including reduced or no tillage, keeping the soil covered year-round through ...

  The New York Consortium for Space Technology (NYCST) is led by Cornell University, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Defense’s Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation through the Defense Manufacturing Community Support Program.   Ithaca, NY— June 14, 2024 — The New York Consortium for Space Technology Innovation and Development (NYCST) today announced more than $300 thousand has been allocated to support 6 projects through the inaugural round of the consortium’s funding program.  The projects were selected during NYCST’s inaugural ...

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. – June 14, 2024) The innate immune system is responsible for protecting the human body from threats that could cause disease or infection. The system relies on innate immune sensors to detect and transmit signals about these threats. One of the key innate immune strategies to respond to threats is through cell death. New research from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital discovered that NLRC5 plays a previously unknown role as an innate immune sensor, triggering cell death. The findings, published in Cell, show how NLRC5 drives PANoptosis, a prominent type of inflammatory cell death. This understanding has implications for the development of therapeutics ...

Researchers have consistently shown that prenatal exposure to Di (2-ethyhexyl) phthalate harms the reproductive system in male mice and causes fertility defects. In a new study, scientists from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have shown that the combination of DEHP and a high-fat diet in pregnant mice can cause more damage to pups than each factor alone.  Male reproductive disorders are a growing issue due to the global decrease in sperm count and quality. Concerningly, chemicals like DEHP, which can be found in food storage containers, pharmaceuticals, and building materials, have been ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - After surveying food market retailers in three New York City Chinatown districts, Cornell University researchers have found genetic evidence that some endangered species of sea cucumbers – considered a pricey but nutritious dried delicacy – are being sold to consumers. The researchers collected 103 samples of dried sea cucumbers from retail food shops. By using mitochondrial DNA testing, they successfully identified 74 examples of sea cucumbers. Eight were classified as brown sea cucumbers– which are threatened and found on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List due to overharvesting. “We ...

WHAT: The amount of infectious H5N1 influenza viruses in raw milk rapidly declined with heat treatment in laboratory research conducted by scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health. However, small, detectable amounts of infectious virus remained in raw milk samples with high virus levels when treated at 72 degrees Celsius (161.6 degrees Fahrenheit) for 15 seconds—one of the standard pasteurization methods used by the dairy industry. The authors of the study stress, ...

“Elucidating the function of Erk5 in cancer [...] will contribute to a better understanding of cancer pathogenesis and the development of novel therapeutic strategies.” BUFFALO, NY- June 14, 2024 – A new editorial paper was published in Oncoscience (Volume 11) on May 20, 2024, entitled, “Role of Erk5 expressed in bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells on bone homeostasis and its potential applications in cancer treatment.” In their new editorial, researchers Tetsuhiro Horie and Eiichi Hinoi from Kanazawa ...

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. – June 14, 2024) Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital today announced a way to improve molecular scale distance measurements using single-molecule fluorescence resonance energy transfer (smFRET). smFRET quantifies the excitation and emission properties of chemicals called fluorophores.    When an excited electron in the fluorophore relaxes, it emits light after a delay, causing the molecule to glow (fluoresce). However, fluorophores don’t always fluoresce after excitation. Instead, through quantum mechanical ...

SAN ANTONIO, June 14, 2024 – The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio School of Dentistry is preparing to launch its Center for Regenerative Sciences, a new research initiative that aims to position the university at the forefront of regenerative dentistry and medicine. “The center will provide new avenues for interdisciplinary collaborations to accelerate the translation of preclinical discoveries into therapeutic benefit for patients suffering from dental, oral and craniofacial diseases,” said Yong-Hee Chun, DDS, PhD, MS, associate professor of ...

In a major breakthrough for lithium recovery technologies, researchers from the Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology (QIBEBT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, together with collaborators, have developed a crystalline carbon nitride membrane that could transform the lithium extraction industry. The innovative design, which mimics biological ion channels, shows remarkable efficiency and durability in separating lithium ions from magnesium ions in salt-lake brine. The study, published in Science Advances on June 14, introduces a ...

KEY TAKEAWAYS Lung cancer is the most diagnosed cancer and the leading cause of cancer death globally, representing an urgent need for new and improved treatment options. Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital developed a new nanomedicine therapy that delivers anticancer drugs to lung cancer cells and enhances the immune system's ability to fight cancer. The research must undergo rigorous toxicology studies before moving into clinical testing in patients but represents a potential treatment for patients who have failed to respond to traditional immunotherapy. Researchers at Brigham and ...

Atlanta, GA – June 14, 2024 – Antibiotics in the uppermost water surface, known as the sea surface microlayer, can significantly affect the number of bacteria present and contribute to the adaptation of marine bacteria against widely used antibiotics. In new research presented at ASM Microbe, scientists directly assessed the potential effects of antibiotics on bacterial diversity in Jade Bay, Southern North Sea, Germany. The researchers tested the susceptibility and resistance of marine bacteria to ofloxacin, ...

Atlanta, GA—Sepsis is a life-threatening infection complication and accounts for 1.7 million hospitalizations and 350,000 deaths annually in the U.S. Fast and accurate diagnosis is critical, as mortality risk increases up to 8% every hour without effective treatment. However, the current diagnostic standard is reliant on culture growth, which typically takes 2-3 days. Doctors may choose to administer broad-spectrum antibiotics until more information is available for an accurate diagnosis, but these can have limited efficacy and potential toxicity to the patient. In a study presented at ASM Microbe, a team from Day Zero Diagnostics unveiled a novel approach to antimicrobial susceptibility ...

A team of researchers led by Philip Walther at the University of Vienna carried out a pioneering experiment where they measured the effect of the rotation of Earth on quantum entangled photons. The work, just published in Science Advances, represents a significant achievement that pushes the boundaries of rotation sensitivity in entanglement-based sensors, potentially setting the stage for further exploration at the intersection between quantum mechanics and general relativity. Optical Sagnac interferometers are the most sensitive devices to rotations. They have been pivotal in our understanding of fundamental physics since the early years of the last century, contributing to establish ...

Atlanta, Ga. – June 14, 2023 – Researchers have demonstrated that a new technology could quickly and accurately diagnose bloodstream infections. The study findings were reported at ASM Microbe, the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology. “There is a need to be able to rapidly and accurately diagnose bacteremia in newborn babies. They are especially susceptible to long-term morbidities and mortality the longer they go without treatment, or even with inaccurate treatment for bloodstream infections or sepsis,” said presenting study author April Aralar, Ph.D., a ...