The Huns suddenly appeared in Europe in the 370s, establishing one of the most influential although short-lived empires in Europe. Scholars have long debated whether the Huns were descended from the Xiongnu. In fact, the Xiongnu Empire dissolved around 100 CE, leaving a 300-year gap before the Huns appeared in Europe. Can DNA lineages that bridge these three centuries be found? To address this question, researchers analyzed the DNA of 370 individuals that lived in historical periods spanning around 800 years, from 2nd century BCE to 6th century CE, encompassing sites in the Mongolian steppe, Central Asia, and the Carpathian Basin of Central Europe. ...

A new artificial intelligence model measures how fast a patient’s brain is aging and could be a powerful new tool for understanding, preventing and treating cognitive decline and dementia, according to USC researchers. The first-of-its-kind tool can non-invasively track the pace of brain changes by analyzing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. Faster brain aging closely correlates with a higher risk of cognitive impairment, said Andrei Irimia, associate professor of gerontology, biomedical engineering, quantitative ...

Starting today, people with Parkinson’s disease will have a new treatment option, thanks to U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of groundbreaking new technology.   The therapy, known as adaptive deep brain stimulation, or aDBS, uses an implanted device that continuously monitors the brain for signs that Parkinson’s symptoms are developing. When it detects specific patterns of brain activity, it delivers precisely calibrated electric pulses to keep symptoms at bay.   The FDA approval covers two treatment algorithms that run on a device made by Medtronic, a medical device company. Both work by monitoring the same part of the brain, called the subthalamic nucleus. ...

Elephants, giraffes, pythons and other large species have higher cancer rates than smaller ones like mice, bats, and frogs, a new study has shown, overturning a 45-year-old belief about cancer in the animal kingdom. The research, conducted by researchers from the University of Reading, University College London and The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, examined cancer data from 263 species across four major animal groups - amphibians, birds, mammals and reptiles. The findings challenge "Peto's paradox," a longstanding idea based on observations from 1977 that suggested ...

LA JOLLA, CA—Children who experience multiple cases of dengue virus develop an army of dengue-fighting T cells, according to a new study led by scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI).  The findings, published recently in JCI Insights, suggest that these T cells are key to dengue virus immunity. In fact, most children who experienced two or more dengue infections showed very minor symptoms—or no symptoms at all—when they caught the virus again. "We saw a significant T cell response in children who had been infected more than once before," says study leader and LJI Assistant Professor Daniela Weiskopf, Ph.D. Dengue virus infects up ...

Smart artificial microswimmers—small robots that resemble microorganisms like bacteria or human sperm—could potentially be used for targeted drug delivery, minimally invasive surgery, and even in fertility treatments. These types of complicated tasks won’t be accomplished by a single microswimmer. Multiple swimmers will be necessary; however, it’s unclear how such groups will move within the chemically and mechanically complex environment of the body’s fluids.  “We know that whenever a swimmer has a neighbor, it swims differently,” says Ebru Demir, an assistant ...

(Charlottesville, VA, Feb. 24, 2025) –  The Center for Open Science (COS) is pleased to announce the appointment of Daniel Correa, Chief Executive Officer of the Federation of American Scientists, and Amanda Montoya, Associate Professor of Quantitative Psychology at UCLA, to the COS Board of Directors. Both will serve three-year terms from 2025 to 2027, bringing valuable expertise in science policy, innovation, research methodology, and open science advocacy. Daniel Correa is the Chief Executive Officer of the Federation of American Scientists, ...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Researchers say they found that infection with a common virus that can be transmitted from mother to fetus before birth significantly worsens an often-fatal complication of premature birth called necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) in experiments with mice. The research team, led by Johns Hopkins Children’s Center investigators and funded by the National Institutes of Health, says the new findings advance the search for better treatments for NEC — a relatively rare condition, but still the most common emergency intestinal complication in preemies. A report on the study published Feb. 13 in Cellular and Molecular Gastroenterology ...

Irvine, Calif., Feb. 24, 2025 — There’s an arms race in medicine – scientists design drugs to treat lethal bacterial infections, but bacteria can evolve defenses to those drugs, sending the researchers back to square one. In the Journal of the American Chemical Society, a University of California, Irvine-led team describes the development of a drug candidate that can stop bacteria before they have a chance to cause harm.   “The issue with antibiotics is this crisis of antibiotic ...

Ketamine can effectively treat depression, but whether depressed patients with alcohol use disorder can safely use ketamine repeatedly remains unclear clinically. To investigate this possibility, Mohamed Kabbaj and colleagues from Florida State University modeled aspects of human depression in rats using long-term isolation and assessed how isolation and alcohol exposure alter ketamine intake. The authors found that a history of isolation and alcohol use influence the rewarding properties of ketamine in a sex-dependent manner.  Female rats took ketamine more than males in general. Prior alcohol use increased female rat ketamine ...

Poor food decisions and eating habits can contribute to excessive weight gain and health problems. Nutritional labels meant to convey healthiness instead may create negative expectations about taste or pose as a time-constraining hurdle for shoppers. Doris Schicker and Jessica Freiherr, from the Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging, led a study in JNeurosci to explore whether pairing food labels with a sensory stimulus, like odor, affects how people perceive foods and thus promotes healthy shopping. ...

LAWRENCE — Added sugar, derived from cheap crops like corn, is bad for babies. According to the American Heart Association, added sugars are full of energy but lack nutritional value, boosting odds of obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and other health problems. But a study published today from the University of Kansas in the Journal of Food Composition and Analysis shows most infant formulas on the U.S. market contain primarily added sugars rather than the healthier, naturally occurring lactose found in cow-milk base that would be best for babies because ...

Remember when 2°C of global warming was the doomsday scenario? Well, we're now staring down the barrel of something much worse. From the fish on your plate to the weather outside your window, everything's about to change. A new study by an international team of researchers, including Jackie Dawson, full professor, Geography, Environment and Geomatics at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Arts, underscores the grave risks posed by insufficient national commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. “Our findings ...

Philadelphia, February 24, 2025 – In metastatic cancer surveillance, monitoring the actual concentrations of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) may be critical. Researchers showed that absolute ctDNA concentration thresholds can be defined to rule out or predict impending cancer progression. They introduce a dual threshold model in a novel study in The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics, published by Elsevier, that may improve cancer surveillance, patient stratification, and risk-informed, personalized treatment by providing more accurate and timely assessment of disease progression. Lead ...

New research reveals insight into the impact sleep quality has on a person’s immune system, and how it could be linked to the development of diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases. The study, published in The Journal of Immunology, found that even a single night of 24-hour sleep deprivation in young, lean, and healthy individuals altered the profile of immune cells that help regulate the immune system to resemble that of individuals with obesity - a condition known to drive chronic inflammation. This suggests that the immune system is highly sensitive to sleep and may adapt rapidly to changes in sleep pattern. ...

Researchers at The University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital, have found that people with diabetes can achieve the same positive results using advanced insulin technology when trained by their primary care providers (PCPs) or through telehealth as they would by seeing a specialist in person. The study’s findings, which focused on Type 1 diabetes, are a major step forward in expanding access to cutting-edge care for people with diabetes, especially for those living in rural ...

A new study reveals how the brain’s "place cells" create internal maps to help us navigate. These specialized neurons, found in the hippocampus, were once thought to rely on precisely ordered patterns for spatial coding. However, researchers have found that their activity, which appears disordered in large spaces, actually follows universal mathematical principles. This surprising discovery suggests that randomness, not strict organization, is key to how our brains encode information about our experiences. The findings could reshape our understanding of brain function ...

Scientists have developed an AI-powered tool that detects 64% of brain abnormalities linked to epilepsy that human radiologists miss.  MELD Graph is an AI tool that could drastically change the care for 30,000 patients in the UK and 4 million worldwide with one cause of epilepsy, researchers say. The study, published today in JAMA Neurology by a team at King’s College London and University College London (UCL), shows how the tool significantly improves the detection of focal cortical dysplasia’s (FCDs) which is a leading cause of epilepsy. Researchers say the tool will speed up diagnosis times, get patients the surgical treatment ...

About The Study: The results of this study suggest that mRNA COVID-19 vaccination may be a protective factor against post–COVID-19 condition in children following SARS-CoV-2 infection. These findings suggest benefits of COVID-19 vaccination beyond those associated with protection against acute COVID-19 and may encourage increased pediatric uptake. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Anna R. Yousaf, MD, email pgy6@cdc.gov. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.59672) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional ...

About The Study: This cohort study found no increase in sudden cardiac arrest/sudden cardiac death in young competitive athletes in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting that reports asserting otherwise were overestimating the cardiovascular risk of COVID-19 infection, vaccination, and myocarditis. Many athlete cases shown in social media video montages occurred before the pandemic yet claimed COVID-19 infection or vaccination raised the risk of sudden cardiac arrest/sudden cardiac death. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Jonathan A. Drezner, MD, email jdrezner@uw.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this ...

About The Study: The results of this cross-sectional study suggest that although physicians and most health care workers experienced lower mortality rates compared with the general population, this benefit did not fully extend to female individuals or racial and ethnic minority groups. Renewed efforts are needed to address health inequities within the health care workforce.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Anupam B. Jena, MD, PhD, email jena@hcp.med.harvard.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link ...

About The Study: In this cohort study, telemedicine adoption was associated with modestly lower use of 7 of 20 examined low-value tests (most point-of-care) and no changes in use of other low-value tests, despite a small rise in total visits that might offer more testing opportunities. Results suggest possible benefits of telemedicine and mitigate concerns about telemedicine contributing to increased spending.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Ishani Ganguli, MD, MPH, email iganguli@bwh.harvard.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link ...

Low-value care—medical tests and procedures that provide little to no benefit to patients—contributes to excess medical spending and both direct and cascading harms to patients. A research team from Mass General Brigham and their collaborators have found that telemedicine may help to reduce the use of low-value tests. The work is published in JAMA Internal Medicine.  “In theory, widespread adoption of telemedicine post-pandemic may influence low-value testing—such as Pap smears and prostate cancer screenings in older adults, and imaging scans for straightforward cases of low back pain,” said lead author Ishani ...

Analysis of fossilised rocks known as stromatolites from more than two-and-a-half billion years ago has provided new insights into the conditions on Earth before the evolution of oxygen. Led by Northumbria University researcher, Dr Ashley Martin, an international team with expertise in geology, microbiology, and geochemistry, worked in partnership to investigate nitrogen cycling patterns within ancient stromatolites, preserved in southern Zimbabwe. Nitrogen is vital for all life on Earth but must first be converted into useable, bioavailable, forms as it passes through the atmosphere, soil, plants and animals in the nitrogen cycle. The team believe the unusual nitrogen ...

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications received funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to renew its annual Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program, the Future of Discovery: Training Students to Build and Apply Open Source Machine Learning Models and Tools (FoDOMMaT). Housed in NCSA’s Center for Artificial Intelligence Innovation (CAII), the 10-week on-site experience brings about 10 undergraduate students each year from a variety of academic backgrounds to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus to engage in cutting-edge machine learning and deep learning projects, developing ...