App-Based Hearing Screenings in Family Practice May Improve Hearing Disorder Diagnosis  Background and Goal: Pure-tone audiometry, the gold standard for assessing hearing impairment, is costly and time-consuming. This study evaluated the acceptability and feasibility of hearing screening in the routine practice of private family medicine using two self-tests.   Study Approach: 516 consecutive patients aged older than 10 years attending three private French family-practice clinics wore calibrated ...

AI-Enabled Cardiovascular Screening Shows Promise in Identifying Heart Dysfunction in Women Considering Pregnancy  Background and Goal: This study evaluated the performance of an artificial intelligence–enabled electrocardiogram (AI-ECG) and an AI-powered digital stethoscope to see how well they could detect early signs of heart dysfunction in women of reproductive age. Study Approach: In this cross-sectional pilot study, researchers examined two groups of women aged 18 to 49 who were considering pregnancy. Women who were currently pregnant or within one year postpartum were also ...

The  Global Virus Network (GVN) is highly concerned that the world is unprepared for the next pandemic and has not incorporated the lessons learned from COVID-19.  The GVN, comprised of 80+ Virology Centers of Excellence and Affiliates in 40+ countries, whose mission is to facilitate pandemic preparedness against viral pathogens and diseases that threaten public health globally, believes that systemic inadequacies and vulnerabilities persist, which threaten public health on a global scale. Furthermore, the need for governments and health organizations worldwide to invest and collaborate in developing and implementing an effective, ...

The world is changing rapidly, and so is the way wars are fought. The United States military faces challenges when it comes to securing and protecting its communication systems in a time of advanced technology and shifting global power dynamics. A key issue is the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) – the airwaves used for wireless communication, radar, GPS and other critical systems. These frequencies are under constant threat of interference from adversaries, and as warfare becomes more high-tech, the ability to control and manipulate this spectrum will determine success or failure. To address critical U.S. Air Force communications needs, Dimitris Pados, Ph.D., principal ...

With the increasing demand for underwater and implantable medical electronics, a stable and continuous power supply is essential. However, conventional wireless charging methods (such as electromagnetic induction and radio frequency-based charging) used in smartphones and wireless earphones suffer from short transmission distances, low energy transfer efficiency in biological tissues, and electromagnetic interference. To overcome these limitations, researchers are now considering the use of ultrasound as a new wireless power transfer technology. ...

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools significantly improve the readability of online patient education materials (PEMs), making them more accessible, a new study shows.  Led by researchers at NYU Langone Health, the study focused on the readability of PEMs available on the websites of the American Heart Association (AHA), American Cancer Society (ACS), and American Stroke Association (ASA). According to the researchers, these materials help patients make decisions about their health care but often exceed the recommended reading level of grade ...

An increase in physical activity between the ages of 45 and 65 could help prevent Alzheimer's disease, while inactivity may be detrimental to brain health. This is the main conclusion of a scientific paper published in Alzheimer's & Dementia, which highlights the need to promote physical activity among middle-aged adults. The study is the result of a collaboration between the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a center promoted by the “la Caixa” Foundation, and the ...

The safety and durability of transport and building infrastructure are in the interests of both operators and users. To maintain the best possible building condition at the lowest possible cost, effective monitoring is required to improve condition assessment. Although there are suitable monitoring systems, they are usually not properly networked, not directly integrated into the building management system and their data is often not usable in the long term due to incomplete documentation and non-standardised evaluation procedures. In the PreMainSHM project, a team at Graz ...

A new study comparing wild and zoo-housed Sumatran orangutans reveals that life in a zoo significantly alters how orangutans interact with their environment. Researchers analyzed over 12,000 instances of daily exploratory object manipulation (EOM)—the active manipulation and visual inspection of objects associated with learning and problem-solving—across 51 orangutans aged 0.5 to 76 years. The findings show that orangutans living in zoos engage in more frequent, more diverse, and more complex exploration than their wild counterparts. “Our study shows that orangutans ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA – In the future, quantum computers could rapidly simulate new materials or help scientists develop faster machine-learning models, opening the door to many new possibilities. But these applications will only be possible if quantum computers can perform operations extremely quickly, so scientists can make measurements and perform corrections before compounding error rates reduce their accuracy and reliability. The efficiency of this measurement process, known as readout, relies on the strength of the coupling between photons, which are particles of light that carry quantum information, ...

As the world’s population ages, intervertebral disc degeneration (IDD) has become a major medical issue, causing chronic lower back pain and mobility issues that diminish the quality of life for millions. The study from the University of Macau offers new hope with a novel “sugar glue” designed to repair damaged spinal discs. Led by Professor Chunming Wang, in collaboration with Professor Dong Lei of Nanjing University and supported by Professor Geng Dechun’s team at the First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University. The research introduces a glucomannan-based solution that restores disc health by targeting a key protein, published in Nature Communications, ...

Imagine a world where deepfakes have become so good that no detection mechanism can unmask them as imposters. This would be a bonanza for criminals and malignant state actors: for example, these might use deepfakes to slander rival political candidates or frame inconvenient defenders of human rights. This nightmare scenario isn’t real yet, but for years, methods for creating deepfakes have been locked in a ‘technological arms race’ against detection algorithms. And now, scientists ...

Policymakers often overlook the challenges faced by shrinking small and medium-sized cities. Yet, keeping these cities sustainable is crucial for many urban stakeholders. Unfortunately, the methods that have succeeded in large cities cannot be unilaterally applied to combat this issue. This suggests that a research gap on effective urban management in small and medium-sized cities exists. Dr. Haruka Kato, a junior associate professor at Osaka Metropolitan University, examined the types of municipal expenditures ...

A new systematic review has found that parents and other child caregivers who have alcohol-related diagnoses are twice as likely to maltreat children in their care than parents and caregivers with no alcohol-related diagnoses.  ‘Alcohol-related diagnoses’ included alcohol-related hospitalisation, alcohol-related service use, or a history of clinically determined alcohol dependence. ‘Child maltreatment’ included physical, psychological, emotional and sexual abuse; neglect; and other types of maltreatment such as harsh parenting. The study pooled the results from twelve studies of child maltreatment.  All were cohort studies in high-income countries: three in ...

Imagine a crocodile built like a greyhound — that’s a sebecid. Standing tall, with some species reaching 20 feet in length, they dominated South American landscapes after the extinction of dinosaurs until about 11 million years ago. Or at least, that’s what paleontologists thought, until they began finding strange, fossilized teeth in the Caribbean. “The first question that we had when these teeth were found in the Dominican Republic and on other islands in the Caribbean was: What are ...

Scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) found that the fringe-lipped bat, known to eavesdrop on frog and toad mating calls to find its prey, learns to distinguish between palatable and unpalatable frogs and toads through experience. The findings, published April 29 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, provide the first evidence that eavesdropping predators fine-tune their hunting cues over the course of their development.  To source their food, some predators eavesdrop on calls emitted by prey. Fringe-lipped bats, which range from Panama to Brazil, are some of the most skilled eavesdroppers in the world: They are attuned to the sexual advertisement ...

The likelihood of a pedestrian or cyclist being fatally injured is 44% higher if they are hit by a sports utility vehicle (SUV) or light truck vehicle (LTV) compared with smaller passenger cars, new research shows. For children there is an even larger effect, with a child hit by a SUV or LTV being 82% more likely to be killed than a child hit by a passenger car. As part of a new analysis of existing studies, researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and Imperial College London gathered real-world collision data from over 680,000 collisions from the last 35 years. They compared the severity of injuries suffered by pedestrians ...

Researchers at Amsterdam UMC have developed a new diagnostic test that can quickly and accurately diagnose bacterial meningitis. The test measures the CRP protein in cerebrospinal fluid, a protein that is already often tested in blood to detect bacterial infections. Research shows that elevated CRP in cerebrospinal fluid is a very reliable indicator of bacterial meningitis. Currently it often takes a long time before meningitis is diagnosed, which delays the start of adequate treatment. The study is published today in The Lancet Regional Health Europe.  Bacterial ...

Nearly two-thirds of adults in the U.S. have experienced some form of in-person exposure to gun violence, according to a national study by Rutgers researchers tracking racial disparities in direct and media-based experiences. This study, published in the Lancet Regional Health – Americas, examines how frequently U.S. adults are exposed to gun violence, both in person and through media, based on data from a nationally representative sample. It looks at who is most affected based on their race, income, and the neighborhoods they live in. Researchers surveyed 8,009 adults throughout the U.S. to find out how often people experience gun violence, whether directly (such ...

Cholera kills thousands of people and infects hundreds of thousands every year—and cases have spiked in recent years, leaving governments with an urgent need to find the best ways to control outbreaks. Current public health guidelines discourage treating cholera with antibiotics in all but the most severe cases, to reduce the risk that the disease will evolve resistance to the best treatments we have. But recent disease modeling research from University of Utah Health challenges that paradigm, suggesting that for some cholera outbreaks, prescribing antibiotics ...

A higher tax on cigarettes in low and middle-income countries can help to reduce child mortality, especially amongst the poorest children, a new study led by researchers at Karolinska Institutet and published in The Lancet Public Health suggests. The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends a tax of at least 75 percent on the retail price of cigarettes, but most countries impose a much lower tax than that. “If all 94 countries included in the study had raised their cigarette tax to the level recommended by the WHO, the lives of over 280,000 children could potentially have been saved in a single year,” says Márta Radó, principal investigator at ...

Exercise can counter the detrimental effects of cancer treatment, such as heart and nerve damage and brain fog, suggests an overarching review of the existing pooled data analyses of the most recent research, published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. Exercise also seems to boost psychological wellbeing and overall quality of life, lending weight to its routine inclusion in treatment protocols for the disease, say the researchers. Several pooled data analyses of the available research have evaluated the impact of exercise on health outcomes in people with cancer, but significant gaps remain in our understanding, ...

Employing too few permanent nurses on hospital wards is linked to longer inpatient stays, readmissions, patient deaths, and ultimately costs more in lives and money, finds a long term study published online in the journal BMJ Quality & Safety. Redressing the balance is cost-effective, saving an estimated £4728 for each year of healthy life gained per patient, but not if  temporary agency staff are used to plug the gaps, the findings indicate.  Inadvertent understaffing–through unfilled vacancies–or deliberate–through cost cutting ...

A new technology in the form of a bracelet that helps children better understand how others play and interact has been developed by University of Bristol researchers. The bracelet, which includes coloured buttons to activate a light colour signifying the play mode or activity of the children, is selected by the wearer. Children who participated in the research were able to use the bracelet to display to others whether they were playing together (green), playing alone (blue) or wanted to play with others (yellow). The study, presented today at the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Yokohama, highlights the importance of children being able to display and ...

A ground breaking international study has revealed spruce trees not only respond to a solar eclipse but actively anticipate it by synchronising their bioelectrical signals hours in advance into a cohesive, forest-wide phenomenon. The discovery, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, shows older trees exhibit a more pronounced early response, suggesting these ancient sentinels retain decades of environmental memory and may use it to inform younger trees of impending events. This study adds to the emerging evidence that plants ...