The border crossing separating San Diego, California, from Tijuana, Mexico, is a dynamic place. When it was closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, drug tourism from San Diego to Tijuana continued. This provided a flow of people in both directions, bringing with them not only the virus that causes COVID-19 (SARS-CoV2) but also the virus that causes AIDS (HIV). A collaborative study led by researchers from University of California San Diego and Irvine, recently published in the Lancet, found that rather than preventing the spread of disease, closing the border actually increased the rate of HIV transmission. Injection drug use increases the risk of HIV infection through ...

A new study has found that pancreatic cancer cells are different based on their location in the pancreas, providing new information about tumors that could lead to better targeted treatments. Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is an aggressive cancer, and the diagnosis has dramatically increased over the last decade. It is currently the seventh leading cause of cancer deaths in men and women globally and projected to be the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths world-wide by 2030. This increase is due to several factors such as an increase in obesity and diabetes. Houston Methodist’s ...

The disruption to the supply of a prescription medicine that helps people stop smoking may have led to thousands fewer people quitting each year in England, which will lead to avoidable deaths in future, suggests a new study led by UCL (University College London) researchers. Varenicline (also known as Champix) is one of the most effective treatments to help smokers quit. It works by reducing cravings for nicotine and easing withdrawal symptoms. But its distribution was paused in July 2021 in the UK and Europe as a precaution after higher than expected levels of a potentially ...

Interdisciplinary researchers in Illinois, the U.S. and around the world can advance their projects with the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology's new Zeiss Xradia 630 Versa micro-CT scanner, the first of its kind with life science applications in the U.S. Computed tomography, or CT, is an imaging technique that involves capturing a series of cross-sectional X-ray scans of an object or sample — be it a material like concrete or a biological sample like an insect or human body. Stacked on top of one another, the images non-invasively reconstruct the subject in 3D from the inside out. Microscopic computed tomography, or micro-CT, helps researchers reconstruct ...

Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) is a chronic and debilitating pain disorder, typically considered lifelong with limited treatment options. Now, groundbreaking research finds that early detection and effective treatment can lead to significant recovery within 18 months, offering hope to millions of people worldwide.   Led by NeuRA’s Centre for Pain IMPACT and conducted in partnership with the University of South Australia, the findings could deliver life-changing outcomes for people with CRPS, with up to 80% of patients recovering ...

Carbon emissions associated with air travel to professional conferences make up a sizable fraction of the emissions produced by researchers in academia. Andrea Gokus, a McDonnell Center postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, is advocating for a reduction of these emissions. In a paper published in PNAS Nexus, Gokus and collaborators estimated the CO2-equivalent emissions for conference travel to all 362 open meetings in the field of astronomy in 2019. The total is an estimated ...

As the world faces the loss of a staggering number of species of animals and plants to endangerment and extinction, one University of Michigan scientist has an urgent message: Chemists and pharmacists should be key players in species conservation efforts.   "Medicinal chemistry expertise is desperately needed on the frontlines of extinction," said Timothy Cernak, assistant professor of medicinal chemistry at the U-M College of Pharmacy. "Animals are dying at staggering rates, but they don't have to. Modern ...

URBANA, Ill. –  When scientists look at the Earth’s available water for ecosystem services, they don’t just look at precipitation. They must also account for water moving from the ground to the atmosphere, a process known as evapotranspiration (ET). ET includes evaporation from soil and open water pools such as lakes, rivers, and ponds, as well as transpiration from plant leaves. The difference between precipitation and ET indicates the water balance available for societal needs, including agricultural and industrial production. However, measuring ET is challenging. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign ...

The inventors of a suite of tests that enable food packages to signal if their contents are contaminated are working to bring producers and regulators together to get their inventions into commercial products, with the goal of preventing illness and reducing food waste. Though the tests would cost just a few cents per package, food producers are reluctant to add costs that consumers will ultimately have to bear, say the McMaster researchers behind an article published today in the journal Nature Reviews Bioengineering. A system based on smart packaging, the researchers say, would save producers ...

MADISON — In an effort to improve delivery of costly medical treatments, a team of researchers in electrical engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison has developed a stimulating method that could make the human body more receptive to certain gene therapies. The researchers exposed liver cells to short electric pulses — and those gentle zaps caused the liver cells to take in more than 40 times the amount of gene therapy material compared to cells that were not exposed to pulsed electric fields. The method could help reduce the dosage needed for these treatments, making them much safer and more affordable. The research appears April 30 in the ...

Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago is pleased to announce the first pediatric use of the novel fluorescent agent CYTALUX during surgery to remove lung metastases. The drug allows surgeons to better visualize cancer in the lung, as well as potentially detect additional cancerous nodules missed by preoperative imaging. This drug is FDA-approved in adult patients, but Lurie Children’s is the first-in-pediatrics to have an Investigational New Drug application with the FDA to study ...

Four U-M projects funded by the Department of Energy's Nuclear Energy University Partnerships program aim to make nuclear energy safer and more equitable.    The projects are designed to improve the monitoring of nuclear reactors during operation; explore the safety of an advanced modular reactor design; develop a framework for ethical, consent-based siting of nuclear facilities; and upgrade a facility for modeling radiation damage to reactor components.    Real-time radiation effects on optics   How well could optical sensors monitor future advanced nuclear reactors? Funded with $1 million, Igor Jovanovic, a professor of nuclear ...

The University of Texas at Arlington is honoring two faculty for their outstanding contributions to research.   Yuze (Alice) Sun, associate professor of electrical engineering, and Venu Varanasi, associate professor in the Bone Muscle Research Center, are the 2024 recipients of the University Award for Outstanding Research Achievement or Creative Accomplishment. This award recognizes faculty members for achieving significant research or creative accomplishments during the past three years. “Alice and Venu are truly bright stars on the faculty at UT Arlington,” ...

As an undergraduate student in The University of Texas at Arlington’s Honors College, Hannah Selvarathinam knew she wanted to conduct research. Near the end of her first year at UTA, the Keller native reached out to the lab of biology Assistant Professor Piya Ghose. “Hannah has been a very impressive scholar from Day 1,” Ghose said. “She had the foresight to reach out for research opportunities very early on.” Ghose brought Selvarathinam in to work on one of the lab’s core projects ...

Nothing lives forever, but compared to other cells in the body, hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are remarkably long-lived. HSCs are blood-forming cells – they give rise to rapidly dividing progenitor cells, which in turn generate hundreds of billions of cells to fulfill the daily demand of oxygen-delivering red blood cells, disease-fighting white blood cells and clot-forming platelets. HSCs typically remain dormant within the bone marrow, yet they possess the ability to activate and replenish blood cells continuously, maintaining a relatively youthful profile throughout the life of an organism. What is the secret of ...

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and University of Pennsylvania published a new Journal of Marketing study that examines online educational platforms and the question of whether they should release content through a scheduled format that resembles a traditional university course or use an on-demand release strategy. The study, forthcoming in Journal of Marketing, is titled “More Likely to Pay but Less Engaged: The Effects of Switching Online Courses from Scheduled to On-Demand Release on User Behavior” and ...

Black drivers are more frequently searched during traffic stops without finding contraband than white drivers, according to a University of Michigan study.   Institute for Social Research scientists Maggie Meyer and Richard Gonzalez analyzed data from 98 million traffic stops, and showed that innocent Black drivers were likely to be searched about 3.4 to 4.5 percent of the time while innocent white drivers were likely to be searched about 1.9 to 2.7 percent of the time. Their results are published in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology.   "We show that there's ...

The Ecological Society of America is pleased to announce its 2024 Fellows. The Society’s fellowship program recognizes the many ways in which its members contribute to ecological research, communication, education, management and policy. This year, the ESA Governing Board has confirmed nine new Fellows and ten new Early Career Fellows. Fellows are members who have made outstanding contributions to a wide range of fields served by ESA, including, but not restricted to, those that advance or apply ecological knowledge in academics, ...

Currently, most therapies for allergic diseases require lifelong treatment. Allergic reactions, characterized by ongoing (type 2) inflammation in response to chronic antigen exposure, underlie many chronic diseases in humans, including asthma, atopic dermatitis, ulcerative colitis and more. T helper 2 (Th2) cells play an important role in the body's immune response, particularly in allergic reactions. Despite their central role, the sustained activity of Th2 cells during allergic reactions, even in the face of constant antigen exposure, has long puzzled researchers. A research team that included authors from Mass General Brigham, including ...

Link to release: https://www.washington.edu/news/2024/04/30/oects/   Researchers who want to bridge the divide between biology and technology spend a lot of time thinking about translating between the two different “languages” of those realms. “Our digital technology operates through a series of electronic on-off switches that control the flow of current and voltage,” said Rajiv Giridharagopal, a research scientist at the University of Washington. “But our bodies operate on chemistry. In our brains, neurons ...

MIAMI, FLORIDA (April 30, 2024) – Newly updated guidelines on neuroendocrine tumors developed by an expert at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and collaborators provide clinicians with the latest recommendations for staging and management of these rare but increasingly diagnosed tumors. The guidelines, developed for the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) and summarized today in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, highlight recent changes for treating these tumors and offer a snapshot of this rapidly evolving ...

Around 6,200 BCE, the climate changed. Global temperatures dropped, sea levels rose and the southern Levant, including modern-day Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Lebanon, southern Syria and the Sinai desert, entered a period of drought.  Previously, archaeologists believed that this abrupt shift in global climate, called the 8.2ka event, may have led to the widespread abandonment of coastal settlements in the southern Levant. In a recent study published with the journal Antiquity, researchers at UC San Diego, the University of Haifa and Bar-Ilan University share new evidence suggesting at least one village formerly thought abandoned not only remained occupied, but ...

“[...] these findings may help to advance our understanding of the pathogenesis of corneal endothelial disease and may lead to the discovery of new therapies targeting senescent cells.” BUFFALO, NY- April 30, 2024 – A new research paper was published on the cover of Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 16, Issue 8, entitled, “Senescent characteristics of human corneal endothelial cells upon ultraviolet-A exposure.” In ...

Common household products containing nanoparticles – grains of engineered material so miniscule they are invisible to the eye – could be contributing to a new form of indoor air pollution, according to a Rutgers study. In a study published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, a team of Rutgers researchers found people walking through a space, where a consumer product containing nanoparticles was recently sprayed, stirred residual specks off carpet fibers and floor surfaces, projecting them some three ...

An international team of researchers has successfully used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to map the weather on the hot gas-giant exoplanet WASP-43 b. Precise brightness measurements over a broad spectrum of mid-infrared light, combined with 3D climate models and previous observations from other telescopes, suggest the presence of thick, high clouds covering the nightside, clear skies on the dayside, and equatorial winds upwards of 5,000 miles per hour mixing atmospheric gases around the planet. The investigation is just the latest demonstration of the exoplanet science now possible with Webb’s ...