In a mouse study, UCLA researchers tested a vaccine against the bacterium that causes melioidosis and found it was highly protective against the disease, which is endemic in many tropical areas, causing approximately 165,000 cases with 89,000 fatalities around the world each year.  The bacterium, called Burkholderia pseudomallei, is spread through contact with contaminated soil and water through inhalation, ingestion or broken skin. It is so dangerous that it is categorized as a Tier 1 Select Agent of bioterrorism, and it can cause ...

The ability to simulate the behavior of systems at the atomic level represents a powerful tool for everything from drug design to materials discovery. A team led by Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers has developed machine learning interatomic potentials that predict molecular energies and forces acting on atoms, enabling simulations that save time and expense compared with existing computational methods. “Machine learning potentials increasingly offer an effective alternative to computationally ...

AMHERST, Mass. – A team of engineers led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst and including colleagues from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) recently announced in the journal Nature Communications that they had successfully built a tissue-like bioelectronic mesh system integrated with an array of atom-thin graphene sensors that can simultaneously measure both the electrical signal and the physical movement of cells in lab-grown human cardiac tissue. In a research first, this tissue-like mesh can grow along with the cardiac cells, ...

The solar energy world is ready for a revolution. Scientists are racing to develop a new type of solar cell using materials that can convert electricity more efficiently than today’s panels.  In a new paper published February 26 in the journal Nature Energy, a University of Colorado Boulder researcher and his international collaborators unveiled an innovative method to manufacture the new solar cells, known as perovskite cells, an achievement critical for the commercialization of what ...

The City University of New York (CUNY) Institute for Implementation Science in Population Health (ISPH) and the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy (CUNY SPH), in collaboration with Pfizer, are initiating a critical two-year prospective epidemiologic study in the spring of 2024 to track acute respiratory infections across the United States. Project PROTECTS (Prospective Respiratory Outcomes from Tracking and Evaluating Community-based TeSting) builds on the CHASING COVID Cohort Study, which has monitored SARS-CoV-2 infection rates and ...

UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center is hosting its 47th annual scientific symposium, “Pancreatic Cancer: From Discovery to the Clinic,” on May 21-22 at the Friday Center for Continuing Education in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The symposium is free and will feature 15 talks on the latest in pancreatic cancer basic, translational and clinical research by faculty at the University of North Carolina, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, University of Michigan ...

Many important medicines, such as antibiotics and anticancer drugs, are derived from natural products from Bacteria. The enzyme complexes that produce these active ingredients have a modular design that makes them ideal tools for synthetic biology. By exploring protein evolution, a team led by Helge Bode from the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg, Germany, has found new "fusion sites" that enable faster and more targeted drug development. Industry often follows the assembly line principle: components are systematically assembled into complex products, with different production lines yielding different products. However, not humans are the ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — In 2020, a line of severe thunderstorms unleashed powerful winds that caused billions in damages across the Midwest United States. A technique developed by Penn State scientists that incorporates satellite data could improve forecasts — including where the most powerful winds will occur — for similar severe weather events. The researchers reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters that adding microwave data collected by low-Earth-orbiting satellites to existing computer weather forecast models produced more accurate forecasts of surface gusts in a case study of the 2020 Midwest ...

A new study has shown that overall and cause-specific mortality rates in individuals in the U.S. with low-risk differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) are low. The study is published in the peer-reviewed journal Thyroid®, the official journal of the American Thyroid Association® (ATA®). Click here to read the article now. Cari Kitahara, PhD, from the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, and coauthors identified 51,854 individuals diagnosed with first primary DTC at low risk ...

Thanks to an unusual application of game theory and machine learning technology, a large team of scientists led by experts at Cincinnati Children’s has published the world’s most detailed “atlas” of the many types of stem cells and early progenitors involved in producing human blood from diverse donors. The team has identified more than 80 distinct subsets of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) – early-stage cells that kick off production of mature red cells, white cells ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — As climate change worsens global drought conditions, hindering crop production, the search for ways to capture and store atmospheric carbon causing the phenomenon has intensified. Penn State researchers have developed a new high-tech tool that could spur changes in how crops withstand drought, acquire nitrogen and store carbon deeper in soil. In findings published in the January issue of Crop Science, they describe a process in which the depth of plant roots can be accurately estimated by scanning leaves with ...

Ammonia is one of the most widely produced chemicals in the world, and is used in a great many manufacturing and service industries. The conventional production technology is the Haber-Bosch process, which combines nitrogen gas (N2) and hydrogen gas (H2) in a reactor in the presence of a catalyst. This process requires high levels of temperature and pressure, resulting in substantial power consumption. Indeed, ammonia production is estimated to consume 1%-2% of the world’s electricity and to account for about 3% of global carbon emissions. In pursuit of more sustainable alternatives, researchers affiliated with the Center for Development of Functional Materials (CDMF) ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Forests and streams are separate but linked ecosystems, existing side by side, with energy and nutrients crossing their porous borders and flowing back and forth between them. For example, leaves fall from trees, enter streams, decay and feed aquatic insects. Those insects emerge from the waters and are eaten by birds and bats. An international team led by Penn State researchers has now found that these ecosystems appear to keep the energy exchanges in balance — a finding that the scientists called surprising. Scientists ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A product used to control pest slugs on farms in multiple countries is deadly to least one type of native woodland snail endemic to the Pacific Northwest, according to scientists who say more study is needed before the product gains approval in the United States. Dee Denver of the Oregon State University College of Science led a 10-week laboratory project that showed the effect of a biotool marketed as Nemaslug on the Pacific sideband snail. The study was published today in PLOS One. Nemaslug is based on the organism Phasmarhabditis hermaphrodita, a species of tiny, parasitic worm known as a nematode. The ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Blood vessels engineered from stem cells could help solve several research and clinical problems, from potentially providing a more comprehensive platform to screen if drug candidates can cross from the blood stream into the brain to developing lab-grown vascular tissue to support heart transplants, according to Penn State researchers. Led by Xiaojun “Lance” Lian, associate professor of biomedical engineering and of biology, the team discovered the specific molecular signals that can efficiently mature nascent stem cells into the endothelial cells that comprise the vessels and regulate exchanges to and ...

EL PASO, Texas (Mar. 21, 2024) - Professors at The University of Texas at El Paso have launched a new industrial engineering lab focused on supporting human performance and behavior in various application areas. Projects include supportive exoskeletons for high-strain occupations and virtual reality that simulates high-stress environments. The facility, known as the Physical, Information and Cognitive Human Factors Engineering (PIC-HFE) Research Lab, was established with the help of a $350,000 STAR grant from the State of Texas. The lab is led by Priyadarshini Pennathur, Ph.D., and Arunkumar ...

Research Highlights: An analysis of health records for almost 110,000 women in the U.K. found that women with poor cardiovascular health after pregnancy or who experienced adverse pregnancy outcomes, including high blood pressure, gestational diabetes and/or pre-term birth, had a significantly higher long-term risk of developing cardiovascular disease. Among women with adverse pregnancy outcomes, those who maintained better cardiovascular health after pregnancy had cardiovascular disease risk similar to women who had no history of pregnancy complications. Embargoed until 1:30 p.m. CT/2:30 ...

https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.15212/AMM-2024-0006 Announcing a new publication for Acta Materia Medica journal. Endocrine therapy that blocks estrogen receptor signaling has been effective for decades as a primary treatment choice for breast cancer patients expressing the estrogen receptor. However, the issue of drug resistance poses a significant clinical challenge. It is therefore critically important to create new therapeutic agents that can suppress ERα activity, particularly in cases of ESR1 mutations. This review article highlights recent efforts in drug development of next ...

For most people, reading about the difference between a global average temperature rise of 1.5 C versus 2 C doesn’t conjure up a clear image of how their daily lives will actually be affected. So, researchers at MIT have come up with a different way of measuring and describing what global climate change patterns, in specific regions around the world, will mean for people’s daily activities and their quality of life. The new measure, called “outdoor days,” describes the number of days per year that outdoor temperatures are neither too ...

A collaboration between scientists from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute uncovered four proteins that govern the identity of anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL), an aggressive form of cancer. These proteins comprise a core regulatory circuit (CRC) that surprisingly incorporates a dysregulated signaling protein. Establishing the CRC for this lymphoma gives researchers insight into potential vulnerabilities that may be future therapeutic targets. The findings were published today in Cell Reports Medicine. “Mutations in signaling pathways have long been known to drive oncogenic transformation ...

Expanding organic cropland can lead to increased pesticide use in surrounding conventional fields while reducing pesticide use on nearby organic fields, according to a study based in a leading U.S. crop-producing region. The findings provide insight into overlooked environmental impacts of organic agriculture and suggest that clustering organic fields could reduce pesticide use at the landscape scale. Organic agricultural practices are designed to have less negative local environmental impacts than other forms of intensive agriculture. However, the ...

A particular gene plays a critical role in visual preference for mate choice between closely related Heliconius butterflies, according to a new study. The findings provide insight into how visually guided behaviors can be encoded within the genome. Many species use color and other visual cues to attract and recognize suitable mates. As such, visual preferences are important drivers of mate choice and sexual selection. However, while the genetics and evolution of the traits that serve as these cues – such as butterfly wing color  – are ...

Constructing human artificial chromosomes (HACs) in budding yeast overcomes the long-standing problem of uncontrolled multimerization – the rampant joining of similar molecules – and results in HACs that are large, stable, and structurally well-defined, researchers report. The findings may help advance chromosome engineering for precise genome editing in mammals and many other organisms. Artificial chromosomes can carry large numbers of engineered genes. Their use in bacteria and yeast as vehicles for writing and rewriting genomes has hinted at their potential to provide an alternative approach to editing genetic material in human cell lines. Although the first HACs were ...

In a Policy Forum, Alan Schoenfeld and Phil Daro argue that the “equity versus excellence” controversy over how mathematics is taught has long disrupted education in the United States, particularly for underrepresented ethnic and socioeconomic groups. According to Schoenfeld and Daro, K-12 mathematics education in the U.S. is structured in ways that are problematic and do not reflect international trends. For more than 50 years, the typical yet rigid sequence of hierarchical mathematics courses – algebra 1 to geometry to algebra II to precalculus to calculus – has disenfranchised ...

Tropical Heliconius butterflies are well known for the bright colour patterns on their wings. These striking colour patterns not only scare off predators – the butterflies are poisonous and are distasteful to birds – but are also important signals during mate selection. A team led by evolutionary biologist Richard Merrill from LMU Munich, in cooperation with researchers from the Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá (Colombia) and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (Panama), has now exploited the diversity of warning patterns of various Heliconius species to investigate the genetic foundations of these preferences. ...