INDIANAPOLIS — Nearly 3% of all children in the United States are diagnosed with autism, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But a collaborative team of researchers at Indiana University and Purdue University are finding ways to make the right diagnosis sooner. “The number of children needing autism evaluations exceeds the capacity of specialists trained to provide this service,” said Rebecca McNally Keehn, PhD, assistant professor of pediatrics at the IU School of Medicine. “Children and their families are currently waiting a year or more to access evaluations. ...

Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center have isolated human monoclonal antibodies against influenza B, a significant public health threat that disproportionately affects children, the elderly and other immunocompromised individuals. Seasonal flu vaccines cover influenza B and the more common influenza A but do not stimulate the broadest possible range of immune responses against both viruses. In addition, people whose immune systems have been weakened by age or illness may not respond effectively to the flu shot. Small-molecule drugs that block neuraminidase, a major surface glycoprotein of the ...

Novel CAR T cell therapy obe-cel yields strong remission rates in adults with relapsed or refractory B-ALL (Abstract 6504) The novel anti-CD19 autologous chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy obecabtagene autoleucel (obe-cel) achieved durable remissions in 40% of patients with relapsed or refractory B-ALL without a subsequent stem cell transplant (SCT), according to results from the Phase Ib/II FELIX clinical trial presented today by Elias Jabbour, M.D., professor of Leukemia. At a median follow-up of 21.5 months, these patients were in ongoing remission ...

Osteochondral defects (OCDs) can cause damage to cartilage and underlying bone, leading to chronic pain and loss of joint function. Depending on the extent of damage, individuals must undergo surgical treatment, the most extensive being total knee replacement, which over 800,000 Americans undergo each year. Dr. Melissa Grunlan, professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University, received a grant from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Disease, a suborganization of the National Institutes ...

Recently published research led by the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus examined the prevalence — and impact — of physicians’ ethical or religious barriers to their involvement in medical aid in dying (MAiD), a multi-step process where a physician provides a terminally ill adult with decision-making capacity with a lethal dose of medication to end their life.   The research article, “Conscience-Based Barriers to Medical Aid in Dying: A Survey of Colorado Physicians,” was published this May in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. It shows that 26% of physician ...

The latest book of prolific author David Julian McClements is a family affair. The Distinguished Professor of Food Science, along with his daughter Isobelle Farrell McClements and nephew Jake McClements, have written “How to be a Successful Scientist: A Guide for Graduate Students, Postdocs, and Professors” (Springer, 2024). The three authors offer different perspectives as scientists at different stages in their careers. Julian McClements, who has published more than 1,300 scientific articles and numerous books, is the most highly ...

    Converting home heating systems from natural gas furnaces to electric heat pumps is seen as a way to address climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.   But a new University of Michigan study of 51 Southeast Michigan households shows that switching to efficient, cold-climate heat pumps would increase annual utility bills by an average of about $1,100.   Home weatherization upgrades, such as adding attic insulation and sealing around doors and windows, could help reduce utility bills and make ...

A new, nano-scale look at how the SARS-CoV-2 virus replicates in cells may offer greater precision in drug development, a Stanford University team reports in Nature Communications. Using advanced microscopy techniques, the researchers produced what might be some of the most crisp images available of the virus’s RNA and replication structures, which they witnessed form spherical shapes around the nucleus of the infected cell. “We have not seen COVID infecting cells at this high resolution and known what we are looking at before,” said Stanley Qi, ...

Community gardens in higher-income Boulder neighborhoods have fewer varieties of bees than their medium-income counterparts, new University of Colorado Boulder research suggests. Scientists suggest that people in these neighborhoods tend to apply more landscaping practices, such as using fertilizers, which could impact bees’ habitats. The finding appeared May 22 in the journal Urban Ecosystems.  “Bees are so important for local ecosystems through their pollination services. The landscape would not look the same without our pollinators,” ...

At its annual meeting on Thursday, the University of Miami Board of Trustees (BOT) confirmed Manuel “Manny” Kadre as its new chair, Wayne Chaplin and Bill Morrison as new vice chairs, and welcomed a slate of new trustees.  Kadre, chairman and chief executive officer of MBB Auto Group as well as a senior executive and shareholder of a number of beverage, automotive, health care, and real estate companies, first joined the board as a trustee in 2004. He served as a vice chair since June 2021 and more recently as board chair-elect.  “The University has one of the great reputations and brand names anywhere in the world,” ...

Mars has a distinct structure in its mantle and crust with discernible reservoirs, and this is known thanks to meteorites that scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and colleagues have analyzed on Earth. Meteorites that formed roughly 1.3 billion years ago and then ejected from Mars have been collected by scientists from sites in Antarctica and Africa in recent decades. Scripps Oceanography geologist James Day and his colleagues report May 31 in the journal Science Advances ...

Researchers at the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Rochester have identified mechanisms in the brain’s hippocampal network that are rescued by ketones. These findings build on previous research showing that ketones can alleviate neurological and cognitive affects. As we age our brain naturally becomes more insulin resistant. This creates a breakdown in communication between neurons, causing symptoms like changes in mood, cognitive decline, and eventually neurodegeneration. Nathan A. Smith, MS, PhD ('13), associate professor of Neuroscience, and fellow researchers studied the mechanisms in the brain that break down when insulin resistance is suddenly ...

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. Some articles are open-access; to view others, members of the media can contact kpflaumer@ametsoc.org for press login credentials. JOURNAL ARTICLES Large-Scale Climate Modes Drive Low-Frequency Regional Arctic Sea Ice Variability Journal of Climate Arctic sea ice loss may accelerate in the coming decade. This study examined the dominant natural climate ...

Faculty, staff and researchers from higher education and K-12 schools throughout Texas gathered in Arlington for the state’s first “Prompt-a-Thon” hosted by Microsoft and UTA’s offices of Research and Innovation and Information Technology. Together, educators and researchers learned how to best use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to improve their work. “This Prompt-a-Thon is a significant step toward promoting AI literacy across multiple universities and establishing UTA as a frontrunner for AI use in the state,” said Jeremy Forsberg, associate ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A novel, human-inspired approach to training artificial intelligence (AI) systems to identify objects and navigate their surroundings could set the stage for the development of more advanced AI systems to explore extreme environments or distant worlds, according to research from an interdisciplinary team at Penn State. In the first two years of life, children experience a somewhat narrow set of objects and faces, but with many different viewpoints and under varying lighting conditions. Inspired by this developmental insight, the researchers introduced a new machine learning approach that uses information about spatial position to train AI visual ...

University of Massachusetts Amherst food scientist Lynne McLandsborough has won the 2024 Mahoney Life Sciences Prize for her research that offers a solution to a sticky sanitation and food safety dilemma hounding the peanut butter and chocolate industries. “I was really surprised and excited,” McLandsborough says of winning the prize. “I think our research is innovative and there’s a need in the industry. It was a fun project.”  She is already in talks with Mars, the world’s ...

For centuries, civilizations have used naturally occurring, inorganic materials for their perceived healing properties. Egyptians thought green copper ore helped eye inflammation, the Chinese used cinnabar for heartburn, and Native Americans used clay to reduce soreness and inflammation. Flash forward to today, and researchers at Texas A&M University are still discovering ways that inorganic materials can be used for healing. In two recently published articles, Dr. Akhilesh Gaharwar, a Tim and Amy Leach Endowed Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, and Dr. Irtisha Singh, assistant professor in the Department of Cell Biology ...

In a groundbreaking study published in Cyborg Bionic Systems, researchers from Shanghai University have unveiled a new artificial intelligence framework that revolutionizes the way robots interpret and execute tasks. The "Correction and Planning with Memory Integration" (CPMI) framework leverages large language models (LLMs) to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of robots performing complex, instruction-based tasks. Traditionally, robots required explicit programming and extensive data to navigate ...

About The Study: In Chinese adults with obesity or overweight, once-weekly injection with tirzepatide 10 mg or 15 mg resulted in statistically significant and clinically meaningful weight reduction with an acceptable safety profile.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Xiaoying Li, M.D., email li.xiaoying@zshospital.sh.cn. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2024.9217) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial ...

An international team led by researchers at the University of Toronto has found a new RNA virus that they believe is hitching a ride with a common human parasite. The virus, called Apocryptovirus odysseus, along with 18 others that are closely related to it, was discovered through a computational screen of human neuron data – an effort aimed at elucidating the connection between RNA viruses and neuroinflammatory disease. The virus is associated with severe inflammation in humans infected with the ...

50,000 years ago, North America was ruled by megafauna. Lumbering mammoths roamed the tundra, while forests were home to towering mastodons, fierce saber-toothed tigers and enormous wolves. Bison and extraordinarily tall camels moved in herds across the continent, while giant beavers plied its lakes and ponds. Immense ground sloths weighing over 1,000 kg were found across many regions east of the Rocky Mountains. And then, sometime at the end of the Last Ice Age, most of North America’s megafauna disappeared. How and why remains hotly contested. Some researchers believe the arrival of humans was pivotal. Maybe the animals were hunted and eaten, or maybe humans just altered ...

In a significant advancement for robotics and artificial intelligence, researchers at Chongqing University of Technology, along with their international collaborators, have developed a cutting-edge method for enhancing interaction recognition. The study, published in Cyborg and Bionic Systems, introduces the Merge-and-Split Graph Convolutional Network (MS-GCN), a novel approach specifically designed to address the complexities of skeleton-based interaction recognition. Human interaction recognition plays a crucial role in various applications, ranging from enhancing human-computer interfaces ...

Endowed with the power of memory, certain alloys can magically return to their original shape when heated or deformed. However, the repeated back-and-forth between the original and new configuration may leave permanent imprints on the alloy’s microscopic features, which could then impact its ability to reversibly transform shape. Thus, unraveling the impact of the strain history on these alloys’ functionality is essential to improving predictive capabilities, but it has not received enough attention. To fill this knowledge gap, the National Science Foundation ...

The electromagnetic driving systems are proposed for the flexible 5-DOF magnetic manipulation of a micro-robot within the posterior eye, enabling precise targeted drug delivery. A research team has presented a novel electromagnetic driving system that consists of eight optimized electromagnets arranged in an optimal configuration and employs a control framework based on an active disturbance rejection controller (ADRC) and virtual boundary. The team published their findings in Cyborg and Bionic Systems on Mar 23, 2024. Intraocular microsurgery has witnessed a transition from the utilization of conventional handheld surgical tools to the adoption of robot-assisted surgery, owing ...

New York, NY [May 31, 2024]—Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and others have identified a neurodevelopmental disorder, caused by mutations in a single gene, that affects tens of thousands of people worldwide. The work, published in the May 31 online issue of Nature Medicine [DOI: 10.1038/s41591-024-03085-5], was done in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Bristol, UK; KU Leuven, Belgium; and the NIHR BioResource, currently based at the University of Cambridge, UK. The findings will improve clinical diagnostic ...