During archaeological excavations in the Schöningen open-cast coal mine in 1994, the discovery of the oldest, remarkably well-preserved hunting weapons known to humanity caused an international sensation. Spears and a double-pointed throwing stick were found lying between animal bones about ten meters below the surface in deposits at a former lakeshore. In the years that followed, extensive excavations have gradually yielded numerous wooden objects from a layer dating from the end of a warm interglacial period 300,000 years ago. The findings suggested a hunting ground on the lakeshore. An interdisciplinary ...

Bacterial proteins often play a successful hide and seek game with the body’s immune system, making it difficult to combat the bacteria that cause diseases like staph infections.   Now, biomolecular engineer Aditya Kunjapur and colleagues have come up with a strategy to create bacteria that build and incorporate a key amino acid into their own proteins, which makes the proteins more “visible” to the immune system.   For this work toward building a better platform for possible future bacterial vaccines, Kunjapur is the winner of the 2024 BioInnovation Institute & Science Prize for Innovation. ...

A flexible electronic fiber that utilizes the human body as part of the circuit enables textile-based electronics without the need for batteries or chips, researchers report. According to the authors, the approach is well-suited for scalable manufacture of comfortable fiber-based electronics for a wide range of applications, including “smart” clothing. Textile electronic systems are designed to equip textile or fiber assemblies with electronic functions for sensing, computation, display, or communication. They create vast opportunities ranging from physiological monitoring to powering ...

In this Policy Forum, Michael Cohen and colleagues highlight the unique risks presented by a particular class of artificial intelligence (AI) systems: reinforcement learning (RL) agents that plan more effectively than humans over long horizons. “Giving [such] an advanced AI system the objective to maximize its reward and, at some point, withholding reward from it, strongly incentivizes the AI system to take humans out of the loop,” write Cohen and colleagues. This incentive also arises for long-term planning agents (LTPAs) more generally, say the authors, and in ways empirical testing is unlikely to cover. It is thus critical to address extinction risk from these ...

In asthma, the tightening of muscles around the bronchi causes damage to the airway by squeezing and destroying epithelial cells, which promotes the airway inflammation and mucus production often associated with an asthma attack, researchers report. The findings suggest that preventing the mechanical damage caused by an asthma attack, rather than treating only its downstream symptoms, could pave the way for therapies that stop the whole asthma inflammatory cycle. Asthma is a common airway disorder affecting more than 300 million people worldwide. Although it is primarily considered an inflammatory disease, a diagnostic feature of asthma is mechanical bronchoconstriction – the ...

Promoting livestock biodiversity and soil conservation strategies provides both social and environmental benefits, according to a new study. The findings suggest that well-designed polices aimed at incentivizing the adoption of multiple diversification strategies could mitigate simplified agriculture’s negative environmental, health, and social impacts. “Our interdisciplinary analysis spanning a wide array of regions provides convincing evidence that agricultural diversification is a promising win-win strategy for providing social and environmental benefits,” write the authors. Agricultural lands tend to be simplified ecosystems designed ...

After two decades in the United States, Martin Hetzer returned home to Austria in 2023 to become the 2nd President of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA). A year into his new role, the molecular biologist remains engaged in the realm of aging research. Hetzer is fascinated by the biological puzzles surrounding the aging processes in organs like the brain, heart, and pancreas. Most cells comprising these organs are not renewed throughout a human’s entire life span. Nerve cells (neurons) in the human brain, for instance, can be as old as the organism, even ...

Scientists at King’s College London have discovered a new cause for asthma that sparks hope for treatment that could prevent the life-threatening disease. Most current asthma treatments stem from the idea that it is an inflammatory disease. Yet, the life-threatening feature of asthma is the attack or the constriction of airways, making breathing difficult. The new study, published today in Science, shows for the first time that many features of an asthma attack—inflammation, mucus secretion, and damage to the airway barrier that ...

 It is possible to leave most of the lymph nodes in the armpit, even if one or two of them have metastases larger than two millimetres? This is shown in a trial enrolling women from five countries, led by researchers at Karolinska Institutet and published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The results open up for gentler surgery for patients with breast cancer.  Breast cancer can spread to the lymph nodes in the armpit. However, tumours found only in the breast and armpit lymph nodes are considered a localized disease, with the goal of curing the patient.  A challenging question for breast cancer surgeons revolves around what should ...

Music holds an important place in human culture, and we’ve all felt the swell of emotion that music can inspire unlike almost anything else. But what is it exactly about music that can bring on such intense sensations in our minds and bodies? A new study reported in the journal iScience on April 4 has insight from studies that systematically examine the way perception of unique musical chords elicits specific bodily sensations and emotions. “This study reveals the intricate interplay between musical uncertainty, prediction ...

Clinicians often find limited success in treating patients with traumatic brain injury, a condition long linked to contact sports and military services. A new study, published April 4 in the journal Cell Stem Cell, may offer new clues to better solutions. Scientists found a protein, TDP-43, that appears to drive nerve damage right after injury. Moreover, blocking a certain cell surface protein can correct faulty TDP-43 and curb nerve death in mouse and human cells. “There’s really nothing out there that can prevent the injury ...

Lack of respectful maternity care in the U.S. culminating in mistreatment in childbirth is a regular occurrence, according to a new study at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Yet until now experiences of this mistreatment had not been widely documented in the United States.  The findings are published in JAMA Network Open. To estimate the prevalence of mistreatment by care providers in childbirth, the researchers collected survey data from a representative sample of people who had a live birth in 2020 ...

An astrophysicist from The University of Texas at Dallas and his colleagues from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) collaboration are at the forefront of an ambitious experiment to study the expansion of the universe and its acceleration. Dr. Mustapha Ishak-Boushaki, professor of physics in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics (NSM) at UT Dallas, is a member of the DESI collaboration, an international group of more than 900 researchers from over 70 institutions around the world engaged in a multiyear experiment to increase understanding of the ...

Music which surprises us can be felt in the heart, while music which matches our expectations can bring feelings of calmness and satisfaction, according to a new study. Researchers played eight short tunes made up of just four chords each to over 500 participants. Each tune had a varied mix of surprising and unsurprising, and certain and uncertain chord progressions. When asked to report how the tunes made them feel and where they were affected, participants’ answers showed that fluctuations in predictions about chord sequences were felt in specific parts of the body, notably the heart and abdomen. Researchers also ...

A nerve-stimulation treatment for obstructive sleep apnea that originally was approved only for people with body mass indexes (BMIs) in the healthy range recently was extended to patients with BMIs up to 40, a weight range generally described as severely obese. A healthy BMI ranges from 18.5 to 24.9. The expanded eligibility criteria for the treatment provide more sleep apnea patients with access to the increasingly popular therapy, known as hypoglossal nerve stimulation. However, new research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis indicates that the likelihood of successful nerve-stimulation treatment ...

About The Study: Among 7,998 adults hospitalized during the 16 months before the first respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine recommendations, RSV disease was less common but similar in severity compared with COVID-19 or influenza disease among unvaccinated patients and more severe than COVID-19 or influenza disease among vaccinated patients for the most serious outcomes of invasive mechanical ventilation or death.  Authors: Diya Surie, M.D., of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in ...

About The Study: In this randomized crossover clinical trial with 62 participants, non-hospitalized patients with post-COVID condition (PCC) generally tolerated exercise with preserved cardiovascular function but showed lower aerobic capacity and less muscle strength than the control group. They also showed signs of postural orthostatic tachycardia and myopathy. The findings suggest cautious exercise adoption could be recommended to prevent further skeletal muscle deconditioning and health impairment in patients with PCC.  Authors: Andrea Tryfonos, Ph.D., of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, is the corresponding author.  To ...

People suffering from post-COVID have been discouraged from exercising because early observations  suggested it could be harmful. In a study published in JAMA Network Open, researchers from Karolinska Institutet show that post-covid does not mean that exercise must be strictly avoided.  People affected by post-COVID often experience symptoms such as extreme fatigue, shortness of breath, high resting heart rate, and muscle weakness. Symptoms are often exacerbated by exertion.  “The World Health Organization (WHO) and other major bodies have said that people with post-covid ...

Viruses need hosts. Whether it’s measles, the flu or coronavirus, viral pathogens cannot multiply or infect other organisms without the assistance of their hosts’ cellular infrastructure. However, humans are not the only ones affected by viruses: animals, plants and even microorganisms can all serve as hosts. Viruses that use bacteria as host cells are called bacteriophages (or simply “phages” for short) and are thought to be the most abundant biological entities of all. Just as the human immune system springs ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – A new study found increased coronary vessel wall thickness that was significantly associated with impaired diastolic function in asymptomatic, middle-aged individuals living with HIV. The study was published today in Radiology: Cardiothoracic Imaging, a journal of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). According to the World Health Organization, approximately 39 million people were living with HIV at the end of 2022. Since 2010, HIV-related deaths have been reduced by 51%, but HIV continues to be a major global public health issue, claiming 40.4 million lives so far.  As effective therapy drugs increase ...

(WASHINGTON, April 4, 2024) – A study published today in Blood Advances showed that among patients in Denmark who had slow-growing chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) with no symptoms and a low risk for ever needing treatment, those who stopped seeing their doctors for specialized follow-up had fewer hospital visits, fewer infections, and similar survival after three years compared to those who continued to undergo specialized follow-up. “To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first study ...

TAMPA, Fla. (April 4, 2024) – The University of South Florida is broadening its collaboration with the U.S. Department of Defense through a formalized agreement with the U.S. Army. The five-year educational partnership agreement brings together faculty from throughout the university to conduct critical defense research and provide student internships – helping broaden the talent pipeline for future military needs. Adam Rawlett, senior research scientist for the Army Research Laboratory, and Sylvia Thomas, USF vice president for research and innovation, formally signed the agreement on March 26.  “This new partnership with ...

Sandsæter is a midwife and has seen the development first hand. Increasing numbers of pregnant women are overweight. Heidi Sandsæter has studied what overweight and obese pregnant women perceive as the cause of this development. “Research in other countries has shown that there is a direct correlation between weight and a difficult childhood in some adults. We wanted to find out if this was also the case in wealthy Norway,” says Sandsæter. She is a PhD candidate at the Department of Public Health and Nursing at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), and has used data ...

A new study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science investigated the factors influencing orgasm rates for women across sexual orientations. The researchers report that partner gender plays a significant role in how women approach sex. and their likelihood of reaching orgasm. Understanding the Orgasm Gap Previous research has established the existence of an "orgasm gap," where cisgender women are less likely to achieve orgasm during partnered sex compared to cisgender men. This new study delves deeper, ...

Highlights: Colorectal cancer is associated with a disrupted gut microbiome. About 40% of people with colorectal cancer have a mutation in the KRAS gene. Researchers in China connect the 2 in a new study. Their findings identify distinct microbial signatures in patients with and without KRAS mutations. The work points to a potential noninvasive biomarker for determining a person’s KRAS status after a colorectal cancer diagnosis. Washington, D.C.—For about 40% of people diagnosed with colorectal cancer (CRC), the tumor carries a mutation in a gene called KRAS. Many of those mutations have been linked to shorter survival and ...