The perception of softness can be taken for granted, but it plays a crucial role in many actions and interactions – from judging the ripeness of an avocado to conducting a medical exam, or holding the hand of a loved one. But understanding and reproducing softness perception is challenging, because it involves so many sensory and cognitive processes. Robotics researchers have tried to address this challenge with haptic devices, but previous attempts have not distinguished between two primary elements of softness perception: cutaneous cues (sensory feedback ...

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the bacteria that causes a tuberculosis infection, is present in exhaled breath of 90% of those presenting with suspected tuberculosis. This includes those who were negative on conventional sputum testing and not diagnosed with TB. This raises the possibility that those who have tested negative may be unknowingly transmitting the infection. Researchers from the University of Cape Town and Amsterdam UMC analysed results from over 100 patients who presented themselves to clinics in South Africa. These findings are published today in PNAS.  “If ...

In a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers from the University of Minnesota Medical School investigated brain development to understand how different areas of the brain become specialized in handling information such as vision, sound, touch and planning.  The study found that different areas of the brain start with a similar organization rather than already being specialized in early development. This suggests that the brain might use a single shared blueprint to guide early development.  “Throughout life, the brain continually builds on the foundations set ...

Researchers have discovered a game changer for the potato industry. According to a new study published in a leading international society journal published by the American Society of Plant Biologists, a small genetic element is the cause of a major production problem in potatoes. “Our manuscript reveals the mystery of “cold-induced sweetening” (CIS), the most troublesome and expensive problem for the potato processing industry,” explained Jiming Jiang, Corresponding Author of “Molecular dissection of an intronic enhancer governing cold-induced expression ...

Developed by VHIO, a novel AI-based and non-invasive diagnostic tool enables accurate brain tumor diagnosis, outperforming current classification methods Developed by VHIO’s Radiomics Group in close collaboration with researchers of the Neuroradiology Unit at the Bellvitge University Hospital (HUB), DISCERN is a deep learning tool that leverages information of magnetic resonance imaging and facilitates brain tumor classification to aid clinical decision making. Currently, a definitive diagnosis often requires neurosurgical interventions that compromise the quality of life of patients. Trained to differentiate between the three most ...

With the help of 16 grants from the National Science Foundation, researchers have painstakingly taken computed topography (CT) scans of more than 13,000 individual specimens to create 3D images of more than half of all the world's animal groups, including mammals, fishes, amphibians and reptiles. The research team, made of members from The University of Texas at Arlington and 25 other institutions, are now a quarter of the way through inputting nearly 30,000 media files to the open-source repository MorphoSource. This will allow researchers ...

WASHINGTON  –  U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) researchers deliver novel contribution in fiber optics computing, Fiber Optic Computing Using Distributed Feedback paper recently published in Communications Physics journal, brings the Navy one step closer to faster, more efficient computing technologies. Optical computing uses the properties of light, such as its speed and ability to carry large amounts of data, to process information more efficiently than traditional electronic computers. In collaboration with Sandia National Laboratories and the University of Central Florida, NRL is aiming ...

A new study led by UC San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography postdoctoral scholar Jennifer Bowen finds that canals used to drain soggy peatlands in Southeast Asia are likely hotspots for greenhouse gas emissions.  The results, published March 8 in Nature Geoscience and supported by the Scripps Institutional Postdoctoral Program and Stanford University’s Precourt Institute for Energy, identify a previously unaccounted for source of emissions from these threatened, carbon-rich landscapes. Findings from the study suggest that the degradation of tropical peatlands in Southeast Asia has released even more planet-warming ...

The nutritional value of meat must be considered when comparing carbon footprints – that is the key message from a recent study undertaken by Hybu Cig Cymru – Meat Promotion Wales (HCC), Bangor University, Queen’s University, and the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI). The scientific paper, published in the journal Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems using data from the Welsh Lamb Meat Quality project, focuses on different lamb production systems, specifically the ‘finishing’ period – at the end of which lambs have reached the required weight, meat and fat cover for ...

Prostate cancer stands as a prevalent threat to men's health, ranking second in cancer-related deaths in the United States. Each year, approximately 250,000 men in the U.S. receive a prostate cancer diagnosis. While most cases have low morbidity and mortality rates, a subset of cases demands aggressive treatment. Urologists assess the need for such treatment primarily through the Gleason score, which evaluates prostate gland appearance on histology slides. However, there's considerable variability in interpretation, leading to both undertreatment and overtreatment. The current method, based on histology ...

A team of investigators from the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute was awarded a $3.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to identify new ways to prevent and overcome treatment resistance to targeted therapy in patients with all sub-types of cutaneous melanoma, an aggressive form of skin cancer.  Virtually all cutaneous melanomas display genetic alterations that ...

A new study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden reveals that immune cells in the liver react to high cholesterol levels and eat up excess cholesterol that can otherwise cause damage to arteries. The findings, published in Nature Cardiovascular Research, suggest that the response to the onset of atherosclerosis begins in the liver. Cholesterol is a type of fat that is essential for many functions in the body, such as making hormones and cell membranes. However, too much cholesterol in the blood can be harmful, as it can stick to the walls of the arteries ...

INFORMS Journal Marketing Science Study Key Takeaways: Female entrepreneurs increase their chances of success and improved performance with female mentors. One of the key benefits to female entrepreneurs is a mentoring style characterized as “positive engagement.”   BALTIMORE, MD, March 11, 2024 – In business and in life, the power of mentorship has long been understood, but how important is it that your mentor look like you? This question was at the center of a new study, which specifically found that mentor gender has a powerful impact on ...

  LA JOLLA, CA—Scientists at the Scripps Research Digital Trials Center have partnered with the health technology company CareEvolution to launch a remote study that will investigate whether wrist-worn devices, such as activity trackers and smartwatches, can help people with long COVID manage and reduce the severity of their symptoms. “New treatments and interventions are urgently needed,” says the study principal investigator Julia Moore Vogel, PhD. “We’re excited to launch the Long COVID Wearable Study and ...

With the Global Nutrition and Hydration Week 2024 starting today, researchers have announced an intriguing discovery – consumers generally prefer AI-generated images of food over real food images, especially when they are unaware of their true nature. The new findings have been published in Food Quality and Preference. According to the researchers, the results suggest that AI-generated food visuals excel at enhancing the appeal of depicted foods by leveraging key features such as symmetry, shape, glossiness, and overall lighting and colour. All of these are known to contribute significantly ...

BOSTON – (March 11, 2024) Mass General Brigham is establishing the Implantable Brain-Computer Interface Collaborative Community (iBCI-CC). This is the first Collaborative Community in the clinical neurosciences that has participation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). BCIs are devices that interface with the nervous system and use software to interpret neural activity. Commonly, they are designed for improved access to communication or other technologies for people with physical disability. Implantable BCIs are investigational devices ...

Political anger and cynicism are rising in the United States and in many democracies worldwide, and both are associated with exposure to political attacks on social media, a new University of Michigan study shows.   Americans use social media to find information and news about politics, but much of the content they see in their feeds is hostile, uncivil and attacking, said lead author Ariel Hasell, assistant professor of communication and media and an affiliate of the Center for Political Studies at the U-M Institute for Social Research.    Hasell ...

FINDINGS   In a new UCLA Health study, 25 medical students pursuing emergency medicine were interviewed about their experiences working in an emergency room during clinical rotations. Four themes were identified in their answers: watching difficult interactions between patient and care team and among the care team was distressing; women participants found that culture to be exclusionary; traits – like assertiveness and self-advocacy – were favored; and access to mentors, representation, and exposure to environment influenced interest towards the specialty.  Most of the medical students interviewed -- 21 ...

The University of Houston College of Pharmacy is included in a $68.5 million funding package from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT).   Ming Hu, Diana S-L. Chow Endowed Professor of Drug Discovery and Development, and Gregory Cuny, Joseph P. & Shirley Shipman Buckley Endowed Professor of Drug Discovery, received $1.4 million to fight familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP), a devastating and rare genetic disorder of the gastrointestinal tract that can cause hundreds or thousands of polyps inside the colon ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Each year between 200,000 and 270,000 children and youth enter foster care placements with child welfare services, and many more children receive child welfare services while remaining in their parent's care, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Although many of these children have a documented history of abuse or neglect, children may respond differently to incidents of maltreatment or other potentially traumatic events. Incorporating a trauma screening — which assesses how trauma and maltreatment affected each child — into the child welfare evaluation process provides information that could be used to ...

Monitoring daily activity patterns using a wrist-worn device may detect early warning signs of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The researchers analyzed movement data from wristwatch-like devices called actigraphs worn by 82 cognitively healthy older adults who were participants in a long-running study of aging. Some of the participants had detectable brain amyloid buildup as measured by PET scan. Buildup of the protein amyloid beta in the brain is a key feature of Alzheimer’s disease. Using a sensitive statistical technique, the ...

They published their work on new superionic mechanism in fluorite oxide electrolyte for low temperature protonic ceramic fuel cells  in Energy Material Advances.   "The development of low-temperature and high-performance solid oxide fuel cells is imperative." said corresponding author Dr. Jianbing Huang, Associate Professor of the State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University.   Dr. Huang explained that protonic ceramic fuel cell has several significant advantages as an alternative solid oxide fuel cell ...

WASHINGTON, March 11, 2024 — For years, scientists thought some complex molecules could only be formed on Earth. But what if we found these kinds of molecules out in space after all? In this episode of Reactions, we explore new findings that show complex carbon ring structures can be formed in space, and what that might mean for biology, chemistry and our own chemical history! https://youtu.be/Jh_O5JP10aQ?si=HFvdSchFY95y4idV Reactions is a video series produced by the American Chemical Society and PBS Digital Studios. Subscribe to Reactions at http://bit.ly/ACSReactions and follow us on Twitter @ACSReactions. The ...

A research team at Microsoft has designed an efficiency tool called TaskMatrix.AI that can be used to accomplish a wide variety of specific AI tasks. TaskMatrix.AI connects general-purpose foundation models like GPT-4, the model behind ChatGPT, with specialized models suitable for certain tasks — much like a human project manager. This research was published Feb. 16 in Intelligent Computing, a Science Partner Journal. Foundation models and specialized models usually have different mechanisms thus are not easily compatible. Rather than modifying and integrating existing models, TaskMatrix.AI bridges the gaps between them through application ...

A piece of rotting fruit is likely covered in hundreds if not thousands of microscopic roundworms, including C. elegans—a popular experimental model system for studying neurogenetics. With a lifespan of only a few weeks, C. elegans must reproduce quickly and often. The species is made up of hermaphrodites and males. The hermaphrodites have female bodies, can self-fertilize, and can mate with males. Recent research from of the Portman Lab at the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Rochester, found the males do not mate indiscriminately—they are selective about things like age, mating history, and nutrition. “We ...