CLEVELAND—A team of researchers from the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine has provided fresh insight into the dangers some common household chemicals pose to brain health. They suggest that chemicals found in a wide range of items, from furniture to hair products, may be linked to neurological diseases like multiple sclerosis and autism spectrum disorders. Neurological problems impact millions of people, but only a fraction of cases can be attributed to genetics alone, indicating that unknown environmental factors are important contributors to neurological disease. The new study ...

Imagine a world where complex calculations that currently take months for our best supercomputers to crack could be performed in a matter of minutes. Quantum computing is revolutionizing our digital world. In a research article published Feb. 19 in Intelligent Computing, researchers unveiled an automated protocol-design approach that could unlock the computational power of quantum devices sooner than we imagined. Quantum computational advantage represents a critical milestone in the development of quantum technologies. It signifies the ability of quantum computers to outperform classical supercomputers in certain tasks. Achieving ...

PITTSBURGH – The University of Pittsburgh has received a pair of two-year grants from the National Institutes of Health to support studies on the health effects of environmental contamination resulting from the train derailment that spilled hazardous materials into the local communities in East Palestine, Ohio, in February 2023. The grants, totaling nearly $1 million, were awarded through a National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences ...

Scientists have found a “tipping point” in the evolution of fungi that throttles their growth and sculpts their shapes. The findings, published in the journal Cell Reports, demonstrate how small changes in environmental factors can lead to huge changes in evolutionary outcomes. Fungi are nature’s great composters. They wait within the forest floor to feed on fallen trees and autumn leaves, releasing essential nutrients from these plants back into the Earth.   Although fungi often ...

About The Study: The cumulative incidence of heart offer acceptance by a transplant center team was consistently lower for Black candidates than for white candidates of the same gender and higher for women than for men in this study. These disparities persisted after adjusting for candidate-, donor-, and offer-level variables, possibly suggesting racial and gender bias in the decision-making process. Further investigation of site-level decision-making may reveal strategies for equitable donor heart acceptance.  Authors: Khadijah Breathett, M.D., M.S., of Indiana University in Indianapolis, ...

About The Study: In this study of 18,000 adults who were employed, greater job flexibility was significantly associated with reduced odds of experiencing serious psychological distress and experiencing anxiety. Greater job security was significantly associated with reduced odds of experiencing serious psychological distress and experiencing anxiety.  Authors: Monica L. Wang, Sc.D., M.S., of the Boston University School of Public Health, is the corresponding author.  To access ...

About The Study: Inappropriate diagnosis of community-acquired pneumonia was common, particularly among older adults, those with dementia, and those presenting with altered mental status in this study of 17,000 hospitalized adults treated for pneumonia in 48 Michigan hospitals. Full-course antibiotic treatment of those inappropriately diagnosed with community-acquired pneumonia may be harmful.  Authors: Ashwin B. Gupta, M.D., of the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website ...

About The Study: The findings of this observational study of 20,000 adults suggest that a measure of follow-up colonoscopy within defined periods after an abnormal result of a stool-based screening test for colorectal cancer is warranted based on low current performance rates and would be feasible to collect by health systems and produce valid, reliable results.  Authors: Elizabeth L. Ciemins, Ph.D., M.P.H., M.A., of the American Medical Group Association in Alexandria, Virginia, is the corresponding author.  To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media ...

Coastal seas form a complex transition zone between the two largest CO2 sinks in the global carbon cycle: land and ocean. Ocean researchers have now succeeded for the first time in investigating the role of the coastal ocean in a seamless model representation. The team led by Dr. Moritz Mathis from the Cluster of Excellence for Climate Research CLICCS at Universität Hamburg and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon was able to show: The intensity of CO2 uptake is higher in coastal seas than in the open ocean. This is evidenced by a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. To ...

Thanks to diligent observers, seahorses, those enigmatic and charismatic fish, are not only being discovered in new habitats and expanded geographic ranges, they are also being found at new ocean depths. While their capacity for male pregnancy has long fascinated people, new information on sex ratio and pregnancy seasonality has been discovered by, well, you. Researchers from Project Seahorse – a marine conservation team based at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) – identified and reviewed new findings related to 35 of the 46 seahorse species found around the globe, ...

Next-generation advanced high/pulsed power capacitors urgently require dielectric materials with outstanding energy storage performance. (Bi0.5Na0.5)TiO3-based material, a typical lead-free ferroelectrics, has the characteristics of high polarization strength and excellent component compatibility, making it emerge as a potential candidate for energy storage applications.   Researchers have made an interesting breakthrough in the modification of the BNT-based ferroelectrics, an effective method for various properties such ...

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 the disease in recent years, the UVA researchers say that ...

For researchers studying the acoustic behavior of whales, distinguishing which animal is vocalizing is like a teacher trying to figure out which student responded first when the entire class is calling out the answer. This is because many of the techniques used to capture audio record a large sample size of sounds. A major example of this is passive acoustic monitoring (PAM), which records audio via a microphone in one location, usually a stationary or moving platform in the ocean. While this method allows researchers to gather acoustic data over a long time period, it ...

SAN ANTONIO — March 25, 2024 —Southwest Research Institute is investing internal funding to develop more effective conversion surfaces to allow future spacecraft instruments to collect and analyze low-energy particles. Conversion surfaces are ultra-smooth, ultra-thin surfaces covering a silicon wafer that convert neutral atoms into ions to more effectively detect particles from outer space. Changing the charge of particles simplifies and enhances detection and analysis capabilities. Dr. Jianliang Lin of the Institute’s Mechanical Engineering Division and Dr. Justyna Sokół of SwRI’s Space Science Division lead the multidisciplinary project. The project builds ...

Combinatorial optimization problems (COPs) have applications in many different fields such as logistics, supply chain management, machine learning, material design and drug discovery, among others, for finding the optimal solution to complex problems. These problems are usually very computationally intensive using classical computers and thus solving COPs using quantum computers has attracted significant attention from both academia and industry. Quantum computers take advantage of the quantum property of superposition, using specialized qubits, that can exist in an infinite yet contained number of states of 0 or 1 or any combination of the two, to quickly ...

A new study combining genetic, palaeoecological, and archaeological evidence has unveiled the Persian Plateau as a pivotal geographic location serving as a hub for Homo sapiens during the early stages of their migration out of Africa.   This revelation sheds new light on the complex journey of human populations, challenging previous understandings of our species' expansion into Eurasia.  The study, published in Nature Communications, highlights a crucial period between approximately 70,000 to 45,000 years ago when human populations did not uniformly spread across Eurasia, ...

PULLMAN, Wash. – The famous work ethic of honey bees might spell disaster for these busy crop pollinators as the climate warms, new research indicates. Flying shortens the lives of bees, and worker honey bees will fly to find flowers whenever the weather is right, regardless of how much honey is already in the hive. Using climate and bee population models, researchers found that increasingly long autumns with good flying weather for bees raises the likelihood of colony collapse in the spring. The study, published in Scientific Reports, focused on the Pacific Northwest but holds implications for hives across the U.S. The researchers ...

All present day non African human populations are the result of subdivisions that took place after their ancestors left Africa at least 60.000 years ago. How long did it take for these separations to take place? Almost 20.000 years, during which they were all part of a single population. Where did they live for all this time? We don’t know, yet. This is a conversation that could have taken place one year ago, now it is possible to give clearer answers to these questions thanks to the study recently published in Nature Communications (1) led by the researchers from the University ...

MISSOULA – The escalation of extreme wildfires globally has prompted a critical examination of wildfire management strategies. A new study from the University of Montana reveals how fire suppression ensures that wildfires will burn under extreme conditions at high severity, exacerbating the impacts of climate change and fuel accumulation. The study used computer simulations to show that attempting to suppress all wildfires results in fires burning with more severe ecological impacts, with accelerated increases in burned area beyond those expected from fuel accumulation or climate change. “Fire suppression has unintended consequences,” said lead author Mark Kreider, a Ph.D. ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — While Hollywood and Silicon Valley love the limelight, California is an agricultural powerhouse, too. Agricultural products sold in the Golden State totaled $59 billion in 2022. But rising temperatures, declining precipitation and decades of over pumping may require drastic changes to farming. Legislation to address the problem could even see fields taken out of cultivation. Fortunately, a study out of UC Santa Barbara suggests less extreme measures could help address California’s water issues. Researchers combined remote sensing, big data and machine ...

Humans pass on more viruses to domestic and wild animals than we catch from them, according to a major new analysis of viral genomes by UCL researchers. For the new paper published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, the team analysed all publicly available viral genome sequences, to reconstruct where viruses have jumped from one host to infect another vertebrate species. Most emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases are caused by viruses circulating in animals. When these viruses cross over from animals into humans, a process known as zoonosis, they can cause disease outbreaks, epidemics and pandemics such as Ebola, flu or Covid-19. Given the enormous impact ...

Understanding the behavior of matter is crucial for advancing scientific fields like biology, chemistry, and materials science. X-ray crystallography has been instrumental in this pursuit, allowing scientists to determine molecular structures with precision. In traditional X-ray crystallography experiments, a single crystal is exposed to X-rays multiple times to obtain diffraction signals. This poses a problem, where the sample has its structure altered or damaged by X-ray exposure. In recent years, advances in technology have allowed for the development of “time-resolved serial femtosecond crystallography” (TR-SFX). In serial ...

More efficient use of phosphorus could see limited stocks of the important fertiliser last more than 500 years and boost global food production to feed growing populations. But these benefits will only happen if countries are less wasteful with how they use phosphorus, a study published today in Nature Food shows. Around 30-40 per cent of farm soils have over-applications of phosphorus, with European and North American countries over-applying the most. The global population is due to hit nearly 10 billion by 2050 and it is estimated that to feed ...

RICHLAND, Wash.— A commonplace chemical used in water treatment facilities has been repurposed for large-scale energy storage in a new battery design by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The design provides a pathway to a safe, economical, water-based, flow battery made with Earth-abundant materials. It provides another pathway in the quest to incorporate intermittent energy sources such as wind and solar energy into the nation’s electric grid. The researchers report ...

Scientists from The Australian National University (ANU) have discovered a gene mutation is responsible for causing psoriasis – a chronic inflammatory skin disease that causes patients to develop red, scaly and itchy patches across their body. According to ANU researcher Dr Chelisa Cardinez, if two copies of this mutated gene (known as IKBKB) are present, patients with psoriasis may go on to develop psoriatic arthritis, leaving them with joint pain, stiffness and swelling. Thanks to the world-first discovery from ANU, scientists now know what causes the progression from a skin-only disease to a skin and joint disease. It’s hoped the findings will lead ...