A surprisingly low amount of methane and a super-sized core hide within the cotton candy–like planet WASP-107 b. The revelations, based on data obtained by the James Webb Space Telescope, mark the first measurements of an exoplanet’s core mass and will likely underpin future studies of planetary atmospheres and interiors, a key aspect in the search for habitable worlds beyond our solar system. “Looking into the interior of a planet hundreds of light-years away sounds almost impossible, but when you know the mass, radius, atmospheric composition, and hotness of its interior, you’ve got ...

Micelles assemble in water from amphiphilic molecules, composed of hydrophilic and hydrophobic frameworks. They can be found all around us, for example in soaps, detergents, and shampoos. Their main application is the water-solubilization of insoluble molecules through encapsulation into hydrophobic cavities. These cavities are conventionally composed of linear alkyl-chains, providing good interactions with alkyl-based guests, yet poor interactions with aromatic compounds. In addition, the rather weak intermolecular alkyl-alkyl type ...

BALTIMORE, Md. (May 20, 2024) – Scientists seeking to counter the neglect of African Americans in neuroscience research have found evidence that genetic ancestry is responsible for the increased prevalence of certain neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease and stroke, and decreased prevalence of others, including Parkinson’s disease, in Black Americans, according to new research published May 20 as the June cover story in the journal Nature Neuroscience.  In contrast, the scientists from the Lieber Institute for Brain Development did not find evidence that genetic ancestry is responsible for differences in the ...

Researchers at the University of California San Diego have been awarded a $5.6 million grant through the Coast-to-Coast Consortium (C2C) to further their pioneering efforts with the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) All of Us Research Program. The award is designated to facilitate participant engagement, enrollment, data collection, and retention. C2C will build on the foundation set by the UCSD-led California Precision Medicine Consortium (CAPMC), established in 2018, which enrolled more than 65,500 participants to the program. This award follows the program's ...

BEER-SHEVA, Israel, May 20, 2024 – When you disable the brakes on a race car, it quickly crashes. Dr. Barak Rotblat wants to do something similar to brain cancer cells. He wants to disable their ability to survive glucose starvation. In fact, he wants to speed the tumor cells up, so they just as quickly die out. It is a novel approach to brain cancer based on a decade of research in his lab. He and his students' and co-lead researcher Gabriel Leprivier of the Institute of Neuropathology at University Hospital Düsseldorf ...

A sweeping new Health Blueprint for Southwest Virginia highlights the grave health challenges that grip the rural region but also proposes solutions to help residents live longer, healthier lives. The Blueprint was assembled by the University of Virginia College at Wise’s Healthy Appalachia Institute, the Southwest Virginia Health Authority, UVA Health’s Center for Telehealth and a coalition of residents and regional healthcare providers. The document identifies priority health concerns for the three health districts in the southwestern corner of Virginia: Lenowisco, Cumberland Plateau and Mount Rogers. These are areas ...

About The Study: Many studies suggest a survival benefit for cancer trial participants. However, these benefits were not detected in studies using designs addressing important sources of bias and confounding. Pooled results of high-quality studies are not consistent with a beneficial effect of trial participation on its own.  Quote from corresponding author Jonathan Kimmelman, Ph.D.: “Many physicians, policymakers, patient advocates, and research sponsors believe patients have better outcomes when they participate in trials, even if they are in the comparator arm. Educational ...

Fukuoka, Japan—From the rain drops rolling down your window, to the fluid running across a COVID rapid test, we cannot go a day without observing the world of fluid dynamics. Naturally, how liquids traverse across, and through, surfaces are a heavily researched subject, where new discoveries can have profound effects in the fields of energy conversion technology, electronics cooling, biosensors, and micro-/nano-fabrications. Now, using mathematical modeling and experimentation, researchers from Kyushu University’s Faculty of Engineering have expanded on a fundamental principle in fluid dynamics. Their new findings may ...

ATLANTA - Chemical Insights Research Institute (CIRI) of UL Research Institutes applies cutting edge technologies to evaluate the toxicity of burn-impacted land areas affected by the August 2023 Lahaina wildfires. Created with CIRI research partners from Duke University and the East-West Center (EWC) in Hawai’i, the study known as Lahaina Environmental Assessment Project (LEAP), will collect and analyze residual dust, soil and ash samples from properties affected by the fires. These residues, including fine dust, ...

PLYMOUTH MEETING, PA [May 20, 2024] — The National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) today announced publication of new NCCN Guidelines for Patients®: Small Bowel Adenocarcinoma. This free resource for people facing cancer and caregivers is focused on a rare cancer type that typically occurs in the small intestine, where routine screening is impossible, even for high-risk individuals. The small amount of patient information that exists for this cancer type tends to combine it with other cancers of the small intestine (such as sarcomas, neuroendocrine tumors, or lymphomas) despite very different treatment approaches and results. The NCCN Guidelines for Patients: ...

Groundbreaking research has provided new insight into the tectonic plate shifts that create some of the Earth’s largest earthquakes and tsunamis. “This is the first study to employ coastal geology to reconstruct the rupture history of the splay fault system,” said Jessica DePaolis, postdoctoral fellow in Virginia Tech's Department of Geosciences. “These splay faults are closer to the coast, so these tsunamis will be faster to hit the coastline than a tsunami generated only from ...

In 2023, Antarctic sea ice reached historically low levels, with over 2 million square kilometres less ice than usual during winter – equivalent to about ten times the size of the UK. This drastic reduction followed decades of steady growth in sea ice up to 2015, making the sudden decline even more surprising. Using a large climate dataset called CMIP6, BAS researchers investigated this unprecedented sea ice loss. They analysed data from 18 different climate models to understand the probability of such a significant reduction in sea ice and its connection to climate change. Lead author Rachel Diamond explained that while 2023's extreme ...

For hundreds of years, the whitespotted eagle ray (Aetobatus narinari) has been considered the only inshore stingray species in Bermuda, until now. Using citizen science, photographs, on-water observations and the combination of morphological and genetic data, researchers from Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute and collaborators are the first to provide evidence that the Atlantic cownose ray (Rhinoptera bonasus) has recently made a new home in Bermuda. Because ...

For many patients with a deadly type of brain cancer called glioblastoma, chemotherapy resistance is a big problem. Current standard treatments, including surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy using the drug temozolomide, have limited effectiveness and have not significantly changed in the past five decades.  Although temozolomide can initially slow tumor progression in some patients, typically the tumor cells rapidly become resistant to the drug. But now, Virginia Tech researchers with the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC may ...

In today's medical landscape, precision medicine and targeted therapies are gaining traction for their ability to tailor treatments to individual patients while minimizing adverse effects. Conventional methods, such as gene transfer techniques, show promise in delivering therapeutic genes directly to cells to address various diseases. However, these methods face significant drawbacks, hindering their efficacy and safety. Intracellular protein delivery offers a promising approach for developing safer, more targeted, and effective therapies. By directly transferring proteins into target cells, this method circumvents issues such as silencing ...

HOUSTON – (May 20, 2024) – Rice University chemist Julian West is one of a dozen up-and-coming young scientists featured in Chemical & Engineering News’ (C&EN) 2024 Talented 12, an annual issue of the weekly news magazine that highlights rising stars across all chemistry research disciplines. West, an assistant professor and the Norman Hackerman-Welch Young Investigator in Rice’s Department of Chemistry, is a synthetic chemist whose lab designs novel chemical reactions. Drawing inspiration from biology, West’s research group has found ways to simplify the production of entire libraries of feedstock chemicals ...

VANCOUVER, Wash. – Using more robots to close labor gaps in the hospitality industry may backfire and cause more human workers to quit, according to a Washington State University study. The study, involving more than 620 lodging and food service employees, found that “robot-phobia” – specifically the fear that robots and technology will take human jobs – increased workers’ job insecurity and stress, leading to greater intentions to leave their jobs. The impact was more pronounced with employees who had ...

In some severe cases of COVID-19, the lungs undergo extreme damage, resulting in a range of life-threatening conditions like pneumonia, inflammation, and acute respiratory distress syndrome. The root cause of those wide-ranging reactions in the lungs has until now remained unclear. A new study by researchers at Columbia and the Columbia University Irving Medical Center sheds light on this mystery. The study found that ferroptosis, a form of cell death first named and identified at Columbia in 2012, is the major cell death mechanism that underlies COVID-19 lung disease. The finding indicates that deliberately halting ...

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have succeeded in delivering targeted cancer treatment via small membrane bubbles that our cells use to communicate. A new study published in Nature Biomedical Engineering shows that the treatment reduces tumour growth and improves survival in mice. When our cells communicate, they send out small membrane bubbles known as extracellular vesicles which contain various signalling molecules. Interest in these tiny bubbles, sometimes referred to as the body’s ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – A quarter of parents report that caffeine is basically part of their teen’s daily life, according to a national poll. Two in three parents think they know whether their teen’s caffeine intake is appropriate and which products have too much caffeine. Yet a third aren’t able to identify recommended caffeine limits, according to the University of Michigan Health C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health. “Our report suggests parents may not always be aware of how much they should be limiting caffeine consumption for teens,” said poll co-director and Mott ...

Compartments of consistently sized, tightly packed microspheres are what makes some brown algae shimmer like opal. The Kobe University discovery not only sheds light on the mechanism behind the alga’s structural coloration, it is also the first to spot the effect in an order of brown algae other than the two where it was known to occur. Most brown algae are indeed yellowish-brown, but scuba divers noticed that a species resembling Sporochnus in the order Sporochnales shimmers like peacock feathers in yellow, ...

Decarbonization of automobiles not only requires a shift from gasoline engines to electric motors, but also quality steel parts that help the motors run while lessening the weight of vehicles. High-performance steel materials can offer quieter rides and resist the wear and tear from high-speed rotation in motors. To create them, the process of modifying the steel surface with carbon, nitrogen, and alloy elements needs to be optimized. To understand the interactions between elements in steel, a systematic investigation ...

Dr. Hyuk-June Moon from the Bionics Research Center at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), in collaboration with Prof. Olaf Blanke’s team at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), has successfully induced self-location illusions with multi-sensory virtual reality (VR) in the MRI scanner and observed corresponding changes in the human brain's grid cell activity. The brain is known to contain grid cells and place cells, which perform global positioning system (GPS) functions that allow us to recognize where we are. While ...

WASHINGTON, DC (May 20, 2024) — Gallbladder cancer rates have been stable or declining for most Americans over the last two decades, but cases have steadily risen among Blacks, with growing numbers not being diagnosed until later stages, according to a study scheduled for presentation at Digestive Disease Week® (DDW) 2024. “Gallbladder cancer diagnosis at late stage can be highly detrimental,” said lead author Yazan Abboud, MD, internal medicine resident at Rutgers University New Jersey Medical School. “This could be due to a lack of timely ...

Washington (May 14, 2024) — Cancer-related studies, including a diagnostic tool for gastric cancer and trends in gallbladder and colorectal cancers, will be presented this week at Digestive Disease Week (DDW) 2024. Abstracts are available to registered media, and press releases are available where noted. Studies are embargoed until 12:01 a.m. EDT the day of presentation, unless otherwise noted. Here are summaries of the new research on the schedule: Oral microbiome signatures as potential biomarkers for gastric cancer risk assessment, Abstract 949, will be presented Monday, May 20, at 4:15 p.m. EDT.  (A press release is available upon request. Embargoed until 12:01 a.m. EDT ...