In the United States and worldwide, cardiovascular disease is the leading avoidable cause of premature death and disability. Primarily heart attacks and stroke, cardiovascular disease accounts for more than 900,000 annual deaths nationally and about 10 million deaths globally. Uncontrolled hypertension or high blood pressure is a major risk factor for stroke and heart attacks. Prevention and management of cardiovascular disease involves therapeutic lifestyle changes such as diet and exercise and adjunctive drug therapies of proven benefit. In a commentary published in The American ...

Researchers including those from the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences transferred genes from simple organisms capable of regenerating their bodies into common fruit flies, more complex animals that cannot. They found the transferred gene suppressed an age-related intestinal issue in the flies. Their results suggest studying genes specific to animals with high regenerative capability may uncover new mechanisms for rejuvenating stem cell function and extending the healthy lifespan ...

Plant diseases pose significant challenges to agricultural productivity, presenting formidable hurdles that require urgent attention. Left unchecked, these diseases can spread rapidly, inflicting widespread damage on crops and leading to reduced yields and substantial economic losses. Therefore, accurately identifying the pathogens responsible for these diseases is crucial. This identification allows for targeted interventions that minimize risks and effectively mitigate the agricultural impacts. Xanthomonas species are notorious plant pathogens that affect a broad spectrum of hosts, including key crops like rice, wheat, and tomatoes. These pathogens augment ...

The development of human societies is concurrent with infrastructural changes, evidenced by rapid urbanization in recent years. We are moving towards the era of 'smart cities' powered by advanced technology—such as artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things, and big data analytics—for sustainable urban development. However, climate change has been hampering this growth—earthquakes and other natural hazards negatively impact buildings and other structures in their wake. Soil liquefaction is an example of a natural ...

Over the past few decades, there has been remarkable progress in genetic manipulation technologies, bringing us closer to the point where genes can be modified in vivo. Such tools would open up the way to gene therapy, ushering in a new era in medicine. Thus far, the most promising strategies for gene therapy involve leveraging the existing molecular machinery found in viruses. In particular, adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors have recently garnered significant attention from the scientific community, given their potential to serve as nucleic acid vaccines ...

When developing new drugs, understanding their effects on ion channels in the body, such as the human ether-a-go-go-related gene (hERG) ion channel found in neurons and heart muscle cells, is critical. Blocking hERG channels can disrupt normal heart rhythm, potentially leading to a fatal condition known as torsade de pointes. Current methods for assessing these effects typically involve invasive procedures like patch-clamp techniques or fluorescence microscopy. These methods alter cell properties and may affect measurement accuracy, requiring specialized equipment ...

Much of the water in the West is transported across vast geographical areas by large infrastructure projects known as interbasin water transfers. Two of these projects in particular make up 85% of all energy-related greenhouse gas emissions associated with U.S. interbasin transfers — one in Arizona and the other in California — according to the new research published this week in the journal Nature Water. The project in Arizona is known as the Central Arizona Project and in California it’s the State Water Project. “You hear a lot about these big projects and how much energy they use,” said Avery Driscoll, a doctoral student in ...

Higher levels of urinary metals such as cadmium, tungsten, uranium, cobalt, copper and zinc are linked to increased cardiovascular disease and mortality in a racially and ethnically diverse U.S. population, according to a new study at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. While it is well documented that exposure to certain metals has been associated with cardiovascular disease (CVD) and mortality, until now the evidence was limited beyond arsenic, cadmium, and lead and for a racially diverse population. The findings are published in the journal Circulation. When analyzed together, ...

Human-made climate change can lead to a destabilisation of large-scale components of the Earth system such as ice sheets or ocean circulation patterns, the so-called tipping elements. While these components will not tip over night, fundamental processes are put into motion unfolding over tens, hundreds or thousands of years. These changes are of such a serious nature that they should be avoided at all costs, the researchers argue. In their new study, they assessed the risks of destabilisation of at least one ...

For some forms of tuberculosis, the chances that an exposed person will get infected depend on whether the individual and the bacteria share a hometown, according to a new study comparing how different strains move through mixed populations in cosmopolitan cities. Results of the research, led by Harvard Medical School scientists and published Aug. 1 in Nature Microbiology, provide the first hard evidence of long-standing observations that have led scientists to suspect that pathogen, place, and human host ...

LA JOLLA, CA—To diagnose heart conditions including heart attacks and heart rhythm disturbances, clinicians typically rely on 12-lead electrocardiograms (ECGs)—complex arrangements of electrodes and wires placed around the chest and limbs to detect the heart’s electrical activity. But these ECGs require specialized equipment and expertise, and not all clinics have the capability to perform them. Now, a team of scientists and clinicians from Scripps Research has shown that heart conditions can be diagnosed roughly as accurately using just three electrodes and an artificial intelligence (AI) tool. In a ...

Current climate policies imply a high risk for tipping of critical Earth system elements, even if temperatures return to below 1.5°C of global warming after a period of overshoot. A new study indicates that these risks can be minimized if warming is swiftly reversed. Human-made climate change can lead to a destabilization of large-scale components of the Earth system such as ice sheets, ocean circulation patterns, or global biosphere components, the so-called tipping elements. In their new study published in Nature Communications, researchers from IIASA and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) analyzed the risks for four interconnected core climate tipping elements ...

Vaccines are safe and effective, and help reduce death and illness. But global vaccination rates are suboptimal and have trended downward, leaving humanity more vulnerable to vaccine-preventable diseases such as COVID-19, influenza, measles, polio, and HPV. Identifying interventions that could increase vaccine coverage could help save lives. A new paper from a team led by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania offers the first comprehensive meta-analysis examining what types of vaccine intervention strategies have the ...

Osaka, Japan — An aging society has posed a new global problem, the risk of falling. It is estimated that 1 in 3 adults over the age of 65 falls each year and the resulting injuries are becoming more prevalent. To tackle this growing issue, Associate Professor Hiromitsu Toyoda and Specially Appointed Professor Tadashi Okano from Osaka Metropolitan University’s Graduate School of Medicine, together with Professor Chisato Hayashi from the University of Hyogo, have developed a formula and assessment tool for estimating fall risks that is simple for older adults to use. The tool was developed using data collected from older adults over a ten-year period from April 2010 to December ...

Resistance, or weight training, is widely recommended in sports and rehabilitation as an effective exercise to increase muscular strength and size. This form of exercise involves applying resistance to muscle contraction to build strength. However, some practitioners believe resistance training can increase passive muscle stiffness over time. Passive muscle stiffness is a key indicator of how muscles behave mechanically when they are stretched without active contraction. Specifically, it refers to the amount of force required to change the muscle length by a given amount during passive stretching. Studies ...

Image cropping is an essential task in many contexts, right from social media and e-commerce to advanced computer vision applications. Cropping helps maintain image quality by avoiding unnecessary resizing, which can degrade the image and consume computational resources. It is also useful when an image needs to conform to a predetermined aspect ratio, such as in thumbnails. Over the past decade, engineers around the world have developed various machine learning (ML) models to automatically crop images. These models aim to crop an input image in a way that preserves its most relevant parts. However, ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. (Aug. 1, 2024) – Figuring out how the tissues in our bones, adrenal glands, muscle and fat “talk” to each other could help scientists better understand what happens to our skeletons with age, when our bones tend to lose mass and become weaker, leaving us at risk for falls and fractures. “Tissues don’t function in isolation – everything in the body “talks” to everything else to keep people healthy across the lifespan,” explains Meghan McGee-Lawrence, PhD, bone biologist at the Medical College of Georgia at ...

In an innovative new study of glioblastoma, scientists used artificial intelligence (AI) to reprogram cancer cells, converting them into dendritic cells (DCs), which can identify cancer cells and direct other immune cells to kill them. Glioblastoma is the most common brain cancer in adults and also the deadliest, with less than 10% of patients surviving five years after their diagnosis. While new approaches such as immunotherapy have revolutionized treatment for other cancers, they have done little for patients with glioblastoma. That is partly because these hard-to-reach brain tumors ...

The likelihood of developing high blood pressure (hypertension) increases with higher levels of tellurium, a contaminant transferred from mining and manufacturing activities to foods. Improved monitoring of tellurium levels in specific foods could help decrease high blood pressure in the general population. The results of a study examining the relationship between tellurium exposure and hypertension were published in the journal Environment International.    The study was led by Nagoya University in Japan. According to Takumi Kagawa, one of the researchers involved in the ...

In electronic technologies, key material properties change in response to stimuli like voltage or current. Scientists aim to understand these changes in terms of the material’s structure at the nanoscale (a few atoms) and microscale (the thickness of a piece of paper). Often neglected is the realm between, the mesoscale — spanning 10 billionths to 1 millionth of a meter. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, in collaboration with Rice University and DOE’s Lawrence ...

LA JOLLA (July 31, 2024)—The Salk Institute was awarded $3.6 million by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), one of the world’s largest institutions dedicated to regenerative medicine. Salk Professor Rusty Gage will lead the new CIRM-funded Shared Resources Laboratory focused on stem cell-based models of aging and neurodegeneration. The award is part of CIRM’s latest round of funding to address challenges in the regenerative medicine field. The state agency dedicated $27 million to help establish six new Shared Resources ...

A new large study led by researchers at the American Cancer Society (ACS) suggests incidence rates continued to rise in successively younger generations in 17 of the 34 cancer types, including breast, pancreatic, and gastric cancers. Mortality trends also increased in conjunction with the incidence of liver (female only), uterine corpus, gallbladder, testicular, and colorectal cancers. The report will be published today in the journal The Lancet Public Health. “These findings add to growing evidence of increased cancer risk in post-Baby Boomer ...

Nearly nine months of joint replacement surgery has been lost - around 160,000 fewer operations –  since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a new study led by the University of Bristol has found.  The research suggests returning to pre-pandemic levels will not tackle the backlog, and even with rapid expansion, it will take many years, if not decades, to fix this joint replacement crisis. The study, published in The Bone & Joint Journal today [1 August], looked in detail at the effect ...

Public health interventions that tackle dementia risk factors could yield as much as £4bn in savings in England by reducing dementia rates and helping people to live longer and healthier, finds a new study led by UCL researchers. The study, published in The Lancet Healthy Longevity, shows that interventions – such as reformulating food products to reduce sugar and salt intake, introducing low emission zones to improve air quality in cities, and minimum alcohol unit pricing to reduce drinking – could have extensive benefits beyond just the health outcomes they are directly targeting. Lead author Dr Naaheed Mukadam (UCL Psychiatry) ...

Vision loss and high cholesterol add to 12 previously identified modifiable risk factors for dementia, concludes a new report from the 2024 Lancet Commission. The potential to prevent and better manage dementia is high if action to tackle these risk factors begins in childhood and continues throughout life, even in individuals with high genetic risk for dementia. New report outlines 13 recommendations for individuals and governments to help reduce risk, including preventing and treating hearing loss, vision loss, and depression; being cognitively active ...