Two faculty members at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have been elected to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), an independent organization of leading professionals from multiple scientific fields including health, medicine and the natural, social and behavioral sciences. NAM serves alongside the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering to provide objective advice for the nation and international scientific communities. An announcement of 100 new members was made Oct. 21. Being ...

Eight cities in the United States have implemented taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages, which contribute to health issues including obesity and Type 2 diabetes. New research from the University of Washington investigated responses to sweetened beverage taxes using the purchasing behavior of approximately 400 households in Seattle, San Francisco, Oakland and Philadelphia – all of which recently introduced beverage taxes. The study was published online Sept. 30 in Health Economics. Researchers found that after the tax was introduced, lower-income households decreased their purchases of sweetened beverages by nearly 50%, while higher-income households reduced purchases by 18%. Since ...

PHILADELPHIA — Despite advances in cardiovascular medicine, Black patients are 22% more likely than white patients to die in the hospital after coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) surgery, according to a study of more than 1 million patients presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY® 2024 annual meeting. “Our large study shows that disparities in cardiovascular health care delivery in the U.S. are ongoing, especially in Black patients,” said Vinicius Moreira, M.D., lead author of the study and chief anesthesiology resident at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center, Chicago. “We found Black patients who have ...

A new study has found that after watching a docudrama about the efforts to free a wrongly convicted prisoner on death row, people were more empathetic toward formerly incarcerated people and supportive of criminal justice reform. The research, led by a team of Stanford psychologists, published Oct. 21 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). “One of the hardest things for groups of people who face stigma, including previously incarcerated people, is that other Americans don’t perceive ...

Billions of years ago, long before anything resembling life as we know it existed, meteorites frequently pummeled the planet. One such space rock crashed down about 3.26 billion years ago, and even today, it’s revealing secrets about Earth’s past.     Nadja Drabon, an early-Earth geologist and assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, is insatiably curious about what our planet was like during ancient eons rife with meteoritic bombardment, when only single-celled bacteria and archaea reigned – and when it all started to change. When ...

DURHAM, N.C. – The El Niño event, a huge blob of warm ocean water in the tropical Pacific Ocean that can change rainfall patterns around the globe, isn't just a modern phenomenon. A new modeling study from a pair of Duke University researchers and their colleagues shows that the oscillation between El Niño and its cold counterpart, La Niña, was present at least 250 million years in the past, and was often of greater magnitude than the oscillations we see today. These temperature swings were more intense in the past, and the oscillation occurred even when the continents were in different places than they are now, according to the study, which appears the week ...

Breathing thin air at extreme altitudes presents a significant challenge—there’s simply less oxygen with every lungful. Yet, for more than 10,000 years, Tibetan women living on the high Tibetan Plateau have not only survived but thrived in that environment. A new study led by Cynthia Beall, Distinguished University Professor Emerita at Case Western Reserve University, answers some of those questions. The new research, recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), reveals how the Tibetan women’s physiological ...

Microbes in the environment, not fossil fuels, have been driving the recent surge in methane emissions globally, according to a new, detailed analysis published Oct 28 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by CU Boulder researchers and collaborators. “Understanding where the methane is coming from helps us guide effective mitigation strategies,” said Sylvia Michel, a senior research assistant at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research(INSTAAR) and a doctoral student in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at CU Boulder. “We need to know more about those emissions to ...

HERSHEY, Pa. — Immunotherapies that mobilize a patient’s own immune system to fight cancer have become a treatment pillar. These therapies, including CAR T-cell therapy, have performed well in cancers like leukemias and lymphomas, but the results have been less promising in solid tumors. A team led by researchers from the Penn State College of Medicine has re-engineered immune cells so that they can penetrate and kill solid tumors grown in the lab. They created a light-activated switch that controls protein function associated with cell ...

The Arctic is threatened by strong climate change: the average temperature has risen by about 3°C since 1979 – almost four times faster than the global average. The region around the North Pole is home to some of the world’s most fragile ecosystems, and has experienced low anthropogenic disturbance for decades. Warming has increased the accessibility of land in the Arctic, encouraging industrial and urban development. Understanding where and what kind of human activities take place is key to ensuring sustainable development in the region – for both people and the environment. Until now, a comprehensive assessment of this part of the world has ...

A new PET scan reliably detects benign tumors in the pancreas, according to research led by Radboud university medical center. Current scans often fail to detect these insulinomas, even though they cause symptoms due to low blood sugar levels. Once the tumor is found, surgery is possible. The pancreas contains cells that produce insulin, known as beta cells. Insulin is a hormone that helps the body absorb sugar from the blood and store it in places like muscle cells. This regulates blood sugar levels. In rare cases, the beta cells malfunction, resulting in a benign tumor called ...

During the late middle Pleistocene, between 300 and 400 thousand years ago, at least three ancient elephant relatives died near a river in the Kashmir Valley of South Asia. Not long after, they were covered in sediment and preserved along with 87 stone tools made by the ancestors of modern humans. The remains of these elephants were first discovered in 2000 near the town of Pampore, but the identity of the fossils, cause of death and evidence of human intervention remained unknown until now. A team ...

Mercouri Kanatzidis, a materials scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and professor at Northwestern University, will receive the 2025 ACS Award in the Chemistry of Materials from the American Chemical Society, the nation’s leading professional organization of chemists. The award ​“recognizes and encourages creative work in the chemistry of materials,” according to the citation. At Argonne, Kanatzidis’s work has focused on the implications of a ...

When it comes to sustainable energy, harnessing nuclear fusion is—for many—a holy grail of sorts. Unlike climate-warming fossil fuels, fusion offers a clean, nearly limitless source of energy by combining light atomic nuclei to form heavier ones, releasing vast amounts of energy in the process. But it isn’t easy replicating and controlling the process that powers the sun. “We eventually want to move to producing energy this way,” says Brian Leard ’21 ’25G, a ...

Plants control their water consumption via adjustable pores (stomata), which are formed from pairs of guard cells. They open their stomata when there is a sufficient water supply and enough light for carbon dioxide fixation through photosynthesis. In the dark and in the absence of water, however, they initiate the closing of the pores. SLAC/SLAH-type anion channels in the guard cells are of central importance for the regulation of the stomata. This has been shown by the group of Professor Rainer Hedrich, biophysicist at Julius-Maximilians-Universität ...

When it comes to building muscle, not all proteins are created equal. New research from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) reveals that 100% ground beef packs a bigger punch for muscle protein synthesis than a soy-based counterpart. In fact, the study suggests that a person would need double the amount of soy-based protein to achieve the same results. Published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the study examined the anabolic response — how the body builds muscle — after consuming a 4-ounce beef patty versus one or two 4-ounce patties of a soy-based product. The results? Just one serving of beef did the ...

A pilot study led by researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine found that advanced artificial intelligence (AI) could potentially lead to easier, faster and more efficient hospital quality reporting while retaining high accuracy, which could lead to enhanced health care delivery.  The study results, published in the October 21, 2024 online edition of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) AI, found an AI system using large language models (LLMs) can accurately process hospital quality measures, ...

Four University of Michigan faculty have been elected to the National Academy of Medicine, one of the highest honors in medical research. Kenneth M. Langa, M.D., Ph.D., Erica E. Marsh, M.D., MSCI, FACOG, Santa J. Ono, Ph.D. and Marc A. Zimmerman, Ph.D., are among 100 newly elected health and medical scientists recognized for their outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service. They join the 79 other current, former and late U-M faculty who have earned this distinction. NAM members help the Congressionally chartered, private nonprofit organization provide objective advice to the nation on key health ...

New research led by Florida State University College of Medicine faculty quantified the association between loneliness and dementia by analyzing data from more than 600,000 people around the world — the largest study of its kind. The meta-analysis of 21 longitudinal studies showed that experiencing feelings of loneliness increased the risk of developing dementia by 31%. The research was published in Nature Mental Health. “These results are not surprising, given the mounting evidence that link loneliness to poor health,” said Assistant Professor Martina Luchetti, who led the study. “Dementia ...

Tyrus Berry, Assistant Professor, Mathematics, College of Science, received funding for the project: “Nitrogen Vacancy Diamond Metrology for Temperature and Pressure Sensing: Data Assimilation.” Berry aims to provide the mathematical tools for a robust sensor that can simultaneously measure temperature, pressure, and force over a long range of values in harsh environments.  The sensor readings will be tied to fundamental physics laws, and the mathematical framework will automatically track any drift in the ...

Antil Studying Structure Preserving Optimization Algorithms & Digital Twins Harbir Antil, Professor, Mathematical Sciences, College of Science, received funding from the National Science Foundation to study partial differential equation (PDE)-constrained optimization problems that incorporate data to make decisions in the presence of uncertainty arising from modeling unknown quantities.  The proposed methods support various application areas, including digital twins where physics and data are fused to support decision making. One graduate student will be supported by the project and the ...

Lishan Yang, Assistant Professor, Computer Science, College of Engineering and Computing (CEC), received funding for the project: “Collaborative Research: Elements: MELIOREM: An Integrated Evaluation Cyberinfrastructure towards Safe and Dependable Autonomous Driving Systems.” Yang and her collaborators aim to develop MELIOREM, an automated tool designed to enhance the safety of autonomous vehicles.  MELIOREM will conduct rigorous testing to identify and address potential safety issues before they affect public roads. This initiative ensures that autonomous vehicles are dependable ...

“Overall, the data presented in this study affirm that humanizing 3E10 preserves its crucial biological properties essential for therapeutic efficacy.” BUFFALO, NY- October 21, 2024 – A new research paper was published in Oncotarget's Volume 15 on October 1, 2024, entitled, “Next-generation cell-penetrating antibodies for tumor targeting and RAD51 inhibition.” As highlighted in the abstract, monoclonal antibody therapies for cancer have shown extraordinary clinical success in recent years. However, these strategies are primarily ...

Myasthenia gravis (MG) is a chronic autoimmune disorder in which antibodies block communication between nerves and muscle, resulting in weakness of the skeletal muscles. It can cause double vision, difficulty swallowing, and, occasionally, serious breathing difficulties, among other symptoms. Many autoimmune diseases such as MG, as well as a range of other human illnesses, result from the inability to regulate activity of IgG antibodies – collectively, these diseases are referred to as IgG-mediated pathologies. In a paper out this month in Cell, researchers at Emory University have discovered a family of enzymes that ...

Climate change is increasingly influencing fire behaviour worldwide and intensifying fire smoke, endangering public health from air pollution caused by fires. These are the results of two new climate change impact attribution studies, both published in Nature Climate Change, with involvement of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research PIK. The first study finds 15.8 percent higher global burned areas over the period 2003 to 2019 due to climate change, intensifying fire activity especially in Australia, South America, Western North America and Siberia. These increasing fire dynamics offset the decrease in burned area ...