Bezos Earth Fund grant establishes new Centre at Imperial to transform global food systems from environmentally damaging to innovative by creating sustainable solutions. Imperial’s Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein, launched today, will develop innovative and evidence-based solutions through the design, delivery, and commercialisation of alternative food products that are economically and environmentally friendly, nutritious, affordable, and tasty. The Centre, spanning across seven Imperial academic departments, will advance research into precision fermentation, cultivated meat, bioprocessing and automation, ...

The history of how stars and galaxies came to be and evolved into the present day remains among the most challenging astrophysical questions to solve yet, but new research brings us closer to understanding it. In a new study by an international team led by Dr. Angela Adamo at Stockholm University, new insights about young galaxies during the Epoch of Reionization have been revealed. Observations with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) of the galaxy Cosmic Gems arc (SPT0615-JD) have confirmed that the light of the galaxy was emitted 460 million years after ...

Giving very premature babies high concentrations of oxygen soon after birth may reduce the risk of death by 50 percent, compared to lower levels of oxygen says new research led by University of Sydney researchers. When premature babies are born, they sometimes need help breathing because their lungs haven’t finished developing. To help babies during this process, doctors may give them extra oxygen through a breathing mask or breathing tube. The study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, examined clinical trial data and outcomes of ...

For those suffering from treatment-resistant depression, the anaesthetic drug ketamine offers hope, but it has side effects and can be costly to access – a University of Otago-led clinical trial may change that.   Working in collaboration with New Zealand’s Douglas Pharmaceuticals, researchers have conducted a trial of ketamine in an extended-release tablet form.   The study, published in prestigious international journal Nature Medicine, involved 168 adults for whom regular anti-depressant therapy ...

An unexpectedly versatile and regenerative stem cell in early embryos may be key to creating new effective fertility treatments, suggests a new study in mice from the University of Copenhagen. It probably will not surprise anyone that pregnancy is a very complicated process. First, a sperm cell must find its way and fertilize an egg in the fallopian tube, after which the egg begins to divide. After about five days, the egg becomes a blastocyst, which eventually develops into a fetus. But for more and more people, fertility is becoming increasingly harder to achieve due to various factors ...

A new tablet form of ketamine has shown promise in treating severe depression, offering a potential alternative to existing clinic-based treatments that can be expensive and lacking in convenience for some patients. Unlike the injectable and nasal spray alternatives that require clinicians to monitor patients for two hours while side effects subside, the slow-release tablet form can be taken safely at home without medical supervision and with negligible side effects. Led by Professor Paul Glue of University of Otago, researchers from UNSW Sydney and the affiliated Black Dog Institute (BDI) collaborated with colleagues from ...

In recent years, a new era of transportation innovation has unfolded with the introduction of autonomous electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircrafts. These advanced air mobility (AAM) systems are poised to revolutionize urban and regional transportation by offering efficient, sustainable, and rapid transit solutions, potentially transforming daily commutes and cargo deliveries alike. eVTOL technology, which enables aircrafts to ascend, hover, and land vertically, has become a focus for both academic research and commercial ventures due to its numerous advantages ...

Singapore, 24 June 2024 – A study led by clinician-scientists and scientists from the National Cancer Centre Singapore (NCCS) and A*STAR’s Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) and funded by the National Research Foundation Singapore (NRF) has discovered unexpected molecular heterogeneity even within the same liver tumours. More than 40% of HCC harbours more than one molecular subtype within the same tumour and in these, the clinical outcomes for the patients are best predicted by the most aggressive subtype. This phenomenon, termed the “bad apple effect”, has significant implications on the understanding of liver cancer and suggests that a more holistic sampling ...

New Haven, Conn. — Rising health care prices in the U.S. are leading employers outside the health care sector to reduce their payroll and decrease their number of employees, according to a new study co-authored by Yale economist Zack Cooper.  The study, published June 24 as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), found that when health care prices increased, non-health care employers responded by reducing their payroll and cutting the jobs of middle-class workers. For the average county, a 1% increase in health ...

Press materials are now available for NUTRITION 2024, the annual flagship meeting of the American Society for Nutrition (ASN). Top nutrition scientists and practitioners from around the world will gather to share the latest research findings on food and nutrition during the meeting, held in Chicago from June 29–July 2. Register for a press pass to attend NUTRITION 2024 in person or to access embargoed press materials before the meeting. Explore the meeting schedule, poster presentations, poster theater flash sessions and oral presentations to see all the exciting research ...

Ann Arbor, June 24, 2024 – Alcohol consumption is involved in a large proportion of homicides and suicides each year in the United States, but there has been limited evidence on how policies targeting alcohol use influence violence. A statistical analysis in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, published by Elsevier, indicates that more restrictive alcohol policy environments are associated with a reduction in specific states’ homicide rates. Lead investigator James P. Murphy, PhD, RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, says, "Previous studies have found a significant relationship between some state-level ...

The stereotype of mathematics and mathematicians involves a solitary pursuit of knowledge, but Eric Stachura knows better. The Kennesaw State University assistant professor of mathematics works on quantitative analysis of electromagnetic waves and keeps a collaborative research practice with colleagues near and far. That partnership has led to a three-year grant worth $223,206 from the Army Research Office, a director of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Army Research Laboratory. “It is a very collaborative subject, ...

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has partnered with the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to provide approximately $15.4 million over three years for research into the structures, functions and interactions of ribonucleic acid (RNA), as well as the creation of RNA-based technologies. RNA sequencing and the mapping of RNA modifications have gained significant momentum in the genomics community in recent years, with a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine outlining a roadmap for the field to build technology and infrastructure to allow researchers to more completely study and catalog RNA and its modifications.  “A ...

INDIANAPOLIS – One of the first studies to examine patient acceptability of teleneurology and determine factors influencing acceptability across neurological conditions, has found teleneurology was highly acceptable across the full range of patients with different neurological diagnoses, including headache, movement disorders and other neurological symptoms and diagnoses. The study also determined that the more medical complexity -- having additional diseases -- was associated with increased patient satisfaction with teleneurology. Older patients were as accepting of teleneurology as younger patients, individuals often viewed as more ...

Image generator models – systems that produce new images based on textual descriptions – have become a common and well-known phenomenon in the past year. Their continuous improvement, largely relying on developments in the field of artificial intelligence, makes them an important resource in various fields.   To achieve good results, these models are trained on vast amounts of image-text pairs – for example, matching the text "picture of a dog" to a picture of a dog, repeated millions of times. Through this training, ...

The function of non-coding RNA in the cell has long been a mystery to researchers. Unlike coding RNA, non-coding RNA does not produce proteins – yet it exists in large quantities. A research team from the University of Göttingen has now discovered an important function of antisense RNA (asRNA): the researchers found that asRNA acts as a "superhighway" in cell transport and thus accelerates gene expression. The results were published in Nature.   RNA (ribonucleic acid) plays a central role in the translation of DNA information into proteins. There are different types of RNA, one of which is known as messenger ...

Video: https://youtu.be/bGKA32TlVXM?si=0PdhaUyOKH33DFbB Meet CARMEN, short for Cognitively Assistive Robot for Motivation and Neurorehabilitation–a small, tabletop robot designed to help people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) learn skills to improve memory, attention, and executive functioning at home.  Unlike other robots in this space, CARMEN was developed by the research team at the University of California San Diego in collaboration with clinicians, people with MCI, and their care partners. To the best of the researchers’ knowledge, CARMEN is also the only robot that teaches compensatory cognitive strategies to help improve memory and executive function. “We ...

New York University has established the Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy, which aims to further our understanding of the sentience and moral status of nonhumans, notably animals and AI systems.  “The world contains quintillions of animals, and in the future, it could contain an even larger number of AI systems,” says Jeff Sebo, CMEP’s founding director and a professor in NYU’s Department of Environmental Studies. “Human activity is increasingly shaping the lives of these beings, and these trends raise important and difficult questions, such as: Which of these beings are sentient, ...

Whether it’s physical phenomena, share prices or climate models – many dynamic processes in our world can be described mathematically with the aid of partial differential equations. Thanks to stochastics – an area of mathematics which deals with probabilities – this is even possible when randomness plays a role in these processes. Something researchers have been working on for some decades now are so-called stochastic partial differential equations. Working together with other researchers, Dr. Markus Tempelmayr ...

CLEVELAND—With a new five-year, $2.78 million grant from the National Institutes of Health and National Cancer Institute, researchers at Case Western Reserve University(CWRU), Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals (UH) will use artificial intelligence (AI) to better treat rectal cancer patients. The American Cancer Society estimates about 46,000 people nationally will be diagnosed this year with rectal cancer—the third most common type of cancer in the digestive system, after colon and pancreatic cancer. By using AI, the researchers intend to derive specific metrics on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to better understand how ...

Terahertz technology could help us meet the ever-increasing demand for faster data transfer rates. However, the down-conversion of a terahertz signal to arbitrary lower frequencies is difficult. In a recent study, researchers from Japan have developed a new strategy to up- and down-convert a terahertz signal in a waveguide by dynamically modifying its conductivity using light, creating a temporal boundary. Their findings could pave the way to faster and more efficient optoelectronics and enhanced telecommunications.    As we plunge deeper into the Information Age, the demand for faster data transmission keeps soaring, accentuated by fast progress in fields like deep learning ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Scientists have identified a potential driver of aggressive lung cancer tumors in patients who live in areas with high levels of violent crime. Their study found that stress responses differ between those living in neighborhoods with higher and lower levels of violent crime, and between cancerous and healthy tissues in the same individuals. The findings are detailed in the journal Cancer Research Communications. The study was designed to address the higher incidence of lung cancer in Black men than in white men, said University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign ...

PHILADELPHIA, June 24, 2024 — About 80% of an individual’s modifiable health contributors are determined by social and economic factors.[1] Exposure to violence can have detrimental health implications contributing to toxic stress and trauma, mental health illness, substance abuse and an increased risk for heart disease[2]. The American Heart Association, which marked 100 years of service saving lives earlier this month, has distributed $480,000 from the Association’s Bernard J. Tyson Impact Fund to four social ...

Aniline or nitrogen-containing organic molecules like 3-aniline-substituted indoles commonly found in natural products have shown promising results as pharmaceutical contenders. The same goes for moieties such as 2-aminoaryl acetic acid scaffold which forms the fundamental structural motif of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as diclofenac which inhibits COX-2 to relieve pain and inflammation. While there are several ways of synthesizing these molecules individually using different starting materials, can we produce them ...

It’s summer and time to enjoy the sunshine. But it’s also important to do so safely. Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the United States—and it’s most commonly caused by sun exposure. Research has shown that skin self-awareness and regular skin self-examinations are strongly linked to better treatment outcomes if you receive a skin cancer diagnosis.  As part of an effort to identify effective interventions to increase skin self-examinations and decrease melanoma deaths, faculty ...