February 26, 2025 — For women with breast cancer, breast-conserving therapy (BCT) is associated with improved sexual well-being, compared to mastectomy followed by breast reconstruction, reports a study in the March issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer. "In our study, patients undergoing BCT scored consistently higher on a measure of sexual well-being, compared to total mastectomy and breast reconstruction," comments Jonas A. Nelson, MD, MPH, of Memorial ...

The practice of purposely looping thread to create intricate knit garments and blankets has existed for millennia. Though its precise origins have been lost to history, artifacts like a pair of wool socks from ancient Egypt suggest it dates back as early as the 3rd to 5th century CE. Yet, for all its long-standing ubiquity, the physics behind knitting remains surprisingly elusive. “Knitting is one of those weird, seemingly simple but deceptively complex things we take for granted,” says ...

OKLAHOMA CITY – A new study published in Communications Medicine, a Nature publication, details the discovery of rare gene variants that increase the prevalence of Type 2 diabetes in multiple generations of Asian Indian people. The unusual finding is a step toward more targeted treatment for all people with Type 2 diabetes, a disease with complex genetic influences. “We wanted to study several generations of Asian Indians because understanding genetics in families can give us better information, and Asian Indians have up to six times higher risk of developing Type 2 diabetes than Europeans. In addition, Asian Indians tend to live clustered together and marry ...

The perfusion technique developed at UMCG to test the quality of donor livers led to a record number of liver transplants last year. Not only in Groningen, but throughout the Netherlands. Meanwhile, there is worldwide interest in this perfusion technique. Donor livers can only be stored outside the body for a short time, up to 6 to 10 hours. The organ must therefore get to the recipient as quickly as possible. As a result, transplants have always been under great time pressure. The UMCG has had an ‘Organ Preservation & ...

In a breakthrough that could transform bioelectronic sensing, an interdisciplinary team of researchers at Rice University has developed a new method to dramatically enhance the sensitivity of enzymatic and microbial fuel cells using organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs). The research was recently published in the journal Device. The innovative approach amplifies electrical signals by three orders of magnitude and improves signal-to-noise ratios, potentially enabling the next generation of highly sensitive, low-power biosensors for health and environmental monitoring. “We have demonstrated a simple yet powerful technique to amplify weak bioelectronic signals ...

INDIANAPOLIS- A team of scientists at the Indiana University School of Medicine has identified that an eye condition affecting the retina, the light-sensing tissue in the back of the eye, may serve as an early indicator for Alzheimer's disease. Their findings, published in Alzheimer's & Dementia, offer new insights into the potential use of retinal changes as early biomarkers for Alzheimer's, which could improve diagnosis and treatment of neurodegenerative disease.  The research was led by IU School of Medicine PhD Student Surabhi D. Abhyankar, MS, alongside colleagues from the school's departments of ophthalmology and biochemistry and molecular biology, the ...

Endophytes: A plant’s friends or foes Endophytes are microorganisms that live inside plants. Some of these organisms, mostly bacteria or fungi, make the plants sick, while others have no harmful effect on the plants or are even beneficial. Previous studies of endophytic fungi living inside certain grasses have shown that these fungi provide the grasses with a defense against predators. However, little has been known about whether this is also true for trees. The current study investigated the influence of an endophytic fungus of the genus Cladosporium on the herbivore defense of the black poplar Populus nigra, as well as the effects on the insect communities that live on poplars. "We ...

In a significant advancement for boosting renewable energy generation development, the School of Engineering of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has taken the lead in breaking through studies of the nanoscale properties of perovskite solar cells (PSCs). This initiative has resulted in the development of more efficient and durable cells, poised to substantially diminish costs and broaden applications, thereby connecting scientific research with the needs of the business community.   Compared to conventional silicon solar ...

HOUSTON ― The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Research Highlights showcases the latest breakthroughs in cancer care, research and prevention. These advances are made possible through seamless collaboration between MD Anderson’s world-leading clinicians and scientists, bringing discoveries from the lab to the clinic and back. Study identifies biomarkers for predicting treatment response in metastatic breast cancer Standard treatment for patients with hormone receptor (HR)-positive, HER2-negative (HR+/HER2-) ...

About The Study: In this cross-sectional study of social media posts about 5 popular medical tests, most posts were misleading or failed to mention important harms, including overdiagnosis or overuse. These data demonstrate a need for stronger regulation of misleading medical information on social media. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Brooke Nickel, PhD, email brooke.nickel@sydney.edu.au. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.61940) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other ...

About The Study: In this study, confidence in organizations to use health data responsibly was largely unchanged from 2020 to 2022, but polarization increased between politically liberal and conservative respondents. Compared with 2020, in 2022 liberal respondents reported increased confidence in the federal government to use digital health data responsibly, while conservative respondents reported decreased confidence in the federal government and agencies. Changes in confidence may be related to the prominence of these agencies (CDC, NIH) during the COVID-19 pandemic, a 2020 national election with a change in the governing ...

Influencers are promoting “overwhelmingly” misleading information about medical tests on Instagram and TikTok, according to a global University of Sydney-led study published today in JAMA Network Open.  Researchers analysed almost 1000 posts about five controversial medical screening tests that had been promoted by social media influencers to almost 200 million followers. They found most posts had no reference to scientific evidence, were promotional, had explicit financial interests and failed to mention potential harms.  The ...

Two papers published today in the journal Nature describe a significant advance in understanding the complex functions of the metabolic network. The research is from the lab of Marian Walhout, PhD, the Maroun Semaan Chair in Biomedical Research and chair and professor of systems biology, which has been engaged with fundamental questions of metabolism for more than a decade.   According to Dr. Walhout, organisms constantly monitor their nutrient intake and adjust their metabolism to generate biomass and energy; their ...

Laying the groundwork for quantum communication systems of the future, engineers at Caltech have demonstrated the successful operation of a quantum network of two nodes, each containing multiple quantum bits, or qubits—the fundamental information-storing building blocks of quantum computers. To achieve this, the researchers developed a new protocol for distributing quantum information in a parallel manner, effectively creating multiple channels for sending data, or multiplexing. The work was accomplished by embedding ytterbium atoms ...

Immune cells that eat bacteria in the body don’t stash them in specialized compartments as once thought, but turn them into critical nutrients that build proteins, create energy and keep the cells alive, according to a new study from scientists at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. “We are what we eat,” said the study’s co-senior author Angelo D’Alessandro, Ph.D., professor of biochemistry and molecular genetics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine at CU Anschutz. “What we eat changes the composition of us and when immune cells eat bacteria the same thing happens to them.” The ...

The brain creates internal 'maps' to help us navigate and learn from our surroundings, but how these maps form remains a challenge to understand. Now, a study led by Liset M. de la Prida at the Cajal Neurosciences Center (CNC-CSIC) in Madrid, in collaboration with Imperial College London, offers a fresh perspective on how spatial and experiential information is encoded in the hippocampus, a key brain region for navigation and memory. The study published today in Neuron, reveals that two types of hippocampal ...

The data sets are very large: with more than 75 permanent forest dynamics plots in 29 countries worldwide, the Forest Global Earth Observatory network (ForestGEO) of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) provides excellent forest inventories for investigating the dynamics of forest ecosystems and better understanding the processes that drive the structure and function of forests. On these 20-to-50-hectare plots, every single tree with a diameter not much larger than a pencil has been identified, measured and mapped every five years, often totalling more than 200 000 trees. The two UFZ researchers, Dr. Thorsten Wiegand ...

This roundup highlights a common drug that can help treat multiple myeloma, a paper analyzing the benefit of a colorectal surgery follow-up test, recommendations for implementing remote patient monitoring for care received before, during and after surgery, details on how often women with an elevated breast cancer risk are receiving enhanced screenings, and clinical trial results for a new chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy targeting B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. To learn more about research at City of Hope, one of the largest and most advanced cancer research and treatment organizations in the U.S. with its ...

SINGAPORE – NalaGenetics, a spin-off from A*STAR Genome Institute of Singapore (A*STAR GIS), will be transforming leprosy treatments in Indonesia with a nationwide genetic screening programme with their PGx1301 diagnostic kit. Set to launch in the fourth quarter of 2025, this initiative builds on a successful five-year pilot test in East Indonesia, which demonstrated the effectiveness of precision medicine in preventing life-threatening adverse drug reactions (ADRs). As part of this programme, up ...

For nearly a century, scientists have known that different parts of the human brain’s cortex control different body movements. This fundamental discovery dates to the 1930s, when neurosurgeons used electrical stimulation to map how different cortical regions correspond to different body parts. But can these regions be further broken down into even smaller functional components? Researchers have long suspected that cortical units for specific body movements are more complex than simple patches in the cortex. Studies have identified various types of neurons stacked in multiple layers across the neocortex, but without a clear picture of how these ...

A research team co-led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), Columbia University, and Universidad Autónoma de Madrid has developed a new optical computing material from photon avalanching nanoparticles. The breakthrough – which the team published recently in the journal Nature Photonics – paves the way for fabricating optical memory and transistors on a nanometer size scale comparable to current microelectronics. This approach offers a path toward realizing smaller, faster components for next-generation ...

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the second most commonly diagnosed cancer in China and a leading cause of cancer-related mortality. Despite improvements in treatment, the survival rate remains lower than in Western and other Asian countries due to late-stage diagnosis. Given that CRC typically develops over a prolonged period from precursor lesions, early detection and timely intervention are crucial for improving patient outcomes. However, CRC screening in China faces several challenges, including regional disparities, economic constraints, and limited public awareness. Recent advancements in non-invasive diagnostic tests, innovative imaging techniques, and ...

Aerospace engineering senior Philip Wilson attended an American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) conference. Rohit Raut, a senior physics major, presented his work at a nuclear research symposium, and senior biology major Jaden Rankin had the opportunity to feature her research at an entomology conference. These and other University of Texas at Arlington students were able to showcase their original research at major symposiums thanks to UTA’s expansion of its popular undergraduate research program that provides funding for select students to present at academic conferences. “At the conference, I presented my work on rotating ...

Oral cancer remains a serious global health concern due to its high morbidity and mortality rates, primarily caused by late-stage diagnosis. The presence of oral potentially malignant disorders (OPMDs) provides an opportunity for early intervention, as these lesions precede the development of oral squamous cell carcinoma. However, the accurate detection and classification of OPMDs remain challenging due to their diverse clinical presentations. Conventional diagnostic methods, including visual examination and histopathological ...

To develop a practical fusion power system, scientists need to fully understand how the plasma fuel interacts with its surroundings. The plasma is superheated, which means some of the atoms involved can strike the wall of the fusion vessel and become embedded. To keep the system working efficiently, it’s important to know how much fuel might be trapped. “The less fuel is trapped in the wall, the less radioactive material builds up,” said Shota Abe, a staff research physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL).  Abe is the lead researcher on a new study published in Nuclear ...