In an analysis of all relevant published studies that assessed atopic dermatitis (also known as eczema) associated with trends in climate-related hazards due to greenhouse gas emissions, investigators found that impacts include direct effects on eczema, like particulate matter-induced inflammation from wildfires, and indirect effects, such as stress resulting from drought-induced food insecurity.    In their research published in Allergy, the scientists created maps showing the past, ...

Rhizarthrosis, also known as trapeziometacarpal osteoarthritis, is a type of osteoarthritis that affects the thumb, and treatments range from splints to surgery. Investigators have uncovered various genetic differences between individuals with rhizarthrosis who undergo surgery for their condition versus those who opt for nonsurgical treatments. The study, which is published in the Journal of Orthopaedic Research, included 1,083 surgical patients and 1,888 nonsurgical patients with rhizarthrosis, as well as 205,371 controls ...

By Amy Norton Alcoholics Anonymous has long been a cornerstone of treating alcohol use disorders in the United States. But even today, Americans are not accessing it equally, according to a new study in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. Alcoholics Anonymous, or AA, got its start nearly 90 years ago and is famous for spurring the "12-step" approach to recovery -- which includes acknowledging powerlessness over alcohol and giving your life over to a "higher power." Over the years, AA and similar "mutual-help groups" ...

Chopped carrot pieces are among the most universally enjoyed foods and a snacking staple – a mainstay of school lunchboxes, picnics and party platters year-round. Now researchers from the University of Bath have uncovered the secret science of prepping the popular root veg and quantified the processes that make them curl up if left uneaten for too long. Mechanical Engineering student Nguyen Vo-Bui carried out the research as part of his final-year studies, in the limited circumstances of Covid-19 lockdowns of 2021. Without access to labs, Nguyen aimed to identify the geometrical ...

Bottom Line: Imaging the tumors of patients with advanced melanoma receiving pembrolizumab (Keytruda) after only one week—rather than the standard of around three months—identified metabolic changes that corresponded with treatment response and progression-free survival (PFS). Journal in Which the Study was Published: Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Author: Michael D. Farwell, MD, an associate professor of radiology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania Background: Cancer immunotherapy has helped ...

Social systems where influence is focused around one or a few individuals may create environments where new ideas are ignored, and innovation is hindered. This is according to a study published today in People and Nature by researchers at the University of Sydney and Stockholm University. It looked at the social networks and fertiliser use of 30 rural, cocoa-producing villages in Sulawesi, to examine how innovative and sustainable farming practices are adopted among communities. It found that when one or two farmers hold a disproportionate level of influence (often due to their roles as "model farmers" in official sustainability programs) ...

Tunnelling is one of most fundamental processes in quantum mechanics, where the wave packet could traverse a classically insurmountable energy barrier with a certain probability. Within the atomic scale, tunnelling effects play an important role in molecular biology, such as accelerating enzyme catalysis, prompting spontaneous mutations in DNA and triggering olfactory signaling cascades. Photoelectron tunnelling is a key process in light-induced chemical reactions, charge and energy transfer and radiation emission. The size of optoelectronic chips ...

Replacing abstract form-making training with the perception of landscape site has been an important trend in the basic course of landscape architecture. Based on theoretical research and the authors’ teaching practice, this article aims to explore the significance, objects, and methods of site perception training. The authors argue that because landscape design is stemmed from the perception and interpretation of site characteristics, experiencing landscape sites must precede form-making training to become the foundation of design learning. Human-scale spaces that concern elements, structure, processes, and feelings for perception, representation, ...

Tin perovskites have gained tremendous attention in lead-free perovskite solar cells. However, Sn vacancies and undercoordinated Sn ions on the tin perovskite surfaces can create deep-level traps, leading to non-radiative recombination and absorption nucleophilic O2 molecules, impeding further device efficiency and stability.   Researchers led by Prof. Ligang Xu at Nanjing University of Posts & Telecommunications, China, are interested in lead-free perovskite solar cells, where the deep-level traps lead to inferior efficiency and stability. The work first introduced semicarbazide hydrochloride (SEM-HCl) into ...

Holographic display technology provides an ultimate solution for real 3D display and has great potential in augmented reality and virtual reality. However, the color and viewing angle of holographic 3D display mainly depend on the wavelength of the laser and the pixel size of the current spatial light modulator. Inevitable color differences and narrow viewing angle in conventional systems seriously affect the holographic display effect and hinder the application of holographic 3D display in many fields. In a new paper published in Light: Science & Application, a team of scientists, led by Professor Qiong-Hua Wang from Beihang ...

The ability to walk one kilometre comfortably can help predict fracture risk, according to researchers at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research. The findings, published today in JAMA Network Open, suggest that simply asking a patient about walking limitation could allow clinicians to identify those in need of further bone health screening and prescribe interventions that could prevent fractures from occurring. “We’ve discovered that trouble walking even short distances appears closely tied to higher fracture risk over the following five years,” says lead author of the study, Professor ...

Crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica), a widely cherished ornamental plant, boasts a rich history, originating in Southeast Asia to Oceania and flourishing in cultivation centers like China for over 1600 years. Renowned for its unique blooming during the summer peak, it has evolved through extensive hybridization, and now includes more than 200 species. Current research has made strides in understanding the determinants of plant architecture, flower, leaf color, and dwarfism traits through transcriptomics and QTL mapping. However, the absence of a reference genome for L. indica severely limits comprehensive ...

Education saves lives regardless of age, sex, location, and social and demographic backgrounds. That’s according to the latest and largest study of its kind published today in The Lancet Public Health. Researchers have known that those who reach higher levels of schooling live longer than others, but they didn’t know to what extent until now. What they found was that the risk of death drops by two per cent with every additional year of education. That means those who completed six years of primary school had a lower risk of death by an average of 13 per cent. After graduating from secondary school, the risk ...

New research from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King’s College London, and in partnership with the University of Exeter and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, has found that women with a history of severe mental illness face a lower risk of relapse after giving birth in regions where they have access to a community perinatal mental health team (CPMHT). The research, published in Lancet Psychiatry, is the first of its kind to evaluate the effectiveness of CPMHTs, and suggests that women with access to specialist support have a reduced risk of acute relapse after birth, but also highlights the importance of the need for ...

Non-COVID-19-related deaths among people with diabetes increased during the pandemic, as did the diabetes complication of sight loss, according to a global study review led by a University of Massachusetts Amherst public health researcher that examined the impacts of pandemic-related disruptions on this vulnerable population. The review, commissioned by the World Health Organization (WHO) and published Jan. 23 in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, looked at 138 studies comparing pre-pandemic to during pandemic periods in North America (39), Western Europe (39), Asia (17), Eastern Europe (14), South America (four), Egypt (one), Australia ...

New database of 928 species of weeds from Universities of Sheffield and Oxford published to provide free, global resource for plant ecologists and archaeologists The data changes our understanding of the history of agriculture as well as ability to understand the future of our farming practices in a time of climate change The project, based on 30 years of research partnerships, is a testament to how academics of different disciplines can collaborate on globally significant research A new database of weeds that can help scientists understand how ...

A ‘fitness check’ of regulations in five countries meant to protect animals during transportation, has deemed that they all fall short of fully protecting animals during transport. Findings from this interdisciplinary work involving animal welfare scientists and a law lecturer which compared animal transport rules designed to protect the billions of livestock that are transported on lengthy journeys in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, EU (including UK) and US, highlights serious failures. The study, published in Royal Society Open Science today [Wednesday 24 January], and involving researchers from the Universities ...

Color mixing is the process of combining two or more colors: red and green make yellow, blue and red make purple, red and green and blue make white. This process of mixing colors is the basis for the future of solid-state lighting. While currently white light is achieved by phosphor down-conversion, LED color mixing actually has a higher theoretical maximum efficiency, which is needed in order to achieve the 2035 DOE energy efficiency goals. Despite the potential efficiency of color-mixed LED sources, there exists one significant challenge: green. ...

More than 2 billion people, approximately a quarter of the world’s population, lack access to clean drinking water. A new, portable and affordable water filtration solution created by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin aims to change that. The new system collects dirty water with a syringe and injects it into a hydrogel filter that weeds out nearly all tiny particles. This device, the researchers say, offers significant advantages in cost, simplicity, effectiveness and sustainability compared existing commercial options, giving users the ability to easily decontaminate water from nearby streams and ...

The power of gravity is writ large across our visible universe. It can be seen in the lock step of moons as they circle planets; in wandering comets pulled off-course by massive stars; and in the swirl of gigantic galaxies. These awesome displays showcase gravity’s influence at the largest scales of matter. Now, nuclear physicists are discovering that gravity also has much to offer at matter’s smallest scales. New research conducted by nuclear physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility is using a method that connects theories of gravitation to interactions among the smallest ...

Researchers from Cleveland Clinic and IBM have published a strategy for identifying new targets for immunotherapy through artificial intelligence (AI). This is the first peer-reviewed publication from the two organizations’ Discovery Accelerator partnership, designed to advance research in healthcare and life sciences. The team worked together to develop supervised and unsupervised AI to reveal the molecular characteristics of peptide antigens, small pieces of protein molecules immune cells use to recognize threats. Project members ...

Everyone ruminates about the bad things that happen to them. Whether it’s a nasty breakup, an embarrassing failure or simply when someone is mean, it can be hard to stop thinking about what happened and why. For people who ruminate too much, this negative thought pattern can cause lasting problems with mental health. A research team led from the University of California, Davis, Center for Mind and Brain found that adolescent girls who have a stronger tendency to ruminate show different patterns of brain activity when faced with social rejection. The study was ...

Neurons intricately communicate and respond to stimuli within a vast network, orchestrating essential functions from basic bodily processes to complex thoughts. Traditional neuroscience methods, relying on in vivo electrophysiology (within a living organism), often have difficulty addressing the complexity of the brain as a whole. An alternative approach involves extracting cells from the organism and conducting studies on a culture dish instead (in vitro), providing researchers with enhanced control and precision in measuring neural processes. In a new study featured in Advanced Science, researchers unveil a cost-effective, open-source in vitro system ...

While recent therapies have the potential to stall or delay the progression of multiple sclerosis, a new study shows that young Black and Hispanic women fare worse than young white women.  Minority women were more likely to have more advanced disease and faced greater challenges in pregnancy, the researchers reported in their study, publishing in the journal Neurology on Jan. 23, 2024.  Researchers tracked medical records at nine MS centers throughout the country for 294 women whose pregnancies resulted in live births. Approximately half of the patients ...

Combining testosterone-blocking drugs in patients with prostate cancer relapse prevents the spread of cancer better than treatment with a single drug, a multi-institution, Phase 3 clinical trial led by UC San Francisco researchers has found.  The approach can extend the time between debilitating drug treatments without prolonging the time it takes to recover from each treatment.   Prostate cancer affects 1 in 8 men and causes 34,000 deaths each year in the United States. It is usually treated with one of several testosterone-lowering drugs for a set period of ...