When we learn something new, our brain cells (neurons) communicate with each other through electrical and chemical signals. If the same group of neurons communicate together often, the connections between them get stronger. This process helps our brains learn and remember things and is known as long-term potentiation or LTP.   Another type of LTP occurs when the brain is deprived of oxygen temporarily – anoxia-induced long-term potentiationor aLTP. aLTP blocks the former process, thereby impairing learning and ...

Higher exposure to certain chemicals called phthalates is linked to an increased risk of pregnancy complications, including preeclampsia and eclampsia (PE/E) and other hypertensive or high blood pressure disorders, according to a study funded by the NIH Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes program. Here are the key findings: Doubling the levels of a specific molecule linked to exposure to phthalates found in PVC plastics and insect repellents—mono (3-carboxypropyl) phthalate (MCPP)—increased ...

New Haven, Conn. — In a new study funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, researchers from Yale and 11 other institutions found “no association between COVID-19 vaccination and stillbirth.” In a case-control study led by Yale School of Medicine’s Dr. Anna Denoble, researchers compared 276 stillbirths with 822 live births during a one-year period from February 2021 to February 2022. Their results, published June 6 in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, found no linkage between pregnant individuals ...

Media Contact: John Dudley (814) 490-3290 (cell) jjdudley@usf.edu TAMPA, Fla. (June 6, 2024) – University of South Florida researchers are using artificial intelligence to revolutionize mosquito surveillance to help combat malaria in Africa. Ryan Carney, professor of integrative biology, and Sriram Chellappan, professor in the department of computer science and engineering, will collaborate with an interdisciplinary team of researchers to advance malaria research and explore innovative solutions ...

An international team of astronomers has used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to study the disk of gas and dust around a young, very low-mass star. The results reveal the largest number of carbon-containing molecules seen to date in such a disk. These findings have implications for the potential composition of any planets that might form around this star. Rocky planets are more likely than gas giants to form around low-mass stars, making them the most common planets around the most common stars in our galaxy. Little is known about the chemistry of such worlds, which may be similar to or very different from Earth. By studying the disks from which such planets form, astronomers hope ...

Study Finds Home Health Aides Struggle with Mental Health Home health aides (HHAs) are vulnerable to stress, isolation and depressive symptoms, which impact their own health as well as their patients’ desire to age in place, according to Weill Cornell Medicine researchers. HHAs are a rapidly growing workforce trained and certified to provide personal and medical care, as well as emotional support, in the home. “As a doctor, I’ve learned that home health aides are a critical part of patients’ well-being,” said senior author Dr. Madeline Sterling, ...

Alopecia areata (AA) is an autoimmune disease characterized by hair loss, which occurs when T cells of the immune system mistakenly attack hair follicles. To restore control over hyperactive immune cells, investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, and MIT developed a cutting-edge approach to deliver T cell regulators directly to sites of hair loss and halt autoimmune activity. Findings, published in Advanced Materials, demonstrated marked and lasting increases in hair regrowth in models of the disease. Our immune system evolved to safeguard against the overactivation that occurs when it mistakenly attacks ...

  Lakmini Kidder, MBA, has been appointed to the newly expanded role of Senior Vice President, Finance, and Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) for Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC). Kidder will begin her role on July 22. She joins VUMC from Johns Hopkins Health System in Baltimore, where she served as Vice President of Enterprise Revenue Cycle Management. In her new capacity, Kidder will assume responsibility for overseeing all aspects of VUMC’s integrated revenue cycle, encompassing hospitals, clinics, the Vanderbilt Medical Group and Vanderbilt Integrated Providers. Additionally, she will oversee revenue management and ...

A research team led by Rice University’s Edward Knightly has uncovered an eavesdropping security vulnerability in high-frequency and high-speed wireless backhaul links, widely employed in critical applications such as 5G wireless cell phone signals and low-latency financial trading on Wall Street. Contrary to the common belief that these links are inherently secure due to their elevated positioning and highly directive millimeter-wave and sub-terahertz “pencil-beams,” the team exposed a novel method of interception using a ...

As infrastructure ages, it becomes more susceptible to failure, which can cause safety and mobility concerns for drivers and pedestrians, and economic woes for taxpayers. A recent study published in “Transportation Research Record” shows that high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite data can detect infrastructure issues early on, which can help prevent further damage to roads in the same way that annual checkups can help prevent more complex health issues in humans. Led by Dr. Anand Puppala and Ph.D. candidate Amit Gajurel, researchers at Texas A&M University are working on a new method of infrastructure monitoring using Synthetic ...

The International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) convenes world-renown scientists dedicated to stem cell research and regenerative medicine each year at its annual meeting to share the year’s most compelling basic discoveries and clinical breakthroughs in the stem cell field. Abstract submission and registration for ISSCR 2025, taking place 11-14 June 2025, will open on 2 October 2024. Abstracts submitted by 21 January 2025 will be considered for oral presentations and merit and travels awards. The ISSCR is proud to announce the ...

EL PASO, Texas (June 6, 2024) — Researchers at The University of Texas at El Paso are developing a new therapeutic approach that uses nanoparticles for the treatment of skin and lung fibrosis, conditions that can result in severe damage to the body’s tissues. Md Nurunnabi, Ph.D., is an associate professor in UTEP’s School of Pharmacy and the lead researcher on two studies published this June in the medical Journal of Controlled Release; one study focuses on skin fibrosis and the other on lung fibrosis. “We are closer than ever ...

DALLAS, June 5, 2024 — Nine out of 10 people who suffer cardiac arrest outside of the hospital die, and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), especially if performed immediately, can double or triple survival rates.[1] That is why the American Heart Association, celebrating 100 years of lifesaving service, will broaden efforts to drive CPR education at the community level through the Heart Walk® campaign. Heart Walk is the Association’s largest community-based activation engaging more than 220 cities ...

Restricting menthol flavor in cigarettes while making nicotine replacement therapy, such as a skin patch that can help ease withdrawal, more available and affordable has the potential to reduce socioeconomic disparities in tobacco use. That was one of the findings in a study published in May in Nicotine and Tobacco Research that marks a new use of existing data from the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC’s Addiction Recovery Research Center. Researchers analyzed data from their Experimental Tobacco ...

It’s an unusual collaboration. Botanists and archaeologists don’t often work together, unless they’re studying the way people have used plants through time. But a new four-year grant from the National Science Foundation is shaking things up. It provides more than $1 million to study how Mediterranean plants that people have largely ignored evolved and diversified in one of the most formative periods of human history. “The Mediterranean is at the crossroads of Europe,” said Nicolas Gauthier, curator ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Biomedical engineers at Duke University have developed a silk-based, ultrathin membrane that can be used in organ-on-a-chip models to better mimic the natural environment of cells and tissues within the body. When used in a kidney organ-on-a-chip platform, the membrane helped tissues grow to recreate the functionality of both healthy and diseased kidneys. By allowing the cells to grow closer together, this new membrane helps researchers to better control the growth and function of the key cells and tissues of any organ, enabling them to more accurately model a wide range of diseases and test therapeutics. The research appears June 4 in the journal Science Advances. Often ...

What species live in this coral reef, and are they healthy? Chemical clues emitted by marine organisms might hold that information. But in underwater environments, invisible compounds create a complex “soup” that is hard for scientists to decipher. Now, researchers in ACS’ Journal of Proteome Research have demonstrated a way to extract and identify these indicator compounds in seawater. They found metabolites previously undetected on reefs, including three that may represent different reef organisms. Plants and animals living in coral reefs release various substances, from complex macromolecules to individual amino acids, into the surrounding water. To determine ...

https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.15212/CVIA.2024.0033 Announcing a new article publication for Cardiovascular Innovations and Applications journal. This study was aimed at investigating factors influencing the progression of native coronary atherosclerosis after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). A cohort of 462 patients was classified into progressive (n = 73) or non-progressive (n = 389) groups according to the presence of native coronary atherosclerosis progression on coronary angiography. ...

One of the biggest challenges in quantum technology and quantum sensing is “noise”–seemingly random environmental disturbances that can disrupt the delicate quantum states of qubits, the fundamental units of quantum information. Looking deeper at this issue, JILA Associate Fellow and University of Colorado Boulder Physics Assistant Professor Shuo Sun recently collaborated with Andrés Montoya-Castillo, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, and his team to develop a new method for better understanding and controlling this noise, potentially paving the way for significant advancements in quantum computing, ...

For a tiny hunter of the microbial world that relies on extending its neck up to 30 times its body length to release its deadly attack, intricate origami-like cellular geometry is key. This geometry enables the rapid hyperextensibility of the neck-like protrusion, for single-celled predator Lacrymaria olor, a new study reports. The findings not only explain L. olor’s extreme shape-shifting ability but also hold potential for inspiring innovations in soft-matter engineering or the design of robotic systems. Single-celled protists are well known for their ability to perform dynamic morphological changes in ...

In a Policy Forum, R. Scott Kemp and colleagues argue that promoting new nuclear reactor technologies using high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) threatens the international system of controls that has prevented nuclear weapons proliferation for over 30 years. “Governments and others promoting the use of HALEU have not carefully considered the potential proliferation and terrorism risks that the wide adoption of this fuel creates,” write Kemp et al. The authors warn that if HALEU becomes a standard reactor ...

James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations have revealed abundant hydrocarbons in the protoplanetary disk surrounding a young, very-low-mass star – findings that provide novel insights into the chemical environment from which many terrestrial planets, in particular, are born. Planets form in disks of gas and dust that orbit young stars. Observations show that terrestrial planets form more efficiently than gas giant planets around very-low-mass stars (VLMSs) – those with less than 0.3 solar masses. Although the chemical compositions of the inner disk regions around higher mass stars ...

Heat production in fat tissue, a trait also known as adipose tissue thermogenesis, evolved over two stages in mammals, fully developing in eutherian mammals after the group’s evolutionary divergence from marsupials, according to a new study. The results could provide insights that inform future therapies related to metabolism and obesity. Many organisms produce heat internally to regulate body temperature. It is thought that the evolution of the ability to maintain high body temperatures provided ...

“There are some things in life you can watch and then never unwatch,” said Manu Prakash, associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford University, calling up a video of his latest fascination, the single-cell organism Lacrymaria olor, a free-living protist he stumbled upon playing with his paper Foldscope. “It’s … just … it’s mesmerizing.” “From the minute Manu showed it to me, I have just been transfixed by this cell,” said Eliott Flaum, a graduate student ...

Planets form in disks of gas and dust, orbiting young stars. The MIRI Mid-INfrared Disk Survey (MINDS), led by Thomas Henning from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg, Germany, aims to establish a representative disk sample. By exploring their chemistry and physical properties with MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) on board the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the collaboration links those disks to the properties of planets potentially forming there. In a new study, a team of researchers ...