The expansion of fiber optics is progressing worldwide, which not only increases the bandwidth of conventional Internet connections, but also brings closer the realization of a global quantum Internet. The quantum internet can help to fully exploit the potential of certain technologies. These include much more powerful quantum computing through the linking of quantum processors and registers, more secure communication through quantum key distribution or more precise time measurements through the synchronization of atomic clocks. However, the differences between the glass fiber standard of 1550 nm and the system wavelengths of the various quantum bits ...

Sex pheromones are vital in facilitating the chemical communication that underpins insect courtship and mating behavior. Among female American cockroaches (Periplaneta americana), two key volatile sex pheromone components, periplanone-A (PA) and periplanone-B (PB), are predominantly released. Previous studies have indicated that PB is the primary component, but the precise interplay between PA and PB, alongside their regulatory mechanisms in male courtship and mating behavior has remained ambiguous. Recently, a team led by Professor Sheng Li from the Institute of Insect Science and Technology, School of Life Sciences, South China Normal ...

West Virginia University is leading one of 50 projects as part of a nationwide effort to increase farmland availability to underserved populations, while also helping producers obtain working capital and means of food distribution. The WVU Institute for Community and Rural Health was awarded a five-year, $8.5 million cooperative agreement grant for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Increasing Land Access Program, funded by President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. Titled “Working Lands of Central Appalachia,” ...

MISSOULA – An opinion paper published by University of Montana professor Lilian Calderón-Garcidueñas MD, PhD identifies air pollution risk exposures and the development of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in exposed populations. Calderón-Garcidueñas coauthors, Dr. Alberto Ayala and Dr. Partha Mukherjee discussed US citizens are not fully aware of the harmful brain impact of exposures to ubiquitous anthropogenic combustion emissions and friction-derived nanoparticles, industrial nanoplastics, wildfires and ...

Diagnosing infectious conditions can be challenging. Diagnosis is especially challenging for uncommon and emerging infectious diseases for which there’s limited clinical experience. Nevertheless, successfully identifying patients with infectious diseases, especially communicable ones, is critical, so patients can be isolated to reduce disease spread. To address this challenge, investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, recently developed and validated a computer program that can be incorporated into electronic medical record systems to help clinicians diagnose mpox (formerly known as monkeypox). The research ...

WMG at the University of Warwick has boosted the West Midlands economy by £450 million – with every £1 invested into WMG’s small and medium enterprise (SME) programmes, around £22 has returned to the local economy. Celebrating 20 years of tailored business support, WMG has delivered manufacturing expertise to 15,000 SMEs in the Midlands. It has supported the creation of more than 13,000 jobs, 350 new businesses and 355 internships over the last two decades. WMG has delivered critical projects to SMEs to help them succeed in digitalisation, business change and product design. A key ongoing project is helping SMEs mange the energy crisis with a specialised ...

The Department of Defense awarded a little more than $1.9 million to a multidisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Arkansas and University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences to develop a wearable device that will assist with the early detection and monitoring of internal and external bleeding. The grant comes as part of the Department of Defense’s prestigious Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs. Hemorrhagic shock is currently the leading cause of preventable death in casualty care settings. Existing methods often fail to detect blood loss until the onset of shock, which can be too late for some patients. This makes early detection and management ...

Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital are preparing to demonstrate their expertise and foster collaborations at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting. It will be held April 5-10, 2024 in San Diego, California. Each year, members of the cancer research community including scientists, clinicians, healthcare professionals, cancer survivors, patients and advocates attend AACR’s annual meeting. It provides an opportunity for St. Jude researchers to share their research findings ...

Nerve cells (neurons) are amongst the most complex cell types in our body. They achieve this complexity during development by extending ramified branches called dendrites and axons and establishing thousands of synapses to form intricate networks. The production of most neurons is confined to embryonic development, yet few brain regions are exceptionally endowed with neurogenesis throughout adulthood. It is unclear how neurons born in these regions successfully mature and remain competitive to exert their functions within a fully formed organ. However, understanding these processes holds great potential for brain repair approaches during disease. A team ...

The results of a pioneering study support the safety of the bioimplants called PeriCord, made from stem cells of the umbilical cord and pericardium from a tissue donor, which aid in the regeneration and revascularisation of the affected area. The study has monitored 7 interventions of this pioneering tissue engineering surgery over three years, noting excellent biocompatibility and no rejection in patients. The therapy has been developed by the research group ICREC (Heart Failure and Cardiac Regeneration) at Germans Trias i Pujol Research ...

About The Study: Supply chain issues associated with drug shortages increased at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic according to the results of this national cross-sectional study. Ongoing policy work is needed to protect U.S. drug supplies from future shocks and to prioritize clinically valuable drugs at greatest shortage risk.  Authors: Katie J. Suda, Pharm.D., M.S., of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, is the corresponding author.  To access the embargoed study: Visit our For ...

Researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center showed that altering the sequence of breast cancer treatment to administer radiation before mastectomy allowed for concurrent breast reconstruction surgery, which reduced the number of operations required, minimized treatment delays and improved patient satisfaction. The Phase II trial results, published today in JAMA Network Open, evaluated 49 patients who received radiation therapy followed by mastectomy with immediate breast reconstruction. There were no complete flap ...

A research group centered at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine has drilled deep into a dataset of over 3 million individuals compiled by the direct-to-consumer genetics company 23andMe, Inc., and found intriguing connections between genetic factors influencing alcohol consumption and their relationship with other disorders. The study was recently published in the Lancet eBioMedicine. Sandra Sanchez-Roige, Ph.D., corresponding author and associate professor at UC San Diego School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry, explained that the study used genetic data to broadly classify individuals as being European, Latin American ...

The CHEOPS space telescope, whose scientific operations centre is based at the University of Geneva (UNIGE), is providing new information on the mysterious exoplanet WASP-76b. This ultra-hot giant is characterised by an asymmetry between the amount of light observed on its eastern terminator - the fictitious line that separates its night side from its day side - and that observed on its western terminator. This peculiarity is thought to be due to a ‘‘glory’’, a luminous phenomenon similar to a rainbow, which occurs if the light from the star - the ‘‘sun’’ around which the ...

(SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS) — UTSA has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E), the City of San Antonio, and CPS Energy to develop and promote energy technologies that could potentially decarbonize the aviation sector. The ambitious project will pursue a range of research and development objectives, including sustainable aviation technologies, battery technologies and battery storage solutions, enhanced electric vehicle charging technologies and power-related technologies. The MOU will position San Antonio as an innovation center for these new energy solutions, accelerating their development ...

The detection of gravitational waves stands as one of the most significant achievements in modern physics. In 2017, gravitational waves from the merger of a binary neutron star were detected for the first time which uncovered crucial information about our universe, from the origin of short gamma-ray bursts to the formation of heavy elements. However, detecting gravitational waves emerging from post-merger remnants has remained elusive due to their frequency range lying outside the range of modern gravitational wave detectors (GWDs). ...

About The Study: The results of this systematic review and meta-analysis suggest that integrating magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in prostate cancer screening pathways is associated with a reduced number of unnecessary biopsies and overdiagnosis of insignificant prostate cancer while maintaining clinically significant prostate cancer detection as compared with prostate-specific antigen (PSA)-only screening.  Authors: Shahrokh F. Shariat, M.D., D.Dr.(hc), of Medical University Vienna in Vienna, is the corresponding author.  To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/  (doi:10.1001/jamaoncol.2024.0734) Editor’s ...

The sense of smell is highly influenced by the cues from other senses, while the sense of sight and hearing are affected to a much lesser extent, shows a new study in Journal of Neuroscience. A popular theory of the brain holds that its main function is to predict what will happen next, so it reacts mostly to unexpected events. Most research on this topic, called predictive coding, has only focused on what we see, but no one knows if the different senses, such as smell, work in the same way. To figure out more about how smell relates to how we ...

Certain RNA molecules in the nerve cells in the brain last a life time without being renewed. Neuroscientists from Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) have now demonstrated that this is the case together with researchers from Germany, Austria and the USA. RNAs are generally short-lived molecules that are constantly reconstructed to adjust to environmental conditions. With their findings that have now been published in the journal Science, the research group hopes to decipher the complex aging process of the brain and gain a better understanding of related degenerative diseases. Most cells in the human ...

Despite vaccine shortages, many younger people  in New York City accessed vaccines ahead of schedule, particularly in high-income areas, according to new research at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Low-income areas with high proportions of older people demonstrated lower coverage rates than wealthier areas in the first three months of vaccine rollout, and higher mortality over the year. The findings are published in the Journal of Urban Health. “A vaccine program that prioritized those at greatest risk of COVID-19-associated morbidity and mortality would have prevented more deaths than the strategy that was implemented,” said Nina Schwalbe, adjunct ...

Hear the words E. coli or salmonella and food poisoning comes to mind. Rapid detection of such bacteria is crucial in preventing outbreaks of foodborne illness. While the usual practice is to take food samples to a laboratory to see the type and quantity of bacteria that forms in a petri dish over a span of days, an Osaka Metropolitan University research team has created a handheld device for quick on-site detection. Led by Professor Hiroshi Shiigi of the Graduate School of Engineering, the team experimented with a biosensor that can simultaneously detect multiple disease-causing bacterial species within an hour. “The palm-sized device for detection ...

The number of suicides among US college student athletes has doubled over the past 20 years, finds an analysis of data from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. Suicide is now the second most common cause of death after accidents in this group of young people, with rates highest among cross-country competitors, the findings show. US suicide rates rose by around 36% across all age groups between 2001 and 2021, note the researchers. But the evidence ...

The Lancet: Prostate cancer cases expected to double worldwide between 2020 and 2040, new analysis suggests Annual prostate cancer cases are projected to rise from 1.4 million in 2020 to 2.9 million in 2040, and annual deaths to increase by 85% to almost 700,000 over the same timeframe, mainly among men in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs). The Lancet Commission on prostate cancer argues that the ‘informed choice’ programme for prostate cancer screening with PSA testing, which is common in high-income countries ...

Britain was already well on its way to an industrialised economy under the reign of the Stuarts in the 17th century – over 100 years before textbooks mark the start of the Industrial Revolution – according to the most detailed occupational history of a nation ever constructed. Built from more than 160 million records and spanning over three centuries, the University of Cambridge’s Economies Past website uses census data, parish registers, probate records and more to track changes to the British labour force from the Elizabethan era to the eve of World War One. The research shows that 17th century Britain saw a steep decline ...

Testing for tumour DNA in the blood can successfully identify advanced bladder cancer patients who will not relapse following surgery, new research shows. This could allow doctors to target treatments more effectively to those who need it, and spare those patients for whom further treatment is unnecessary, researchers say. The findings from the screening phase of the IMvigor011 Phase III trial are presented today [Friday 5 April] at the European Association of Urology Congress in Paris. They show that just over 90% of muscle invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) patients with a ...