HOUSTON ― The Institute for Data Science in Oncology (IDSO) at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center today announced the appointment of its inaugural cohort of IDSO Affiliates. These 33 talented scientists, clinicians and staff bring diverse expertise to help IDSO leadership and focus area co-leads advance collaborative data science projects and align the institute’s efforts with MD Anderson’s mission to end cancer.     “We are proud to welcome these exceptional individuals to the growing IDSO community, and we look forward ...

Toughening has always been an important research direction of structure ceramics. The addition of secondary phases to the ceramic matrix to prepare composite ceramics is an effective toughening pathway in the field of structure ceramics. Both phase-type and microstructure of the secondary phases play a decisive role in the toughening effect of the ceramic matrix. Being different from the conventional independent phase as the secondary phase, B4C@TiB2 core–shell structural unit has been purposely designed as an innovative kind of secondary phase to toughen the Al2O3 ceramic matrix, providing a new concept for the toughening studies of structural ceramics.   A ...

Messenger RNA (mRNA) made its big leap into the public limelight during the pandemic, thanks to its cornerstone role in several COVID-19 vaccines. But mRNAs, which are genetic sequences that instruct the body to produce proteins, are also being developed as a new class of drugs. For mRNAs to have broad therapeutic uses, however, the molecules will need to last longer in the body than those that make up the COVID vaccines.  Researchers from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and MIT have engineered a ...

The last time you dropped a favorite mug or sat on your glasses, you may have been too preoccupied to take much notice of the intricate pattern of cracks that appeared in the broken object. But capturing the formation of such patterns is the specialty of John Kolinski and his team at the Laboratory of Engineering Mechanics of Soft Interfaces (EMSI) in EPFL’s School of Engineering. They aim to understand how cracks propagate in brittle solids, which is essential for developing and testing safe and cost-effective composite materials for use in construction, sports, and aerospace engineering. But traditional mechanics approaches to analyzing crack formation assume ...

Decommissioned offshore structures offer limited long-term ecological benefits if they are simply left in the ocean to serve as artificial reefs, a new study suggests. The research, published in the journal Nature Sustainability, saw researchers carrying out a comprehensive analysis of existing studies into the environmental impacts of marine artificial structures – including oil and gas platforms and offshore wind farms – all over the world. It highlighted that such installations can offer some ecological benefits – including increasing the diversity and abundance of fish species – in areas where the ...

There can be no analysis without data. In this spirit, researchers from the University of Bonn and the Swiss Federal Institution of Technology (ETH) Zurich have published a database containing over 6,000 agri-environmental policies, thus enabling their peers as well as policymakers and businesses to seek answers to all manner of different questions. The researchers have used two examples to demonstrate how this can be done: how a country’s economic development is linked to its adoption of agri-environmental policies and how such policies impact soil erosion. Their study has now been published in “Nature Food.” Embargo: Don´t publish before March 22, ...

Embargoed until 08:00 AM GMT / 04:00 AM ET Friday 22 March 2024 Bees need food up to a month earlier than provided by recommended pollinator plants Plant species which are recommended as ‘pollinator friendly’ in Europe begin flowering up to a month too late for bees, resulting in low colony survival and low production of queens.  This is the first time that research has quantified the decline in colony survival and queen production due to a shortage of early season food. Enhancing ...

Weak fluctuations in superconductivity1, a precursor phenomenon to superconductivity, have been successfully detected by a research group of Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech). This breakthrough was achieved by measuring the thermoelectric effect2　in superconductors over a wide range of magnetic fields and over a wide range of temperatures from much higher than the superconducting transition temperature to very low temperatures near absolute zero. This revealed the full picture of fluctuations in superconductivity ...

The morphology of an animal's teeth often reflects its diet. A well-known example of a mammal that feeds in the water is the crabeater seal (Lobodon carcinophaga), which consumes large amounts of zooplankton. Crabeater seals have complex, jagged teeth, which are believed to function as a sieve to retain krill in their mouths and filter it from seawater. Furthermore, recent studies have shown that the Baikal seal (Pusa sibirica) also preys on large quantities of zooplankton and possesses distinctive jagged teeth. Thus, while behavioral observations and tooth morphology studies suggest a ...

Bottom Line: Among patients over 65 who received an allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant (allo-HCT) for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) between 2000 and 2021, leukemia-free and overall survival improved significantly over time. Journal in Which the Study was Published: Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Author: Ali Bazarbachi, MD, PhD, senior author of the study and a professor at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon Background: AML ...

  · Long genes have more potential sites for DNA damage · Genes involved in brain loss during aging and linked to Alzheimer’s are very long · New view of biological aging differs from previous beliefs CHICAGO --- What causes our body to age? Four complementary studies, including one from Northwestern Medicine, have come to the same conclusion: long genes.  In a new paper, the scientists write about their findings and how they advance existing knowledge about aging.  “Long genes ...

Water eletrolysis process is a system that produces hydrogen by electrolyzing water. It is an eco-friendly technology that can produce hydrogen fuel, a future energy source, without emitting environmental pollutants, but its limitations have been pointed out as low hydrogen production efficiency and high production costs. Recently, a team of researchers from Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) published research that solved both problems at once, attracting attention.   A collaborative research team comprising Professor Jong Kyu Kim, Jaerim Kim, a Ph. D. candidate, Professor ...

Scientists believe that planetary systems like our solar system contain more rocky objects than gas-rich ones. Around our sun, these include the inner planets – Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars –  the asteroid belt and the Kuiper belt objects such as Pluto. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, on the other hand, contain mostly gas. But scientists also have known for a long time that planet-forming disks start out with 100 times more mass in gas than solids, which leads to a pressing question: When ...

Imagine if every time you saw a face, it appeared distorted. Well, for those who have a very rare condition known as prosopometamorphopsia (PMO), which causes facial features to appear distorted, that is reality. As the Dartmouth-based website about prosopometamorphopsia explains, "'Prosopo' comes from the Greek word for face 'prosopon' while 'metamorphopsia' refers to perceptual distortions.''' Specific symptoms vary from case to case and can affect the shape, size, color, and position ...

VIDEO available to download HERE of scientist Ruchi Gupta explaining how she hopes to make a lollipop or lozenge to diagnose mouth cancer. The film features mouth cancer survivor Rachel Parsons and contains explicit images. A ‘LOLLIPOP’ that can diagnose mouth cancer early could become a reality, thanks to a pioneering project funded by Cancer Research UK and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). Dr Ruchi Gupta at the University of Birmingham has been awarded £350,000 over the next three years by Cancer Research UK and EPSRC to make a prototype flavoured ‘lollipop’ from a material called a smart hydrogel. Smart ...

At the close of 2023, Defra asked the British Ecological Society to bring together nearly 40 experts, to collate expert opinion on freshwater policy and set out a list of priorities for the biodiversity evidence programme to focus on. Published today, the new report sets out priorities for restoring England’s polluted fresh waters.  We know that England’s rivers, and the life they support, are in a desperate state. The River Trust’s annual State of Our Rivers report found that a mere 15% of rivers in England were classed as being in good ecological health and no ...

NASA’s BurstCube, a shoebox-sized satellite designed to study the universe’s most powerful explosions, is on its way to the International Space Station. The spacecraft travels aboard SpaceX’s 30th Commercial Resupply Services mission, which lifted off at 4:55 p.m. EDT on Thursday, March 21, from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. After arriving at the station, BurstCube will be unpacked and later released into orbit, where it will detect, locate, and study short gamma-ray ...

Women experience disruptions in their sleep patterns and report heightened feelings of anger in the days leading up to their period, according to new research.  The study sheds new light on the intricate relationship between women's menstrual cycles, emotions, and sleep patterns.   Co-author Dr Jo Bower, of the University of East Anglia’s School of Psychology, said: “Our research provides valuable insights into the complex interplay between menstrual cycles, emotions, ...

Milan, Italy: Patients with breast cancer that has started to spread to the lymph nodes in the armpit can safely avoid extensive removal of the lymph nodes if their treatment is tailored to their response to cancer-killing therapies such as chemotherapy before surgery.   In a presentation to the 14th European Breast Cancer Conference today (Friday) in Milan, Annemiek Van Hemert, a doctor and PhD student in the Surgical Oncology Department of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek-Netherlands Cancer Institute (AVL-NKI) in Amsterdam (The Netherlands), said: “If we are able to predict the response based on the removal of ...

*This is an early press release from the European Congress on Obesity (ECO 2024) Venice 12-15 May. Please credit the Congress if using this material* New research being presented at this year’s European Congress on Obesity (ECO) in Venice, Italy (12-15 May), suggests that replacing sugar-sweetened food and drinks with low/no energy sweetened products can help weight control for at least one year after rapid weight loss in adults, without increasing the risk of type 2 diabetes or cardiovascular disease. The findings of a year-long randomised controlled trial involving adults with overweight and obesity and children in the overweight range from Northern, Central and ...

BOSTON (MA), March 21, 2024 – This July, the 13th annual International Space Station Research and Development Conference (ISSRDC) returns to Boston, where leaders from the commercial sector, U.S. government agencies, and academic communities will assemble to highlight innovations and opportunities through our nation’s orbiting outpost. ISSRDC will take place July 30-August 1, 2024, at the Marriott Copley Place in Boston. Early registration is now open until May 24, 2024. Booking during early ...

WOODS HOLE, Mass. –Twelve accomplished science and health journalists have been awarded a highly competitive fellowship in the Logan Science Journalism Program at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL). Now in its 37th year, the Logan Science Journalism Program provides journalists with immersive, hands-on research training, giving them invaluable insight into the practice of science as well as some of the major news stories of today. The program, which offers a Biomedical course and an Environmental course, will run May 13-23 in Woods Hole. Biographies for the 2024 Logan Science Journalism Fellows are here. They are: Biomedical Fellows Pakinam Amer, Independent ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Physicians and biomedical engineers at Duke University have developed a method to visualize the growth of a placenta throughout a mouse’s pregnancy. By coupling an implantable window with ultrafast imaging tools, the approach provides the first opportunity to track placental development to better understand how the organ functions during pregnancy. This new perspective gives researchers a precise way to examine how lifestyle factors like alcohol consumption and health complications like inflammation can affect the placenta and potentially lead to adverse pregnancy outcomes. The research appears March 20 as the cover ...

The American Meteorological Society continuously publishes research on climate, weather, and water in its 12 journals. Many of these articles are available for early online access–they are peer-reviewed, but not yet in their final published form. Below is a selection of articles published early online recently. To view full article text, members of the media can contact kpflaumer@ametsoc.org for press login credentials. Observed Changes in Extreme Precipitation Associated with United States Tropical Cyclones Journal of Climate Rainfall ...

URBANA, Ill. – Agricultural occupations are  hazardous with one of the highest rates of workplace injuries and fatalities in the U.S. The manual and often strenuous nature of the work, combined with the use of machinery and exposure to environmental hazards create a challenging work environment. Understanding the nature and causes of injuries can help improve safety guidelines and policy measures. However, obtaining a comprehensive overview of injuries is hindered by the absence of a central reporting system. Two ...