UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Dark-humored memes — like “This is fine,” featuring a dog wearing a bowler hat in a room on fire — tend to dominate social media during times when the world appears to be falling apart. But what bothers people most can spur action and change, especially on the local level, according to Lisa Silvestri, associate teaching professor of communication arts and sciences at Penn State. Silvestri shifted her research focus to peace- and community building after studying ...

Physics lab courses are vital to science education, providing hands-on experience and technical skills that lectures can’t offer. Yet, it’s challenging for those in Physics Education Research (PER) to compare course to course, especially since these courses vary wildly worldwide.  To better understand these differences, JILA Fellow and University of Colorado Boulder physics professor Heather Lewandowski and a group of international collaborators are working towards creating a global taxonomy, a classification system that could create a more equitable way to compare these courses. Their findings were recently ...

Key takeaways The galaxy M87, located in the Virgo constellation, provided the first-ever photo of a black hole in 2019, when the Event Horizon Telescope captured an image of the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s center. An international research team including UCLA has observed a teraelectronvolt gamma-ray flare seven orders of magnitude — tens of millions of times — larger than the event horizon, or surface of the black hole itself.  A flare of this intensity — which has not been observed in over a decade —  can offer crucial insights ...

The Alliance of Hispanic-Serving Research Universities (HSRU) will lead a project to increase the number of doctoral graduates in technical fields from its 22 institutions from across the nation. The initiative is supported by a new $9.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). UCF’s portion of the funding totals approximately $4.8 million. The effort, titled Hispanic Serving Research Institutions Research and STEM Education (HSI-RSE) Project, is co-led by UCF and the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP).  The project aims to address the critical need for high-quality ...

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) are not just falling short of global sustainability targets but are actively contributing to the very problems they claim to address, according to a new study from the University of Surrey. This study argues that there is an urgent need for MNEs to reassess their innovation strategies to align with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The research team found that many MNEs are prioritising profit over sustainable practices. The study highlights how MNEs often adopt superficial compliance measures rather than engaging in meaningful, sustainable innovations by analysing case studies from various countries, including both advanced ...

Australian-led research is unlocking new ways for immunotherapy to better target cancer.  Cancer immunotherapy has revolutionised treatment for patients, whereby the body’s own immune system is harnessed to destroy cancer cells.  Typically, several molecules restrain the ability of T cells to target cancer cells and developing approaches to limit this restraining effect can lead to improved effectiveness of cancer immunotherapy.   Research published in Science Immunology has determined the structure of how an inhibitory molecule, LAG3, interacts with its main ligand and provides a new targeted approach to ...

A new twist: the molecular machines that loop our chromosomes also twist DNA Scientists from the Kavli Institute of Delft University of Technology and the IMP Vienna Biocenter discovered a new property of the molecular motors that shape our chromosomes. While six years ago they found that these so-called SMC motor proteins make long loops in our DNA, they now discovered that these motors also put significant twists into the loops that they form. These findings help us better understand the structure and function of our chromosomes. They also provide insight into how disruption of twisted DNA looping can affect health—for instance, in developmental ...

The air around us contains a powerful solution for making agriculture more sustainable. Researchers at Stanford University and King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Saudi Arabia have developed a prototype device that can produce ammonia – a key fertilizer ingredient – using wind energy to draw air through a mesh. The approach they developed, if perfected, might eliminate the need for a century-old method that produces ammonia by combining nitrogen and hydrogen at high pressures and temperatures. The older method consumes 2% of global energy and contributes 1% of annual carbon dioxide emissions from its ...

An international team of researchers, including a glaciologist at Newcastle University, UK, has discovered remarkably well-preserved glacial landforms buried almost 1 km beneath the North Sea. The team used sound wave, known as seismic, data to reveal Ice Age landforms buried beneath almost 1 km of mud in the North Sea. The results, reported in the journal Science Advances, suggest that the landforms were produced about 1 million years ago, when an ice sheet centred over Norway extended towards the British Isles. This is important because the timing of this ice advance corresponds to a period of global cooling called the Mid-Pleistocene Transition. Glacial ...

About The Study: Among patients with early or locally advanced triple-negative breast cancer, the addition of camrelizumab, an anti–PD-1 antibody, to neoadjuvant chemotherapy significantly improved pathological complete response.  Corresponding Authors: To contact the corresponding authors, email Zhi-Ming Shao, MD (zhiminshao@fudan.edu.cn) and Lei Fan, MD (teddyfl@163.com). To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jama.2024.23560) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including ...

Intermittent fasting has proven benefits for metabolic health, but a new study shows that it could slow hair growth—at least in mice. Researchers report December 13 in the Cell Press journal Cell that mice subjected to intermittent fasting regimes showed improved metabolic health but slower hair regeneration compared to mice with 24/7 access to food. A similar process might occur in humans, based on a small clinical trial that the team also conducted, but it’s likely to be less severe since humans have a much slower metabolic rate and different hair growth patterns compared to mice. “We don't want to scare people away ...

About The Study: The findings of this study suggest that body mass index and obesity prevalence in the U.S. decreased in 2023 for the first time in more than a decade. The most notable decrease was in the South, which had the highest observed per capita glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonist (GLP-1RA) dispensing rate. However, dispensing does not necessarily mean uptake, and the South also experienced disproportionately high COVID-19 mortality among individuals with obesity.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Benjamin Rader, PhD, MPH, email benjamin.rader@childrens.harvard.edu. To ...

About The Study: In 2023, among 29,522 respondents to the National Health Interview Survey, a nationally representative household survey, 8.4% of adults in the U.S. reported they ever had post–COVID-19 condition (PCC; also known as long COVID), 3.6% currently had PCC, and 2.3% currently had activity-limiting PCC. Significant differences across all 3 outcomes were observed by sex, sexual orientation, age, race and Hispanic origin, family income, and urbanization.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Anjel Vahratian, PhD, MPH, email avahratian@cdc.gov. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website ...

A recent study has reported a novel breeding strategy to rapidly create climate-smart crops that show higher yield under normal conditions and greatly rescue yield losses under heat stress both in staple grain and vegetable crops. The study, which was published in Cell on 13 December, was conducted by Prof. XU Cao’s team from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology (IGDB) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The year 2050 is fast approaching and farm productivity must increase by 60% in order to feed a projected global population of 10 billion. However, current crop production is insufficient and is expected to worsen due to the abiotic-stress burden ...

Led by researchers from the University of Oxford’s Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science and the University of Iceland, the review explores how genetic variations can explain differences in reproductive health and longevity. The study provides the most comprehensive review of male and female genetic discoveries of reproductive traits to date, and provides new insights into how our DNA affects when we have children, the timing of menopause, and even how that is connected to how long we live.   Genes at the heart of reproduction Using the GWAS Catalog, an online database of Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS), the researchers identified ...

Wildfire smoke has long been known to exacerbate health problems like heart disease, lung conditions, and asthma, but now a new study finds that smoke from these fires can lead to poor health thousands of miles away. Researchers from the University of Maryland Institute for Health Computing (UM-IHC) found that medical visits for heart and lung problems rose by nearly 20 percent during six days in June, 2023, when smoke from Western Canadian wildfires drifted across the country, leading to very poor air quality days in Baltimore and ...

PASADENA, CA – December 13, 2024 – The Giant Magellan Telescope announced today that Northwestern University has joined its international consortium to construct the $2.54 billion observatory.   Home to the world-renowned Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) and the newly founded NSF-Simons AI Institute for the Sky (SkAI), Northwestern is at the forefront of advancing astrophysical research. Northwestern researchers will develop and apply cutting-edge artificial intelligence ...

SAN ANTONIO – Patients with early-stage, node-negative, hormone receptor (HR)-positive, HER2- negative breast cancer who have a high risk of recurrence based on the OncotypeDX genomic test had better outcomes when treated with adjuvant anthracycline- plus taxane-based chemotherapy regimens compared with those receiving adjuvant taxane-based chemotherapy regimens alone, according to results presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS), held December 10-13, 2024. “HR-positive, HER2-negative is the most common type of breast cancer in the United States and we frequently need to decide whether or not adjuvant chemotherapy ...

SAN ANTONIO – The ZEST clinical trial, designed to evaluate niraparib (Zejula) for the prevention of breast cancer recurrence in patients with circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), failed to accrue enough patients positive for ctDNA, according to results presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS), held December 10-13, 2024. As some of the lessons learned from this trial, investigators suggest beginning ctDNA testing during treatment rather than waiting for treatment completion as done in ZEST, and including patients with high- risk ...

SAN ANTONIO – A machine learning (ML) model incorporating both clinical and genomic factors outperformed models based solely on either clinical or genomic data in predicting which patients with hormone receptor (HR)-positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer would have better outcomes from adding CDK4/6 inhibitors to endocrine therapy as first-line treatment, according to results presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS), held December 10-13, 2024. While the use of CDK4/6 inhibitors combined with endocrine therapy have significantly improved outcomes in patients with HR-positive, ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Researchers are shining a light on cancer cells’ energy centers – literally – to damage these power sources and trigger widespread cancer cell death. In a new study, scientists combined strategies to deliver energy-disrupting gene therapy using nanoparticles manufactured to zero in only on cancer cells. Experiments showed the targeted therapy is effective at shrinking glioblastoma brain tumors and aggressive breast cancer tumors in mice. The research team overcame a significant challenge to break ...

DALLAS, December 13, 2024 — The American Heart Association and Major League Baseball (MLB) brought cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and automated external defibrillator (AED) training to the League’s annual Winter Meetings held in Dallas this week. Attendees from all 30 Major League Clubs and many organizations across the baseball industry learned lifesaving skills needed to respond confidently and capably in the event of a cardiac emergency. According to American Heart Association data, 9 out of ...

More than six million Americans are affected by Alzheimer’s disease, a form of dementia marked by accumulation of amyloid-β within the brain. Amyloid-β is a relatively small protein that forms toxic plaques in the brain contributing to the harmful effects of Alzheimer's disease. Another protein, hyperphosphorylated tau (pTau), also accumulates as toxic neurofibrillary tangles. Together, amyloid-β plaques and pTau tangles result in brain damage, neuroinflammation and ultimately brain death. Gene expression studies have already identified ...

(Carlisle, Pa.) — A new study in the journal Scientific Reports offers a rare glimmer of hope in the face of climate change, suggesting glacial rivers and lakes may play a crucial role in mitigating the effects of  methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that recent studies have shown emerging as glaciers melt in warming global temperatures. This new study, led by Dickinson College Associate Professor of Environmental Studies Kristin Strock, looked at what happens when glaciers melt and release trapped methane, a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change. Strock, a 2019 National Geographic Explorer, led an all-female team of researchers ...

Over the last decade, the global market for plant-based beverages has seen remarkable growth, with oat, almond, soy and rice drinks emerging as popular alternatives to cow’s milk in coffee and oatmeal during this time. One of the likely reasons for millions of liters of plant-based drinks ending up in the shopping baskets of consumers is that their climate footprint is often lower than that of cow’s milk. But consumers would be mistaken if they considered plant-based beverages healthier than cow’s milk. This is highlighted in a new study conducted by the University of Copenhagen in collaboration with the University ...