Primary health care, conditional cash transfers and social pensions have prevented 1.4 million deaths of all ages in Brazil over the past two decades, according to a study coordinated by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by “la Caixa” Foundation. If expanded, these programmes could avert an additional 1.3 million deaths and 6.6 million hospitalisations by 2030. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated poverty and social inequalities worldwide, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). In addition, the economic consequences of the ongoing war in Ukraine and ...

Scientists believe the environment immediately surrounding a black hole is tumultuous, featuring hot magnetized gas that spirals in a disk at tremendous speeds and temperatures. Astronomical observations show that within such a disk, mysterious flares occur up to several times a day, temporarily brightening and then fading away. Now a team led by Caltech scientists has used telescope data and an artificial intelligence (AI) computer-vision technique to recover the first three-dimensional video showing what such flares could look like around Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*, pronounced sadge-ay-star), the ...

DALLAS, April 22, 2024 — The American Heart Association, celebrating 100 years of lifesaving service, and the National Football League (NFL), in collaboration with its 32 NFL clubs, are challenging kids to get moving to support mental and physical health with the latest installment of NFL PLAY 60 Fitness Break broadcast series leading up to the live Draft coverage from Detroit. On Thursday, April 25 at 1 p.m. ET/ 12 p.m. CT/ 10 a.m. PT the NFL PLAY 60 Draft Fitness Break broadcast will assist kids in getting their daily 60 minutes ...

Despite surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead, lava-spewing volcanoes, and puffy clouds of sulfuric acid, uninhabitable Venus offers vital lessons about the potential for life on other planets, a new paper argues.   “We often assume that Earth is the model of habitability, but if you consider this planet in isolation, we don’t know where the boundaries and limitations are,” said UC Riverside astrophysicist and paper first author Stephen Kane. “Venus gives us that.” Published today in the journal Nature Astronomy, the paper compiles much of the known information about Earth and Venus. ...

A metal alloy composed of niobium, tantalum, titanium, and hafnium has shocked materials scientists with its impressive strength and toughness at both extremely hot and cold temperatures, a combination of properties that seemed so far to be nearly impossible to achieve. In this context, strength is defined as how much force a material can withstand before it is permanently deformed from its original shape, and toughness is its resistance to fracturing (cracking). The alloy’s resilience to bending and fracture across an enormous range of conditions could open the door for a novel class of materials for next-generation engines that can operate at higher ...

Waltham — April 19, 2024 — Available online tools can help to lower out-of-pocket prescription drug costs for patients with common urologic conditions, reports a study in the May issue of Urology Practice®, an Official Journal of the American Urological Association (AUA). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.  "As clinicians, we find that many patients need help in understanding that prescriptions can often be purchased outside of insurance for significantly lower cost and in ...

New York, NY [April 22, 2024]—State-of-the-art artificial intelligence systems known as large language models (LLMs) are poor medical coders, according to researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Their study, published in the April 19 online issue of NEJM AI [DOI: 10.1056/AIdbp2300040], emphasizes the necessity for refinement and validation of these technologies before considering clinical implementation. The study extracted a list of more than 27,000 unique diagnosis and procedure codes from 12 months of routine care ...

A growing body of research suggests that manipulating gut bacteria may offer a promising approach to managing inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), a chronic and debilitating condition affecting millions of people worldwide. IBD, encompassing Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, and unclassified IBD, is characterized by chronic inflammation of the digestive tract. Conventional treatments aim to control symptoms and prevent complications. However, they often have limited effectiveness and can come with side effects. This new research explores the potential of prebiotics, dietary fibers that nourish ...

INDIANAPOLIS – Screening for colorectal cancer presents a unique opportunity unavailable for most other types of cancers. Screening allows for the detection of both precancerous polyps and cancer, enabling clinicians to intervene and reduce the chances of future development of new or more advanced malignancy. However, gaps in the colorectal screening process exist. One of the most critical gaps, according to an editorial published in JAMA Network Open, is the lack of timely follow-up with a colonoscopy after a positive stool-based test. A positive ...

They published their work on Apr. 10 in Energy Material Advances.   The electrode sheet of the thermoelectric device consists of ionic hydrogel, which is sandwiched between the electrodes to form, and the Prussian blue on the electrode undergoes a redox reaction to improve the energy density and power density of the ionic thermoelectric generator.   Prof. Zeng Wei of the Institute of Chemical Engineering, Guangdong Academy of Sciences, said that at the beginning, the group mainly carried out research based on the thermal diffusion effect and published a series of research results. In spite of this, their results never realized the ...

SAN ANTONIO — April 22, 2024 —Teams led by Southwest Research Institute successfully executed two groundbreaking experiments — by land and air — collecting unique solar data from the total eclipse that cast a shadow from Texas to Maine on April 8, 2024. The Citizen Continental-America Telescopic Eclipse (CATE) 2024 experiment engaged more than 200 community participants in a broad, approachable and inclusive attempt to make a continuous 60-minute high-resolution movie of this exciting event. A nearly simultaneous investigation used unique equipment installed in NASA’s WB-57F research aircraft to chase the ...

Low birth rates have become a serious problem in many developed countries throughout the world, with Japan being a prime example. In Japan particularly, aging and stress have led to a massive rise in infertility, which now affects one in every 4.4 couples. To find a workaround this condition, many couples have now turned to assisted reproduction technologies (ARTs) and in vitro fertilization (IVF) for conception. However, even though ARTs and IVF methods are well-established and have been widely used for over four decades, birth rates post IVF in Japan are still critically low, peaking at a meager 10.2%. One of the reasons ...

Background and Aims Targeted therapy and immunotherapy have emerged as treatment options for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in recent years. The significance of serine and glycine metabolism in various cancers is widely acknowledged. This study aims to investigate their correlation with the prognosis and tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) of HCC.   Methods Based on the public database, different subtypes were identified by cluster analysis, and the prognostic model was constructed through regression analysis. The gene expression omnibus (GEO) data set was used as the ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Drug effects have dominated the national conversation about psychedelics for medical treatment, but a new study suggests that when it comes to reducing depression with psychedelic-assisted therapy, what matters most is a strong relationship between the therapist and study participant. Researchers analyzed data from a 2021 clinical trial that found psilocybin (magic mushrooms) combined with psychotherapy in adults was effective at treating major depressive disorder. Data included depression outcomes and participant reports about their experiences ...

Do children have regular bedtimes and do parents enforce strict screen time policies? And do parents take their children to museums so that they can learn from an early age? Or is everyday life more about having fun together, without clear rules and any ambition to ‘develop’ children in any particular way? Family life can be lived in many different ways, and what children bring with them from the home environment has a substantial impact on their opportunities and development later in life. A new study from the Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen, and VIVE - The Danish Center for Social Science Research ...

Middle-aged and older adults believe that old age begins later in life than their peers did decades ago, according to a study published by the American Psychological Association. “Life expectancy has increased, which might contribute to a later perceived onset of old age. Also, some aspects of health have improved over time, so that people of a certain age who were regarded as old in the past may no longer be considered old nowadays,” said study author Markus Wettstein, PhD, of Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany.  However, the study, which was published in the journal Psychology and Aging, also found evidence that the trend of later perceived old age has slowed ...

PITTSBURGH, April 22, 2024 – Atrial fibrillation (Afib), a common type of arrhythmia that is on the rise in people under the age of 65, is more dangerous in this increasingly younger population than previously thought, according to a new study published today in Circulation Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology and authored by physician-scientists at the UPMC Heart and Vascular Institute. The study, which is among the first to examine a large group of Afib patients younger than 65 in the U.S., found that these younger patients were more likely to be hospitalized for heart failure, stroke or heart ...

Researchers who study Earth’s biosphere tend to operate from one of three scientific cultures, each with distinct ways of conducting science, and which have been operating mostly independently from one another, find the authors of a Perspective published in PNAS on April 19, 2024. SFI Professors Christopher Kempes and Geoffrey West, together with External Professor Brian Enquist (University of Arizona) identify and explain the three cultures, and suggest that reconnecting them could help accelerate ...

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the second most common cancer in the United States. This highlights the importance of early detection and treatment of precancerous lesions like large polyps. Endoscopy offers a minimally invasive approach to removing these polyps, reducing the need for traditional surgery. This review, published in eGastroenterology, explores advancements in endoscopic resection techniques, specifically Endoscopic Mucosal Resection (EMR) and Endoscopic Submucosal Dissection (ESD). Complete removal of large polyps (>10 mm) is crucial to prevent progression to CRC. Piecemeal resection during endoscopic procedures can increase the risk ...

The Speech Accessibility Project, which aims to make automatic speech recognition technology more accessible to people with speech differences and disabilities, is now sharing some of its voice recordings and related data with universities, nonprofits and companies. The project team is accepting signed data use agreements and one-page proposals for 211 recordings of people with Parkinson’s. The download also includes text of the original speech prompts and a transcript of the participants’ responses. A subset includes annotations ...

DALLAS, April 22, 2024 — Scientific researchers in Missouri and Virginia have been awarded nearly $1.4 million each in grants to study ways to extend the life expectancy and improve the quality of life for children with a transplanted heart. These two research awards mark the latest round of funding for a joint $3 million scientific research initiative between 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, and Enduring Hearts, the only non-profit organization solely dedicated ...

A University of Melbourne researcher has spotted a rare evolutionary phenomenon happening rapidly in real time in bats living in the Solomon Islands. Dr Tyrone Lavery reports in a paper published in Evolution that two groups of leaf-nosed bats with vastly different body sizes that were thought to be separate species are an example of a rare type of parallel evolution. Parallel evolution is when different populations living in similar environments evolve similar features independently. The smaller bat, Hipposideros diadema, is found across its six main islands and many smaller islands. It is ...

The SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID has the unsettling ability of often generating variants of itself. Other viruses also mutate, but as SARS-CoV-2 quickly spread throughout the entire human population during the pandemic, killing millions, the virus’ dynamic evolution posed a serious problem: it repeatedly challenged our bodies’ immune response fighting the virus and hindered the process of getting updated vaccines ready. Understanding the genetic mechanism fueling SARS-CoV-2’s ability to generate variants can go a long way in keeping COVID at bay. In this study published in Nature Microbiology, researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and collaborating institutions developed ...

Governments in the Mesoamerican Reef region are exploring the use of nature-based solutions to strengthen coral health and societal benefits for coastal communities. A new study led by Stanford researchers in collaboration with scientists from the World Wildlife Fund, the Healthy Reefs Initiative, and others from the Smart Coasts project quantified the outcomes of different watershed interventions to support coral health at regional versus national scales, and identified target areas that could improve both ecosystem and societal benefits nationally and across the region. The nature-based approaches evaluated as key ...

An international team led by researchers at the University of Toronto has mapped the movement of proteins encoded by the yeast genome throughout its cell cycle. This is the first time that all the proteins of an organism have been tracked across the cell cycle, which required a combination of deep learning and high-throughput microscopy. The team applied two convolutional neural networks, or algorithms, called DeepLoc and CycleNet, to analyze images of millions of live yeast cells. The result was a comprehensive map identifying where proteins are located and how they move and change in abundance ...