MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (05/02/2024) — For the first time, chemists in the University of Minnesota Twin Cities College of Science and Engineering have created a highly reactive chemical compound that has eluded scientists for more than 120 years. The discovery could lead to new drug treatments, safer agricultural products, and better electronics. For decades, researchers have been investigating molecules called N-heteroarenes, which are ring-shaped chemical compounds that contain one or more nitrogen atoms. Bio-active molecules having a N-heteroarene core are widely ...

Four proposed state-of-the art image search engines for automating search and retrieval of digital histopathology slides were found to be of inadequate performance for routine clinical care, new research suggests.   The performance of the artificial intelligence algorithms to power the histopathology image databases was worse than expected, with some having less than 50% accuracy, which is not suitable for clinical practice, said Dr. Helen Shang, a third-year internal medicine resident and incoming hematology-oncology fellow at the David Geffen School ...

A new study examined the drinking levels and patterns of young adults before, during and after the pandemic. The researchers found alcohol use and alcohol-related problems substantially decreased in heavy-drinking young adults during the pandemic, and these decreases were still evident as the pandemic began to wane. The results are available in the May 2 issue of the journal Nature Mental Health.   “The pandemic gave us a unique opportunity to see how wide-spread mitigation measures like social distancing and bar/restaurant closures may have affected alcohol consumption,” said lead ...

Northwestern University engineers have developed a new artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm designed specifically for smart robotics. By helping robots rapidly and reliably learn complex skills, the new method could significantly improve the practicality — and safety — of robots for a range of applications, including self-driving cars, delivery drones, household assistants and automation. Called Maximum Diffusion Reinforcement Learning (MaxDiff RL), the algorithm’s success lies in its ability to encourage robots to explore their environments as randomly as possible in order to gain a diverse set of ...

Play is widespread, but far from ubiquitous, across the animal kingdom. Especially common in mammals, play is also known to occur in taxa as diverse as birds, fish, octopuses, and even insects. But what is its function, given that natural selection never selects fun for its own sake? One prominent hypothesis is that play is beneficial to individuals because it allows them to practice skills needed later in life. Now, a study in Frontiers in Ethology has shown that male baby chickens play far more than females. This result is of interest given that domestic ...

Osaka, Japan – Probiotics offer a range of health benefits, but their adverse effects can occasionally lead to bacteremia, wherein bacteria circulate in the bloodstream throughout the body. In Japan, Clostridium butyricum (C. butyricum) MIYAIRI 588 is commonly used, yet the prevalence and characteristics of bacteremia caused by this strain, as well as its bacteriological and genetic profile, remain unknown. A research team from the Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka University, found an association between bacteremia and probiotics from a study of the genetic materials of bacteria in hospitalized patients with bacteremia. From September 2011 to February 2023, ...

Medical College of Georgia scientists report that a gene previously implicated in the development of atherosclerotic lesions in coronary arteries could be key to understanding why many people don’t benefit from the most used therapy for neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a leading cause of blindness. AMD is a condition characterized by abnormal blood vessel growth in the back of the eye. It is highly prevalent in the elderly and people with diabetes, obesity, and many other chronic metabolic diseases. Excessive vascular growth damages the macula, the part of the eye that translates light into image signals. Anti-VEGF therapy, which blocks vascular ...

Osaka, Japan – It might start simply, with a cough or sneeze…but in some cases, the flu virus can make its way to your brain, causing serious symptoms or even death through a disease known as influenza-associated encephalopathy (IAE). Now, in a study published in Acta Neuropathologica, researchers have revealed that IAE may be caused by the virus entering the brain through a specific cell type, and have identified possible treatment strategies. Although IAE is increasingly common, surprisingly little is known about ...

In the shadowy world of counterfeit alcoholic spirit production, where profits soar and brands are exploited, the true extent of this illegal market remains shrouded. Now scientists from the International Centre for Brewing and Distilling (ICBD) at Heriot-Watt University, in Edinburgh, Scotland, working alongside Dr John Edwards of Process NMR Associates, based in New York, are compiling a database to test, compare and log counterfeit spirits. The research has featured in a paper, titled, Worldwide Illicit and Counterfeit ...

Charge-recharge cycling of lithium-superrich iron oxide, a cost-effective and high-capacity cathode for new-generation lithium-ion batteries, can be greatly improved by doping with readily available mineral elements. The energy capacity and charge-recharge cycling (cyclability) of lithium-iron-oxide, a cost-effective cathode material for rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, is improved by adding small amounts of abundant elements. The development, achieved by researchers at Hokkaido University, Tohoku University, and Nagoya Institute of Technology, is reported in the journal ACS Materials Letters. Lithium-ion batteries have become indispensable in modern life, used in a multitude ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Artificial intelligence analysis of data gathered by acoustic recording devices is a promising new tool for monitoring the marbled murrelet and other secretive, hard-to-study species, research by Oregon State University and the U.S. Forest Service has shown. The threatened marbled murrelet is an iconic Pacific Northwest seabird that’s closely related to puffins and murres, but unlike those birds, murrelets raise their young as far as 60 miles inland in mature and old-growth forests. “There are very few species like it,” said co-author Matt Betts of the OSU College of Forestry. “And there’s no ...

Professor Dong-Woo Cho from the Department of Mechanical Engineering along with Jae Yun Kim, a PhD candidate, from the School of Interdisciplinary Bioscience and Bioengineering and Tugce Sen, a PhD student, from Department of Mechanical Engineering at POSTECH, teamed up with Professor Jae Yeon Lee from Daegu Haany University's Department of Companion Animal Health. Together, they crafted a material aimed at swiftly staunching kidney bleeding and facilitating wound recovery. Their research featured in the online edition of Biomaterials, an ...

  MIAMI, FLORIDA (May 1, 2024) – Patients in South Florida with metastatic melanoma will soon have access to the first cellular therapy for this advanced form of skin cancer, following its recent approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The therapy, known as tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte therapy, or TIL, uses patients’ own immune cells to battle their cancer. It will be available to patients at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine as South Florida’s only center offering ...

A recent study led by UC Davis Health researchers provides new insights into the molecular changes linked to the rare genetic condition 22q11.2 deletion syndrome, or 22q. It found unique biomarkers that could identify patients with 22q who may be more likely to develop schizophrenia or psychiatric conditions, including psychosis, which is commonly associated with 22q. The research was published in the journal Metabolomics. People with 22q are missing a piece of chromosome 22 that contains more than 30 genes. This loss can lead to a variety of health challenges, ...

University of Central Florida College of Medicine researcher Renee Fleeman is on a mission to kill drug-resistant bacteria, and her latest study has identified a therapy that can penetrate the slime that such infections use to protect themselves from antibiotics. In a study published recently in Cell Reports Physical Science, Fleeman showed that an antimicrobial peptide from cows has potential for treating incurable infections from the bacterium Klebsiella pneumoniae. The bacteria, commonly found in the intestines, is usually harmless. ...

Psilocybin - the active ingredient in “magic” mushrooms - is a more effective treatment for symptoms of depression than controls, providing further support for its potential as an antidepressant, suggests a study published by The BMJ today. The researchers say the findings are encouraging but “further research is needed to clarify the factors that maximise psilocybin’s treatment potential for symptoms of depression.” Depression affects an estimated 300 million ...

Global and regional analyses reveal persistent health differences between females and males across the 20 leading causes of disease burden (illness and death—quantified as health loss) over the past 30 years. Overall, health loss is higher in males, particularly driven by premature death; but females, despite tending to live longer, endure higher levels of illness over their lives—underscoring the diverse and evolving health needs of men and women at different stages of their lives. These health differences emerge in adolescence highlighting the importance of early interventions and measures to prevent the onset and exacerbation ...

A new Netflix documentary has recreated the face of a 75,000-year-old female Neanderthal whose flattened skull was discovered and rebuilt from hundreds of bone fragments by a team of archaeologists and conservators led by the University of Cambridge. The team excavated the female Neanderthal in 2018 from inside a cave in Iraqi Kurdistan where the species had repeatedly returned to lay their dead to rest. The cave was made famous by work in the late 1950s that unearthed several Neanderthals which appeared ...

Amsterdam, May 2, 2024 – New evidence reveals global underassessment and undertreatment of chronic hepatitis B (HBV), especially among women and Asian minorities in the West, a new study in the Journal of Hepatology, published by Elsevier, details. "In clinical practice we continue to see patients with advanced liver disease due to HBV despite having vaccines for prevention and excellent oral therapy for those who are treatment eligible. Simplifying and broadening HBV management is crucial," according to the researchers. With the World Health Organization's goal to eliminate viral hepatitis by 2030 fast approaching, targeted outreach is needed to reduce new infections ...

A new publication from Opto-Electronic Advances; DOI  10.29026/oea.2024.230182 , discusses efficient stochastic parallel gradient descent training for on-chip optical processors.   With the explosive growth of global data volume, space-division multiplexing (SDM) technology has been emerged as a promising solution to enhance the communication capacity. Over the past few decades, SDM has been realized in few-mode fibers, multi-core fiber and free-space optical communication systems. However, all of above solutions face challenges of signal crosstalk because of the mixing between different channels during the ...

A new publication from Opto-Electronic Advances; DOI  10.29026/oea.2024.230216  , discusses liquid crystal-integrated metasurfaces for an active photonic platform.   In the field of optical science, the exploration of metasurfaces has garnered significant attention over the last few decades. Metasurfaces represent a sophisticated evolution of traditional optical components, comprising nanostructures meticulously arranged to enable precise control over light manipulation. These nanostructures function as building blocks, allowing for the creation of lenses with unique ...

A new publication from Opto-Electronic Science; DOI 10.29026/oes.2024.230029  discusses unraveling the efficiency losses and improving methods in quantum dot-based infrared up-conversion photodetectors.   Traditional infrared imagers are usually constructed by bonding an infrared PD with each pixel of a thin film transistor (TFT)-based active-matrix backplane. A feasible way to avoid the costly pixilation is to use infrared up-conversion photodetector, in which an infrared photodetector (PD) and a light-emitting diode (LED) with large effective areas are back-to-back ...

“Resistance training can reverse certain aspects of skeletal muscle aging.” BUFFALO, NY- May 1, 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, “A novel deep proteomic approach in human skeletal muscle unveils distinct molecular signatures affected by aging and resistance training.” The skeletal muscle proteome alterations to aging and resistance training have been reported in prior studies. However, ...

A new publication from Opto-Electronic Science; DOI 10.29026/oes.2024.230036 discusses high-intensity spatial-mode steerable frequency up-converter toward on-chip integration.   Integrated photonic devices consisting of micro-lasers, amplifiers, optical waveguides, frequency converters, and modulators on a single chip, enabling control over photon's spatial modes, frequencies, angular momenta, and phases, are essential for preparing high-dimensional quantum entangled states, high-capacity photon information processing, all-optical communication, and miniaturization of photonic computing. However, ...

In 2016, The Jackson Laboratory (JAX), a National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center and at the forefront of cancer research, launched the Maine Cancer Genomics Initiative (MCGI) to bring the latest progress in cancer care to rural Maine patients. Now, after successfully expanding access to genome tumor testing and targeted cancer treatments throughout Maine, the MCGI team provides compelling evidence that genome-matched treatments can provide significant patient benefit. The MCGI report, published recently in npj Precision Oncology, ...