Washington D.C., Feb. 28, 2024- The Global Alzheimer’s Platform Foundation®, (GAP) is releasing the first results from the Bio-Hermes-001 Study. This study in over 1000 community-based participants from throughout the US compared the results of blood and digital biomarkers with brain amyloid PET scans or cerebrospinal fluid assays. The study revealed a strong correlation between several blood tests, particularly p-tau 217, with the presence of amyloid plaques in the brain, a diagnostic hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). This relationship was demonstrated across the entire study ...

Young people could be spared from going blind by a new genetic risk tool that could also help diagnose multiple sclerosis (MS) earlier, to start effective treatments. Optic neuritis is a condition that affects people of all ages, but especially young adults, usually manifesting in blurred vision and sometimes pain when moving the eyes. Up to half of people affected in the UK eventually go on to develop MS – often many years later. Emerging evidence indicates that starting the very effective MS treatments earlier may improve long term health. Optic neuritis occurs because of swelling in or around the optic nerve. For those with MS-related optic neuritis, the swelling subsides ...

Research Highlights: An analysis of survey data for 430,000 adults in the U.S. found that using cannabis has a significant association with an increased risk of heart attack and stroke, independent of tobacco use, with higher odds among the adults with more frequent use (more days of use per month). The most common method of cannabis use was smoking, followed by eating or vaporizing it. The increase in the combined risk of coronary heart disease, heart attack and stroke was similar to the risk among the subset of adults who had never used e-cigarettes but did use cannabis. Embargoed until 4 a.m. CT/5 a.m. ET Wednesday, February ...

A research team at the RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research (BDR) in Japan has succeeded in establishing a model of the blood-brain barrier using modularized tissue derived from human cells. The “Tissue-in-a-CUBE” is a small cubic structure that could provide a boost in the drug discovery field and be used as an alternative to animal models in pre-clinical studies. The study was published in Communications Biology on February 28.   The blood-brain barrier is a strict gatekeeper around the brain that prevents foreign substances in blood from entering the brain. Although protective, the barrier poses challenges when treatments ...

KEY TAKEAWAYS Rheumatoid arthritis is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease, but it can be challenging to predict which individuals are at highest risk. Mass General Brigham experts in rheumatology and cardiovascular disease worked together to identify six biomarkers found in blood samples that can predict future risk of arterial inflammation among patients with rheumatoid arthritis. The team is now working to test these biomarkers in a larger and more long-term cohort of patients with rheumatoid ...

New York, NY [February 28, 2024]—Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and others have harnessed the power of machine learning to identify key predictors of mortality in dementia patients. The study, published in the February 28 online issue of Communications Medicine [10.1038/s43856-024-00437-7], addresses critical challenges in dementia care by pinpointing patients at high risk of near-term death and uncovers the factors that drive this risk. Unlike previous studies that focused on diagnosing dementia, this research delves into predicting patient prognosis, shedding light on mortality ...

Molecules that are induced by light to rotate bulky groups around central bonds could be developed into photo-activated bioactive systems, molecular switches, and more. Researchers at Hokkaido University, led by Assistant Professor Akira Katsuyama and Professor Satoshi Ichikawa at the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, have extended the toolkit of synthetic chemistry by making a new category of molecules that can be induced to undergo an internal rotation on interaction with light. Similar processes are believed to be important in some natural biological systems. Synthetic versions might ...

LA JOLLA (February 28, 2024)—The brain is typically depicted as a complex web of neurons sending and receiving messages. But neurons only make up half of the human brain. The other half—roughly 85 billion cells—are non-neuronal cells called glia. The most common type of glial cells are astrocytes, which are important for supporting neuronal health and activity. Despite this, most existing laboratory models of the human brain fail to include astrocytes at sufficient levels or at all, which limits the models’ utility for studying ...

Statement Highlights: The American Heart Association encourages research and development of artificial intelligence (AI) and other related tools and services that may support and enable more precise approaches to cardiovascular and stroke research, prevention and care. Academia, industry and governments worldwide are pouring resources into developing AI-based tools to transform how and when health care is delivered. While promising research is beginning to emerge in many areas of cardiovascular medicine, AI-based tools, algorithms and systems of care have not yet been proven to improve care enough to justify widespread use. AI and machine learning digital tools currently exist that ...

Smoking cannabis associated with increased risk of heart attack, stroke NIH-funded observational study shows risk grows sharply with more frequent use   Frequent cannabis smoking may significantly increase a person’s risk for heart attack and stroke, according to an observational study supported by the National Institutes of Health. The study, published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, uses data from nearly 435,000 American adults, and is among the largest ever to explore the relationship ...

●    Simple modifications to ventilation systems improve airflow, making operations safer for both patients and surgical teams ●    This research was conducted in close collaboration with a team of surgeons from Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi (CCAD) Abu Dhabi, UAE, February 28, 2024: NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) engineers studying ventilation systems in surgical operating theaters have found that traditional ventilation systems may inadvertently facilitate the circulation of aerosolized pathogen-carrying particles. This, as a result, puts surgical teams at a higher risk of infection by COVID-19 and other airborne diseases. Using basic engineering tools, including ...

Fish weight in the western North Pacific Ocean dipped in the 2010s due to warmer water limiting food supplies, according to a new study at the University of Tokyo. Researchers analyzed the individual weight and overall biomass of 13 species of fish. In the 1980s and 2010s, the fish were lighter. They attributed the first period of weight loss to greater numbers of Japanese sardine, which increased competition with other species for food. During the 2010s, while the number of Japanese sardine and chub mackerel moderately increased, the effect of climate change warming the ocean appears to have resulted ...

Kelp flies and marine yeast cultivated on by-products from the seafood industry can be used in feed for farmed salmon. Replacing fishmeal and soybeans can create more sustainable and circular food production, according to a thesis from the University of Gothenburg. Food from aquaculture, such as farmed fish, is the food industry’s fastest growing sector. One key reason is that this is a nutritious and protein-rich food that is generally more sustainably produced than protein from land animals. However, fish farming also has challenges. One is obtaining sufficient amounts of sustainable high-quality feed. Currently, fish feed accounts for about ...

Scientists from the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) have discovered that increased meltwater in the North Atlantic can trigger a chain of events leading to hotter and drier European summers. The paper, which will be published in the European Geosciences Union’s open access journal Weather and Climate Dynamics, suggests that European summer weather is predictable months to years in advance, due to higher levels of freshwater in the North Atlantic. Discussing the implications, lead author Marilena Oltmanns, Research Scientist at the National Oceanography Centre, said: “While the UK and northern Europe experienced unusually cool and wet weather in Summer 2023, Greenland experienced ...

Osaka, Japan – Throughout the world, it is common for threats to national sovereignty or territorial integrity to stir up strong emotions among the public. Now, researchers from Japan have found that the strength of the reaction to such threats can break down along political lines in interesting ways. In a study published in Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, researchers from Osaka University have revealed that the Japanese public is highly sensitive to what are known as “collective ownership ...

Potters of different cultural backgrounds learn new types differently, producing cultural differences even in the absence of differential cultural evolution. The Kobe University-led research has implications for how we evaluate the difference of archaeological artifacts across cultures. Cultural artifacts differ between cultures but are relatively stable within cultures. This makes pottery, and in particular its form, an important archaeological indicator to determine the presence of different cultural groups in specific locations and how they influenced each other over time. But where do such culturally stable variations arise from? The typical explanation for this is through “selective ...

HONG KONG (28 Feb 2024) — Unique insights into the social lives of cattle revealed in a new study by scientists at City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) can enhance our understanding of animal behaviour and welfare. The study suggests that sex and social status influence social grooming (where one animal licks another, also known as allogrooming) among free-ranging feral cattle in Hong Kong. The CityUHK researchers found that feral cattle performed preferential grooming of certain individuals and, in particular, that more dominant females received more grooming. This asymmetrical distribution of licking also applied to whom male cattle decided to ...

Scientists have produced the first detailed estimates of how much sediment is transported onto the shores of coral reef islands, and how that might enable them to withstand the future threats posed by climate change. Coral reef islands are low-lying accumulations of sand and gravel-sized sediment deposited on coral reef surfaces. The sediments are derived from the broken down remains of corals and other organisms that grow on the surrounding reef. Therefore, the rate of supply of sediment from reefs is a critical control on island formation and future change. The international team of researchers used data available for 28 reef islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, widely ...

Bridging precision engineering and precision medicine to create personalized physiology avatars. Pursuing on-demand tissue and organ engineering for human health. Revolutionizing neuroscience by using AI to engineer advanced brain interface systems. Engineering the immune system for health and wellness. Designing and engineering genomes for organism repurposing and genomic perturbations.  These are the five research areas where the field of biomedical engineering has the potential to achieve tremendous impact on the field of medicine, according to “Grand Challenges at the Interface of Engineering and Medicine,” a study published by a 50-person task force published ...

Submucosal tumors (SMTs) are usually found in the stomach and esophagus during an upper endoscopy. Submucosal tunneling endoscopic resection (STER) and non-tunneling endoscopic resection (NTER) are the two most commonly used techniques in the treatment of gastric and esophageal SMTs. As novel technologies continue to shape the medical landscape, machine learning (ML) algorithms find increased application, demonstrating enhanced performance in various fields. Although some studies have evaluated the incremental value of flexible ML methods, comparisons with traditional logistic regression (LR) models are lacking. To this end, a recent study by a team of researchers from China published in the ...

Federated learning (FL) has emerged as a popular machine learning paradigm which allows multiple data owners to train models collaboratively with out sharing their raw datasets. It holds potential for a wide spectrum of nalytics applications on sensitive data. For example, federated learning has been applied on medical big data analysis such as disease prediction and diagnosis without revealing the patients’ private medical information to thirdparty services. It has also been exploited by banks and insurance ...

Researchers have newly identified a universal, essential biomarker for the childhood cancer neuroblastoma – and a potential new target for treatment. Neuroblastoma accounts for 15% of all pediatric cancer deaths and is the most common source of childhood tumors outside of brain cancer. The disease develops in early nerve tissue, usually in and around the adrenal glands, and typically affects children under age five. High-risk cases have a five-year survival rate of just 50%. Led by UC San Francisco, researchers suspected the oncoprotein AF1q, which is known to play a role in leukemia and solid tumor progression, might be important in tumors of neural origin ...

Scientists at UC San Francisco may have discovered a new way to test for autism by measuring how children’s eyes move when they turn their heads.     They found that kids who carry a variant of a gene that is associated with severe autism are hypersensitive to this motion.     The gene, SCN2A, makes an ion channel that is found throughout the brain, including the region that coordinates movement, called the cerebellum. Ion channels allow electrical charges in and out of cells and are fundamental to how they function. Several variants ...

Why hydrogen causes steels to become brittle and crack is the great conundrum of engineers and researchers looking to develop large-scale transport and storage solutions for the hydrogen age – an era which Australia hopes to lead by 2030. They may now be one step closer to understanding how hydrogen affects steels, thanks to new University of Sydney research. The researchers found adding the chemical element molybdenum to steel reinforced with metal carbides markedly enhances its ability to ...

Concerted international efforts are urgently needed to meet the targets set out in the 2030 Global Alcohol Action Plan (GAAP) and avert “dire consequences” for low and middle income countries, where alcohol markets are expanding, warn health scientists in the open access journal BMJ Global Health.   A lack of progress on alcohol and health in the wake of the 2010 Global Strategy for Reducing the Harmful Use of Alcohol prompted the 75th World Health Assembly to initiate the Global Alcohol Action Plan 2022-30 and declare alcohol a public health priority, ...