(WASHINGTON, Nov. 21, 2024) — Participants of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) Minority Recruitment Initiative had lower attrition rates in graduate and medical programs, were more likely to pursue a career in hematology, and had high levels of engagement at ASH beyond their participation in the program, according to a study published today in Blood Advances. The ASH Minority Recruitment Initiative was established in 2003 following a report from the Institute of Medicine that called for greater workforce diversity. The program aimed to recruit physicians and physician/scientists from communities ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Taking anti-obesity drugs has led some U.S. adults to throw away more food than they tossed before starting the medications, a new study has found. In a survey of people currently on GLP-1 medications such as Ozempic, 25% of respondents agreed they had wasted more food since taking the drugs, compared to 61% who disagreed. People who were nauseated by the drugs were more likely to report increased food waste. Being on the medications for a longer period of time and eating more vegetables were associated with less food waste. Scientists at The Ohio State University see this study of consumer behavior as an initial effort to consider the effects ...

University of Virginia School of Medicine researchers have discovered how long-term treatment of high blood pressure with commonly prescribed drugs can destroy the kidney’s ability to filter and purify blood. The finding could open the door to better ways to manage high blood pressure and other vascular diseases. The class of drugs, known as renin–angiotensin system (RAS) inhibitors, block the effects of the renin enzyme, relaxing blood vessels and allowing blood to flow more easily. They are widely used as first-line medications for hypertension (high blood pressure). But long-term use can take a terrible toll on the ...

NEW YORK, NY, NOV. 21, 2024—A surgical team at NYU Langone Health has performed the first fully robotic double lung transplant in the world. The procedure marks a breakthrough in the potential of robotic surgery and minimally invasive patient care, making NYU Langone the new leader in robotic transplant surgery around the globe. Stephanie H. Chang, MD, associate professor in the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and surgical director of the Lung Transplant Program ...

DARIEN, IL – The Associated Professional Sleep Societies is accepting research abstracts and session proposal submissions for SLEEP 2025, the 39th annual meeting of the APSS, which will be held June 8 to 11 at the Seattle Convention Center. Research abstracts will be accepted for oral and poster presentations. Hot topics for 2025 include machine learning and artificial intelligence, metabolomics and genomics, sleep and the glymphatic system, orexin pharmacology, and obesity management. Accepted abstracts ...

New research from the Kind Group at the Hubrecht Institute sheds light on how cells repair damaged DNA. For the first time, the team has mapped the activity of repair proteins in individual human cells. The study demonstrates how these proteins collaborate in so-called "hubs" to repair DNA damage. This knowledge offers opportunities to improve cancer therapies and other treatments where DNA repair is essential. The researchers published their findings in Nature Communications on November 21. DNA is the molecule that carries our genetic information. It can be damaged by normal cellular processes as well as external factors such as UV radiation ...

“For the first time, we have succeeded in taking a zoomed-in image of a dying star in a galaxy outside our own Milky Way,” says Keiichi Ohnaka, an astrophysicist from Universidad Andrés Bello in Chile. Located a staggering 160 000 light-years from us, the star WOH G64 was imaged thanks to the impressive sharpness offered by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (ESO’s VLTI). The new observations reveal a star puffing out gas and dust, in the last stages before it becomes a supernova. “We discovered an ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – In a polarized nation, there is one thing that nearly all Americans agree on, according to a recent study: Sports are good for us.   Researchers from The Ohio State University and Ithaca College found that more than 9 out of 10 Americans agreed that sports build character and improved one’s health, while 84% agreed playing sports makes one popular in school and 85% said it makes one more well-known in the community.   According to 67% of those surveyed, playing sports even leads to better grades in school.   While these beliefs may seem harmless, ...

Researchers often look to photosynthesis—a process that turns sunlight into chemical energy in plants and bacteria—as a model for innovation. Photosynthesis is in turn linked to chlorophyll pigments, tiny green molecules that play a key role in harvesting light. Naturally, these chlorophyll molecules are organized into precise structures to optimize light absorption in plants and bacteria, and efficiently capture sunlight for energy. Inspired by this natural structure, scientists have explored ways to synthetically assemble chlorophyll-based ...

Rutgers researchers at the Brain Health Institute (BHI) and Center for Advanced Human Brain Imaging Research (CAHBIR) have uncovered how different types of brain cells work together to form large-scale functional networks in the human brain – interconnected systems that support everything from sensory processing to complex decision-making – paving the way for new insights into brain health and disease.   By pinpointing these cellular foundations, the study, published in Nature Neuroscience, offers a deeper understanding of the cellular foundations of cognition and mental health.   The brain’s functional properties arise from the varied ...

A potentially life-changing heart condition, dilated cardiomyopathy, can be caused by the cumulative influence of hundreds or thousands of genes and not just by a single “aberrant” genetic variant, as was previously thought, finds a new study led by researchers at UCL (University College London), Imperial College London and the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences. Dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) is a condition in which the heart becomes progressively enlarged and weakened, reducing its ability to pump blood efficiently. It is estimated to affect up to 260,000 people in the UK (one in every 250 individuals) and is the leading cause of heart transplantation. Previously, ...

People with poorer mental health are more prone to browsing negative content online, which further exacerbates their symptoms, finds a study led by UCL researchers. The relationship between mental health and web-browsing is causal and bi-directional, according to the Wellcome-funded study published in Nature Human Behaviour. The researchers have developed a plug-in tool* that adds ‘content labels’ to webpages—similar to nutrition labels on food—designed to help users make healthier and more informed decisions about the ...

Toronto, ON – A recent longitudinal study from the University of Toronto reveals the mental health consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on older adults living with migraine. Using a sample of more than 2,000 older adults with migraine from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging, researchers examined changes in depression status among this population during the pandemic. More than 1 in 7 older adults with migraine experienced depression for the first time during the COVID-19 pandemic, while approximately 1 in 2 with a previous history of depression experienced a recurrence during this period. “People ...

A new study published in Nature Climate Change estimates that a 1-meter sea level rise by 2100 would affect over 14 million people and $1 trillion worth of property along the Southeast Atlantic coast, from Norfolk, Virginia, to Miami, Florida. The study assesses the cumulative impact of multiple climate-driven coastal hazards, including sea level rise, flooding, beach erosion, sinking land, and rising groundwater, all of which are expected to worsen significantly by the end of the 21st century. The scale of these interconnected ...

Females sleep less, wake up more often and get less restorative sleep than males, according to a new animal study by CU Boulder researchers. The findings, published in the journal Scientific Reports, shed new light on what may underlie sleep differences in men and women and could have broad implications for biomedical research, which for decades has focused primarily on males. “In humans, men and women exhibit distinct sleep patterns, often attributed to lifestyle factors and caregiving roles,” said senior author Rachel Rowe, assistant professor of integrative physiology. “Our results suggest that biological ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Nov. 21, 2024 — A majority of Americans (70%) say they would prefer to be asked about both their physical and mental health during medical appointments with their primary care providers (PCPs). The finding from the new West Health-Gallup Survey on Mental Health in America comes as more than one in five U.S. adults, or 59.3 million people, were living with a mental illness in 2022, and little more than half of them (50.6%) received treatment within the prior year. According to the survey, majorities of men (65%) and women (76%) are eager to discuss both their mental and physical health with their primary ...

by Amy Norton PISCATAWAY, NJ – The risks of alcohol and other drug consumption to the user are well known, but many Americans--nearly 160 million--say they’ve been harmed by someone else’s substance use, according to a new study in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. In a national survey of U.S. adults, researchers found that 34% said they’d ever suffered “secondhand harm” from someone else’s alcohol use--ranging from marriage and family problems to financial fall-out to being assaulted or injured in a drunk-driving accident. Meanwhile, 14% said they’d been harmed ...

Plasma-derived atomic hydrogen (PDAH) enables low-temperature carbon dioxide methanation reaction through the Eley−Rideal-type reaction channel, improving methane yield at low temperatures, as shown by scientists at Science Tokyo. The findings underscore the potential of PDAH in advancing sustainable carbon dioxide recycling methods and optimizing other catalytic hydrogenation reactions, providing a promising avenue for improved efficiency in various energy and environmental technologies. Despite declining reserves and significant carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions contributing to ...

The just-announced Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to University of Washington Professor David Baker, Google DeepMind CEO Hershavis, and Principal Investigator John Jumper for their work using AI to predict the structure of proteins, enabling the discovery of new drugs and new materials. In an era where AI and data are driving the scientific revolution, quantum computing technology is emerging as another game-changer in the development of new drugs and new materials. Dr. Hyang-Tag Lim's ...

Can a single protein-encoding gene determine whether a vertebrate embryo develops normally? Yes, according to Osaka Metropolitan University researchers, who found that suppression of Pcdh8 is essential for the notochord to elongate properly in zebrafish. Graduate School of Medicine Dr. Masatake Kai and Professor Makoto Kondo focused on this paraxial protocadherin (PAPC), which is excluded when dividing cells migrate and form the notochord in the embryo. In the experiments with zebrafish embryo, when this PAPC is not ...

NOVEMBER TIP SHEET - SYLVESTER COMPREHENSIVE CANCER CENTER CANCER RESEARCH Sylvester Researchers to Share Insights at ASH 2024 Annual Meeting Dozens of physician-scientists and other investigators from Sylvester Cancer will share their insights at ASH 2024, the American Society of Hematology’s 66th-annual meeting in San Diego, Dec. 7-10. Sylvester researchers will be involved in more than 130 presentations, including oral, poster and special sessions. Additionally, Sylvester Director Stephen D. Nimer, MD, will receive the 2024 ASH Mentor Award for his exemplary work in mentoring trainees and colleagues. BREAST CANCER   The Cancer Journey: Asking For and Accepting Help Journalist ...

Algorithms that can detect subtle changes in a person’s voice are emerging as a potential new diagnostic tool for Parkinson’s disease, according to researchers from Iraq and Australia. Speech impairments are often the first indicators of the fastest-growing neurological disease in the world, affecting more than 8.5 million people, but traditional diagnostic methods are often complex and slow, delaying early detection. Researchers from Middle Technical University (MTU) in Baghdad and the University of South Australia (UniSA) have recently published a conference paper reviewing ...

Findings from a Mass General Brigham-led study that has followed participants since before birth may offer clues about the origins of Alzheimer’s disease. KEY TAKEAWAYS Stress-related immune activity during the late second to early third trimester of pregnancy can have long-term sex-dependent effects on offspring memory circuitry, function, and decline that potentially increase vulnerability for memory disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease, after menopause. Sex differences in immune function begin in fetal development ...

About one in five people who have stopped smoking for more than a year in England currently vape, equivalent to 2.2 million people, according to a new study led by UCL (University College London) researchers. The study, published in the journal BMC Medicine and funded by Cancer Research UK, found that this increased prevalence was largely driven by greater use of e-cigarettes in attempts to quit smoking. However, the researchers also found a rise in vaping uptake among people who had already stopped smoking, with an estimated one in 10 ex-smokers who vape having quit smoking prior to 2011, when e-cigarettes ...

The Northern Lights were visible much farther south than usual this year, and pictures of the colorful hues filled social media. Now, imagine an aurora hundreds of times brighter – except no one would be able to snap a photo of it, as the onslaught of particles rushing in from the sun would instantly turn smartphones into bricks.  Such extreme solar storms are rare – only six are known to have left their traces on Earth in the past 14,500 years, and none have been witnessed since the height of the Assyrian Empire nearly 2,700 years ago. A research team ...