Waltham — April 10, 2024 — The nursing work environment, nurse education, and staffing levels are independent factors affecting hospital scores on a key measure of patient-centered care – with significant implications for reimbursements, reports a study in Medical Care. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer. "Our results provide evidence-based guidance about which modifiable aspects of hospital nursing are likely to improve patient experience ratings," said Kathleen E. Fitzpatrick Rosenbaum, PhD, RN, CCRN, of Yale University. How do nursing factors affect HCAHPS ...

Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine have developed a powerful, new technique to generate “movies” of changing protein structures and speeds of up to 50 frames per second. Senior author, Dr. Simon Scheuring, the Distinguished Professor of Anesthesiology Research at Weill Cornell Medicine and colleagues developed the new approach to gain a better understanding of how biological molecules change structurally over time. Although investigators in this field routinely image static proteins and other molecules finely ...

Chattering squirrels, charming coypus, and tail-slapping beavers — along with some other rodents — have orange-brown front teeth. Researchers have published high-resolution images of rodent incisors in ACS Nano, providing an atomic-level view of the teeth’s ingenious enamel and its coating. They discovered tiny pockets of iron-rich materials in the enamel that form a protective shield for the teeth but, importantly, don’t contribute to the orange-brown hue — new insights that could improve human dentistry. Human and animal teeth are coated in a ...

DALLAS, April 17, 2024 — Language barriers, longstanding structural racism barriers, underrepresentation within the ranks of health care professionals and higher than average rates of poor health risk factors are among the alarming trends that continue to impede quality health care outcomes for Hispanic Latino people living in the United States. The American Heart Association, celebrating 100 years of lifesaving service as the world’s leading nonprofit organization focused on heart and brain health for all, is making strides ...

Glenview, Illinois – Esha Kapania, MD, will be the mentee for the inaugural year of the 2024 APCCMPD and CHEST Medical Educator Scholar Diversity Fellowship. Designed to pair a fellow-in-training with an established medical educator, the unique scholarship was launched in August by the American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST) and the Association of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Program Directors (APCCMPD) to improve diversity in pulmonary and critical care medical education. The program focuses ...

PULLMAN, Wash. –  While the electronic tongue bears little physical resemblance to its namesake, the strand-like sensory probes of the “e-tongue” still outperformed human senses when detecting contaminated wine in a recent study. In an experiment at Washington State University, the e-tongue identified signs of microorganisms in white wine within a week after contamination—four weeks before a human panel noticed the change in aroma. This was also before those microbes could be grown from the wine in a petri-dish. Winemakers traditionally rely on these two methods, sniffing the wine and petri-dish testing, to ...

Research Highlights: Almost 1 in 5 adults with congenital heart disease living in Israel had or developed an abnormal heart rhythm over five years. Adults with congenital heart disease who developed an irregular heart rhythm in the heart’s upper chambers faced a 65% increased risk of premature death. The adults who developed an irregular heart rhythm in the heart’s lower chambers had double the risk of premature death. Embargoed until 4 a.m. CT/5 a.m. ET Wednesday, April 17, 2024 DALLAS, April 17, 2024 — Almost 1 in 5 adults with congenital heart disease living in Israel had or developed an abnormal ...

A team at the University of Tokyo have constructed an improved mid-infrared microscope, enabling them to see the structures inside living bacteria at the nanometer scale. Mid-infrared microscopy is typically limited by its low resolution, especially when compared to other microscopy techniques. This latest development produced images at 120 nanometers, which the researchers say is a thirtyfold improvement on the resolution of typical mid-infrared microscopes. Being able to view samples more clearly at this smaller scale can aid multiple fields of research, including into infectious diseases, and opens the way for developing ...

Researchers have found that children of women with HIV infection have an increased risk of immune abnormalities following exposure to maternal HIV viraemia, immune dysfunction, and co-infections during pregnancy.  The study, led by Dr Ceri Evans while at Queen Mary University of London, compared clinical outcomes between infants who were HIV-exposed and HIV-unexposed in the Sanitation Hygiene Infant Nutrition Efficacy (SHINE) trial in rural Zimbabwe. Despite high coverage of maternal antiretroviral therapy (ART) and uptake of exclusive breastfeeding, mortality in infants exposed to HIV was 41% higher than in infants not exposed to HIV. Infants who survived and remained HIV-free ...

Competition between species played a major role in the rise and fall of hominins – and produced a “bizarre” evolutionary pattern for the Homo lineage – according to a new University of Cambridge study that revises the start and end dates for many of our early ancestors.   Conventionally, climate is held responsible for the emergence and extinction of hominin species. In most vertebrates, however, interspecies competition is known to play an important role. Now, research shows for the first time that competition was fundamental to “speciation” – the rate at which new species emerge ...

A comparison of treatments for malnutrition enteropathy, caused by severe acute malnutrition (SAM), has found evidence supporting the use of treatments to enhance the healing of mucosal membranes and reduce inflammation in the gut to improve the outcomes of children affected by long-team health consequences of a period of malnutrition.  The Therapeutic Approaches to Malnutrition Enteropathy (TAME), led by researchers from Queen Mary University of London, evaluated four interventions for malnutrition enteropathy in a multi-centre phase ...

Researchers have used artificial intelligence techniques to massively accelerate the search for Parkinson’s disease treatments. The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, designed and used an AI-based strategy to identify compounds that block the clumping, or aggregation, of alpha-synuclein, the protein that characterises Parkinson’s. The team used machine learning techniques to quickly screen a chemical library containing millions of entries, and identified five highly potent compounds for further investigation. Parkinson’s affects more than six million people worldwide, with that number projected to triple by 2040. ...

Toronto, ON —Researchers found that approximately 1 in 5 older Canadian adults with diabetes and no pre-pandemic functional limitations developed functional limitations for the first time during the COVID-19 pandemic. Functional limitations refer to difficulties with basic mobility-related tasks, such as walking two to three blocks, standing up from a chair, or climbing stairs.  In comparison, only one in eight of their peers without diabetes developed functional limitations during the ...

Prolonged droughts followed by sudden bursts of rainfall – how do desert soil bacteria manage to survive such harsh conditions? This long-debated question has now been answered by an ERC project led by microbiologist Dagmar Woebken from the Centre for Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science (CeMESS) at the University of Vienna. The study reveals that desert soil bacteria are highly adapted to survive the rapid environmental changes experienced with each rainfall event. These findings were recently published in the prestigious ...

Researchers at the University of Toronto have discovered a DNA repair mechanism that advances understanding of how human cells stay healthy, and which could lead to new treatments for cancer and premature aging. The study, published in the journal Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, also sheds light on the mechanism of action of some existing chemotherapy drugs. “We think this research solves the mystery of how DNA double-strand breaks and the nuclear envelope connect for ...

While your invigorating morning coffee may become cheaper when there are large fluctuations in the world market price, they are a major additional psychological burden for the farmers who grow the coffee. This is documented in a new international study on the effect of income uncertainty on the mental health of Vietnamese coffee farmers. "Our results suggest that not only poverty, but also the risk of poverty caused by fluctuating prices has a significant additional negative effect on the mental well-being of farmers in low-income countries," says Finn ...

In ancient Greece, over 3000 years ago, wise men used silver salts to prevent wounds from becoming infected. These salts continued to be used until Alexander Fleming discovered the first antibiotic "just" 100 years ago. The use of antibiotics represented a major breakthrough in the treatment of infectious diseases, but resistance soon began to emerge. Bacteria, which have been on the planet longer than us, have found ways to overcome different antibiotics, and today antibiotic resistance is a major global health problem.   In times when everything evolves ...

Significantly reducing trans fat levels in the Nigerian food supply could prevent approximately 10,000 heart disease deaths and save 90 million USD (12 billion Naira, ₦) in healthcare costs over a decade. New findings by The George Institute for Global Health on the health and economic benefits of enacting the country’s trans fat elimination policy were published today in BMJ Global Health. In 2023, Nigeria followed South Africa as only the second African country to adopt a best practice trans fat ...

A new paper in JNCI Cancer Spectrum, published by Oxford University Press, finds that following a healthy diet lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease in breast cancer survivors. Cardiovascular disease is the top non-breast cancer related cause of death in women with breast cancer. There are more than 3.8 million female breast cancer survivors in the United States. These women are at higher risk for cardiovascular disease than women who have not had breast cancer. This is likely due to the cardiotoxic effects of breast cancer treatment, as well as common risk factors for both breast cancer and cardiovascular disease, such as aging, lack of exercise, ...

Perovskites are among the most extensively studied materials in modern materials science. Their often unique and exotic properties, which stem from perovskite’s peculiar crystal structure, could find revolutionary applications in various cutting-edge fields. One intriguing way of realizing such properties is through the precise ordering of a perovskite’s defects, such as vacancies or substitutions. In oxide chemistry, scientists have known for a long time that oxide defects can spontaneously and consistently arrange themselves throughout the crystal lattice, once they reach certain concentrations (e.g. integer ratio). This emerging ...

Artificial intelligence (AI) could be a vital tool to promote peace, prevent violent conflict, and safeguard human rights – if used responsibly, experts say. Much focus has been on AI’s potential for catastrophic harm from powering drone swarms for international warfare to generating deep fakes which spread misinformation and prejudice. But authors Branka Panic and Dr Paige Arthur say AI-driven technology should also be seen as a potential force for good in conflict-torn countries to ‘wage peace’. With the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza and three decades on from the Rwandan genocide, their book AI for Peace highlights concrete ways that AI tools are being used to ...

Volunteer clean-ups have resulted in almost nine tonnes of marine litter being cleared from beaches across the Seychelles, in what researchers have described as a powerful demonstration of the potential of citizen science. More than 1,220 volunteers were recruited to clear 52 beaches on ten islands at various points between June 2019 and the end of July 2023. In that time, they surveyed around 930,000m2 of beaches, with volunteers picking up items ranging from foam and rubber to metals and plastics. In total, the ...

The world's first dual-beamline photoelectron momentum microscope has been developed at the UVSOR Synchrotron Facility, Japan. This innovative experimental station brings breakthroughs in studying the behavior of electrons in materials governing material properties, particularly in analyzing valence orbitals. Understanding the behavior of electrons in materials is crucial for the advancement of materials science and device engineering. Conventional photoelectron spectroscopy provides deep insight into the nature of the electronic structure of solids. Currently, the challenge of researching electronic structures on the micrometer scale is being pursued all over the world. ...

A research team consisting of Professor Kyoung-Duck Park and Taeyoung Moon and Huitae Joo, PhD candidates, from the Department of Physics at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) has engineered “broadband nanogap gold spectroscopic sensor” using a flexible material capable of bending to create a controlled gap. With the developed technology, it is possible to rapidly test various types of materials, including infectious disease viruses, using only a single nano-spectroscopic ...

New research shows that ethnic minorities are underrepresented in studies into multiple long-term conditions (MLTCs), despite being more likely to be affected. A systematic review published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine found a lack of reporting on ethnicity and underrepresentation of ethnic minority groups in intervention studies to improve the management of MLTCs. The prevalence of MLTCs is escalating, due to ageing populations and lifestyle shifts. In England, an estimated one in four adults have two or more long-term health conditions, impacting quality of life and healthcare costs. Ethnic minorities, previous research says, face an increased burden due ...