Kayunta Johnson-Winters, an associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry at The University of Texas at Arlington, has been named a 2025 fellow of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. The honor recognition recognizes her contributions to biochemistry and molecular biology and her efforts to support junior faculty, women in science and student mentorship. “This is a tremendous honor and recognizes Kay’s important work in advancing our understanding of disease while mentoring junior faculty and student researchers,” said Morteza Khaledi, dean of UTA’s College of Science. “I’m pleased ...

ELF4, a transcription factor belonging to the ETS family, has emerged as a pivotal regulator in cell differentiation, immune system function, and cancer progression. This newly published review underscores its molecular complexity and clinical significance, shedding light on its dual role in tumor suppression and oncogenesis.   ELF4 is highly expressed in various tissues, including hematopoietic cells, placenta, and the gastrointestinal tract. Its activity is tightly controlled through post-translational modifications and intricate signaling pathways, allowing it to modulate key physiological processes. Notably, ELF4 plays a critical ...

Embargoed for release until 5:00 p.m. ET on Monday 10 March 2025    Follow @Annalsofim on X, Facebook, Instagram, threads, and Linkedin Below please find summaries of new articles that will be published in the next issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The summaries are not intended to substitute for the full articles as a source of information. This information is under strict embargo and by taking it into possession, media representatives are committing to the terms of the embargo not only on their own behalf, but also on behalf of the organization they represent.          ----------------------------       1. ...

In today’s economy, many workers have transitioned from manual labor toward knowledge work, a move driven primarily by technological advances, and workers in this domain face challenges around managing non-routine work, which is inherently uncertain. Automated interventions can help workers understand their work and boost performance and trust. In a new study, researchers explored how artificial intelligence (AI) can enhance performance and trust in knowledge work environments. They found that when AI systems provided feedback in real-time, performance and trust increased. The study, by researchers at Carnegie Mellon ...

LA JOLLA, CA—The herb rosemary has long been linked with memory: “There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance,” says Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. So it is fitting that researchers would study a compound found in rosemary and sage—carnosic acid—for its impact on Alzheimer’s disease. In the disease, which is the leading cause of dementia and the sixth leading cause of death in the US, inflammation is one component that often leads to cognitive decline. Carnosic acid is an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory compound that works by activating enzymes that make up the body’s natural defense system. ...

Researchers at McMaster University have started a phase-2 clinical trial on a next-generation, inhaled COVID-19 vaccine. The AeroVax study, supported by $8M in funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), will test needle-free vaccines developed to provide protection from SARS-CoV-2. Led by Fiona Smaill and Zhou Xing, members of the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research (IIDR) at McMaster, the multi-centre trial will evaluate the new vaccine in a broad study group, while also confirming ...

A decades-old riddle poses the following scenario: A boy is injured in a car crash in which the father dies and is taken to the emergency room, where the doctor says, “I cannot operate on him—he’s my son.” Who, then, is the doctor? Many over the years have been stumped in not recognizing the answer: the mother.  Similarly, research has shown that adults instinctively think of men when asked to think of a person—they describe the most “typical” person they can imagine as male and assume storybook characters without a specified gender are men. A new study by psychology researchers shows that the way parents ...

In multiple sclerosis (MS), antibodies to the common Epstein-Barr virus can accidentally attack a protein in the brain and spinal cord. New research shows that the combination of certain viral antibodies and genetic risk factors can be linked to a greatly increased risk of MS. The study has been published in the journal PNAS and led by researchers at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, and Stanford University School of Medicine, USA. An estimated 90 to 95 percent of adults are carriers of the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) and have formed antibodies against it. Many become infected as children with few or no symptoms, but in young adults, the virus can cause glandular ...

University of Queensland research has found discrimination based on sexual orientation is common in the gig economy, but only for tasks requiring close physical proximity. Dr David Smerdon, Dr Samuel Pearson and Dr Sabina Albrecht ran an experiment on a popular online marketplace involving more than 1,100 job posts across 6 Australian cities. “To test whether workers discriminate against gay men, we created hundreds of fictitious male ‘requester’ profiles, with some clearly signalling they were gay by referring to their male partner or with a couple profile photo,” Dr Pearson said. “The requested tasks were either inside the home – such as moving ...

Metamorphic proteins can be thought of as the “shapeshifters” of human, animal and bacterial cells. Their ability to drastically switch between two different shapes enables them to adapt to changing environments and carry out diverse functions.  Little is known about how metamorphic proteins transform despite their usefulness in living organisms. To help tackle this mystery, a new paper in the “Perspectives” section of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) offers a “bold theory,” said co-author John Orban, a professor in the University of Maryland’s Department ...

March 10, 2025 — Perinatal interventions guided by reproductive justice principles can have positive effects on the perinatal mental health of Black birthing patients and, perhaps, the mental health development of their infants, states a systematic review published in a special issue of Harvard Review of Psychiatry, part of the Lippincott portfolio from Wolters Kluwer. Mental health interventions incorporating reproductive justice principles "utilize a trauma-informed approach to address the psychosocial stress and trauma of racism and their negative effects on pregnant parents and offspring," Cristiane S. Duarte, PhD, MPH, of Columbia University ...

Herpes simplex virus-1 (HSV-1) is commonly known for causing blisters and sores. But in some cases, the virus can migrate to the eye or nervous system, causing severe, chronic symptoms. Now, a study from University of Illinois Chicago researchers finds that herpes infection through the nose can lead to anxiety, motor impairment and cognitive issues. The research is the first to show that, by exploiting a cellular enzyme, the virus can produce behavioral symptoms. The finding emphasizes the need for prevention and treatment of a virus carried by billions of people worldwide.  The research, published in mBio, is the latest from the College of Medicine group ...

Despite its increasing prevalence, a painful condition called bladder pain syndrome, or interstitial cystitis, remains understudied with limited treatment options. In a new eNeuro paper, Min-Zhi Su and colleagues, from Sun Yat Sen University, used a rat model of bladder pain syndrome to explore if electroacupuncture can alleviate pain and improve bladder function. Electroacupuncture nerve stimulation therapy has shown promise in treating conditions like Huntington’s disease and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, but researchers have not explored its utility in this context. The researchers discovered that this ...

Many psychiatric disorders are linked to altered functioning of brain networks that drive reward processing and executive functions like making decisions, taking risks, planning, and memory. But a better understanding of how these networks typically develop to support reward-related executive functions is needed. New in JNeurosci, Samuel Klein and Monica Luciana, from the University of Minnesota, led a longitudinal study to explore how brain networks for reward processing and executive functioning ...

The Camden Study, a pregnancy cohort of 4,765 women recruited between 1985 and 2006 from one of America’s poorest cities, has found new life at Rutgers University – where it promises to unlock critical insights into maternal and child health for researchers worldwide. According to a recent paper in Nutrients, the project was designed to study nutritional status in adolescent pregnancies but expanded into a comprehensive repository of maternal and infant health data that yielded more than a decade of significant ...

Currently more than 8,000 satellites are orbiting at altitudes of between 300 and 1000 km in the Earth’s upper atmosphere – also called the thermosphere. While changes in space weather, such as coronal mass ejections and solar flares, can cause temporary changes in the density of this region, scientists at the University of Birmingham suggest the effects caused by global warming are likely to be much longer term.  This is because of the effects caused by greenhouse gases (GHGs) ...

MIT aerospace engineers have found that greenhouse gas emissions are changing the environment of near-Earth space in ways that, over time, will reduce the number of satellites that can sustainably operate there.  In a study that will appear in Nature Sustainability, the researchers report that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases can cause the upper atmosphere to shrink. An atmospheric layer of special interest is the thermosphere, where the International Space Station and most satellites orbit today. When the thermosphere contracts, the decreasing density reduces atmospheric drag— a force that pulls old satellites and other debris down to altitudes where they will ...

A mysterious phenomenon at the centre of our galaxy could be the result of a different type of dark matter.  Dark matter, the mysterious form of unobserved matter which could make up 85% of the mass of the known universe, is one of science’s biggest manhunts.  In this first of its kind study, scientists have taken a step closer to understanding the elusive mystery matter. They believe a reimagined candidate for dark matter could be behind unexplained chemical reactions taking place in the Milky Way.  Dr Shyam Balaji, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at King’s College London and one of the lead authors of the study explains, “At the ...

Phase transitions, like water freezing into ice, are a familiar part of our world. But in quantum systems, they can behave even more dramatically, with quantum properties such as Heisenberg  uncertainty  playing a central role. Furthermore, various spurious effects can cause the systems to lose, or dissipate, energy to the environment. When they happen, theses “dissipative phase transitions” (DPTs) push quantum systems into new states. There are different types or “orders” of DPTs. First-order DPTs are like flipping a switch, causing abrupt jumps between states. ...

A recent study published in Engineering presents a significant advancement in manufacturing scheduling. Researchers Xueyan Sun, Weiming Shen, Jiaxin Fan, and their colleagues from Huazhong University of Science and Technology and the Technical University of Munich have developed an improved proximal policy optimization (IPPO) method to address the distributed heterogeneous hybrid blocking flow-shop scheduling problem (DHHBFSP). The DHHBFSP is a complex optimization challenge in manufacturing. In distributed manufacturing settings, jobs with diverse requirements arrive randomly at different hybrid flow shops. These shops have varying numbers of machines ...

PHILADELPHIA – The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) today announced its newly elected 2025 class of Fellows of the AACR Academy. The mission of the Fellows of the AACR Academy is to recognize and honor extraordinary scientists whose groundbreaking contributions have driven significant innovation and progress in the fight against cancer. Fellows of the AACR Academy constitute a global brain trust of leading experts in cancer science and medicine, working to advance the AACR’s mission to prevent and cure all cancers through ...

Student researchers from the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC) participated in the 37th Student Research Week Feb. 26-28. Organized by the TTUHSC Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Student Research Week is an opportunity for TTUHSC student investigators to showcase their work and hear presentations from distinguished national speakers related to the year’s theme.  The Department of Cell Physiology and Molecular Biophysics hosted the 2025 event. The Student Research Week committee chose “Let’s Get Biophysical” as the ...

Ghent, Belgium, 10 March 2025 – New research from an international team of plant biologists, led by researchers at the VIB-UGent Center for Plant Systems Biology, has revealed crucial insights into the role brassinosteroids – essential plant hormones – play in regulating cell division and growth. The findings, published in Cell, provide a comprehensive understanding of how these hormones influence development at the cellular level. Plants on steroids Brassinosteroids are vital hormones for plants, which influence ...

The opioid epidemic has claimed more than half a million lives in the U.S. since 1999, about three-quarters of them men, according to the National Institutes of Health. Although men’s disproportionate rates of opioid abuse and overdose deaths are well-documented, the reasons for this gender disparity are not well understood. A new study in rats by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests that one underlying cause may be biological. Male rats in chronic pain gave themselves increasing doses of an opioid – specifically, fentanyl – over ...

About The Study: While practitioner supply increased overall, the Dobbs decision was associated with moderate but significant relative decreases in obstetrics and gynecology practitioners in the most restrictive vs control states. Findings provide early confirmation of reports that clinicians have migrated from states most impacted by the Dobbs decision. Clinician migration has implications for reproductive care access, quality, and equity as abortion rights are increasingly decided at the state level.  Corresponding ...