By analyzing millions of small genetic differences across a person’s genome, researchers can calculate a polygenic risk score to estimate someone’s lifetime odds of developing a certain disease. Over the past decade, scientists have developed these risk scores for dozens of diseases, including heart disease, kidney disease, diabetes, and cancer, with the hope that patients could one day use this information to lower any heightened risk of disease. But determining whether such tests work effectively across all populations, and how they can guide clinical decision-making, has been a challenge. Now, ...

In the largest genome-wide association study to date on Type 2 diabetes, a team of international researchers, co-led by a University of Massachusetts Amherst genetic epidemiologist, has located 1,289 genetic markers associated with Type 2 diabetes (145 of which are newly identified) and generated risk scores for diabetes complications. In research published Monday, Feb. 19 in the journal Nature that advances understanding into the inheritability of Type 2 diabetes, the scientists used cutting-edge ...

Dopamine, a chemical messenger in the brain, is mostly known for its role in how we experience pleasure and reward. However, new research from the Champalimaud Foundation (CF) shifts the spotlight towards dopamine’s critical involvement in movement, with implications for our understanding and treatment of symptoms in Parkinson’s Disease (PD). Imagine the act of walking. It’s something most able-bodied people do without a second thought. Yet it is actually a complex process involving various ...

In a group of plants that is famous for luring its pollinators into a death trap, one species offers its flowers as a nursery in exchange. The Kobe University discovery blurs the line between mutualism and parasitism and sheds light on the evolution of complex plant-insect interactions. Many plants rely on animals for pollination and most offer rewards for the service. Some plants, however, deceive their pollinators, and a famous example is the genus Arisaema. “It is famous as the only plant that achieves pollination at the expense of the pollinator's life,” says Kobe University biologist SUETSUGU Kenji, who is an expert on plant pollination ecology. The plant uses ...

The prospect of the worrisome triple threat of COVID, RSV and flu was assuaged last year by the effectiveness of flu vaccines. Two recent studies from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s VISION Network have found that flu vaccines were effective for all ages against both moderate and severe flu in the U.S. during the 2022-2023 flu season. Both the pediatric and adult VISION Network studies analyzed flu-associated emergency department (E.D.)/urgent care visits (indicative of moderate disease) and hospitalization (indicative of severe disease) from October 2022 through March 2023, a flu season in which far fewer individuals were social distancing or ...

February 16, 2024   Contact: Nick Wilson   805-235-8008; nwilso28@calpoly.edu Second Year of Cal Poly Astronomy Fellowship to Examine High-Energy Particle Jets Near Supermassive Black Holes SAN LUIS OBISPO — In the second year of the Astronomy Faculty Research Fellowship in Cal Poly’s Bailey College of Science and Mathematics, a research team will study extremely high-energy photons emitted by the extreme environment found near mega-sized black holes. The fellowship was ...

Language skills are strong predictors of academic, socioemotional and behavioral outcomes when children enter school. They learn language in preschool years by interacting with others, especially their parents. Book sharing is a popular way parents engage young children in conversation. However, not all parents are comfortable with book sharing and not all children like having books read to them.  A new study on “parent talk” by Florida Atlantic University, in collaboration with Aarhus University in Denmark, provides ...

Lincoln, Nebraska, Feb. 19, 2024 — A Husker research duo was named a first-round winner in a National Institutes of Health competition aimed at generating solutions for delivering genome-editing technology to the cells of people with rare and common diseases. Janos Zempleni, Willa Cather Professor of molecular nutrition, and Jiantao Guo, professor of chemistry, were selected as Phase 1 winners in the NIH’s Targeted Genome Editor Delivery Challenge. The challenge is a three-phase competition with prizes totaling $6 million; the University of Nebraska–Lincoln team was among 30 initial recipients announced in December ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Until recently, Orthacanthus gracilis could have been considered the “John Smith” of prehistoric shark names, given how common it was.   Three different species of sharks from the late Paleozoic Era – about 310 million years ago – were mistakenly given that same name, causing lots of grief to paleontologists who studied and wrote about the sharks through the years and had trouble keeping them apart.   But now Loren Babcock, a professor of earth sciences at The Ohio State University, has finished the arduous task of renaming two of the three sharks – and in the process rediscovered a wealth ...

A rapid scoping review has been conducted which reveals five common ways in which the health of homeless pet owners and their companion animals is improved. Ten percent of homeless people keep pets. But little information exists on specific intervention strategies for improving the health of homeless people and their pets who are often the only source of unconditional love or companionship in their life. The study, published in the Human-Animal Interactions journal, found that the most common ways ...

Potassium deficiency in agricultural soils is a largely unrecognised but potentially significant threat to global food security if left unaddressed, finds new research involving researchers at UCL, University of Edinburgh and the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology. The study, published in Nature Food, found that more potassium is being removed from agricultural soils than is being added, throughout many regions of the world. It also gives a series of recommendations for how to mitigate the issue. Potassium is a vital nutrient for plant growth that ...

How does our intestine, which can be at least 15 feet long, fit properly inside our bodies? As our digestive system grows, the gut tube goes through a series of dramatic looping and rotation to package the lengthening intestine. Failure of the gut to rotate properly during development results in a prevalent, but poorly understood, birth anomaly called intestinal malrotation. Now, in a study published in the journal Development, scientists from North Carolina State University have uncovered a potential cause of this life-threatening condition.   Intestinal malrotation affects 1 in 500 births but the underlying causes are not well understood. ...

Niigata, Japan – Dr. Yamamoto et al. found the several uremic toxins as one of causes of itching in hemodialysis patients. Hemodialysis patients commonly experience itching on a daily basis, which is distributed throughout their bodies. They developed a "PBUT score" based on highly protein-bound uremic toxins (PBUT) that increase in the body with end-stage kidney disease. The PBUT score was associated with itching in hemodialysis patients. I. Background of the Study Patients with advanced chronic kidney disease (CKD) require kidney replacement therapy, such as hemodialysis, to manage their condition. Hemodialysis patients often experience various symptoms, ...

Communities must be better prepared for flooding in their homes and businesses, an expert warns, as climate change predictions suggest more extreme flooding globally. Floods still inflict major costs to the economies, livelihoods and wellbeing of communities, with flood risks and impacts set to increase further due to climate change (IPCC, 2021). Professor of Environmental Management, Lindsey McEwen explains how many experts now believe local communities have critical roles as key actors within flood risk management and disaster risk reduction. Professor McEwen, author of Flood ...

Link to video and sound (details below): https://spaces.hightail.com/receive/JwM0o5gQdq The reproduction of giant sea spiders in Antarctica has been largely unknown to researchers for more than 140 years, until now. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa scientists traveled to the remote continent and saw first-hand the behaviors of these mysterious creatures, and their findings could have wider implications for marine life and ocean ecosystems in Antarctica and around the world. Sea spiders, or ...

A few years ago, MIT researchers invented a cryptographic ID tag that is several times smaller and significantly cheaper than the traditional radio frequency tags (RFIDs) that are often affixed to products to verify their authenticity. This tiny tag, which offers improved security over RFIDs, utilizes terahertz waves, which are smaller and travel much faster than radio waves. But this terahertz tag shared a major security vulnerability with traditional RFIDs: A counterfeiter could peel the tag off a genuine item and reattach it to a fake, and the authentication system would be none the wiser. The researchers have now surmounted ...

DENVER – Armed with a catalog of hundreds of thousands of DNA and RNA virus species in the world’s oceans, scientists are now zeroing in on the viruses most likely to combat climate change by helping trap carbon dioxide in seawater or, using similar techniques, different viruses that may prevent methane’s escape from thawing Arctic soil. By combining genomic sequencing data with artificial intelligence analysis, researchers have identified ocean-based viruses and assessed their genomes to find that they “steal” genes from other microbes or cells that process carbon in the sea. Mapping microbial ...

Embargoed until 1:30 p.m. ET, Saturday Feb. 17, 2024 DENVER – Imageomics, a new field of science, has made stunning progress in the past year and is on the verge of major discoveries about life on Earth, according to one of the founders of the discipline.   Tanya Berger-Wolf, faculty director of the Translational Data Analytics Institute at The Ohio State University, outlined the state of imageomics in a presentation on Feb. 17, 2024, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.   “Imageomics ...

Tokyo, Japan – Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University crafted replica stone age tools and used them for a range of tasks to see how different activities create traces on the edge. They found that a combination of macroscopic and microscopic traces can tell us how stone edges were used. Their criteria help separate tools used for wood-felling from other activities. Dated stone edges may be used to identify when timber use began for early humans.   For prehistoric humans, improvements in woodworking technology were revolutionary. While Paleolithic (early stone age) artifacts point to the use of wood for simple tools such as spears ...

Two innovative design techniques lead to substantial improvements in performance in fractional-N phase locked loops (PLLs), report scientists from Tokyo Tech. The proposed methods are aimed to minimize unwanted signals known as fractional spurs, which typically plague PLLs used in many modern radar systems and wireless transceivers. These efforts could open doors to technological improvements in wireless communication, autonomous vehicles, surveillance, and tracking systems in beyond 5G era. Many emerging and evolving technologies, such as self-driving vehicles, target tracking systems, and remote sensors, rely on the high-speed and error-free operation ...

DENVER — Young physician investigators interested in research careers in pulmonology, allergy and immunology, pediatric and related programs, are encouraged to submit basic science or clinical research abstracts by June 3, 2024, to be considered for participation in the 20th Annual Respiratory Disease Young Investigators’ Forum. This year’s Forum will take place October 17-20, 2024, in Denver. The annual event provides career development and research opportunities for fellows and early career faculty. The Forum is a celebration of talent and ingenuity in respiratory medicine. Physician-scientists in fellowship ...

In an article published in the Journal of Pediatrics, researchers based in Brazil describe the case of a nine-year-old boy admitted to hospital with multiple symptoms and overlapping conditions that made diagnosis difficult, such as short stature, thin tooth enamel (dental enamel hypoplasia), moderate mental deficiency, speech delay, asthma, mildly altered blood sugar, and a history of recurring infections in infancy.  The team used exome sequencing, in which only the protein-coding portion of the genome is analyzed, to look for genetic mutations, and found them in GCK and BCL11B. ...

MIAMI, FLORIDA (Feb. 15, 2024) – Prominent oncologist and researcher Damian Green, M.D., will join Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University Miami Miller School of Medicine this spring to lead its transplantation and cellular therapy services. Green will serve as chief of Sylvester’s Division of Transplantation & Cellular Therapy, as well as assistant director of Translational Research, beginning March 1. He joins Sylvester from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, where he built a distinguished track record in research and ...

By Wynne Parry WOODS HOLE, Mass. – Like humans struggling to get through the COVID-19 pandemic, bacterial cells need social distancing to thwart viruses. But in some situations, such as inside elevators or within the candy-colored bacterial structures known as “pink berries,” staying apart just isn’t feasible. Looking like spilled Nerds or Pop Rocks, the communal, multicellular pink berries  litter the submerged surface of salt marshes in and around Woods Hole. New research conducted at the Marine Biological ...

Hospital-acquired acute kidney injury (HA-AKI) is a common complication in hospitalized patients that can lead to chronic kidney disease and is associated with longer hospital stays, higher health care costs and increased mortality. Given these negative consequences, preventing HA-AKI can improve hospitalized patient outcomes. However, anticipating HA-AKI onset is difficult due to a large number of contributing factors involved. Researchers from Mass General Brigham Digital tested a commercial machine learning tool, the Epic Risk of HA-AKI predictive model, and found it was moderately successful at predicting risk of HA-AKI in recorded patient data. ...